Blogs For Victory

Mark Steyn has another of his regular entries on demographics over at NRO’s The Corner, and concludes thusly:

…One can be pro- or anti-immigration but, either way, it doesn’t solve a baby bust as severe as Japan’s. Up north, Leonard Stern writes:

A nation that doesn’t replace itself becomes an aging nation, and that’s why economists are terrified. Old people no longer generate wealth, yet they require huge amounts of state support in the form of health care, pensions and other programs…

…If Canada has never really sounded the alarm about the low fertility rate, it’s because we had an antidote — immigration…

Now it turns out that the curative power of immigration was vastly overstated…

…The data show that the only way immigration could offset the declining birth rate is if Canada dismantles border controls and floods the country with well over a half million immigrants a year.

Even then, the government would need to impose rigid “age filters” to ensure that only young people are among the new arrivals.

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.

And even immigration – supposing you encouraged it heavily and carefully ensured that only young, healthy, educated people were allowed in – is only a short-term solution as the Third World goes from baby boom to baby bust. Some Developing World nations below replacement-level fertility are: Vietnam, Algeria, China, Iran, Thailand, Cuba, Russia, Ukraine and South Korea. Mexico’s fertility rate is rapidly declining, though it is still a bit over replacement at 2.3 children per woman. India has a lower fertility rate than Israel. As we can see, it doesn’t really matter what sort of government you have nor what sort of cultural background is dominant – fertility rates are on a very, very rapid downward spiral.

Why is this?

Because the Culture of Death has taken the world by the throat. What is the Culture of Death? Well, its most notable manifestations are abortion and euthanasia but it must be kept in mind that these two things are not the disease – they are just a symptom. The disease is the materialist concept of life – that we are mere biological accidents of no great importance and thus our only real concern is our personal happiness. And some times “personal happiness” can really just boil down to “momentary convenience”. In those rapidly shrinking areas of the world where the Culture of Death hasn’t come to maturity the nations most firmly in it’s grip are assiduously exporting death and despair. Only an embrace of the Culture of Life will save us – essentially, turning back towards what God made us to be.

Unless we embrace Life, we’ll die. And don’t think it will be an easy death – it won’t just be the last latte-sipping geezer dropping dead over the final issue of the New York Times. We’ll have societal chaos – complete breakdown as the world starves for lack of people to maintain the infrastructure, and bitter fights over the remaining resources, now that we lack the people to develope any more. And the final nightmare might be a world run by Islamo-fascists, as they have birth rates that are falling at a slightly slower rate than the rest of the world’s – which means there will come a time when they simply have more young men fit to fight than everyone else does, combined.

Now, mea culpa – I, too, jumped on the bandwagon for the Culture of Death. I eschewed marriage and children in favor of selfishness and despair. I can’t undo what I’ve done – but I can (and do) encourage people to do pretty much the opposite of what I did 18-28. Get married; have children – its what we’re made for. We’re healthiest when we join together in permanent union and raise children together. It is the path of sacrifice; of love; of hope – of humanity. You might not have as nice an SUV as the DINKs down the street, but you’ll be happier, healthier and far more human.

And we must, also, undo those legislative, regulatory and judicial actions which have put government on the side of the Culture of Death. China’s “one-child” policy is just a more extreme example of, say, the United States government providing funds for birth control in high school. Its all of a piece – and all of it is an encouragement of death, slow or rapid. Our proper job is to encourage family formation and child-rearing.