74 Comments

1. Caroline:

Actually I was posting about this on a previous dead thread and I’ll take the opportunity to repeat it here given its relevance to the topic at hand.

I had been quite impressed by the essays of the person writing under the pseudonym of “Spengler”, who has a series of essays on this subject at Asia Times Online (www.atimes.com – scroll down on the left to “The Complete Spengler”). What Roger has in previous posts termed “defeatism” may reflect a broader phenomenon of cultural suicide in Judeo-Christian culture. It’s a simple demographic problem of failing to reproduce at a rate of at least 2.1 children per couple (exacerbated by the liberal championing of abortion and homosexuality – and Spengler seems to ultimately trace its origins to Vatican II). However, while Melanie Phillips sees Europe’s pacifism as due to “unwilling{ness} to sustain any losses, since its populations have fallen below replacement level”, Spengler sees it as more specifically related to the fact that people who are not anticipating a next generation are unwilling to die in battle because they would be dying in vain if their cultural identity was not expected to survive anyway. He gives it a more specific psychodynamic interpretation. The same fate apparently awaits our blue-staters (and possibly explains their defeatism?). In the end, he seems to think that red-state evangelical Christians (who are keeping up their reproductive rates) will be the last bastion against Islam’s ultimate triumph in the West. Depressing indeed.

Dec 10, 2004 - 2:59 pm 2. thedragonflies:

I guess my question is, can political correctness and socialism completely kill a peoples as vibrant and aggressive as the Europeans? I donít believe it. Europe conquered the globe a couple of centuries ago, destroyed much of it sixty years ago, and has gone to sleep. I think they will find a way to awaken from their hypnotic state and come back to life. It might not be pretty, and it might not help the U.S., but I donít see them just fading away.

Dec 10, 2004 - 3:14 pm 3. PeterUK:

Thank you for posting this Roger,it is the coming dilemma of the 21st century,what to do with a failed Europe.

Since the war successive generations of the European elite have been tinkering with the delicate mechanisms of our societies.I have read the analogy with the child that inherits a beautiful antique watch made by a master craftsman,the child takes it apart,loses bits, breaks and finally discards what is left.The watch is lost forever.

In this case the child is the “progressives” in the sense that any change is better than what we have now,the other tack is,we have broken now so change has to be an improvement.

The underlying problem is that thes people have not the slightest idea where the tipping point is,at what point the whole edifice will collapse around them,but they keep sawing away at the branch.

If the “progressives” are told that it is inadvisable to do something on the grounds that when it was tried before it was a disaster,the answer is,

“Ah yes that was before,we are doing it now,and we are clever, educated,nuanced,intelligent what could possibly go wrong with us at the helm?”

Did those returning home in 1945 know that they had merely been fighting to preserve their nations for what stands before us now?

Dec 10, 2004 - 3:40 pm 4. chuck:

Caroline,

I enjoy pessimism as much as the next fellow and Spengler was an entertaining read, but when he made specific predictions — Russian troops in Iraq before the election, for instance — he did no better than the rest of us. The future is not that easy to see, either for pessimist or optimist. So, as Cromwell said, “Put your trust in God; but mind to keep your powder dry!”

Dec 10, 2004 - 3:43 pm 5. jerry:

Caroline:

Agree whole heartedly if you don’t believe in a future, you don’t have children and you won’t die for anyone…Imagine!

Dec 10, 2004 - 3:43 pm 6. Caroline:

Chuck – actually if I recall after reading Spengler’s many articles (there are more than a dozen and it took me much of an afternoon to get through them) – he attributes Russia’s failure to put troops into Iraq – to derailment of their plans after Beslan. But no – he’s certainly not a psychic (although he was 100% positive that Bush would be reelected).

However, it is interesting to try to find the root explanation for Europe’s (and our liberal blue-stater’s”) suicide”. The question ultimately is: why do an affluent, comfortable people stop reproducing? Is this not the most central question we need to answer? And isn’t the rest of it really a moot point after all – because even in the absence of violent jihad against the west, demographic realities will ultimately determine the future anyway within a few generations. And doesn’t that put the article cited by Melanie Phillips into perspective? Because there’s 70-some pages related to military technology and space drones and all the rest – but ultimately the Muslims have no technology! And yet within several generations all of Europe and possibly the US as well could be living under Muslim Sharia law. Can we appreciate the irony of that? What Spengler points out is the simple truth about demographics. Maybe this is what we should be looking at for starters. Simply our WILL to survive. Spengler seems to attribute our lack of will to survive to existential crisis – related to the emptiness of materialism in western culture. Another explanation could lie with “multicultural” visions of Utopia – and a simple failure to see the threat at all. Or is it rather that our very enlightened liberalism – with our respect for women to choose career over reproduction, as well as our tolerance for homosexuality as a lifestyle – just by chance results in less reproduction (while the Islamists keep their women barefoot and pregnant as it were)? I think its high time for a very vigorous debate about the causes of the west’s deficient reproductive rates and I think this debate may have more utility in the end than a whole lot of talk about advances in “war technology”.

Dec 10, 2004 - 4:16 pm 7. Katherine:

I am still convinced that the Europeans will eventually wake up. Problem is that the results of this waking up will not be pretty. The European Armies may be useless on a battlefield, but they would be are quite up to task of quelling riots and deporting rebelling communities, thank you very much. They have quite an experience in both. The longer it takes for Europe to actually face reality of militant, unassimilated Islamists living among them, the longer they stick to their ìprogressiveî multicultural ideals the more ugly will be the outcome ñ for both sides.

Dec 10, 2004 - 4:27 pm 8. chuck:

Caroline,

why do an affluent, comfortable people stop reproducing?

Interesting question, isn’t it. My own pet theory of the moment is lack of stress/challenge. I think a certain amount of conflict may be necessary for the health of human beings. Sad, no? But really, I don’t know either. Even back when folks were predicting the end of the world due to over population, my girl friend of the time wrote a school paper about human population. It turned out to much more complicated and much less understandable than the simple good times, have babies, bad times, die off model. I think it is still a mystery.

Dec 10, 2004 - 4:28 pm 9. Caroline:

I will add another perspective – as a woman who has only replaced herself (1.0) – and that to adoption – which means the couple that adopted my child had a replacement rate of 0.0 (so that’s 1:3 – deficient to say the least). Having been born around the year 1960 and having given my child up in the late 70’s – I can say at the time that my guilt over giving up my child was counteracted in my liberal mind by the broader demographic realities of the political era in which I came of age – namely the dangers of overpopulation, the environmental stresses related to overpopulation in the developed world and so on. In short, good liberals like myself thought we were doing the world a good service to limit reproduction! Less stress on the environment! Especially when the Chinese and the Indians were overproducing and we were were so worried about our own contribution to the ecological stresses on the planet! Of course little could we have imagined until 9/11 – that our utopian ideals would meet the harsh reality of a highly misogynistic, illiberal culture that would wind up way overproducing us and possibly pose a threat to all our utopian ideals. That is really the reality that faces us. The question is – once western liberal Judeo-Christian culture figures out the basic demographic equation – can they turn this around in a generation or so? Meanwhile – we work on 1) limiting immigration 2) monitoring mosques (no more PC crap here) 3) engaging the Muslim world in a vigorous debate about the origins and texts of Islam. Meanwhile, the article Maleanie Phillips cites – goes on about such high tech stuff. Isn’t it all really so much simpler than that? Can the fundamental problem not be solved on a much more simple human level than that if we are all just willing to confront things on the most basic non-technological human level?

Dec 10, 2004 - 4:48 pm 10. Buddy Larsen:

It’s probably a vast oversimplification to wonder what happens to educated, responsible couples who own pencils and can see that the state has already claimed their future (child-rearing) income?

Dec 10, 2004 - 4:51 pm 11. Terrye:

I agree with dragon flies and Katherine. The Europeans ain’t dead yet.

As for why affluent people do not have children… I think it has to do with the fact that the last few decades are the first ones in which women really had a choice. Child bearing was seen by many as entrapment. It does seem to me that younger women are more open to the idea than their mothers were. Having babies is becoming fashionable again.

Dec 10, 2004 - 4:59 pm 12. lindenen:

“Or is it rather that our very enlightened liberalism – with our respect for women to choose career over reproduction, as well as our tolerance for homosexuality as a lifestyle – just by chance results in less reproduction (while the Islamists keep their women barefoot and pregnant as it were)? I think its high time for a very vigorous debate about the causes of the west’s deficient reproductive rates and I think this debate may have more utility in the end than a whole lot of talk about advances in “war technology”.”

That’s the thing that gets me. Is it possible that the more tolerant a society is of homosexuality, the more homosexuals you’ll get, and hence less of a future because there will be significantly fewer children born? Maybe there’s an evolutionary reason why human society is so intolerant of homosexuality? Homophobia is so common and so widespread in human culture that it makes you wonder. When you think of the ancient cultures where homosexuality was accepted, in many cases it was only acceptable so long as the people involved also had wives and children. The same thing goes with the oppression of women. It’s almost a feature of human culture. I was rereading parts of Susan Faludi’s Backlash recently and wondered if a lot of the scaremongering and ludicrous statistics about having children and getting married from the 80s, weren’t a conspiracy against women, but the natural result of the low birth rate and lack of marriages in the 70s. It puts the 50s in a different light as well.

The perceived oppressiveness of that decade may have been the natural and very necessary result of a need to repopulate following the slaughter of World War II. Society attempting to self-correct. It’s interesting to compare female actresses from the 50s to the 90s and now. You had very voluptuous women, but now most female actresses are so thin that it would be almost impossible for many of them to get pregnant. In fact, when you’re as thin as Nicole Kidman or Kate Bosworth, your period will stop. Interesting that the ideal female body is one that would have a difficult time getting pregnant. When our society was reproducing above replacement, the most famous female actresses had large breasts and hips; whereas, since the 90s, we’ve had heroin chic and the Lollypop Guild inflicted on us. We’re supposedly so much more free and open with sex now, but most actresses are practically desexed they’ve lost so much weight. Back when society was oh so repressed, the actresses oozed sex. Well, not Doris Day, but Doris was at least stacked.

Dec 10, 2004 - 5:10 pm 13. Caroline:

Chuck: “My own pet theory of the moment is lack of stress/challenge.”

Well Chuck – doesn’t that pretty much sum up the welfare state? Obviously in the past, people were motivated to reproduce in order to insure their future economic security via their children. But if our state pension is secured, where is the motivation to have children?

Is there anyway to escape the conclusion that liberalism is killing us? Look at the sum total of all of it: welfare state pensions for the elderly, womens’ careers and women’s rights- as a choice over childrearing (and intellectual suffocation), concern about overpopulation and environmental stress and the resources we use as individuals in western affluent societies – that make us choose not to reproduce; let us add multiculturalism, tolerance for homosexuality etc etc. Obviously it all adds up to extinction, to cultural suicide – does it not?

Look – I’m not saying its a bad thing – ie that liberalism is ultimately killing us as a culture. Maybe the result of cultural “enlightenment” is that there is no point in continuing on the earthly realm – with all of its pain and suffering. Maybe the earthly realm should be left to people who are still fighting eachother in the realm of ego and self-interest. I don’t know the answer. Maybe really enlightened people are simply not willing to kill eachother anymore. Maybe they have fully realized the first Christian commandment: Thou Shalt not Kill. And maybe the price of that is extinction? I am not saying it is a bad thing. Just maybe something we should talk about – openly!

Dec 10, 2004 - 5:21 pm 14. Yehudit:

I don’t think the solution is a race to see who can produce more babies. Overpopulation is a real danger, although we have managed to feed a much larger population than we thought in the 1970s, there is a correlation between smaller families and economic prosperity in a post-agrarian world. Larger families does take one half of the population out of full participation in society. Women are not baby machines. (I know there are examples of high-octane superwomen who have 12 kids and still run companies and write books, but that’s not most of us.)

The problem is assimilating all those Muslims into post-agrarian, post-fundamentalist life. They are reproducing faster than we can do this, at least in Europe. But we know that Europe does not have the cultural mechanism for turning immigrants into citizens that we do here. In fact, my guess is that once Muslims assimilate into modern democratic society, they have smaller families just like all the other ethnic groups which came before them.

Are there any studies comparing Muslim family size here and in Europe?

Dec 10, 2004 - 5:24 pm 15. Yehudit:

“In fact, when you’re as thin as Nicole Kidman or Kate Bosworth, your period will stop.”

Um, I think Nicole Kidman has periods. You have to be a marathon runner to stop having periods. Almost all female athletes have periods. This thread is getting ridiculous; every scare tactics from the 70s and 80s coming back.

If we have to force women back into the home and oppress homosexuals in order to reach population parity with fundamedntalist Muslims, exactly what culture are we saving?

Dec 10, 2004 - 5:28 pm 16. AlanC:

I think that this thread is circling the drain for one reason…the search for the “root” cause.

What if there isn’t one? What if all of the reasons cited have some merit? As well as others unmentioned.

This is, I think, a flaw in so much of what passes for analysis these days, especially among the left is that there is an unending search for THE scapegoat, THE boogeyman, THE root cause. Whether it’s poverty, Bush, homosexuals or whatever, everyone seems to want ONE cause because if there’s only one we can just fix it.

That’s also why we get so many unintended consequences, too many people avoid thinking about the complexity of an issue cause then your brain turns to mush and you start babbling and throwing things.

Personally I blame the decline in populations in the West on TV, it’s all Johnny Carson’s fault.

Dec 10, 2004 - 5:54 pm 17. Caroline:

Yehudit – no I really disagree with the tone of your post. You said about Lindenan’s post: “every scare tactics from the 70s and 80s coming back”.

But that is exactly what we are – and should be – talking about. The whole islamist phenomenon – beginning with the takeover of our embassy in Iran in 1979 – essentially encompasses the historical period you are dismissing. Can we, in the really really modern era – grasp how fast history is proceeding? This isn’t the 15th century anymore. Irreversible historical trends now occur within one generation. Its even faster with the influence of the internet. Speed is obviously of the essence. May I suggest that you don’t get it?

So OK I will will state the obvious. Demographics ARE the new reality – given the exponential rate of population growth and the longevity of people in the modern world – compared to the past – due to medications and modern health care in the western world etc.

The bottom line is that the Islamists TOTALLY understand demographic reality. My question is – does the west grasp this? And more importantly – do they care? And I will venture to say that Yehudit – you are living in the past. You don’t get it. Forget about “scare tactics” from the 70’s and 80’s. The reality is much more frightening than you are grasping!

Dec 10, 2004 - 5:55 pm 18. PeterUK:

One factor that seems to be important is financial cost,raising a western child costs a great deal of money,so much so that it rquires two people to work.

Housing costs are high,here in the UK mortgages are generally given on the basis of two incomes.

The standard of living demanded is high,cars,two foreign holidays,endless consumer goods.Education for children is costly,even state schools with good records increase housing costs in their catchment areas.Everybody know that the young cannot possibly wear something cheap and out of fashion.

So with the advent of birth control women ristrict the sizes of their families because of cost and to have a better standard of living.

Further because children take up to thirty years to educate,parents keep working.

Strangely the sexual revolution has not fulfilled the primary function of sex,children,but is now merely another lifestyle choice.Males particulary do not have to get married to have sex so can therefore stay at home with parents until middle age.This has a side effect of a large number of single males with no commitment to the future of the society they live in.In fact many males are neotenic and one is hard put to differentiate between those of teenage and those of middle age.

Tribal societies have large numbers of children to provide extra hands for the family and to care for the parents in their old age,in Europe the state does that.

Society has a problem of its own making which would not be a problem, but for the fact that we have introduced a culture which in darwinian terms makes it suicidal.

Dec 10, 2004 - 6:06 pm 19. chuck:

Katherine:

I think it has to do with the fact that the last few decades are the first ones in which women really had a choice.

Choice has been around forever. From infanticide, to herbal contraceptives and abortificants. Native Americans had them, Greeks had them, I read somewhere that abortificants were openly advertized in the Virginia papers of the 1600’s. This is all to say, there has always been a conscious choice involved in having children.

As to the Muslims, I have seen it said that their birthrate is also collapsing, just lagging the European. Maybe we *are* over populated and a correction is being applied. Does Japan really need 120M people? Maybe the US has a replacement birthrate because we are still faily empty. Who knows?

I think family structure and occupation also has a lot to do with our reproductive choices. Grandparents at home, doesn’t that make life easier with children? Especially if folks marry early and we become grandparents in our 50’s? Living in the countryside, does that help? The fecund branches of my own relations stayed close to the land and their children did not move far. At one point I recall a picture of four generations, and new babies would be handed around at family barbecues. Different lifestyle, really, from the professional one I myself am involved in.

Dec 10, 2004 - 6:09 pm 20. Caroline:

Yehudit: “In fact, my guess is that once Muslims assimilate into modern democratic society, they have smaller families just like all the other ethnic groups which came before them.”

But Yehudit (and I do not want to pick on you):

Isn’t that the point? The ability of Muslims to “assimilate into modern democratic society”?

Are you following the news from Europe? 25+ years of multicultural, liberal assumption that Muslims would assimilate into modern democratic society? Problem is – they’re not. Evidently their religion holds them apart. In fact, given alot of exposure to western liberal society, they have a great deal of contempt for it. Now what?

And recognizing that fact – now add into the equation western Judeo-Christian demographic suicide. That is simply the fact.

Personally I happen to think this a human problem. Not a simple one, but a human problem nonetheless. Not a high-tech military probelm.

Dec 10, 2004 - 6:16 pm 21. lindenen:

“Um, I think Nicole Kidman has periods. You have to be a marathon runner to stop having periods. Almost all female athletes have periods. This thread is getting ridiculous; every scare tactics from the 70s and 80s coming back.

Anorexics will get amenorrhea aka stopped menstruation. I’m not scaremongering. This is a fact. I’ve no clue if Nicole Kidman’s an anorexic, but I’ve seen some scary “please eat something!” pictures of her which is why I mentioned her name. Excessively thin women have a harder time getting pregnant. Eating disorders including bulemia can often cause infertility.

If we have to force women back into the home and oppress homosexuals in order to reach population parity with fundamedntalist Muslims, exactly what culture are we saving?

I don’t want to be forced back into the home any time soon or ever, but the widespread existence of homophobia and the oppression of women in human culture is something to ponder. Anyway, we’d be saving a culture that doesn’t stone women for adultery or strap bombs onto the backs of its children. I’d prefer that western culture continue to exist in an imperfect form than impale it on its own sword because it is not and will never be perfect.

Dec 10, 2004 - 6:26 pm 22. Buddy Larsen:

High taxes. I’m tellin’ ya, babies aren’t affordable at 50, 60, 70% tax rates. As rightist philosophers have been saying for centuries, the left is about cemetery peace. Money to make new life, citizens for the future, goes instead to the folks whose future is past, the pensioners.

Dec 10, 2004 - 6:28 pm 23. chuck:

PeterUK:

one is hard put to differentiate between those of teenage and those of middle age.

Oh, sure. Don’t I wish.

AlanC:

it’s all Johnny Carson’s fault.

There used to be the famous Carson Pulse, well known to civil engineers of the sewage specialty. Seems that when the advertisements came on a large number of flushes occured soon after.

This demographic panic is not a new thing. The Nazis were also concerned and spoke of the three K’s: Kinder, Kirche, Kuche. I don’t know if it originated with them, but population was certainly a great concern to them.

Anyway, I will stick to my point that it is difficult to predict demographics over the long term. It is *way* too early to panic. But it *is* pretty entertaining to tell Europeans they are headed for extinction.

Dec 10, 2004 - 6:31 pm 24. chuck:

lindenen:

A female astronaut I happened to know once related that when she was checking out of the supermarket with a package of tampax, a man looked over and commented that he thought that women of her occupation didn’t menstruate. Bit rude, no? Anyway, let’s not go overboard with preconceptions here.

Dec 10, 2004 - 6:40 pm 25. lindenen:

Why would female astronauts not menstruate? That’s random and bizarre. Too Much Information coming but as someone who does not menstruate without birth control pills (not for eating disorder-related reasons), I’ve read quite a bit about this and talked to more than a few doctors.

Dec 10, 2004 - 6:44 pm 26. Buddy Larsen:

Chuck, right. This definitely calls for a bottom-up solution.

Dec 10, 2004 - 6:45 pm 27. chuck:

Why would female astronauts not menstruate?

I think his thought was that they exercised too much and were too fit. Strange, really.

Dec 10, 2004 - 6:47 pm 28. lindenen:

chuck, I was thinking it would be some bizarre weekly world news-type opinion: “zero g environment causes woman’s ovaries to float away!” Next to all the Batboy and alien abduction articles.

Dec 10, 2004 - 6:50 pm 29. photoncourier.blogspot.com:

I wonder how much of the European problem is linked to the extreme stress and horrors they have been through during the 20th century…ie, WWI and WWII. Just as one data point: *Every single graduate* of the class of 1914 at St-Cyr (the French military academy) was killed. Every single one.

It’s true that very few of those living in Europe now have *personally* experienced such things…but I’m reminded of the saying of a Heinlein character: “My fathers have labored and I am weary.”

Dec 10, 2004 - 7:06 pm 30. chuck:

lindenen:

“zero g environment causes woman’s ovaries to float away!”

Well, there was that too. Supposedly a Russian study had proposed that a womens uterus could invert under high gee’s. So on one flight where they were going to do some acrobatics the pilot in the front seat of the trainer asked her if she was going to be all right. She was ready for that one: she held up a cork and said she would be fine.

Dec 10, 2004 - 7:09 pm 31. Caroline:

Ha ha – quite alot of humor from the posters here. Instead I’ll just cut to the chase and dare anyone else to take it on:

Islam is a pagan religion – its origins are in the ancient moon-god culture of Sumeria. That explains the crescent symbol. Muhammed exploited that – Muhammed – the “so-called” prophet of Islam – was basically a mass-murderer – a warrior, pedophile, torturer, misogynist – you name it – pure evil. Call him the anti-Christ – whatever – Jesus warned of false prophets – and Islam (Mohammed) is it. And the only reason the 1.5 billion adherents of Islam don’t know it is because they are either illiterate (being non-Arabic) or forbidden – on penalty of death (apostasy) – of stating what they know to be true.

There it is. Meanwhile our western liberal PC culture is just too sophisticated to take it on – not good cocktail-party conversation is it? Doesn’t go over well at the black-tie dinner does it?

Until enough people are utterly sick to death of political correctness -nothing will change. And the irony is that it is the very folks that want to talk about it – i.e suffocated women living under islam – whose speech is being suffocated by the PC folks.

So isn’t it abundantly clear that there must be an end to political correctness? An absolute revolt against it? Meanwhile, much of Europe is moving in the direction of laws against “hate-speech” – which obviously feeds into the suppression of anti-Islamist speech. It is all clearly suicidal. Maybe I should just assume that most people just don’t see the threat – what is really going on? Everyone is just fiddling while…..

Dec 10, 2004 - 7:13 pm 32. chuck:

Caroline,

I don’t have the impression that Mohammed was unusual in his morals for his time and place. Perhaps a bit forward looking, in fact. And what’s wrong with paganism? You have a problem with Hindus?

Now, Mohammed was a monotheist and I would argue that if you are going to have one G*d, you might as well have two, if not dozens. Does the bible not say, thou shalt have no gods *before* me. Sounds polytheistic to me. But that is another discussion.

Dec 10, 2004 - 7:28 pm 33. John Moore ( Useful Fools ):

PeteUK’s last post hits most of the points I was going to make… so a few comments.

“Choice has been around for ages.” Nonsense. Sure, it has been technically possible to cause abortions (dangerous ones), and there has been relatively ineffective birth control, but that is dramatically different from today’s situation. As conservatives cynically joke sometimes, abortion has prevented 40,000,000 liberal voters in the US.

The pill and readily available abortion, combined with the change in societal views of sex from being acts producing children (at least from the women’s necessarily defensive point of view) towards being just one more way to trigger pleasant brain chemicals and feeling have all led to reduced incentives to have children. I suspect the ease of divorce may have contributed also – divorced women with children do badly economically.

Here are some reasons that I hope aren’t redundant: the first world has moved from a high infant mortality society to a low infant mortality society that has a social net for the old. Children used to be needed to provide for the elderly. They still are, but taxes and bureaucracies hide the fact, and your own children are much less important to your old age (or it appears that way) than in the past.

Add to this Peter’s comments about the need for the women to work to support the expected lifestyle (and the pressure this competition puts on single earner families increases this need), and you get fewer babies for another reason.

In a society in which population is maintained, women have to be baby machines. That’s what the numbers say. Given longer life spans, widespread public and private services, the baby machine doesn’t have to stay home with the babies all the time, or can choose to have and raise babies, and then do something else.

I suspect homosexuality has a very minor impact. Centuries ago, hohmosexuals frequently had wives and children – they were functioning bisexuals. But the number is so small that losing that today is probably not an issue. In fact, in a society of specialization, the homosexual may fulfill functions that would not be done as well otherwise.

And by the way, time for my homophobia rant. Homophobia is a typical political attack word – meaningless in its construction (except for the few Freudian holdouts who actually thing that negative attitudes towards homosexuality is from a phobia (fear, actually) that oneself might be homosexual). In fact, the word used to be used against people exactly based on that silly idea, which was why it was useful as an attack word.

It is especially bad to see it from smart, well educated people. It isn’t a phobia, and technically parses as a phobia of self.

Dec 10, 2004 - 7:38 pm 34. PeterUK:

As I understand it,young men today are less potent than earlier generations,so as a personal sacrifice I am willing to come out of retirement and Breed for Britain,I know that at my age it could be fatal,sad,but there a quite a few young women about.

Dec 10, 2004 - 7:47 pm 35. lindenen:

Ha! Close your eyes and think of England!

Oh, and EW!

Dec 10, 2004 - 7:51 pm 36. chuck:

John Moore:

I would guess that infanticide was one of the most effective methods of population control. Neglect the female child, and she dies. No need for outright killing, ala China, and a not uncommon occurrence in tribal societies. These days sex selection of children seems to fill the same role, with a long term sex ratio of men to women reaching perhaps 2:1. Women are the bottleneck in reproduction, not men, so a preference for male children serves to limit population growth. Makes one wonder where that preference came from. In any case, population is not driven by simple biological imperatives.

Dec 10, 2004 - 8:02 pm 37. John Moore ( Useful Fools ):

Chuck,

Re Japan. Many Japanese women refuse to get married because the life of a salaryman’s wife is pretty awful in so many cases. Japan’s society is still pretty misogynistic. My sister-in-law married an American (my brother, of course) a couple of decades ago for exactly this reason.

So Japan has a lot of single women who have no intent of children or marriage. Their demographic trends are really catastrophic.

I don’t recall seeing a discussion here of why a falling population is a problem – I have seen discussion that it might be desirable.

The problem is care of the elderly. Unless one goes to euthanasia or harsh triage of care, one needs plenty of woerking people (possibly further decreasing the reproductive rate). Furthermore, family provided care of the elderly (and I don’t just mean medical and survival care, but social environment, love, etc) is usually far preferable to state care, and yet the democraphics are driving us towards state care coincident with a drop in the quality of that care.

As populations drop, the obvious result is an increased burden on the working minority. The cultural and economic strains could be catastrophic, or at least result in inhumane treatment of the old.

Dec 10, 2004 - 8:09 pm 38. John Moore ( Useful Fools ):

Chuck,

Agreed that the drivers of population trends are far from simple.

I also suspect that measures like infanticide were used, because it was safe and worked, but it is also psychologically hard on people. Thus it was probably used in times of seveere societal strees – probably famine, but otherwise I think the kids were allowed to live. I doubt there were other methods effective and acceptable enough to have actually made a significant difference.

Women are the bottleneck, and also the ones with the strongest preservation instincts for their babies.

The problem with selecting for males (other than the unspeakable act of killing the females) is that excess males is the resulting violence. While this may have significant Darwinian value, in today’s world it is quite dangerous. These males are also predisposed by brain structure and hormones to fight each other. The sex selection in China has already created a large excess of men. The consequences are hard to forecast – it could range for terrible violent chaos to social changes (such as a strong acceptance of prostitution and a great shift of power to women willing to marry).

I don’t know how much sex selection is taking place in Muslim societies, but it is happening. After all, sons are everything and daughters are nothing. This could lead to a demographic shift on a different access – sex ratio – that could cause Europe and Muslim countries enormous problems.

Dec 10, 2004 - 8:19 pm 39. Buddy Larsen:

Is that your solution, PeterUK?

Dec 10, 2004 - 8:31 pm 40. Sandy P:

I took a “beating” from flenser and others because I lumped our Brit allies in w/frankenreich a few months ago.

It took me about a 1-1/2 days to compose my response and by then, the thread was essentially dead.

I haven’t read the analysis, and I’m off to bed, but, in a nutshell, I didn’t trust Tony. He’s selling everything England was and is down the river.

I stand by what I wrote, but was too all-encompassing of the British people.

However, their future is up to them and if they so choose to go the European way….

Just like if we had chosen Cabana Boy…..

Dec 10, 2004 - 8:55 pm 41. chuck:

John Moore:

The problem is care of the elderly. Unless one goes to euthanasia or harsh triage of care,

I have wondered if the August dieoff a year ago in France was connected to this. As to care of the elderly, there have been studies that showed that living grandmothers increase the survival chances of their grandchildren. It works both ways. I mean, why are we so longed lived when 40 years would do just fine for reproductive purposes?

I sure don’t have all the answers to these questions, but I am leery of those who see the inevitable Islamization of Europe purely as a demographic necessity. And of course, Europe is a terrible mishmash of ethnicities. Invaders have been washing across the borders for at least twenty thousand years. It didn’t get the way it is because it was ethnically isolated.

Dec 10, 2004 - 8:55 pm 42. John Moore ( Useful Fools ):

Chuck,

Interesting speculation. I suspect it was one factor, but probably most deaths were the result of normal French bureaucratic incompetence.

We have been using some sociobiological analyses here. It is too bad that the field is so hard to achieve valid experiments in – it can lead to obvious conclusions that are, alas, nonsense.

I wasn’t aware of the grandmother statistics. Under what conditions is this true?

The longer-lived question is another interesting one. Likewise, why do women have such a significantly longer life span?

There are lots of possibilities, but it’s just speculation. It could be as simple as an accident – the species survival cost of the genomic factors needed for that survival was too low to make them go away. I tend to think it is more related to passing on information and making decisions for the tribal/familial unit based on greater life experience. Older folks also may have provided spare labor to compensate for the many losses of the younger – in other words, to achieve an adequate average age and thus enough adults for the social unit to survive.

You can get even farther out when you are looking at non-reproducing individuals: why does evolution tolerate homosexuality, for example. An old question that I am sure has led to many theories and lots of fights.

I agree with you on Europe. In fact, I am always pretty skeptical of projections of that sort because human society is far too complex – it is like a month out weather forecast – impossible due to chaos.

However, at the moment Islam is in ideological and emotional ascendency, at the same time that the West is rapidly decaying – especially in Europe. Thus social factors may be a force multiplier for the high reproductive rates.

I would guess that assimilated Muslims would end up with low fertility rates (after a generation). The religion seems to be set for high fertility rates, but so is Catholicism and yet Catholic fertility rates in first world societies are low.

The biggest problem will occur if the Muslims, by their choice or the host population’s, stay segregated. I suspect we would start seeing similar social pathologies as in black inner-city slums in the US (which, interestingly, have some smount of conversion to Islam).

Dec 10, 2004 - 9:39 pm 43. PeterUK:

Buddy,Well you know what they say,I you are not part of the solution you are part of the problem,I feel I should do my bit and if I should succumb during my endeavours there is no reason why the young lady should not inherit.

Dec 10, 2004 - 9:44 pm 44. chuck:

John Moore:

I read about the grandmothers in Science News. A quick google turns up this article, which looks about right. When I read about it, I also thought of the traveling grandmother phenomenon. My Maternal grandmother used to travel about and visit her children, and Peter Freuchen in Book of the Eskimo speaks of grandmothers hitching rides on dog sleds to get from encampment to encampment.

Apropos Europe, I also think of the social unrest in this country in the sixties and seventies and how the Europeans got all snotty about their superior societies. Back then, I noticed the influx of new immigrants into the continent and thought to my self, “just you wait, your turn will come.” Ha. I especially enjoy the thought of the Swedes having to deal, for no country was snottier. Now that they actually *have* a “diversity” problem, we will just see if they can do as well as we did.

Dec 10, 2004 - 10:16 pm 45. PacRimJim:

Europeans, you seem to have forgotten at least one factor in the all-important equation:

Man + Woman – Condom = Survival

Dec 10, 2004 - 10:17 pm 46. lindenen:

PeterUK, you may have to compete with Dick Cheney:

“Itís hard to explain the phenomenon, but Iím a little horrified to tell you that in his way Cheney is well, a rock star. Yes. He has that quality. Had I not seen it with my own eyes, felt the heat with my own body, Iíd not believe it. Because television is not particularly kind to Cheney. He appears rather craven, hulking, cold. Icily authoritative, and laughably pompous. A know-it-all whoís often wrong. But on that stage, in person, with the hot lights blazing and the jumpy, patriotic country-rock music blaring and the beat-beat thumping, he comes across well, the words that spring to mind are debonair dashing weirdly sexy blechhhhhh!!!”

Dec 10, 2004 - 10:30 pm 47. chuck:

PacRimJim:

Or, rearranged, the mind boggling

Condom + Survival = Man + Woman

Dec 10, 2004 - 10:48 pm 48. chuck:

lindenen,

Heh, I saw that report too. Maybe the writer will begin to hide Cheney pictures under her bed. Republicans are happening, who woulda thought.

Dec 10, 2004 - 10:53 pm 49. Yehudit:

“The bottom line is that the Islamists TOTALLY understand demographic reality. My question is – does the west grasp this? And more importantly – do they care? And I will venture to say that Yehudit – you are living in the past. You don’t get it. Forget about “scare tactics” from the 70’s and 80’s. The reality is much more frightening than you are grasping!”

So what is your solution, for us to have as many children/family as they do? Which will give us the same standard of living and sexual norms they have? How does that solve anything?

I don’t live in the past, I just have a distaste for “it is your duty to bear many children for the state/ummah.” Totalitarian societies like that one. And it isn’t necessary.

“I would guess that assimilated Muslims would end up with low fertility rates (after a generation). The religion seems to be set for high fertility rates, but so is Catholicism and yet Catholic fertility rates in first world societies are low. The biggest problem will occur if the Muslims, by their choice or the host population’s, stay segregated.”

Exactly. All societies that make the transition to the global post-industrial economy see their birth rates drop dramatically at the same time. The problem is that Arabic culture hasn’t made that transition. The solution is not for us to go back to where they are, but to create conditions that encourage them to continue making the transition.

In Europe they are now segregated by choice and do have the same inner-city pathologies (except in France the slums are in the suburbs): street crime, gangs, gang rapes of young girls, everyone on welfare. If this continues, Europe has the option to do all the things the US did 20 years ago, plus kick out the ones who aren’t citizens. Meanwhile the democracy-promotion initiative in the ME should be changing things there.

I do agree Europe’s birth rate is a troubling symptom of their decaying civilization, but repressing non-procreative sex and enforcing rigid gender roles will not give their civilization a second wind, it will just be more of the nanny state they are so good at already.

Dec 10, 2004 - 10:57 pm 50. Yehudit:

About Muslim demographics: Because of their high birth rates and gender-segregated culture there are many single young men.Single young men like to fight and die for causes. Part of the terrorism problem is demographic. An aging culture is not going to produce a cult of suicide bombers. Very thought-provoking related article (originally in the Atlantic but you can’t read the whole thing there now).

Dec 10, 2004 - 11:05 pm 51. Yehudit:

“Tribal societies have large numbers of children to provide extra hands for the family and to care for the parents in their old age,in Europe the state does that.”

In an industrial society you don’t need the extra hands. It has nothing to do with the state.

“Choice has been around forever. From infanticide, to herbal contraceptives and abortificants. Native Americans had them, Greeks had them”

True to some extent, but until this century all those methods were not foolproof, and carried health risks. But the fact that women used them shows that we have always wanted to control our fertility – that’s not some new-fangled feminist fad.

Dec 10, 2004 - 11:09 pm 52. Yehudit:

“Anorexics will get amenorrhea aka stopped menstruation. I’m not scaremongering.”

I know that, but most female athletes and actresses aren’t anorexic. Nicole Kidman is fashionably thin but just doesn’t look anorexic.

Actually the pumped look seems to have superceded the Twiggy look. . . . .

Dec 10, 2004 - 11:14 pm 53. Yehudit:

Okay, last post. The key is turning Muslim women into feminists, not turning Western women out of being feminists.

These are the feminists who are going to change European Muslim society:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ni_Putes_Ni_Soumises

http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=59&story_id=5876&name=Neither+whores+nor+slaves

Dec 10, 2004 - 11:22 pm 54. truepeers:

Caroline,

I’m not sure Islam is significantly more pagan than Judeo-Christian culture. None has completely subsumed their pagan forebears – I was just out with a friend and we walked by the local shaman supply shop. FIrst and foremost, it seems to me Islam emerged to spread Hebrew monotheism to those who were left out of the first two monotheist movements.

Consider the problem of coming third. How do you understand your place in history? The Jewish Bible is essentially a narrative history of the Jewish people in the period when their religion was being progressively revealed through historical experiences, as interpreted by the prophets. The New Testament attempts to universalize the Jewish religion, by recounting a new and supposedly improved revelation. The probem for Islam is how to present Mohammed’s text: a newer than the new testament? But if that could appeal, what would stop someone else coming along with the newer than the new new testament? Islam’s move is to opt out of the historical supersession game, and to declare the Koran eternal and uncreated – that’s to say the holy book is considered coeval with God who held the truth back until mankind was ready for it, at least that’s how I understand this confusing bit of theology. Since the Koran presents eternal truths and laws, it creates a culture that is often ahistorical in its thinking, at worst anti-historical. But that is not the same thing as being openly retrospective and pagan.

While Christianity is always striving to revolutionize itself, perhaps discovering with some risk to itself, what is and is not possible in the way of expanding freedoms and building the Kingdom of God on earth, Islam is caught in a vice between its ahistorical instincts and the fact that the JudeoChristian world insures there is a lot of historical change. Of course there would always be some change, howevermuch we are inclined, or not, to think historically; but perhaps the Muslims fear us because they see westerners are a lot better at provoking and riding history than they are. Take away the oil and gas, and economically the Arab world has changed little since Mohammed. That’s the problem.

Dec 10, 2004 - 11:24 pm 55. John Moore ( Useful Fools ):

Speaking of outbreeding, I just found this fun article on NewsMax:

Republicans Outbreed Us, Democrats Fret

It seems that the red state has these horrible “natalists:”

These curious Middle American creatures, it seems, care more about having a family than a summer home in the Hamptons. They tend to have conservative moral values. And … they’re reproducing!

ROFLMAO

Dec 10, 2004 - 11:54 pm 56. chuck:

Republicans Outbreed Us, Democrats Fret

Next year’s Halloween costume in Boston: a pregnant woman with a Giuliani 2008 button.

Dec 11, 2004 - 12:09 am 57. truepeers:

On second thoughts, the problem is not just that Islam is ahistorical in its thinking, it is that western culture is increasingly so too. Fearful of what we did in the 20thC under influence of our various utopianisms, we have declared the postmodern end of history, in which nothing new happens that has not already happened. Terrorism? “It’s always been around.” “When 9-11 happened, it was like a movie we’d already seen.” Thus it is not surprising that some on the western left are open to seeking common cause with ahistorical Islam against those dirty capitalists in western society who still believe in progress. Our challenge is to renew our western belief in epochal change. THis is a difficult question; there is both something to be said for and against the idea that we are living in a post-historical age. I believe, however, that we will be in a new age when we give up the historical fear and knee-jerk victimary thinking that is the legacy of the Holocaust and Hiroshima. The recent US election was hopefully an indicator that this shift is underway.

Dec 11, 2004 - 12:12 am 58. chuck:

truepeers,

I believe there are varieties in Islam. The Sufis and Shia, for instance. There are also regional variations and competing schools. Look at the differences between Khomeini and Al Sistini for instance. Islam is not a monolithic army of Koran clutching robots. The Salafists don’t like this, but it is awfully hard to enforce strict orthodoxy over such a dispersed region and variety of cultures for any extended time. And let us not forget the malign influence of the Great Satan, not to mention the temptations of all the little satans in bikinis. I am not too worried about the religion. I *am* worried about the silly lack of self respect among European elites and the chance that some nut cases will get hold of real weapons.

Dec 11, 2004 - 12:35 am 59. truepeers:

Chuck,

You are quite right in everything you say. Still, many of the differences among Islamic sects have to do with competing claims to be the true inheritors of Mohammed’s revelation. I don’t pretend to any deep knowledge of Islam but I wonder if there are many Moslems, besides a few western-educated elites, who have comfort with historical thinking. As you say, it only takes one nutbar with an atomic bomb to ruin coffee time in Paris. I tend to imagine that nutbar will know full well that it is his objective to bomb us all back to (almost) the stone age. Unlike western elites, with their postmodern nihilism, there is a certain coherent logic in the radical Islamicist’s apparent desire to use terrorism as a tool for returning us to medieval-type societies as Mohammed knew. And they surely know full well that many will have to die because a medieval economy can’t support anywhere near six billion. Don’t be afraid to judge such a coherent objective accordingly, if you can delineate it amidst the contending theories of what really motivates the radicals and their many sympathizers – but do you think OBL isn’t a unifying cult figure, symbolizing the dream of a New Caliph, for many Moslems worldwide?

Dec 11, 2004 - 12:58 am 60. Caroline:

“Anyway, we’d be saving a culture that doesn’t stone women for adultery or strap bombs onto the backs of its children.” (lindenen)

Exactly. Also, you have to consider the historical fate of minority religious groups (the dhimmi’s) in Islamic societies. They are basically exterminated – forced conversion or death. Its not a pretty picture.

“This demographic panic is not a new thing. The Nazis were also concerned and spoke of the three K’s: Kinder, Kirche, Kuche” (Chuck)

Point well taken. Watch out for the liberals to claim that the high reproductive rates among red staters are evidence of some desire to maintain racial purity. More of the Bush=Hitler stuff. But this isn’t an issue of RACIAL purity. Nobody gives a damn about racial intermingling. And it seems pretty obvious to me that no one is concerned about immigration rates among Asians and Hispanics etc. Quite clearly the problem is Islam. Dhimmitude. I believe Bat Ye’or’s book on Dhimmitude and Eurabia is coming out in early 2005. I anticipate that all of these issues will explode in the public realm within the next 6 months. Especially in Europe. They’re going to freak out.

“I don’t have the impression that Mohammed was unusual in his morals for his time and place.” (Chuck)

No, I’m sure he wasn’t. But excuse me for pointing out then that he was no prophet, not a religious man at all. Which means that Islam is a lie. It’s a false religion invented by a con man. And its human costs have been horrific. And now it’s a direct threat to western Judeo-Christian culture. Sorry but I refuse to be PC about it.

On a lighter note, “Cheney is well, a rock star. Yes. He has that quality. Had I not seen it with my own eyes, felt the heat with my own body, I?d not believe it.” (lindenen)

You must have missed all the brouhaha a month or so ago about a photo of Cheney that inadvertently revealed his very impressive, ahem, package! It was all quite hilarious…

Dec 11, 2004 - 5:00 am 61. syn:

Since the early seventies, American feminists have been conditioning females to believe child bearing is a burden we must abort ourselves of in order to empower ourselves.

Females are told that careers will define our identity while the stay-at-home, barefoot moms are oppressed, unhappy, unfulfilled slaves to the man.

20th century feminism deconstructed the female in order to control her. Feminism took the essence that defines a female, the ability to birth life, and told her she is worthless for doing so.

Instead of mocking, ridiculing, victimizing, degrading Motherhood why not build upon the greatest power a female has, the ability to birth life.

The feminist movement took the wrong turn when it attempted to turn us into men. 20th century feminists would be best served in recognizing that males and females compliment one another not equate one another. There is nothing wrong with embracing the power of the female. In doing so, perhaps we may even regain respect for who we are.

It is odd that feminists believe the fetus is simply a clump of cells to be disgarded at leisure. Perhaps this in one reason why today’s female concentrates so much time, energy and emotion on external attributes, we are told our internal attributes are meaningless nothings.

Dec 11, 2004 - 5:00 am 62. PeterUK:

Lindenen,

I think that I too generate heat,but is probably down to the thermal underwear.

Yehudit,

“Tribal societies have large numbers of children to provide extra hands for the family and to care for the parents in their old age,in Europe the state does that.”

In an industrial society you don’t need the extra hands. It has nothing to do with the state.

Ignoring the fact that Europe is post-industral,the point is in tribal societies the family looks after the elderly,in Europe it is the state.

Families are mostly too small to dedicate a member to attend to the old,too busy working.We are living longer so an 88 year old lady might have only a 60 year son to look after her.There is also the near universal state pension, whilst this gives the elderly a measure of independence it also allows the famlies to leave caring to the professionals.Financial burdens,small families, divorce longer life have created a separate group of the elderly which is very much the domain of the state.

Finally if we are having to import people we obviously do need extra hands.

Dec 11, 2004 - 8:03 am 63. PeterUK:

Looking at the evidence I would say that some countries like Holland http://sisu.typepad.com/sisu/2004/12/rats_leaving_th.html and Sweden have reached tipping point.A large part of middle England is also voting with their feet.I live near a town with an invisible middle class,all the quality shops and banks have gone,restaurants and the like have moved into the surrounding countryside.The middle class are obviously still there because the houses are there in the suburbs but they don’t use the town.The centre is now the domain of the white underclass and asians who live in their separate ghettos.The two do not intermingle.

I would strongly disagree that we have time,the changes already wraught, have occured in an historically short space of time and would appear to be exponential.The smaller countries will be first to lose their identities.

Whilst the official line is that emigration and immigration balance,the social make up on European nations is being changed.It is obvious that the newcomers have no interst in the culture or social mores of the host nation .Will they perpetuate our institutions and polity,will they be as tolerant of us when they are the majority as we were of them?

Dec 11, 2004 - 9:09 am 64. Matteo:

Katherine

“I am still convinced that the Europeans will eventually wake up. Problem is that the results of this waking up will not be pretty. The European Armies may be useless on a battlefield, but they would be are quite up to task of quelling riots and deporting rebelling communities, thank you very much. They have quite an experience in both. The longer it takes for Europe to actually face reality of militant, unassimilated Islamists living among them, the longer they stick to their “progressive” multicultural ideals the more ugly will be the outcome – for both sides.”

thedragonflies

“I guess my question is, can political correctness and socialism completely kill a peoples as vibrant and aggressive as the Europeans? I don’t believe it. Europe conquered the globe a couple of centuries ago, destroyed much of it sixty years ago, and has gone to sleep. I think they will find a way to awaken from their hypnotic state and come back to life. It might not be pretty, and it might not help the U.S., but I don’t see them just fading away.”

Here is something I wrote last month which examines this:

http://cartagodelenda.blogspot.com/2004/11/dynamic.html

A Dynamic

In a Front Page Magazine article about the killing of Theo van Gogh by a Dutch Jihadi, a thought came to me while reading this paragraph:

Holland is a country where drugs, euthanasia, and gay marriage are legal, and prostitutes and the military are unionized—simply put, a real country as close as possible to a liberal, tolerant, multiculturalist utopia on earth. And that, as the Dutch have belatedly discovered and become angry about, is precisely the problem. This belated anger—two years after the equally shocking assassination of gay, environmentalist, and equally libertine populist Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn by an “animal rights” militant claiming to “protect” Muslims—explains the post-van Gogh attacks on Muslim schools and mosques (there have been retaliatory attacks against churches, as well) in a country famous for its strong distaste for argument. Add to that the fact that prior to Fortuyn there had been no political murder in the Netherlands since the 1584 assassination of Wilhelm of Orange, the nation’s founder, and one begins to understand why one murder in Amsterdam may have an even more profound impact on Dutch culture and behavior than 3,000 deaths in America on 9/11.

What jumped out at me was: “Holland is a country where drugs, euthanasia, and gay marriage are legal, and prostitutes and the military are unionized—simply put, a real country as close as possible to a liberal, tolerant, multiculturalist utopia on earth. [Holland is] a country famous for its strong distaste for argument.” And it struck me that in the US after 9/11, no mosques or schools were attacked, but in Holland they were.

Here is my thought: Could it be that a society (Old Europe) which has an ethos of unquestioned (and it is; there is no abortion debate in Europe whatsoever, nor is there much debate–yet–about the welfare statism that is killing European civilization), bland, socialistic relativism, and where being argumentative is frowned upon, could it be that this sort of passivity means that there is no emotional safety valve whatsoever, so that when sufficient provocation comes, a surprising level of violence is the result?

I have a vague intuition that sometime in the next few decades, extreme “at each others throats” violence is going to break out in Europe again. The bovine ideal of tolerant-of-anything, docile, egalitarian, no-one-should-try-to-get-ahead-of-anyone-else, eat-drink-and-be-merry, six-weeks-of-holiday conformity, just isn’t in accord with healthy human nature. These people are going to go berzerk.

Have you ever seen the old Star Trek episode, “Return of the Archons”? This is the one where they go to a planet (which is in a sort of small cowboy town Victorian era) where everybody is super polite, childlike, peaceful, and under the powerful mind control of a central computer (named Landru, whose motto is “Peace and contentment will fill you.”). Once a year, they have something called “Festival”. At the Red Hour, the clock strikes 6 PM, the computer releases the mind control, and everyone goes nuts, getting into fisticuffs, raping, looting, and burning down the town.

Does a European Red Hour approach?

I’ve had the thought that when, say, France, decides it has to do something about its “Moslem Problem”, the viciousness of the roundups, arrests, and deportations will be something to behold. Those who have complained, complained, complained about Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib will finally show us as the mere pikers we really are. Meanwhile the US will continue along pretty much as it always has…

Dec 11, 2004 - 5:01 pm 65. Knucklehead:

Wow, what a discussion! I can’t even begin to catch up or cut and paste.

Lindenen:

Society will get more of whatever it tolerates and a lot more of whatever it encourages. Among many other things, Europe tolerates burglary, for example. Buglary rates are huge in Europe. And burglary there is becoming increasingly violent.

Tolerate crime and a society will have more crime. Encourage abortion and a society will have more abortion.

When all is said and done we get what we wish for.

Caroline:

I don’t mean this as an attack on the choices you made. But the Population Bomb, in retrospect, was nonsense. There were people at the time who said it was nonsense.

For the past 3 decades or more we’ve been hearing (at least those of us within earshot of Euros) that the US was consuming the world’s resources at a world wrecking rate. China and India will soon far surpass US consumption of resources and they will do so without a fraction of the US’s regard for environmental care.

People will figure out how to grow enough food. We’ll figure out how to sustain orselves. There is no steady state and we’ve got to understand where science ends and junk science begins.

The growth of muderous ideology is the most serious threat we face, IMO. Perhaps I’m wrong. I certainly hope so.

Oh, and why don’t affluent people reproduce? Because affluent people are most interested in comfort and pleasure. Children are difficult. They are inconvenient. The interfere with our sleep. They interfere with our work. They mess up the house and break things. They cause us trouble or, if we’re lucky, merely aggravation. To affluent people children are a nuisance. Affluent people are interested in now, not tomorrow. The promary problem the Euros face is that they’ve lost sight of tomorrow for the sake of now. They are more interested in their vacations and hobbies than in whether or not their civilization will survive.

Dec 11, 2004 - 5:48 pm 66. PeterUK:

Matteo,

Could it be that a society (Old Europe) which has an ethos of unquestioned (and it is; there is no abortion debate in Europe whatsoever, nor is there much debate–yet–about the welfare statism that is killing European civilization), bland, socialistic relativism, and where being argumentative is frowned upon, could it be that this sort of passivity means that there is no emotional safety valve whatsoever, so that when sufficient provocation comes, a surprising level of violence is the result?

Yes.

Dec 11, 2004 - 6:28 pm 67. Yehudit:

“Finally if we are having to import people we obviously do need extra hands.”

That is still different from having a large family so the 10 year old can milk the cows and the 12 year old can spin the wool. It is pretty consistent in developing nations that as they become more industrialized and urban and the infant mortality rate goes down, families get smaller.

Syn, that’s a gross charicature of 20th c. feminism, media generated mischaracterization similar to the hatchet job done on Bush this year. The socialist wing of feminism did seize the movement from the individualist wing, but when I was a young feminist in the 70s (and I read all the manifestos, so I know what the arguments were), the idea was to empower both women and men to have choices beyond strict socially-enforced gender roles. When has been successful to a great degree, and a good thing. Mainstream feminism has never denigrated mothers.

I know several women who ate in their 40s and now want to have kids, and blame feminism for “brainwashing” them so that they waited so long. This is easier than taking responsibility for their own choices. After all, plenty of feminists are married with kids.

Dec 11, 2004 - 10:58 pm 68. chuck:

Yehudit:

when I was a young feminist in the 70s (and I read all the manifestos, so I know what the arguments were), the idea was to empower both women and men to have choices beyond strict socially-enforced gender roles. When has been successful to a great degree, and a good thing. Mainstream feminism has never denigrated mothers.

Don’t agree. I know women who had children and felt looked down on, insulted, and mistreated by the women’s movement. These were very liberal women too. Likewise, at the time you speak of I asked, why not just help us get along, but all I saw was hostility. I have no doubt you believe what you say, but to me it just looks like an illusion. Try seeking out other peoples experience and see if they agree with you. And pay attention, don’t simply dismiss them as not taking responsibility for their own choices. That is just a total copout.

Dec 11, 2004 - 11:10 pm 69. syn:

“Mainstream feminism has never denigrated mothers”

Theresa Kerry Heinz, wife of a presidential candidate, most certainly denigrated mothers. NOW is very supportive of this idea. We hear quite often in our society that having a career is a far greater achievement for the female than those who choose to be a stay-at-home mother. Our society ridicules young mothers as stupid peons who are too afraid of making it in the “real world”. The list of Motherhood denigration is endless.

“the idea was to empower both women and men to have choices beyond strict socially-enforced gender roles. Which has been successful to a great degree, and a good thing”

Deconstructing the female’s ability to birth life has actually led to the socially backward gender-role that females exists for the sole purpose of providing pleasure for the male.

Today the female spends billions to transform herself into the ideal and ageless sexual beauty in order to receive acknowledgement of her identity. We see in our society that females are encouraged to sell their external selves as a means of gaining wealth, power and status. Females with big breasts on child-like bodies are represented as the ideal women, whereas, child-birth is seen as a distortion of this ideal. My belief is that the 20th century feminist movement is primarily responsible for creating this distorted version of gender empowerment when it destroyed our greatest power to birth life.

As a 42 year old women former 20th century feminist, I do not see this as either a success, or a good thing.

Dec 12, 2004 - 4:45 am 70. PeterUK:

If child mortality goes down,presumably through better health care,then it is probable that there are other reasons why family sizes are decreasing.

This would indicate one of several things,abstinence(fat chance)different kinds of sex or birth control, all would seem to be from choice

One main reason, as I mentioned above, is the enormous cost of raising children and the removal of a wage earner for the first few years of a childs life.This contrasts with a time when a child was a working asset at an early age.

I have often heard women say they would have liked another child but they couldn’t afford it.

With full time education taking the commencement of work up to the age of 18 to 30 most people don’t have the resources,or live long enough, to support large families.

Immigrant groups still cleave to the traditional model,children do work from an early age,the elderly are cared for within the family.

In the long run,none of this matters the culture that out breeds you will be the dominant culture.

Dec 12, 2004 - 6:42 am 71. chuck:

One of my favorite anecdotes from the woman’s movement of the 70’s was when James Tiptree Jr. raised the question of children in a group of women science fiction writers and was asked to leave, because as a man he just “couldn’t understand.” The great thing was that “he” was a “she” and had worked in the CIA since the days of the OSS. Pseudonyms are great, eh, and secrets are oh so much fun.

But also look at R. A. Heinlein, who portrayed active and intelligent woman, but got called a fascist because he thought that raising children was the most important thing. I also brought up the children question and argued the demographic problem people speak of now, but was ignored. Let’s face it, the question of children was the ignored elephant in the room as far as the woman’s movement went.

Dec 12, 2004 - 7:46 am 72. chuck:

Speaking of Tiptree, I miss her, so here is a link for those who know nothing of her. Link.

My favorite two stories were, Love was the Plan, the Plan was Death and The Screwfly Solution.

Dec 12, 2004 - 8:03 am 73. Caroline:

Its all actually quite ironic. It comes down to women – the western world dying off due to reproductive choices given to women. Meanwhile the whole structure of Islam is based on the suppression of women and men’s fear of women’s power. I read an interview on frontpage mag the other day which bascially said that the whole edifice of islamo-fascism would fall apart if women were empowered like in the west. Meanwhile, where is NOW? Barely a peep about the plight of women in Islamic society. They should be at the forefront of the War on Terror.

Dec 12, 2004 - 9:57 am 74. PeterUK:

Caroline,

As I understand it not a few of the officials of NOW had no interest in procreation or the act thereof.

Dec 12, 2004 - 10:48 am

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