Western Civilization Is Dying...
Posted by: tony on 01/03/2006 07:08 PM
Updated by: tony on 01/03/2006 09:49 PM
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Expires: 02/03/2006 12:00 AM
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...one contracepted sex act or abortion at a time. So says Mark Steyn in an opinion piece called It's the Demography, Stupid.
I have opined about this in a couple of places, but I don't have the laser sharp focus that Mark Steyn has in his article. I suggest you read the whole thing. Get a cup of coffee. Settle down and take the time to read it and digest it. Don't skim. Read each and every word.
Scroll way down to the bottom of the Hot One Hundred top breeders and you'll eventually find the United States, hovering just at replacement rate with 2.07 births per woman. Ireland is 1.87, New Zealand 1.79, Australia 1.76. But Canada's fertility rate is down to 1.5, well below replacement rate; Germany and Austria are at 1.3, the brink of the death spiral; Russia and Italy are at 1.2; Spain 1.1, about half replacement rate. That's to say, Spain's population is halving every generation. By 2050, Italy's population will have fallen by 22%, Bulgaria's by 36%, Estonia's by 52%. In America, demographic trends suggest that the blue states ought to apply for honorary membership of the EU: In the 2004 election, John Kerry won the 16 with the lowest birthrates; George W. Bush took 25 of the 26 states with the highest. By 2050, there will be 100 million fewer Europeans, 100 million more Americans--and mostly red-state Americans.
Frightening. And excuse my French, but this should scare the *bleep* out of our left wing friends who support a "woman's right to choose".
We're a little luckier than other countries. When we refuse to reproduce, we have a steady stream of workers from south of the border willing to emigrate here and work to support our social programs. Our southern neighbors are predominantly Catholic (who don't have a propensity to strap on bombs and blow up women and children doing their weekly shopping). Countries in Europe, however have a steady stream of Muslims, and if our lefties here think the "Christian right" is tough on them, just wait until they get a load of the "Muslim right".
Just before the 2004 election, that eminent political analyst Cameron Diaz appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show to explain what was at stake:
"Women have so much to lose. I mean, we could lose the right to our bodies. . . . If you think that rape should be legal, then don't vote. But if you think that you have a right to your body," she advised Oprah's viewers, "then you should vote."
Poor Cameron. A couple of weeks later, the scary people won. She lost all rights to her body. Unlike Alec Baldwin, she couldn't even move to France. Her body was grounded in Terminal D.
But, after framing the 2004 presidential election as a referendum on the right to rape, Miss Diaz might be interested to know that men enjoy that right under many Islamic legal codes around the world. In his book "The Empty Cradle," Philip Longman asks: "So where will the children of the future come from? Increasingly they will come from people who are at odds with the modern world. Such a trend, if sustained, could drive human culture off its current market-driven, individualistic, modernist course, gradually creating an anti-market culture dominated by fundamentalism--a new Dark Ages."
Bottom line for Cameron Diaz: There are worse things than John Ashcroft out there.
And they want Mizz Diaz in a burkah.
I would really like to see a birth rate distribution of red states v. blue states. I think it would be very enlightening. Don't you?
(H/T to The Anchoress)
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