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Europe's Childless Leaders Sleepwalking Us to Disaster
The Gatestone Institute ^ | May 6, 2017 | Giulio Meotti

Posted on 07/06/2017 6:39:45 AM PDT by pgkdan

*As Europe's leaders have no children, they seem have no reason to worry about the future of their continent.

*"Europe today has little desire to reproduce itself, fight for itself or even take its own side in an argument". — Douglas Murray, The Times.

*"'Finding ourselves' becomes more important than building a world." — Joshua Mitchell.

There have never been so many childless politicians leading Europe as today. They are modern, open minded and multicultural and they know that "everything finishes with them". In the short term, being childless is a relief since it means no spending for families, no sacrifices and that no one complains about the future consequences. As in a research report financed by the European Union: "No kids, no problem!".

Being a mother or a father, however, means that you have a very real stake in the future of the country you lead. Europe's most important leaders leave no children behind.

Europe's most important leaders are all childless: German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and the French presidential hopeful Emmanuel Macron. The list continues with Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven, Luxembourg's Prime Minister Xavier Bettel and Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon.

As Europe's leaders have no children, they seem have no reason to worry about the future of their continent. German philosopher Rüdiger Safranski wrote:

"for the childless, thinking in terms of the generations to come loses relevance. Therefore, they behave more and more as if they were the last and see themselves as standing at the end of the chain".

"Europe is committing suicide. Or at least its leaders have decided to commit suicide", wrote Douglas Murray in The Times. "Europe today has little desire to reproduce itself, fight for itself or even take its own side in an argument". Murray, in his new book, entitled The Strange Death of Europe, called it "an existential civilisational tiredness".

Angela Merkel made the fatal decision to open the doors of Germany to one million and half migrants to stop the demographic winter of her country. It is not a coincidence that Merkel, who has no children, has been called "the compassionate mother" of migrants. Merkel evidently did not care if the massive influx of these migrants would change German society, probably forever.

Dennis Sewell recently wrote in the Catholic Herald:

"It is that idea of 'Western civilisation' that greatly complicates the demographic panic. Without it, the answer would be simple: Europe has no need to worry about finding young people to support its elderly in their declining years. There are plenty of young migrants banging at the gates, trying to climb the razor wire or setting sail on flimsy boats to reach our shores. All we need to do is let them in".

Merkel's childless status mirrors German society: 30% of German women have not had children, according to European Union statistics, with the figure rising among female university graduates to 40%. Germany's Minister of Defense, Ursula von der Leyen, said that unless the birth rate picked up, the country would have to "turn the lights out".

According to a new study published by the Institut national d'études démographiques, a quarter of European women born in the 1970s may remain childless. Europe's leaders are no different. One in nine women born in England and Wales in 1940 were childless at the age of 45, compared to one in five of those born in 1967.

French politician Emmanuel Macron has rejected French President François Hollande's assertion that, "France has a problem with Islam". He is against suspending the citizenship of jihadists, and keeps insisting, against all evidence, that Islamic State is not Islamic: "What poses a problem is not Islam, but certain behaviours that are said to be religious and then imposed on persons who practice that religion".

Macron preaches a sort of multicultural buffet. He speaks of colonialism as a "crime against humanity". He is in favor of "open borders", and for him, again against all evidence to the contrary, there is no "French culture".

According to philosopher Mathieu Bock-Coté, the 39-year-old Macron, who is married to his 64-year-old former teacher, is the symbol of a "happy globalization freed of the memory of the French lost glory". It is not a coincidence that "Manif Pour Tous," a movement that fought the legalization gay marriage in France, urged voting against Macron as the "anti-family candidate". Macron's slogan, "En Marche!" ("Forward!"), embodies the globalized élites who reduce politics to an exercise, a performance.

That is why Turkish leader Erdogan urged Muslims to have "five children" and Islamic imams are urging the faithful to "breed children": to conquer Europe. Islamic supremacists are busily building a clash of civilizations in Europe's midst, and they depict their Western host countries collapsing: without population, without values, and abandoning their own culture.

If you look at Merkel, Rutte, Macron and others, are these Islamic supremacists so wrong? Our European leaders are sleepwalking us to disaster. Why should they care, if at the end of their lifespans Europe will not be Europe? As Joshua Mitchell explained in an essay, "'finding ourselves' becomes more important than building a world. The long chain of generations has already done that for us. Now let us play".


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; Government; Miscellaneous; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: birthrate; deathofthewest; europe
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To: snoringbear

You have to find a happy medium.

Japan made the conscious decision to keep immigration to a minimum, and automate rather than import low-skilled workers.

The US OTOH imported millions of low-skilled workers rather than make investments in automation such as advanced farm equipment.

At least Japan’s decision kept the country Japanese.

We’ve balkanized the US perhaps beyond repair.


21 posted on 07/06/2017 7:26:45 AM PDT by MUDDOG
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To: Arthur Wildfire! March; fieldmarshaldj; BillyBoy; AuH2ORepublican; KC_Lion

Thersea May has no children either, her opponent for the leadership, Andrea Leadsom, criticized that off the record to a journalist, the journalist revealed it and it destroyed her campaign.

I didn’t realize all these leaders didn’t have children. Weird.


22 posted on 07/06/2017 7:36:07 AM PDT by Impy (End the kritarchy!)
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To: pgkdan

In the rest of the anglosphere

US Trump 5 chidren
Canada Trudeau 3 children
Australia Turnbull 2 children
New Zealand English 6 children


23 posted on 07/06/2017 7:36:46 AM PDT by xp38
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To: pgkdan

I have been posting from it this morning. It’s too late for Western Civilization
America Alone. Mark Steyn


24 posted on 07/06/2017 7:39:05 AM PDT by MarMema
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To: MUDDOG

IMO demons like Merkel and Soros are much more than merely “unconcerned” about the future. IMO these elites, along with other leaders, are clinically insane and want to hasten the destruction of civilization just so that they won’t be missing anything good when their worthless, treasonous lives end.


25 posted on 07/06/2017 7:46:55 AM PDT by LouAvul (The most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will.)
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To: LouAvul
clinically insane

Religious hysteria, in this case the religion of secular humanism.

That's the historical parallel I see.

26 posted on 07/06/2017 7:52:38 AM PDT by MUDDOG
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To: MUDDOG
No children doesn’t have to be a recipe for disaster.

The key is to keep the bad guys out, like Japan does.

True, to a certain degree. However, Japan's baby bust is so huge and destructive, that it will eventually destabilize even that regimented society.

27 posted on 07/06/2017 8:05:21 AM PDT by zeugma (The Brownshirts have taken over American Universities.)
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To: MUDDOG

That is why Tokyo, largest city in the world, has never had a Muslim terrorist attack.
While the West says oh, get used to it, you can’t stop it, it is part of modern life.


28 posted on 07/06/2017 8:38:34 AM PDT by tbw2
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To: tbw2

Yep. Japan certainly did it right regarding Muslims.

And even on the economic front, yes Japan has been in stagflation for decades, but with all the stories we’re reading nowadays about robotics and automation wiping out even more millions of jobs, and what to do about the displaced workers (including native-born), Japan may have the last laugh on those who say their population decline is disastrous.


29 posted on 07/06/2017 8:48:53 AM PDT by MUDDOG
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To: G Larry

Your Mom was brilliant. How she saw that, I don’t know, but she was 100 percent correct.


30 posted on 07/06/2017 9:25:15 AM PDT by napscoordinator (Trump/Hunter, jr for President/Vice President 2016)
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To: Neidermeyer

Japan is an economic disaster and has been for 25 years,, demographically the elderly will swamp all available resources very soon. We are not too far behind them.

It won’t be easy to fix, BUT it is a 100 percent better then dealing with terrorism in the country. Economic problems are much easier to solve then terrorism. Japan is in a much better situation then Western Europe.


31 posted on 07/06/2017 9:27:54 AM PDT by napscoordinator (Trump/Hunter, jr for President/Vice President 2016)
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To: napscoordinator

Mom has been active in the Pro-Life movement since 1972.
Also fought the ERA in 1973.

She worked with Mike Farris who is now President of ADF, who I also was in chess club with, in Junior High.


32 posted on 07/06/2017 9:45:32 AM PDT by G Larry (There is no great virtue in bargaining with the Devil)
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To: pgkdan
In the 1960’s and 1970’s politicians and “expert” scientists warned of an impending boom of overpopulation.

Overpopulation was the “Global Warming”, come “Climate Change” existential threat of the 1960s and 1970s

The gurus of this false prophecy were two Stanford Profs, Paul Erlich and John Holdren.

Holden became Obama’s Senior Science and Technology Adviser.

Americans and Europeans dutifully did their part to limit population growth to save the world and their societies.

It worked as the West and other first world countries are reaching stable, zero population growth societies.

In the process, we have created a roughly 10-15 year temporary population and demographic imbalance as the post WWII baby boom cohort retires and dies off.

The drive for zero population growth has exposed the Ponzi scheme nature of the modern welfare state as there are not enough young workers to support the larger number of retired and idle baby boom people living off the system.

Now the same social theorists who told us to have less children to save the world are now telling us to import millions of illiterate and uncivilized Third Worlders to save their Utopian Welfare States from the demographic catastrophe they themselves manufactured by their bogus theories of an impending Malthusian disaster that never happened.

Of course, to “save” the welfare state by importing illiterate, unassimilatable third worlders means the destruction of the respective countries cultures and it's replacement with a third world type mess.

So Europeans and Americans are, in effect, destroying their cultures to save their welfare states.

33 posted on 07/06/2017 11:04:00 AM PDT by rdcbn
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To: pgkdan

Contraception Extinction Bump


34 posted on 07/06/2017 6:59:19 PM PDT by Mrs. Don-o (They said what's down is up, they said what isn't is, they put ideas in his head he thought were his)
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