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I suppose these hard facts about the demographic armageddon of Western Civilisation are all just part a of a giant hallucination caused by my personal inadequacies and "fear of the female", LOL.

Among young professionals in America, having more than two children connotes status. It may be too late for Germany because the decline has been going for so long. I believe that the Population Bomb by Paul Ehrlich had a baneful effect on the American birth rate for a generation. But nobody pays any attention to Mr. Ehrlich anymore here. Perhaps the young greenies of deutscheland still believe in the population bomb.

Not sure why the German race dying out would be "the demographic armageddon of Western Civilisation", but I guess that's just me.

Anyway, who cares? - I sure don't. Oh, yeah - you're the one who said Germany will still exist in a thousand years..

To me, all it is, is proof that they're not the "Master Race" after all.

Not sure why the German race dying out would be "the demographic armageddon of Western Civilisation", but I guess that's just me.

On it's own it won't be, but it's part of a larger trend.

Anyway, who cares? - I sure don't. Oh, yeah - you're the one who said Germany will still exist in a thousand years..

Damn you've got a good memory.

Anyway, Germany WILL still exist in a thousand years (nothing special about that figure, btw, I just plucked it out of thin air). The German race will die out only if something fairly drastic isn't done to reverse current trends. But something will be, we all know what Germans are like. Just because you're pretty sure that the fire brigade is going to come and put out a fire, is not a reason not to yell "fire!" in the first place. That's what makes them come!

Ah, yes, the everpure white race... blond like Hitler, tall like Goebbels, slender like Goering...

1.3 children per mother? That's so sad. I'm not saying that out of any sadness over the eventual demise of the German race, but for all those sibling-less children. Though I grew up as one of two siblings, four children per family always seemed to be the optimum number.

I didn't know Germans were a race.

Frank,

No-one seriously believes in Nazi-era racial science any more. You're basically attacking a straw man by harping on about the blonde-hair/blue-eyed Nordic "ideal" (which was all it was, and "ideal"). That doesn't change the fact that race is real, in the sense that unique genetic combinations exist amongst certain populations. This is not subject to debate. Lewontin's thesis that race is a social construct and that genetic variation within races is as great as that between them has been debunked.

I can't tell you WHY different genetic threads of humanity have inherent value and are worth preserving, because if that isn't obvious to you I can no more persuade you of it than I can tell you why it's a bad thing for a sub-species of owl to die out, or for a species of plant to disappear forever. You either value humanity's genetic and cultural inheritence and want to preserve or you don't. But stop trying to tell me that it's not real.

It's kinda funny that the page to which DMT links is titled "Leroy".

RACE RACE RACE RACE RACE

Some critics believe that these ambiguities render the very notion of race worthless. I disagree. The physical topography of our world cannot be accurately described in words. To navigate it, you need a map with elevations, contour lines and reference grids. But it is hard to talk in numbers, and so we give the world's more prominent features—the mountain ranges and plateaus and plains—names. We do so despite the inherent ambiguity of words. The Pennines of northern England are about one-tenth as high and long as the Himalayas, yet both are intelligibly described as mountain ranges.

So, too, it is with the genetic topography of our species. The billion or so of the world's people of largely European descent have a set of genetic variants in common that are collectively rare in everyone else; they are a race. At a smaller scale, three million Basques do as well; so they are a race as well. Race is merely a shorthand that enables us to speak sensibly, though with no great precision, about genetic rather than cultural or political differences.

But it is a shorthand that seems to be needed. One of the more painful spectacles of modern science is that of human geneticists piously disavowing the existence of races even as they investigate the genetic relationships between "ethnic groups." Given the problematic, even vicious, history of the word "race," the use of euphemisms is understandable. But it hardly aids understanding, for the term "ethnic group" conflates all the possible ways in which people differ from each other.

So if Germans are a separate race, does that mean that they are not "White"?

You know they are, you just don't like the word "race" because it has bad vibes. If I'd said "ethnic Germans" or something, you wouldn't have batted an eyelid.

So then, French are a race, and Danes are a race, and Bulgarians are a race, and let's not forget the race of Luxemburg. Thanks for clearing that up.

What about the Lesbianese?

How could I forget the Lesbianese...

BTW, it's worth highlighting that Germans are not dying out because they're getting "blended out" through "race-mixing" (which is the usual red herring that racial preservationist get distracted by). They're dying out because they're not having kids. Too much immigrantion is a problem because it short-circuits the feedback mechanisms (e.g. economic decline) by which their society would realise that the whole "not having kids" thing is unsustainable in the long term. Low birthrate produces labour shortages, but they cover it up with a sticking plaster by importing immigrant workers. It's like if you're hungry and too tired to work, you just pop a pill to suppress your hunger pangs and hire someone else to do the work for you. It might seem like a solution, but eventually you'll die of starvation.

You might say "who cares if Germans die out, there's plenty of other people". Well, if sparrows went extinct, you could always say "who cares? there's plenty of other birds". But I like sparrows!

But sparrows are a species, not a race. A species is distinct in that members cannot mate outside the species and have fertile offspring. Birds are an order. There is no order to your thought here.

BTW, can't help but notice that I'm having a real hard time getting you to wrap your head around the concept of race here. It's as if I have to prove that everyone fits neatly into a certain category, with no overlap and no ambiguity, or else "race doesn't exist". It's not a matter of Black or White, there are shades of Brown. Categories can be meaningful even if they overlap or have fuzzy boundaries.

But sparrows are a species, not a race. A species is distinct in that members cannot mate outside the species and have fertile offspring. Birds are an order. There is no order to your thought here.

It was just an analogy for crying out loud. The Iberian peninsula isn't a species of animal either, is it?

levi,

Are you implying that a population has to be a distinct species before it merits preservation? Why is a sub-population of a species with unique sets or combinations of genetic traits not worth preserving?

In terms of bell curves, Germans definitely have characteristics that make them on average significantly different than other white people. Does that make them a race, though? I don't really think so. It definitely makes them a culture, but not a race.

I'm not sure how I define race, which is why I'm not standing on very firm ground with this argument, but I know I certainly don't define race in such a way as to consider Germans a separate race.

I would bet that there are more Americans of German descent (at least partially) than there are Germans of German descent. These are in no danger of dying out, you betcha.

Race:

To 21 -- what about the idea that a chicken is just the egg's way to create another chicken. If preservation of the variety of the genepool is desired, that can be done without preserving every sub-sub-class. Just mix the genes into a surviving population.

I would go further and say that the Endangered Species Act should not preserve every species, but should give more weight to larger creatures and to creatures which have a great difference to other critters. The snowy owl loses here. He is largish, but there are numerous other similar and more successful closely-related owl populations.

German culture with Mozart and Goethe and Beethoven was magnificent. The 40's left it feeling less worthy of preservation as itself. I suspect that the loss of confidence in the value of Germanness has had an impact on the procreation of Germans.

what about the idea that a chicken is just the egg's way to create another chicken.

Perhaps it means that chickens should value their eggs a bit more? And humans their genetic inheritence? At any rate, they should stop consulting the fox about how to run the henhouse.

If preservation of the variety of the genepool is desired, that can be done without preserving every sub-sub-class. Just mix the genes into a surviving population.

This is part of what the Leroi-link addressed. Lewontin's fallacy is that he only considers genes at an individual level when contemplating the idea of "race", when race is more properly thought of as a set of genes that correlate with each other and appear in certain combinations. If you mix the genes into the surviving population the genes are split up and that unique combination is lost. Also, Germans aren't mixing that much, they're just not having kids (or not enough) so the genes are just plain dying out.

I read your link given in #10 which I found quite informative. I notice that Leroi (love the name) seems to identify five major races at the world level, but then uses the word more casually to identify much smaller groupings like the Basques.

I'm not doubting the reality of "race" but I'm not sure about the Germans being one. I'm thinking "tribe" is a better way of mapping the genetic contours of Europe - Ukranians and certain Poles and Prussians, people from the Baltic to Kiev, seem to be quite related ("Slav-lite" indeed). Bavarians and Lombards in another group.

I have a friend who went to Germany more than ten years ago. He's quite "Germanic" - a Saxon mother's son, he could have played the part of Ivanhoe. His family seems to have invaded England somewhere prior to the 10th century, however, and so is not covered by Germany's "law of return".

Oh, and one last thing about the Leroi article - what is the SSRC? I'd feel a bit better about them if I hadn't noticed that they posted the Leroi article on Hitler's birthday...

They're not dying out.

They're just becoming Turks.

Right Martin?

DMT,

With all your talk of the white race, why do I get this feeling that a computer geek like you probably dates mostly Asian women?

With all your talk of the white race, why do I get this feeling that a computer geek like you probably dates mostly Asian women?

LOL! Because that's my privelage!

German trees are fairing worse than German people: One third of all trees damaged in Germany's ailing forests. Culturally this is huge, the Germans are very fond of their forests.

Here Tutsy, will this make you happy?

Awww. Fluffy birdies! I'd care more about Germans if they were cute and fluffy.

Speaking of subspecies, did you hear that there's a project to revive the Quagga by selective breeding of plains zebra? Apparently you sometimes can get back a lost subspecies if you have enough time and money to throw at it.

I've spanked German ass.

They kicked it.

And not that particular one.

yes, Muslims will rule over Europe, that is our destiny and nothing will change it, it is too late now. Germans are thinking like old people who are more concerned about keeping their savings well than in economical thrive, growth and domestic consumption, because of this they pay more attention to inflation than currency expansion, more to their retirement plans than to the production. Within short time Germany will be overcome by China as major producer, that is the sweet death which Germany likes to have for the future, die in silence, in peace and comfortable on the sun-baked beaches of Spain.

Is it also your destiny to mangle syntax?

hee, hee.
I always wonder what they google to find us. Maybe zorkie or ev will let us know.

Heh. I wonder what else DL is highly ranked for?

{spanking cheese moonbat "Second and Final"} would probably yield a good position.

OK, if you take out "spanking" DL is number one for the above.

A new variation on googlewhacking!

Hrm, I'd never heard of this Trillian.

If you plug in zorkmidden, you get both packen and floranista, but no Trillian.

I didn't know throbert had his own blog.

The two timing hussy!

Oh dear... there's even more that you don't know about, then.

AFW, did you ever try making them? I'm thrilled!

Throb, just in case Lewsi forgets--We got the video, Thanks!

Yes, I did, throb. They were perfect for an "active duty only" party hubby had to go to. They were the first things gone. And apparently were a perfect accompaniment (aesthetically, anyway) to beer.

But I have lost the recipe since then... :(

Yes, I got his email, Mrs. Lewis -- he mentioned that a home screening of the Team America DVD would have to wait until after you two had gone to see Caгino Royale.