Posted on 06/17/2008 6:49:43 AM PDT by steve-b
Dr. Love is struggling.... Dr. Love's allies in the war on childlessness have fared no better. The Singaporean government's official matchmaking agency, the SDU -- the initials stand for Social Development Unit, but it's known to snarky islanders as "Single, Desperate, and Ugly" -- is situated just off the city-state's main shopping thoroughfare, and it doesn't seem nearly as popular as the nearby Emporio Armani....
The developed world is experiencing a wave of pro-natalist sentiment that threatens to bully the childless, tax the single, and reorient states toward the production rather than the protection of citizens. In most developed nations with below-replacement fertility, governments are attempting to align incentives so that women will use their bodies for the purpose of childbirth. In the U.S., right-wing religious groups are calling for a rollback of contraceptive freedom and a return to patriarchal arrangements, all in the name of something called "demographic balance."
Modern fertility panic stems from a desire to reshape polyglot cultures, to regain control over women's reproductive choices, and to locate a single, easy-to-understand culprit for disparate social problems....
...Europe's current demographics largely contradict the idea that more socially conservative societies tend to produce more children.
Religion? It is the most religious European countries, such as Italy, that have the continent's lowest fertility rates; secular Norway is just under replacement level. Working women? European countries with the highest work force participation rates, such as Sweden and Norway, tend to have higher fertility than those with a comparatively small percentage of women working, such as Greece....
(Excerpt) Read more at reason.com ...
I miss the 1970’s when it was global cooling and overpopulation that were the big problems...
Exactly. If we could get the Muslims to use birth control, the world would be a better place.
Here your answer to Muslim birth control.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/33/Abraham-Lincoln-battlegroup.jpg/800px-
Sorry everyone!
As for the effects of below-replacement birth rates over the long term, there is no denying the catastrophic results upon a society. First, the modern welfare state cannot sustain itself without successively larger populations to pay increasing benefits of aging former workers. Second, declining populations require massive immigration to supply new workers as older natives retire -- artificial replacements for the never-born. Even the continuation of economic activity becomes dependent upon fresh supplies of new immigrants. When these immigrants come from alien cultures and refuse to assimilate with their vanishing hosts, inevitable upheavals lie ahead.
Once a demographic tipping point is reached -- when a population ages without replacement -- the math begins to work very swiftly. Any corrective reversal will take decades -- decades during which stronger and growing societies can sieze economic and military advantage. There can be no stability in the face of continuous population decline.
PING for the Freeriders list.
Good catch, but she does make one good point. Liberals are going to use the issue to ask for more and more Government.
bttt
Al Mohler blogged on a recent article in Foreign Policy, which is hardly a right wing religious group. The title of the article is "Why Men Rule--and Conservatives Will Inherit the Earth". The conclusion? Patriarchy will save our culture. Worth reading.
As far as the posted article goes, I think some feminist somewhere finally got around to reading "America Alone".
I will make one other point. The importance of left wing indoctrination in the public schools becomes clear in light of the lack of replacement-level birth rates among Liberals. Instead of birthing their legacy, they indoctrinate them.
FREERIDER...........PING!!!
FREERIDERS!
We’re IRREPLACEABLE!
But cultures that have babies and pass their values onto those babies grow and prosper. Those who don't are replaced by those who do. The culture that has liberated women (an issue obviously dear to the author's heart) is, for the most part, white, Christian, American culture. If folks like the author continue to sneer at efforts to continue that culture, the author will find his granddaughters in burkhas.
The problem is precisely, that to the extent women's liberation results in falling birthrates, it is an entirely self-limiting ideology that can prosper for only short historical periods. The pity is it will drag a lot of other things down with it that will be very hard for mankind to invent again--such as the Rule of Law, private property and stuff like that.
You design policy for a planet where one man with a rock is as effective militarily as one man with a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, and I’ll design policy for Earth.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.