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Falling birth rates could spell end of the West - [Rabbi] Lord Sacks
The Telegraph (UK) ^ | 6 June 2016 | John Bingham

Posted on 06/07/2016 1:51:10 PM PDT by Mrs. Don-o

Western civilisation is on the brink of a collapse like that of ancient Rome because the modern generation does not want the responsibility of bringing up children, the former Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks has warned.

... ultimately, he said, European society as we know it “will die” because of the demographic crisis.

And mass immigration is not a solution because of problems integrating new arrivals into existing society.

"Europe is going to die because of this because Europe can only maintain its population by unprecedented levels of immigration" - Lord Sacks

This makes him one of only a handful of public figures in recent memory to raise the alarm about declining fertility rates as a serious social problem.

He also warned that Britain is losing its national “memory” and cultural identity

He explained: “People forget how Britain won its freedom -Civil war -- and the extraordinary thinking done by John Milton, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke.

“Freedom doesn’t just happen.

“You have the classic example of this, the Arab Spring, 2011. Now people start Googling and using Facebook, tyrants are toppled and you think, that’s it you press a button and Google will do the rest.

“Yes, tyrants were deposed but what succeeded them was not freedom but anarchy.

“And indeed terrible anarchy of a kind that we know basically from Hobbes after the wars of religion of Europe when he spoke about the state of nature as being the war of every man against every man in which life is ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short’.

“[That] is a precise description of life in Syria or Iraq or Afghanistan or Somalia or Libya today. People think freedom is like the default setting on your phone.

“Freedom is not a default setting anywhere, freedom has to be fought for.”

(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; United Kingdom
KEYWORDS: birthrate; contraception; deathofthewest; families; feminism; fetility; future; lawyers; parenspatriae; rome
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To: HiTech RedNeck

It’s not matter of wanting the federal government to be a “preacher” or “godfather.” It’s that any action by which the federal government seeks to change the culture, or undermine the family or Christianity, is illegitimate. Such actions are not authorized by the Constitution.

The federal government has succeeded in these wicked designs because the Left alone has had a strategy.

The mainline Protestant churches, and the Catholic bishops, have been part of the Marxist project for 50-70 years.


41 posted on 06/07/2016 3:55:35 PM PDT by Arthur McGowan
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To: Mrs. Don-o

Excellent article & comments.

As a senior citizen, I reflect a lot on my farm laborer grandparents. God made sure that humans were physically and emotionally engaged in building shelter, raising animals for food and freight. Our ancestors also welcomed the birth of all children and cared for sick family members. There was no ‘wasted’ time, no room for lazy. God made sex pleasurable so that it resulted in new life for the future.

Today, someone else produces our food, builds our homes, manufactures our clothing, transportation and takes care of children and sick family members. We are losing our natural skills except for sexual activity which has increasingly become unnatural........it is not resulting in childbirth as God intended.

The younger generation may be having a lot more fun - but I sense there is a lot less joy.


42 posted on 06/07/2016 3:56:27 PM PDT by sodpoodle (Life is prickly - carry tweezers.)
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To: sodpoodle
The younger generation may be having a lot more fun ...

They don't seem to be. Studies show that they're depressed, anxious, bored, having panic attacks, hooked on drugs, gloomy about their future prospects ...

43 posted on 06/07/2016 4:04:13 PM PDT by Tax-chick ("The world is a dangerous place whose inhabitation always ends in death."~Theodore Dalrymple)
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To: Mrs. Don-o

Read “The Birth Famine “.


44 posted on 06/07/2016 4:12:13 PM PDT by nandrew
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To: Mrs. Don-o
And all of which you cite were determined to be “rights” by the majority of a few lawyers.

Less than twenty people sentenced the US to demographic and civilizational destruction.

No invader, just the enemy within.

45 posted on 06/07/2016 4:21:29 PM PDT by Jacquerie (ArticleVBlog.com)
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To: nandrew
THE BIRTH FAMINE

... on your Kindle for $4.99.

46 posted on 06/07/2016 4:37:17 PM PDT by Mrs. Don-o (It's assumed that the sceptic has no bias; yet he has a very obvious bias in favour of skepticism.)
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To: Utmost Certainty

The government didn’t make raising a large family hard; it always has been. You can’t raise kids like “everyone” else, but you can certainly raise a large family on a limited income. It just requires the same work it always has: gardening/farming/raising animals/hunting/fishing/sewing/carpentry/mechanics/cooking/cleaning/canning, etc. It’s never been about money;it’s always been about work.

Oh, and all the little ones have to pitch in and won’t have the latest fill-in-the-blank. I’ve raised well over a dozen on wages and salaries significantly under the median. When I went back to college after leaving active duty, we had six little mouths to feed, and we made it on $11000 that year.

Lots of rice and beans, and cooking all that excess food from food banks. 80% of the food at charities is never used because it requires minimal cooking skills. Most “poor” Americans can’t or won’t actually prepare meals, even if given the ingredients.

Americans also throw away more clothing than the rest of the world wears. We bought tons of name-brand clothes with the tags still on them. The kids sometimes fought over hand-me-downs, because they wanted a particular item.

They learned to appreciate craftsmanship and hard work. Everyone learned butchering in 30 degree weather is hard, wet wood doesn’t burn, five gallons of water gives a better workout than $500 worth of weights. The greatest lessons they learned is that people are more important than things and a family sticks together, even when life sucks.


47 posted on 06/07/2016 5:01:51 PM PDT by antidisestablishment (If those who defend our freedom do not know liberty, none of us will have either.)
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To: jacknhoo
"It should be noted...mothers kill to the tune of 1.25 children per second."

Any society that murders its on offspring deserves to be destroyed...

48 posted on 06/07/2016 5:08:13 PM PDT by unread (Joe McCarthy was right.......)
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To: Mrs. Don-o

It’s been in process for at least 40 years.

* Men were put out of jobs, as the jobs were moved overseas.

* University feminists, employers and lawyers further libeled men in general while pushing the divorce/cohabitation paradigm.

* Many children grew up without fathers.

* The medical racket takes extreme amounts of money for pregnancy and childbirth. Many midwives were trained by feminists with a pagan religious compulsion to brainwash more people.

* Children are snatched from their parents for nothing more than lacking running water in an established house.


49 posted on 06/07/2016 5:51:18 PM PDT by familyop ("Welcome to Costco. I love you." --Costco greeter in the movie, "Idiocracy")
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To: nandrew

Also Mark Stein’s “America, Alone” for very insightful analysis. He ties the demise of Western Civilization to the two enormously disastrous world wars in the 20th century that destroyed belief in a hereafter. Once that happened, hedonism took over and people then began believing there was no point bringing a new generation into the world. Birth rates sank far below replacement, empty churches, fatalism. Then Marxism and socialism destroyed the work ethic, so vast hordes of “guest workers” were imported from Turkey and other Muslim lands to do the work native Europeans would no longer do. It was a perfect storm set up for the loss of the West.

The church would,have been the bulwark against that happening in the US, but the Marxists now control education, government, media, law, news, and entertainment. Parents can no longer stop or control the cultural Marxism taught to kids in public schools starting in kindergarten.


50 posted on 06/07/2016 5:56:53 PM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom
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To: familyop

Yes. A coordinated effort to pathologize normal people and their families, and to mainstream deviancy.


51 posted on 06/07/2016 6:19:06 PM PDT by Mrs. Don-o (It's assumed that the sceptic has no bias; yet he has a very obvious bias in favour of skepticism.)
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To: Mrs. Don-o

No, our idiot leaders will end our civilization much sooner.


52 posted on 06/07/2016 6:27:47 PM PDT by GingisK
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To: jacknhoo

“mothers kill to the tune of 1.25 children per second.”

1.25/sec = 75/min = 3,600/hr = 86,000/day = 31,536,000/yr.

Is that possible?


53 posted on 06/07/2016 6:41:36 PM PDT by dsc (Any attempt to move a government to the left is a crime against humanity.)
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To: dsc

Absolutely...and more. Mothers have murdered 1.41Billion just since 1980. That’s 44 years worth of seconds in 36 years. It is also more people killed un that short time than all of the world’s wars and health epidemics combined. Www.numberofabortions.com


54 posted on 06/07/2016 6:49:22 PM PDT by jacknhoo (Luke 12:51. Think ye, that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, no; but separation.)
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To: Kay Ludlow; Mrs. Don-o
I don't know about the rest of you, but my public schools (starting in 6th grade) drummed into us that using birth control and not having children was essential if there was going to be enough air to breath, water to drink, land to farm. Remember the “Population Bomb” (Ehrlich) and “Future Shock” (Toffler)? Half of the people I knew from school didn't marry, don't have children, and think they are the intelligent ones. Maybe if they stop indoctrinating white kids around the world with that crap, there would be more white kids in the future...

Good post. I think we're about the same age.

Mrs. Don-o,

To your list of reasons why there are no children, I'd like to add hostility - between the sexes. There have been many threads here lately on why people think marriage just isn't worth it. It's very sad.

55 posted on 06/07/2016 6:57:56 PM PDT by thecodont
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To: thecodont
Hostility between the sexes--- YOW, I agree with you strongly. It's all over the FR forum. It shocks me, frankly, because I've seen very little of that among the people close to me in all my long years, but at FR it's on display all the time on certain threads--- wherever a male/female heme comes up. And of course, not only at FR: it seems to be pervasive in what you could call the public culture.p> Maybe I mean the media culture.

The Sexual Revolution was supposed to make people so flexible, natural and free. So why are males and females, venomously in college, even in high school, seething with bitterness toward each other?

I thank heaven I have been pretty much sheltered from that. Pretty much.

56 posted on 06/07/2016 8:04:34 PM PDT by Mrs. Don-o (It's assumed that the sceptic has no bias; yet he has a very obvious bias in favour of skepticism.)
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To: Mrs. Don-o
So why are males and females, venomously in college, even in high school, seething with bitterness toward each other?

I suggest that when people view themselves simply as appetites, and others as objects for temporary relief of appetite, they despise themselves and others.

57 posted on 06/08/2016 2:16:48 AM PDT by Tax-chick ("The world is a dangerous place whose inhabitation always ends in death."~Theodore Dalrymple)
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To: jacknhoo

“Absolutely...and more”

I have to say that I’m skeptical of the number.

We only have...what, 50,000,000 murders of the preborn in America in all the years since Roe v. Wade.


58 posted on 06/08/2016 7:51:08 AM PDT by dsc (Any attempt to move a government to the left is a crime against humanity.)
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To: dsc

The word “only” refers to a comparison of 31 million a year with 50 million over many years.

I don’t mean to poormouth the enormity of these hideous crimes.


59 posted on 06/08/2016 7:53:08 AM PDT by dsc (Any attempt to move a government to the left is a crime against humanity.)
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To: dsc

Lol, you can simply add them up yourself. China’s toll alone is 23 million per year. The abortion counter uses data that is even conservative. What difference would it make say if the number was double or perhaps half? Would it make mothers any less evil really...there would still have never been an evil of such a magnitude in the whole history of the world.


60 posted on 06/08/2016 8:40:20 AM PDT by jacknhoo (Luke 12:51. Think ye, that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, no; but separation.)
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