Dangerous numbers

Lately I've been thinking about numbers, specifically demographic numbers.

I've written previously about the potential for chaos caused by sex-ratio imbalance in Asia, and commented on Mark Steyn's wonderfully witty analysis of the demographic decline of Europe in 'America Alone.'

But what I'm thinking about now is something I noticed about the civil war in Ulster (Northern Ireland) some years ago.

The various IRA factions (there isn't just one) were backed by the Catholic Irish, the Unionists by the Scots-Irish Protestants.

In Eire, Catholics amount to around 97 percent of the population, the rest being mostly descendants of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy who actually supplied quite a few Irish revolutionaries during centuries of English rule. (Weird? No, just Irish.)

Northern Ireland was kept by the UK because the population was roughly two-thirds Unionist Protestants and one-third Catholic. Actual percentage numbers varied over a couple of generations, and Catholics have a higher birth rate. Higher enough to scare the Protestants.

Without going into specifics of why the decades-long troubles started, it occurred to me years ago this ratio was really dangerous.

In America the largest minority is black people, at about 11 percent. (Now swiftly being overtaken by Hispanics.) That's why Black Nationalism, in either its secular or Islamist version was a fantasy.

Any revolutionary movement based on a population group of only 11 percent is a fantasy. The most they could aspire to (on the light side and dark side of democracy) is power through organized crime or as a swing voting block. And that assumes unanimity of purpose, something almost never achieved within any group on more than a single issue.

To put it very, very, bluntly, the question that dominates majority/minority relations in any time and place, the one we're all to polite to talk about is, "If they grow too troublesome, can we kill them all?" (And I'm putting that in its most extreme form. "All of them" is not necessary, just enough to terrorize the rest.)

Eleven percent? You know the answer.

But one-third? A one-third minority can realistically dream of winning.

Look throughout military history and you'll find plenty of examples of armies who defeated other armies twice as large.

Point: total victory is not necessary.

Mark Steyn, referring to Europe’s growing Islamic population, “(I)t’s not about hitting 50 percent. It’s about the point at which mediating between the Muslim population and the broader population becomes a central and then the dominant feature of the culture.”

And it's not just the numbers that matter, but the age distribution. Steyn pointed out the median age of the Muslim population of Europe is considerably less than the native European population. Crime rates in America are sent soaring by a smallish demographic within the minority population, males between 15 and 35 years of age.

Hint: What demographic do your street fighters come from?

So what does that have to do with us?

Newt Gincrich told a breakfast group I attended a few years back, that all surveys show the committed Hard Left in America is no more than 14 to 16 percent in this country.

Frankly I was surprised it's that high.

So 16 percent max is still only at the nuisance level. And quite frankly, they strongly tend to be wimp academics and intellectuals. Not exactly street fighter material.

(Their birth rate isn't all that high either. That's why they want control of education. They can't breed enough of their own so they want our children. And that's why they want to change the demographic makeup of America by importing illegal immigrants.)

But... what happens when they're reinforced by dissatisfied masses who are basically non-ideological, but whose sense of grievance, real or imaginary, can be organized and focused?

I've said before, any ambitious program to socialize America cannot be done through the electoral system alone. They're going to need a thug corps.

Notice that today, September 12, Americans who resist the idea of turning our country into a fascist state are the ones taking to the streets of the capitol.

A lawyer with the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) once pointed out to me that control of the streets is very important to fascists.

So what kind of reply can we expect from them?

Interesting times we live in, what?