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Many people are completely ignorant of and uninterested in history, before about 1963.
Ignorant, for example, of how very little immigration there was into Europe, after the Muslim invasions of the Dark and Middle Ages, which were halted and finally after long centuries rolled back by the warriors of Spain, Portugal, central Europe and the Balkans.
But even if you are not interested in history, history is interested in you.
The history of demographics is the best example because demographics is perhaps the most important history there is, much more important than class struggle, arguably even more important than the history of economic development, to which it is closely linked, or political history which it determines.
When pressed on whether the number of immigrants needed to make the Scottish government's economic plans work would be nearer 40,000 or 400,000, their author, Andrew Wilson said “nearer 400,000”.
There are many romantic, conservative, liberal, socialist and fascist reasons for wanting Scotland to be an independent country but the Scottish nationalists do not want their country to be independent. They want it to be ruled and subsidised by the EU. And they do not want their country to be an ethnic state, the land of the Scots, but to be remade as an immigrant society.
They are not nationalists. Nicola Sturgeon, whom I dubbed the Poison Dwarf, the nickname for a character in a soap opera long ago, has said that she regrets that her party has the word nationalist in its name.
Nations for her are suspect unless they are 'civic nations'.
No, the Bruce would not have understood, nor Burns or Boswell.
Scotland is one example of how nations, in the sense that they were always known in Europe, are committing suicide. News items from Austria, Spain, Greece each day exemplify the death of nation states.
Ignorant, for example, of how very little immigration there was into Europe, after the Muslim invasions of the Dark and Middle Ages, which were halted and finally after long centuries rolled back by the warriors of Spain, Portugal, central Europe and the Balkans.
But even if you are not interested in history, history is interested in you.
The history of demographics is the best example because demographics is perhaps the most important history there is, much more important than class struggle, arguably even more important than the history of economic development, to which it is closely linked, or political history which it determines.
When pressed on whether the number of immigrants needed to make the Scottish government's economic plans work would be nearer 40,000 or 400,000, their author, Andrew Wilson said “nearer 400,000”.
There are many romantic, conservative, liberal, socialist and fascist reasons for wanting Scotland to be an independent country but the Scottish nationalists do not want their country to be independent. They want it to be ruled and subsidised by the EU. And they do not want their country to be an ethnic state, the land of the Scots, but to be remade as an immigrant society.
They are not nationalists. Nicola Sturgeon, whom I dubbed the Poison Dwarf, the nickname for a character in a soap opera long ago, has said that she regrets that her party has the word nationalist in its name.
Nations for her are suspect unless they are 'civic nations'.
No, the Bruce would not have understood, nor Burns or Boswell.
Scotland is one example of how nations, in the sense that they were always known in Europe, are committing suicide. News items from Austria, Spain, Greece each day exemplify the death of nation states.
'...demographics is perhaps the most important...'
ReplyDeletePierre Chaunu
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
The central thesis of several of his works, including “La Peste blanche” (Gallimard, 1976), is that the contemporary West is committing suicide because of demographic decline and low birth rate; hence the subtitle, “How can the suicide of the West be avoided?” In evoking the word “plague,” the historian very explicitly recalled the terrible epidemic that decimated the European population in the fourteenth century. He equally echoed the study of Latin America that made his reputation: South America experienced a steep drop in population at the arrival of the Spanish. From 80 million, the population went to 10 million in the span of half a century. Thus, according to Chaunu, the demographic index became a prime indicator to understand the rise and fall of civilizations. The historian maintained that population growth could reverse itself rapidly, to the point of resulting in the phenomena of near-disappearance of some peoples.
Also:
On peut dire que ce qui caractérise la décadence, c'est qu'elle est rarement perçue par l'organisme atteint. En outre, le processus, du moins dans sa phase initiale, est relativement lent. Quand il arrive à son terme, le corps social est trop profondément amenuisé pour être encore conscient, il a perdu une partie de la mémoire culturelle et historique qui lui aurait permis de juger...
...Or, la crise actuelle, que nous sommes tentés d'interpréter comme un processus de décadence, est autre chose. Elle se marque par l'apparition de phénomènes radicalement nouveaux... En un mot, c'est non pas la décadence qui est devant nous, mais l'alternative entre une nouvelle croissance et le collapsus de la vie et de la culture. Les civilisations anciennes meurent comme des individus. Leur mort laisse toutes ses chances à l'espèce. Il en va autrement dans un monde unifié [tel que le nôtre]. La menace qui s'est précisée, il y a quelques années, et dont j'ai deviné tout de suite l'ampleur, concerne la vie, c'est-à-dire la natalité.
Pierre Chaunu
I didn't know where to post this, but I suppose it will be of high interest to you: http://www.pewforum.org/2018/05/29/being-christian-in-western-europe/
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