When my daughter was about 18 months old, I was entertaining the idea of moving to the lower-48 in the Southern regions (yes, it was February in Anchorage). For the heck of it, I was checking out some "live-in" positions where high-powered, type-A folks were looking for personal assistants to be at their beck-and-call. I started talking to a nice, older couple...a retired oil exec and his wife who were heavily involved in foundations, fundraising and event planning. The position would have been perfect! I sent them my resume, samples of my writing and made sure they knew I had an 18-month-old daughter.
They were impressed with my abilities and tickled at the thought of having a child in the house again. It really looked like this was going somewhere. As a proud mama, I decided to send them a picture of Morrigan and I together.
That evening, I received a curt (at first) phone call saying they were no longer interested in my services.
I was shocked and couldn't understand what was happening. I thought perhaps I had said something, that they thought I looked unprofessional (not thin enough) and was so baffled that I kept pushing for an answer.
I was told that they could not hire someone who was "a traitor to her race." I was one of the folks responsible for creating "the mud people" and therefore was "a mud person" myself, which meant that I was a few other choice words as well (mostly regarding my sexual practices). I was so stunned (after yelling numerous accusations about his heritage, his manhood, his IQ and the present location of his head) that it took the "off the hook" sound on my phone to remind me to hang it up.
One of the things that surprised me so much was that these folks were originally from the UK. However, after research I discovered that there was a strong undercurrent of anti-immigration-turned-racism happening in in the UK and the rest of Europe.
Enter Alaska's Senator Ted Stevens, with one of his "Grandfather Simpson" style rantings when he was asked about his stance on Real ID and the Patriot Act (he's for both of them) and was told about opponent Mark Begich's stance against them.
"Read the book "America Alone." A lot of people complain about that book...look at the demographic concepts of that book and just think about what's going on in the world and decide whether we want to become Italy or we want to become..."
Wait for it...
"...France, in terms of our society and how it's impacted by those who are really against us."
So, according to Mark Steyn's book "America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It," what does happen to Italy and France?
I went out and actually bought the book and started reading. However, I also discovered that an excellent review by UK journalist, Johann Hari summed it up nicely:
'America Alone' is a guidebook to a continent called Eurabia in the year 2020. Its old European shell looks familiar; "most of" the old Cathedrals and boulevards "still stand" in Rome and London and Paris. But the Islamic National Republican Coalition has just won the French elections - only the latest nation-sized domino to fall to the Islamists. Alcohol is already banned in the Netherlands and Denmark. The continent's women are veiled. The gay clubs are long since shut and shuttered, "relocated to San Francisco."
At least he gave the gays San Francisco.
The "mass evacuations" of white people began five years ago, as the "supposedly Greater France" began "remorselessly evolving month by month into Greater Bosnia." As they flee, the last Europeans curse the memory of mass immigration and multiculturalism. They now realise that 7/7 and France's 2006 car-burning banlieues were merely "the first stage of the Eurabian civil war." The continent that defined modernity is condemned to "societal collapse, fascist revivalism" and a descent into "the long Eurabian night." America is left alone, the last country to resist being "reprimitivized"...
And how do we resist? Because we have guns, you see. Guns will be the thing that saves us all in the long run from fanatic Islam, which supposedly becomes the goal of ALL Muslims rather than just the small percentage every person educated in Middle East politics tells us exists.
Here's where we get to Steven's "demographics" part:
...Steyn's story is - very loosely - based on demographics. His argument is simple. Europe's "white" population (a label he initially shies away from, but later embraces) is having fewer and fewer children. So to keep their social democratic economies spinning, these Europeans are importing Muslim immigrants - who are breeding rapidly. Although he offers no statistics on the European Muslim birthrate, he warns ominously that the most popular baby's name in Rotterdam is now Mohammed. This generation of young Muslims will represent "a literal baby boom". He asks sceptically, "Can the developed world get more Muslim in its demographic character without becoming more Muslim in its political character?" No. Because the "European races too self-absorbed to breed," they are unwittingly catalysing the "the recolonization of Europe by Islam."
An unassimilated, culturally confident Muslim mass will slowly become the majority, and demand the demoralised multicultural "natives" integrate with them. At times, Steyn implies this shift is the result of a conscious political conspiracy. Orianna Fallacci - whose "bravery" he praises - said that Muslims "have been told to come here and breed like rats." Steyn skirts close to his, warning: "Today, a fearless Muslim advance has penetrated far deeper into Europe than Abd al-Rahman... There are three strategies Islam deploys against a dying West: first, demography; second, conversion; and third, the murky 'intertwining' of modern technology and ancient hatreds."
So basically, the "demographics" that Ted Stevens mentioned forbodingly are as Phil Munger states a little more bluntly in his post title on Progressive Alaska; Steyn wants white folks to have more babies because (according to Steyn) the evil Muslim folks (did we mention they are mostly brown?) are multiplying like rabbits as part of a conspiracy to take over Europe and then the world.
And this is the completely-devoid-of-any-scientific-research-tripe that neo-cons like Dick Cheney and Ted Stevens are openly touting as their influence for domestic and foreign policy strategy!
I don't randomly cry "racism" and cast the evil eye on everyone who might say something stupid. While denouncing the Clintons and their surrogates for "race-baiting," I did not racism.
However, the "demographics" argument in this book being discussed in the most powerful offices in the land finds its roots in the "mud people" argument originally laid out over 100 years ago by the KKK (and later other "white pride" or "neo-nazi" groups). These groups practice their fear-mongering by insinuating that interracial relationships would lead to the "mud people" "exterminating" the "white race," which contributed to the laws making interracial marriage illegal. Even today, they are using that same fear.
Mark Steyn is not unique. He verbally spits the title of "liberal" when anyone tries to apply the "racist" label. However, he's taking these same stereotypes that hate groups have used on every other minority and attributing them to Muslims to support his paranoid fear-mongering. Not only that, he also casts all Muslims in the "terrorist" category with Osama Bin Ladin.
The sad fact is that Ted Stevens description of the book during the press conference showed that he obviously understands exactly what it says...something I believe is important to know before November.
Is this just another incendiary issue on which the media will refuse to hold him accountable?