The only way to beat our demographic crisis is to confront the Sexual Revolution

LifeSiteNews ^ | 9/19/14 | Don Feder

[wagglebee]

Editor’s Note: The following address was delivered by Don Feder, communications director for the World Congress of Families, at the International Forum: Large Family and the Future of Humanity in Moscow September 10-12, 2014.

If current trends continue, we won’t run out of energy or other natural resources in the foreseeable future. We will run out of people. This global catastrophe will be the result of rapidly declining fertility, known as Demographic Winter.

In 1960, worldwide, the average woman had 5 children. Now, that number is 2.6 and falling – in other words, a decline of almost 50 percent in a little more than 50 years. Today, 59 countries with 44 percent of the world’s population have below-replacement fertility. Many developed nations have fertility rates of 1.5 or lower, with 2.1 needed just to replace current population.

This didn’t happen spontaneously. Demographic Winter is the direct result of the Sexual Revolution – which first became noticeable in the late 1960s, not coincidentally, about the time birth rates began to fall.

The dogma of the Sexual Revolution – which has become ingrained social wisdom in the West -- might be summarized as follows:

1. Sex is the most important aspect of existence;
2. When sex is consensual, it’s always good;
3. The primary purpose of sex is pleasure, not procreation or the physical expression of love;
4. The primary purpose of life is pleasure;
5. Inhibitions lead to neuroses and must be overcome;
6. Sex has nothing to do with morality; and
7. Sex should not only be guilt-free, but free of consequences -- hence contraception, hence abortion, hence abandonment of marriage.

The prophets of the Sexual Revolution include Sigmund Freud,  “researchers” like Alfred Kinsey and Masters and Johnson, pornographers like Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, and feminists like Margaret Sanger, Betty Friedan, and Simone de Beauvoir.  In the United States, the Sexual Revolution is spearheaded by groups like Planned Parenthood, the National Organization for Women, the (homosexual) Human Rights Campaign, and the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the U.S. (SIECUS).

The impact of the Sexual Revolution on fertility cannot be overstated.

For the first time in history, just under half the world’s population of child-bearing age uses some form of birth control. By 2015, the global contraceptives market will generate an estimated $17.2 billion annually.

Overwhelmingly, this is financed by governments, businesses or international aid agencies. Other species have become extinct. Ours may be the first to finance its own extinction.

Worldwide, there are approximately 42 million abortions a year.  That’s more than twice the number of military deaths in World War II.

From a demographic perspective, we’re not just losing 42 million people annually, but also their children, grandchildren and other descendants down through the ages. We are, quite literally, aborting our future.

The flight from marriage has affected fertility even more profoundly than contraceptives. In France, in 2010, more people began living together than married.

In the United States, in 1960, 59 percent of 18-to-29-year olds (those in their prime childbearing years) were married, compared to only 20 percent today.

Once a central reality of existence, marriage is increasingly optional. In its place have come cohabitation, casual liaisons and out-of-wedlock births. Not surprisingly, fewer marriages – especially early marriages -- result in fewer children.

Just as Demographic Winter is the result of the Sexual Revolution, the latter is the result of something called Cultural Marxism – a movement associated with Antonio Gramsci, the Frankfurt School and Herbert Marcuse.

Cultural Marxism was their answer to the failure of worldwide revolution after the First World War. Gramsci believed family and church gave workers what communists called a “false class consciousness” that made them immune to the appeals of Marxism.

The solution, then, was to destroy the family and religion – and what better way to do that than to foster sexual license and a society oriented toward mindless pleasure and away from hearth and home.

While there’s no proof that dramatically declining fertility is what Cultural Marxists wanted, it’s the natural consequence of creating a highly eroticized society where family is viewed as an obstacle to self-fulfillment and children as a burden.

We won’t find our way out of the forest of Demographic Winter until the Sexual Revolution is overthrown -- its prophets exposed and its dogma debunked.

Ultimately, the Sexual Revolution is about death – abortion, contraception, sexually-transmitted disease, pornography and promiscuity, in place of marriage, fidelity, procreation, and responsibility.

To combat both the Sexual Revolution and Demographic Winter, we must embrace a philosophy of life. For does not the Bible tell us: “I have set before you this day life and death, blessing and curses. Therefore, choose life so that you may live – you and your children.”

[kabar]

America was still America and much more livable in 1970, our population was just fine, we were headed to becoming a more advance, larger Switzerland.

In 1970 89% of the population was non-Hispanic white. The Immigration Act of 1965 changed our demography forever.

The last 100 million people destroyed us as a nation, and turned us into a grubby bus stop of overcrowded cities and big government as our communities were destroyed, and we became a dog eat dog place of concrete and greed and short term gains and big city politics devoured states.

Demography is destiny. Add to that the welfare state that was placed on hyper-drive under LBJ's Great Society. One out of every two Americans receives a check from the government.

The 35.4 Percent: 109,631,000 on Welfare

What did taxpayers give to the 109,631,000 — the 35.4 percent of the nation — getting welfare benefits at the end of 2012?

82,679,000 of the welfare-takers lived in households where people were on Medicaid, said the Census Bureau. 51,471,000 were in households on food stamps. 22,526,000 were in the Women, Infants and Children program. 20,355,000 were in household on Supplemental Security Income. 13,267,000 lived in public housing or got housing subsidies. 5,442,000 got Temporary Assistance to Needy Families. 4,517,000 received other forms of federal cash assistance.

But the 109,631,000 living in households taking federal welfare benefits as of the end of 2012, according to the Census Bureau, equaled 35.4 percent of all 309,467,000 people living in the United States at that time.

When those receiving benefits from non-means-tested federal programs — such as Social Security, Medicare, unemployment and veterans benefits — were added to those taking welfare benefits, it turned out that 153,323,000 people were getting federal benefits of some type at the end of 2012.

[Mrs. Don-o]

I'd have to study those charts more carefully before I made any conclusions.

Here's a question that just occurred to me: what accounts for the 25-45 age cohort bulging out in the projected 2060 census? That would seem to suggest a big uptick in fertility rate in births starting in 2015, but I don't see that. Or are they accounting for a surge in immigration starting in 2015?

[Buckeye McFrog]

The Immigration Act of 1965 changed our demography forever.

Which was the handiwork of......wait for it.....TEDDY KENNEDY!

Has one family of pompous, drunken fornicators ever done so much damage since the days of the Roman Empire?

[LambSlave]

No, sex within marriage does not lead to a culture of hedonism. Marriage is part of God’s plan and sex within that context is always virtuous— assuming no-fault divorce is eliminated, which just turns marriage into serial adultery. For men of virtue, the purpose of marriage is much greater than sex, but my comment was intended to mean that even for men of lesser virtue, sex was only culturally acceptable within the bounds of marriage, so they were forced to become virtuous by accepting monogamy.

[Nowhere Man]

On the whole I think Feder has it backwards in a way. Birth control and abortion isn't causing people to have fewer children. Rather it is allowing them to have the fewer children they want because they don't need them anymore.

If the sexual revolution came without birth control and abortion then we would be seeing massive increases in population right now. With pretty much every part of the media telling us we have to be having great sex on a daily basis or else we are losers, if there were no birth control or abortion, there would probably be lots of orphanages or lots of people who started out having lots of "great" sex, but are now too tired from working three jobs just to keep all of their progeny fed.

True. It is easier not to have kids many times. I know a 20 something who will get married soon and she does not want kids. She likes her Mini-Cooper and would like to live in a small house. Well, it's her choice. I also know a man who had his first child at 56. I think the trick we need to do is make our ideals of Western Civilization to survive, too many on the left have a death wish when it comes to our way of life.

[Nowhere Man]

A factor that is seldom discussed is that of WHO is having these kids. There is an inverse relationship in our society between number of children and what is generally considered success.

IOW, we are presently seeing reverse Darwinian selection. Superior reproduction by those who are less fit.

Yeah, that's the key problem. Those that have many kids either want to live off the welfare system, do not have any sense of Western values or both.

[Nowhere Man]

America was still America and much more livable in 1970, our population was just fine, we were headed to becoming a more advance, larger Switzerland.

The last 100 million people destroyed us as a nation, and turned us into a grubby bus stop of overcrowded cities and big government as our communities were destroyed, and we became a dog eat dog place of concrete and greed and short term gains and big city politics devoured states.

You got that right, we let in too many people who do not understand our way of life and refuse to assimilate as well. It's OK to hold on to your heritage and so on but overall immigrants who came here in the past did learn the American way of life and lived it. It's not that way anymore and I think the 1965 law that opened the flood gates (thanks LBJ and Ted Kennedy) really did us in.

[ansel12]

True, but the 1965 Immigration Act was JFK’s baby, not LBJ.

JFK was obsessed with replacing us with foreigners that would support his party and it’s agenda, his efforts that consumed so much of his life in the 1950s and 60s, and that he wrote a book promoting, became the Act that passed after his death, and in his name.

[utahagen]

“[focusing]...on our own salvation” implies “living chastely”.

[kabar]

Here's a question that just occurred to me: what accounts for the 25-45 age cohort bulging out in the projected 2060 census? That would seem to suggest a big uptick in fertility rate in births starting in 2015, but I don't see that. Or are they accounting for a surge in immigration starting in 2015?

Recent immigration has had only a tiny impact on the nation’s age structure. If the nearly 14 million immigrants who arrived in 2000 or later are excluded, it raises the average age in the United States in 2010 from 37.4 years to 37.6 years — roughly two months.

You can check out the Census Bureau data here--U.S. Census Bureau Projections Show a Slower Growing, Older, More Diverse Nation a Half Century from Now

The ACS and CPS can be used to provide insight into the impact of immigration on the size of the U.S. population. Table 6 reports six different methods using the 2010 ACS and CPS to estimate the effect of immigration on U.S. population growth since the last census. The first column in the table shows that between April 2000 (the control data for the Census) and July 2010 (the control data for the ACS) the U.S. population grew 27.9 million. The first three rows of Table 6 use the number of immigrants who arrived in the United States in the last decade to estimate the impact of immigration on U.S. population growth. As already indicated, in 2010 13.9 million immigrants indicated that they had entered the country in 2000 or later. Because those who arrived in the first three months of 2000 should already have been counted in the 2000 census we reduce this figure by 390,000, or three months worth of new immigration, to account for those who arrived in the first quarter of 2000. It is reasonable to view the 13.47 million immigrants who arrived over this time period as the basis for estimating immigration’s effect on population growth because this flow reflects current U.S. immigration policy — both legal immigration and the level of resources devoted to controlling illegal immigration.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Thank you.

[Lorianne]

The way you framed it was that men got married to “get sex”. There was no mention of lofty goals that you are now mentioning.

[LambSlave]

Yes, men want sex. So do women. In the past the only way to have sex without being driven from polite society was to be married, which was a strong incentive for men (and women) to marry.

[trisham]

Don’t be silly. Who would dispute what the government tells us?

[JoeFromSidney]

Just remember, the future belongs to those who show up for it.

[Jack Hydrazine]

I keep forgetting about those darn illegals!

[kabar]

It is LEGAL IMMIGRATION that will destroy this country. We have been taking in over a million legal permanent immigrants a year since 1990. The chart below depicts legal immigration by the decade. We have just had the two biggest decades of immigration in our history.

The Gang of 8 bill will triple legal immigration to 33 million over the next decade.