Ross Douthat, "Germany on the Brink": Was Gaddafi Right?

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"We have 50 million Muslims in Europe. There are signs that Allah will grant Islam victory in Europe — without swords, without guns, without conquest — will turn it into a Muslim continent within a few decades."

- Muammar Gadaffi, speech, April 10, 2006

In his latest New York Times op-ed entitled "Germany on the Brink," Ross Douthat does not mince his words concerning the influx of Muslim immigrants into Germany. Pointing his finger at violent acts perpetrated against women on New Year's Eve in Cologne and noting that with regard to Germany "71 percent of all asylum applicants in 2015 were men," Douthat goes on to say regarding this influx of newcomers upon German demographics and culture:

"[I]f you add a million (or millions) of people, most of them young men, in one short period, you get a very different kind of shift.

In the German case the important number here isn’t the country’s total population, currently 82 million. It’s the twentysomething population, which was less than 10 million in 2013 (and of course already included many immigrants). In that cohort and every cohort afterward, the current influx could have a transformative effect.

. . . .

If you believe that an aging, secularized, heretofore-mostly-homogeneous society is likely to peacefully absorb a migration of that size and scale of cultural difference, then you have a bright future as a spokesman for the current German government.

You’re also a fool. Such a transformation promises increasing polarization among natives and new arrivals alike. It threatens not just a spike in terrorism but a rebirth of 1930s-style political violence."

Douthat's politically incorrect conclusion: "Angela Merkel must go."

So, will the swelling Muslim population of Europe contribute to the continent's science and industry and adopt its culture and democracy, or will Europe be contending with higher unemployment, swollen welfare rolls, gang violence and honor killings?

My belief is that Gaddafi was right and that Europe has signed its own death warrant. Germany? Will it return to the early Conan the Barbarian era, wedged between the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods? Stay tuned . . .