Mark's Web Site: A quiet place with just a bit of pretension.

After reading a column by Paul Gray in the Australian Herald Sun link, I'm beginning to understand why we are so inept at confronting terrorism. Spinning from a thesis offered by writer Mark Steyn of Canada, Gray says our problem in the west is that we are not having enough children. Islam "have an abundance of youth and they are not afraid to use them against us." The purported leader of the airplane bombing plots as well as the English bombings of July 7 were all young men in their mid-twenties with young children. Gray writes, "Angry young men, once a cliche of Western protest culture, are now a positively lethal element in the armoury of those who want to do more than protest, by actually destroying the West." Therefore, both Gray and Steyn conclude, Muslims around the world are raising their children to hate Westerners. Birth rates, quoting Steyn, are "a more basic national security issue that what you spend on defence."

Of course, we in the West bear some responsibility, Gray goes on. Our response to 9/11 and July 7 is to make new movies and grow fat watching them. World Trade Center, United 93, and even Snakes on a Plane Gray cites as examples of our decandence. With Western birthrates dropping in Europe and Japan, it is only a matter of generations before we are all following mullahs around, apparently. And of course they couldn't resist trotting out gay marriage as more proof of our imminent destruction.

It is an fascinating argument: Apparently Gray and Steyn think we are so decadent that we cannot defend ourselves and our way of life against those who would destroy us because we are so decadent. Methinks the mullahs are winning the argument.

Of course, this whole argument runs along the edge of the absurd. Although I may agree that movies about terrorist actions pander to our collective voyeurism, they also serve to preserve the stories of our culture. These are important stories, and whether the facts are accurate or not, they are needed to help us process the events in relation to our lives. They will help to shape the story as it passes through the generations.

Declining birth rates are a sign that global population is reaching limits of sustainability. Poor societies, those served mostly by Islam, tend to have more children because so many die young. If we addressed the needs of the poor, I mean truly addressed them, then those birth rates would decline also. I don't think we need to honor the gay marriage crack at all.

The war on terrorism is not a war between cultures, it is not a war of numbers to see who can breed the most haters. It is a war about winning the minds of the the most desparately disenfranchised amongst us. It is a war to bring the hearts of people together. And that war is being won because we are learning, at the popular level, that each culture has good things to offer and that all peoples on this planet have similar desires. And we are learning the value of each soul that finds itself on this planet.