MARK STEYN: The Great Brain Drain.

As I said to Tucker Carlson the other night, the demographic transformation of the western world is “the biggest story of our time”, and it will indeed determine all the others:

~Taxes? Big Government welfare programs depend on a high degree of social solidarity between givers and takers. If you think in France or Germany that young Mohammed and Ahmed will be willing to pay higher and higher taxes so that Jean-Pierre and Fritz can continue enjoying their present thirty-year retirements, you’re deluded.

~Defense spending and ISIS? More UK and Canadian Muslims have volunteered for the Islamic State than serve as soldiers of the Queen. As you can tell from their kid-glove treatment of returning jihadists, it’s unlikely that these countries will still be willing to follow America into the sands of Araby as Islam becomes a bigger and bigger domestic and electoral consideration. As for the broader international order, two of the Big Five at the UN will be semi-Islamized (and, indeed, semi-Islamic nuclear powers).

~Abortion? Hispanics, we’re told by Charles Krauthammer et al, are “natural conservatives”, so in theory Latin-American immigration ought to be good for the pro-life lobby: After all, South America has some of the toughest anti-abortion regimes on the planet. Then again, once they get to the United States, Hispanics account for about a quarter of all abortions. So who knows?

To reprise an old line of mine from America Alone, the future belongs to those who show up for it.

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