Posted on 12/08/2007 3:13:57 PM PST by Jim W N
The president of Estonia goes on national TV to urge his countrymen to have more children. Russian President Vladimir Putin warns his parliament about "a serious crisis threatening Russia's survival": the nation's low birth rate. The government of Singapore is trying to reverse that country's birth dearth by sponsoring a massive taxpayer-funded matchmaking service.
In 1968, Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb, panicking the world with dire predictions of a population explosion. By the year 2000, he predicted, the world would be so crowded that hundreds of millions would die of starvation. Although Mr. Ehrlich's prophecies have turned out to be almost comically wrong, PBS has produced a documentary taking him seriously, and philanthropists like Ted Turner still donate millions to combat population growth.
But the problem today is not overpopulation; it's under-population. For a population to reproduce itself, the fertility rate must average 2.1 children per woman. (The .I allows for child mortality.) The fertility rate today among major developed nations is only 1.6.
The United States is rare among its peers in keeping its fertility rate at around the replacement level of 2.1, according to the Population Reference Bureau, which provided the fertility data cited here. Europe, though, is shrinking. Germany's rate is 1.3. Despite the stereo-type of large Catholic families, France has a fertility rate of 1.9 and Italy has one of the lowest in Europe, 1.3. At this rate, there will be only about half as many Italians in the next generation. There will also be fewer Russians, whose fertility rate is 1.3.
(Excerpt) Read more at abortionno.org ...
Based also on estimated unreported abortions which are significant.
A lot of truth, although the details are somewhat crapulous. 100 million die each year.
Silly analogy. And we were never 100% foreign born when this country gained its independence from the England. Read your American history. Huntington puts it best:
"America was created by 17th- and 18th-century settlers who were overwhelmingly white, British, and Protestant. Their values, institutions, and culture provided the foundation for and shaped the development of the United States in the following centuries. They initially defined America in terms of race, ethnicity, culture, and religion. Then, in the 18th century, they also had to define America ideologically to justify independence from their home country, which was also white, British, and Protestant. Thomas Jefferson set forth this creed, as Nobel Prize-winning economist Gunnar Myrdal called it, in the Declaration of Independence, and ever since, its principles have been reiterated by statesmen and espoused by the public as an essential component of U.S. identity.
"By the latter years of the 19th century, however, the ethnic component had been broadened to include Germans, Irish, and Scandinavians, and the United States' religious identity was being redefined more broadly from Protestant to Christian. With World War II and the assimilation of large numbers of southern and eastern European immigrants and their offspring into U.S. society, ethnicity virtually disappeared as a defining component of national identity. So did race, following the achievements of the civil rights movement and the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. Americans now see and endorse their country as multiethnic and multiracial. As a result, American identity is now defined in terms of culture and creed."
"Most Americans see the creed as the crucial element of their national identity. The creed, however, was the product of the distinct Anglo-Protestant culture of the founding settlers. Key elements of that culture include the English language; Christianity; religious commitment; English concepts of the rule of law, including the responsibility of rulers and the rights of individuals; and dissenting Protestant values of individualism, the work ethic, and the belief that humans have the ability and the duty to try to create a heaven on earth, a city on a hill. Historically, millions of immigrants were attracted to the United States because of this culture and the economic opportunities and political liberties it made possible."
Blockading legal immigrants who truly want to enjoy the freedom to build their lives as they see fit is not the answer.
What the hell are you talking about? Who is trying to "blocade" legal immigrants? I guess it depends on how you define legal. People who enter our country without our permission and knowledge are illegal. I have no problem with legal immigrants, except we need to change our policies to control the numbers and to meet the needs of our economy. I am married to one and my grandmother was one.
You're still missing the point. What economy are you talking about? Our current socialist-inclined economy held in the grasp of an ever larger and threatening central government? If so, you're catering to the wrong thing. As I've said, the answer is to rid ourselves of this unconstitutional blight or you won't have to worry about outsiders screwing up our country - the government will have already done it for you.
Once we're back on a limited government, free market economy, legal immigrants will be responsible for themselves as they should be. We're not responsible to take care of them, thus the irrelevance of "we can't afford them".
We are not getting anywhere because you don’t seem to understand the problem. A free market doesn’t mean an open border and unfettered migration of labor across national borders. It is about sovereignty. Do you believe in that concept?
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