BreakPoint | Wolves in Berlin

Wolves?? In Berlin?? That's what Chuck Colson now warns about. Here's an excerpt:

Elsewhere in Germany and the rest of Europe, the emptying landscape provides an opening for an unlikely immigrant: the wolf. German biologists expect the growing packs to head soon toward Berlin.

And why, you ask? Because in Europe they're not having nearly as many children as they need to replace their populations. Last time I checked, they're down to 1.5 children per woman-of-childbearing-age, and that counts all the children she has, from menarche to menopause.

Japan is in even worse shape. According to Colson, they're down to one child per family. And because they refuse to countenance immigration, their population will continue to shrink, unless--well, I'll say more about that below.

How are these societies coping? Well, the Japanese are making do with glorified talking dolls, some to take the place of the grandchildren that many elderly Japanese never had, and some to take the place of office receptionists. (I have heard persistent rumors that the Japanese have developed a true robot that can handle file clerking and other white-collar office jobs, but never once have I seen a reliable report of so much as a working prototype.) But in Europe they're welcoming Muslim immigrants. And in that regard, Colson says this:

But as last week’s bombings in London illustrate, turning millions of Islamic immigrants into "Europeans," however you define the term, is a dubious proposition.

I'll say. What must Charles the Hammer think? Or El Cid, or King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, or Richard the Lionhearted? The enemy whom they fought in battle--and most of them defeated--will now take over the lands the defended by default! (Or will they? Again--stick with me.)

What does the future hold? Colson ends with this warning, which he quotes from a columnist named Mark Steyn:

Europe’s decline is directly linked to its hostility towards Christianity. Its rejection of what Christianity teaches about the family has made the continent safe for another kind of family: four-legged ones who howl at the moon.

Or keffiyeh-clad ones making bombs in their basements, and maybe getting stoned on hashish and serviced by affectionate houris as a reminder of the paradise that, according to the Koran and Hadith, awaits them for going and killing in the name of Allah. (Warning: some of the quotes are highly salacious, and the names of some of the authors of those quotes will shock you. And to be fair, at least one person who claims to have studied the Koran in detail disputes that notion.)

All right, then--let's talk about what might really happen. I see three possibilities:

1. The dire possibilities that Colson warns about could yet come to pass. Revelation 6:7-8 speaks of a Tribulatory event in which wild beasts ravage the countryside and have a paw, or more likely a claw and tooth, in the killing of up to a quarter of the population then alive. That would fit with Colson's wolves-in-Berlin scenario. But it's hard to feature East Asia becoming extinct, because Revelation 16 says that eastern armies will march across the dried-up Euphrates River to take part in the Battle of Armageddon.
2. In a few generations, unless the immigrants take over completely (in Europe, that is), a core of fertile natives will see their deliberately non-fertile neighbors die off, and they, having children at more than the replacement level, will inherit their society and start to repopulate it. How many generations that will take depends entirely on what portion of the population is actually having more children than are necessary to replace those who die--generally 2.1 children per childbearing woman, the extra .1 being necessary to replace the occasional child who dies before he or she can ever get married and have children of his or her own. This might be the experience of the USA. We are at replacement level, and an ever-larger proportion of children coming of age today are coming from large families, and they have large-family mindsets. Blame--or credit--the "Roe Effect" that many have written about elsewhere--namely, that those who are suffused either with selfishness or the idea that "people cause pollution and are the pollution" are dying off, while the conservatives have been breeding a new, more fertile generation.
3. The Rapture and Tribulation will intervene before any of this takes place. In that event, except for the Beastly regime having the sort of headaches that Colson mentions in his piece (like the one in which the sewage system breaks down because not enough people are flushing their toilets!), none of the above discussion will be relevant.