Gary Rosen, you took the words right out of my mouth!

Richard, the point about the unknowns of the future is the important one. The Future rarely moves in a straight line, as it is the sum of all the vectors of humans interacting with one another in all of their various groupings. Ironically, it is modern Cartesian technological man that thinks he can control nature (and Man himself)and create, for the first time in history, a static existence. How odd that we should understand science so well, (and make a veritable religion out of evolution), and yet largely reject its basic premise of change.

whiskey (at 4:27) — but if Europe becomes Muslim, and Muslim countries don’t produce anything, then we don’t have to worry about Europe, since it will become more irrelevant than the Middle East and South Asia since it little oil or gas to bother us with. At least, that’s what a straight-line reading of many of the posts here would suggest.