Posted on 09/06/2008 7:31:19 AM PDT by RKBA Democrat
IT WAS A SPECTACULAR LATE-MAY AFTERNOON IN SOUTHERN ITALY,but the streets of Laviano — a gloriously situated hamlet ranged across a few folds in the mountains of the Campania region — were deserted. There were no day-trippers from Naples, no tourists to take in the views up the steep slopes, the olive trees on terraces, the ruins of the 11th-century fortress with wild poppies spotting its grassy flanks like flecks of blood. And there were no locals in sight either. The town has housing enough to support a population of 3,000, but fewer than 1,600 live here.
SNIP
The figure of 2.1 is widely considered to be the “replacement rate” — the average number of births per woman that will maintain a country’s current population level. At various times in modern history — during war or famine — birthrates have fallen below the replacement rate, to “low” or “very low” levels. But Hans-Peter Kohler, José Antonio Ortega and Francesco Billari — the authors of the 2002 report — saw something new in the data. For the first time on record, birthrates in southern and Eastern Europe had dropped below 1.3. For the demographers, this number had a special mathematical portent. At that rate, a country’s population would be cut in half in 45 years, creating a falling-off-a-cliff effect from which it would be nearly impossible to recover. Kohler and his colleagues invented an ominous new term for the phenomenon: “lowest-low fertility.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
....world wide, whites are the most endangered species on the planet...about 15% and falling.
So what? As long as the culture survives, the skin color is irrelevant.
muslim hordes taking over empty cities ensures the culture does not survive.
I agree but the culture is not surviving. The leftist have made it their life’s work to make sure that European culture can not survive.
Oh, it’s surviving, in places like the churches and in a free and vigorous intellectual movement in places like Free Republic.
To a certain extent, genes drive culture.
Whites are birth-controlling themselves out of existence.
Self-genocide by pill.
By strict definition, no. ‘Culture’ is what drives human behavior that is not genetic.
“Whites are birth-controlling themselves out of existence.
Self-genocide by pill.”
....not to mention in this country allowing hordes of 3rd world people to enter illegally.
Except for Sarah, of course. That must not be allowed says the MSM "consensus."
A strong historical case can be made that American culture has been pervaded by mainline protestantism. The mainline is just about dead and the culture it nourished is becoming unrecognizable as we speak.
The identification of race and culture may not be desirable but it is a stubborn reality throughout much of humanity to be ignored at our own risk. Consider the deleterious effect of the "multicultural" agenda, which has basically been an assault against the culture generated here by white european forebears, replacing it with secular state-dominated totalitarianism.
...while undeveloped cesspool countries are supported by the Western countries where "population explosions", "environment disasters", "political corruption", and "global warming exploitation" flourish.
caucasians are actually over 50% of the world population. There is no significant genetic difference East Indians and Europeans. The only difference is coloring but that means most to you. Whites are neither a species or a race.
Thank you for posting this article! Wonderful read.
So, the bottom line is this: For fertility rates to thrive in a Western Culture, you need freedom. People need the flexibility to choose how to live their own lives without government telling them how to do it.
The nations with the greatest generosity from the government regarding children are doing better than the others, but it’s more work and expense than just letting people get on with their own decisions.
“So what? As long as the culture survives, the skin color is irrelevant.”
This is an idealistic way of looking at it. Practically speaking, however, culture is far more likely to be transmitted by the people who are steeped in the culture, who have grown up in the culture.. You are a product of a culture in all sorts of subtle ways that you don’t even notice. If you’ve ever been abroad, you would understand this. I would not be able to transmit Chinese culture anywhere nearly as effectively as a Chinese person, for example. I could only study Chinese civilization from the outside and my understanding of it would come through a Western framework which I absorbed earlier in life. I would not move like a Chinese woman; my mannerisms and automatic assumptions would be different. It would be quite a steep learning curve, and I would never be fully Chinese in my outlook.
It’s actually a pretty good article. In discussing the economic arguments (”the government doesn’t do enough to support children”), it points out that the US, while it has little government support for children, more than makes up for that with the economic flexibility that lets people control their working hours, leave and change jobs, etc. This flexibility aids family creation. Europe is locked into a labor contract system that makes this very difficult, and in addition, Europeans tend to think of a job as a job for life, which is bound to lead to a certain income stagnation.
The real reason, though, is simply that people have been told for years now that children were bad, that the whole point of sex was sex, that families were a drag on your unfettered self-expression, and that in any case the world was withering up and famine was at the door - because of the “selfishness” of people who had children. I think the reason that Spain and Italy were hard hit is, oddly enough, because they held out a little longer than Northern Europe in clinging to family patterns, so when they finally drank the poison after 1968, it was fully developed and they didn’t have any resistance built up.
Spain and Italy wanted to prove they were modern and “with it.” Unfortunately, this was also the time at which the Catholic Church collapsed as a result of Vatican II. The Church could have been the defense against this; Pope Paul VI did the only brave thing of his pontificate and condemned birth control. But by then it was too late, no one was listening and the clergy and bishops were in open rebellion.
Furthermore, Spain, thanks to its Socialist government, is now the abortion capital of Europe and has aborted a huge percentage of what would have been its future population. I notice that this article did not mention abortion.
Memes and genes typically have a close symbiotic relationship: they _can_ reproduce independently, but usually don’t.
Thank you for pointing that out. My wife and I are white, but two of our three children are adopted African-American blacks. They will be raised with western, Catholic values.
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