Mark Steyn on the decline of Western and Japanese populations

Mark Steyn's post in The Corner on Saturday paints a grim picture of the future of Western Civilization:

The transformation of developed societies — either into old folks' homes (like Japan) or semi-Islamized dystopias (like Amsterdam, Brussels, etc) — will lead, in fact, to emigration. A young German or Japanese circa 2040 will have no reason whatsoever to stay in his native land and have most of his income confiscated in a vain attempt to prop up an unsustainable geriatric welfare system. So many will leave. Where will they go? At one time the obvious answer would have been America — but Good King Barack seems determined to saddle us with the same unaffordable entitlements that have scuttled the rest of the west.

For much of the developed world, the "credit crunch," the debt burden, and the rest are not part of a cyclical economic downturn but the first manifestations of an existential crisis.

What is most tragic is that we now have the opportunity to receive the best and the brightest from the declining countries in Europe and Asia. But the present administration (with a little help from FDR, LBJ and 75 years of the welfare state) is ruining this opportunity by plunging us toward bankruptcy as fast as the other developed nations.

In this case, the "existential crisis" of which Steyn speaks does not refer to some subtle interpretation of Sartre or Nietzsche, but the very existence of our nation.