April 15, 2006: HPI note: This article is by Ed Vitagliano written for Agape Press, a Christian publication. The opening paragraph reads:
Anyone know where we can find some Etruscans? You know, members of the Etruscan civilization that existed in ancient Italy, predating even Rome? Well, there aren’t any. The Etruscans were absorbed by the Roman civilization and ceased to exist as a distinct people. Ominously, if a growing number of experts and cultural observers are right, it’s entirely possible that the same question may be asked 100 years from now — only about Italians or Spaniards or Russians. As writer Mark Steyn glumly put it in The New Criterion, “Much of what we loosely call the Western world will not survive this century, and much of it will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not most Western European countries.”
In the rest of the article, Vitagliano explains this prediction on the basis of falling birth rates and increasing immigration to Europe, with consequential social, religious and political ramifications.