Teddy Roosevelt, the Family, Contraception, and Life Issues[my title]

The Wanderer | 11/22/01 | From the Mail column

[hocndoc]

Romans 14, which also contains the admonishment to work for peace among the believers.

Let's agree on the points that we can agree upon: none of us should kill children in order to limit the size of the family.

[patent]

romans 14 is talking about parts of the Jewish law no long applying, namely the food restriction. It does not support the idea that merely believing something is not a sin makes it not a sin. It is simply a reference to no food being unclean, as the chapter itself makes clear by saying the kingdom of God is not about eating, at the same time it makes clear that there is a path to righteousness:

17 For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit,
18 because anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and approved by men.
19 Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification.
20 Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food. All food is clean, but it is wrong for a man to eat anything that causes someone else to stumble.

This verse makes it clear that if I believe it is fine for me to eat pork, but my doing so makes another stumble, it is WRONG despite my believing it is not. Stating that a sin is only a sin if one believes it to be so renders vast sections of the Bible completely meaningless. I don't want to debate over this with you, this thread really wasn't about that, but please consider what that interpretation ignores in that very section, and what it removes from the Bible as a whole.

Let's agree on the points that we can agree upon: none of us should kill children in order to limit the size of the family.

I will agree with you on that, but I can not agree to be silenced on the points we disagree on. In the end such a policy would leave me mute in the company of others.

patent

[Antoninus]

I don't see the lack of assimilation by immigrants as related to numbers at all. Immigrants don't have to assimilate because the people who are here so often fail to take pride in their American heritage. Instead, a large percentage of Americans try to pretend that any heritage is as good as any other and that our Founding Fathers didn't create anything special. It wouldn't matter how many Americans there were as long as we were split on this question.

I agree with what you wrote here. However, this in no way excludes the points that I made above with reference to assimilation being more difficult because of the smaller numbers of Americans existing in these regions than may have. And my point still stands that this mass immigration need never have happened if not for a huge demand for workers from agriculture and industry.

I will say that use of contraception is not a belief that sex has no conseqences. It is simply an attempt to mitigate against those consequences.

Sorry, but I don't see the distinction here. Contraception, as sold to the public, is not ever presented as simply 'mitigation'. And the idea that sex could or should be 'consequence-free' a widely-held and thriving viewpoint, much to our detriment.

If contraception fails and the woman becomes pregnant, then the couple must be responsible for the care of the baby.

Once again, we must get back to the reality of the situation we have today, where such 'unplanned' pregnanacies are routinely terminated. The mindset that allows a person to terminate a pregnancy just because it's unplanned is a direct outgrowth of the contraceptive mindset. Just try to separate the two and see what kind of outcry you get.

While you have every right to keep trying, you will not persuade people that they should be denied sex for about ten to twelve days a month or face a much higher possibility of pregnancy.

Denied sex? What a ridiculous way to put it. Are we animals who must have sex several times a week? Is monogamy a 'denial' of sex too? After all, men often have the urge to copulate with attractive women they meet on a daily basis. Sorry, not buying it. Sexual restraint is a virtue. I do believe that people who exercise such self-control have happier, healthier, and longer lives than those who give in to the urge whenever and wherever it strikes them. Want to do a survey of the divorce rates on couples of each variety?

This position as wrong and unreasonable. People will always see it that way, and I agree with them.

Who are these 'people' anyway? I know lots of people who think that the position of the Catholic Church is the proper course. I guess we just know different 'people'.

There are two ways to avoid this problem.

It's only a problem if you can't abstain from sex for about 10 days each month and don't consider children a blessing from God. No problem here.

Maybe you don't see a distinction between abortion and contraception. If you don't, then we really don't have a basis on which to work together to outlaw abortion.

In my opinion, your strategy will NEVER lead to the outlaw of abortion. Why? Because you refuse to realize that (as I said above) it's the contraceptive mentality that enables people to see abortion as a reasonable alternative to the 'disaster' of pregnancy in the first place.

[WFTR]

I think we've taken this discussion as far as we can go. Unless you have another idea, I'll leave you with the last words. Anything more seems to be a restatement of things that both of us have already said.

[Antoninus]

Agreed. Fair enough.

[Antoninus]

TR on marriage, family, and child-rearing issues...

On motherhood as the true source of progress, Teddy Roosevelt said:

"A more supreme instance of unselfishness than is afforded by motherhood cannot be imagined."

Before an audience of liberal Christian theologians in 1911, he said:

"If you do not believe in your own stock enough to see the stock kept up, then you are not good Americans, you are not patriots, and ... I for one shall not mourn your extinction; and in such event I shall welcome the advent of a new race that will take your place, because you wil have shown that you are not fit to cumber the ground."

On the centrality of the child-rich family to the very existence of the American nation:

"It is in the life of the family, upon which in the last analysis the whole welfare of the nation rests....The nation is nothing but the aggregate of the families within its borders."

On parenthood:

"No other success in life, not being President, or being wealthy, or going to college, or anything else, comes up to the success of the man and woman who can feel that they have done their duty and that their children and grandchildren rise up to call them blessed."

On out-of-wedlock birth versus practiced sterility:

"After all, such a vice may be compatible with a nation's continuing to live, and while there is life, even a life marred by wrong practices, there is a chance of reform.

In another place, on the same subject:

"...[W]hile there is life, there is hope, whereas nothing can be done with the dead."

On the behavior of 90% of those who practice birth control:

"[It is derived] from viciousness, coldness, shallow-heartedness, self-indulgence, or mere failure to appreciate aright the difference between the all-important and the unimportant."

On the "pitiable" child-rearing record of graduates of women's colleges like Vassar and Smith who bore only 0.86 of a child each during their lifetimes:

"Do these colleges teach 'domestic science'?... There is something radically wrong with the home training and school training that produces such results."

Doesn't sound like a McCainiac to me...

[steve-b]

One relies on human reason to place a physical barrier between God’s will and the couple's will.

What a ridiculous notion of "God" you have. I can easily punch a hole in a condom -- "God", evidently is weaker than me to about the same extent that I am weaker than the Incredible Hulk as depicted in the comic books.

[steve-b]

if God truly wills the pregnancy, then it will happen

If one is a Christian, one must accept that if God truly wills the pregnancy, it will happen even if you don't have sex.

[steve-b]

The birthrate in the US is approaching the rate of replacement. Meanwhile, in Mexico, it's positively soaring with no end in sight.

Really, you ought to do your homework before making easily disproven assertions.

[steve-b]

Death, in the context of 'Culture of Death' also means...

While we're on the subject, what do the words "alone", "sex", and "is" "also mean"?

[steve-b]

Turn their populations into a bunch of self-absorbed, instant-gratification loving nincompoops

Works for me. If someone gave me a magic button that could give every citizen of Saudi Arabia the values of the Hollywood set, I would probably sprain a finger from pressing it too hard.

[steve-b]

I can't help wondering if trying to persuade a non-Catholic of the evils of contraception is a little bit like a Jewish person trying to convince me not to eat bacon.

Actually, I've noted that none of my Jewish friends and acquaintances is so presumptuous as to make any such attempt.

[steve-b]

Populations have to stabilize at some point -- exponential growth exceeds any finite limit in a surprisingly short time. Given this fact, delaying the adjustments required by the stabilization is, to coin a phrase, the old 'short term gain for long term pain' solution.

[utahagen]

We DO need good, law-abiding, American citizens who are married to have big families to neutralize the Muslims and the rap stars, who are breeding like crazy.

[steve-b]

Part of the reason Mexicans living the the SW aren't assimilating is because they don't have to. There are enough of them here already that they can forge their own self-sufficient communities among a dwindling native population. If the native population had been larger, they might have been able to cope better with the large influx of foreigners.

You are conflating two independent variables. A population of one billion natives who bend over backwards to avoid putting the newcomers to the slighest inconvenience of assimilation will fail to assimilate them. A population of one million natives who insist that the newcomers enter legally, learn English, follow the laws, etc will assimilate them just fine.

But WHY won't we secure our borders? It is because there is a huge demand from agriculture and industry for Mexican workers. Why is there a demand?

Because agribusiness wants to pay wages well below what the market will bear, if that market consists solely of people who are in the country legally, and has sufficient influence to bribe the government to look the other way.

Because Americans who may have filled these jobs were dumped in a landfill or never existed to begin with.

Er, you aren't helping your case with the implicit claim that if abortion had been suppressed, the market wage of native-born Americans would be a couple bucks an hour.

That opinion is just a manifestation of the silly belief that man can control all things in life.

Whether or not this belief is "silly" in a particular case is determined by experiment. For instance, if it is "silly" to believe that a certain pill will prevent pregnancy, the silliness of the notion will become evident when people who take the pill keep getting pregnant anyway.

As I explained above, contraception is part and parcel of the Culture of Death because it lulls people into a false sense of security when it comes to sexual relations.

By the same reasoning, one could just as soundly conclude that all of modern medicine is part and parcel of the Culture of Death because it lulls people into a false sense of security when it comes to diet and exercise.

Nowhere on this thread do I say that each woman should have 12 kids. I do however advocate larger families (4-5 children) and personally believe that people who willingly attempt to limit the number of children they have to 1 or 2 are doing themselves, society, and the children that they allow to be born a grave disservice.

Since a doubling each generation is not indefinitely sustainable, the alleged "grave disservice" must be accepted at some point in any case.

[WFTR]

If one is a Christian, one must accept that if God truly wills the pregnancy, it will happen even if you don't have sex.

Wow, a response to a post made four and a half years ago. That's a new record for me.

Your statement is true, but it's irrelevant to the point that I was making four and a half years ago. My point was then and still remains that there's nothing wrong with taking steps to minimize the risk of pregnancy. Those steps may include the use birth control while having sex. We can't account for what God may do through His omnipotence. However, we can use the probabilities to our advantage to try to achieve the outcomes that we believe are best for us.

Bill

[WFTR]

We DO need good, law-abiding, American citizens who are married to have big families to neutralize the Muslims and the rap stars, who are breeding like crazy.

On the contrary, we need to persuade "the Muslims and the rap stars" to stop "breeding like crazy." An overcrowded society full of white Christians is just as miserable for many of us as an overcrowded society full of any other demographic group. The advantage to having a larger number of good, law-abiding Americans to oppose these people is only an advantage if we are willing to use our numerical advantage to force the others to follow our ways or at least leave us alone. Right now, we have the numbers to do that. We just don't have the will to do it. Creating more babies isn't going to give us the will. What we need is simply for people to decide that we will use whatever force is necessary to oppose enemies from without and within.

Bill

PS. As I said to the last poster, a reply from something that I posted four and a half years ago is a new record for me. I didn't even know that these old threads still existed.

[utahagen]

You wrote, "On the contrary, we need to persuade "the Muslims and the rap stars" to stop "breeding like crazy." There is literally no way to persuade Muslims and rap stars to stop breeding. Of all the possible groups you could come up with, these two are the most resistant to any type of persuasion by normal people.

[WFTR]

For the Muslims, we could simply stop letting more of them into the country. The ones who are here will continue to "breed like crazy," but there are still few enough of them that they could be changed. The ones outside the country can do whatever they want as long as they don't mess with us. When they do, we need to destroy a bunch of them so that the rest get the message.

For the "rap community," persuading them not to "breed like crazy" is as simple as putting an end to breeding entitlements. If they had to support all of their babies instead of having others subsidize them, they would learn some control. The ones who failed to support their babies would lose them to state control and be prosecuted for neglect.

Bill