Tag Archive for: demography

Knock, knock? We’re on a path to extinction! Anyone interested?

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South Korea just broke its own grim record, reporting the world’s lowest fertility rate at 0.78 children per woman. An unprecedented birth dearth.

South Korea is supposedly a “wealthy” country, but it will not be wealthy without children. The disappearance of East Asia and their ancient cultures proceeds apace. Japan and China are already shrinking with no end in sight. So many young people are not even interested in dating. What for? They have smartphones, video games and social media.

The same situation plagues the West. In what was once known as Christendom – Europe, Russia, the Anglosphere, Latin America – Christianity is being supplanted by thoroughly modern secularism. “Go forth and multiply” does not apply.

Fertility is falling everywhere. Why?

In prehistoric times, natural selection prevailed. Those best able to adapt survived and produced more offspring. Charles Darwin is credited with the discovery of this principle, though he simply rendered reality into writing. Natural selection became the basis for his theory of evolution.

For people at the mercy of the elements, death was a constant companion. The bearing of children just came naturally to perpetuate family and tribe. The survival instinct was strong. Five-star restaurants, two-car garages and family planning were unknown.

Then came civilization. Sustained commerce between small settlements and the rise of agriculture spawned economies and social stability. Between 4000 and 3000 BC full-fledged civilizations arose. Finding food, clothing and shelter was no longer a do-or-die proposition. Large-scale cooperation emerged. Natural selection gave way to social selection. Civilization presented diversions such as art, science, education, politics, wealth, leisure, and power.

Fast forward to the 19th century. In 1800 no transportation system rivaled the old Roman roads. Nor was there a postal service as proficient as Caesar’s. That changed with the Industrial Revolution. The Idea of Progress, the belief that history ineluctably proceeds towards material well-being and a better life, took hold and superseded religious faith. This belief emerged from Enlightenment empiricism. Mankind had come to believe in itself: Master of the Universe. Modernism was born.

Modernism was inextricably linked with progress. What great things humanity can do! How could anyone possibly argue with that? Modernism is defined by the Oxford dictionary:

A tendency in theology to accommodate traditional religious teaching to contemporary thought and especially to devalue supernatural elements.

According to Merriam-Webster it is:

a movement toward modifying traditional beliefs in accordance with modern ideas, especially in the Roman Catholic Church in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Note the words “accommodate” and “modifying.” It’s not rocket science – religious faith, traditional values and common sense were subordinated to “modern” notions of “liberty, equality and fraternity.” In the West that eventually morphed into “diversity, equity and inclusion” (DEI).

Where is the family in all this? Good question. Modernism continually moves the goal posts. In the West the very definitions of marriage, family and morality are up for debate. Moral relativism destroys social cohesion, a form of “social security” money can’t buy. That is gone in the West and fading fast in the East.

The West’s Industrial Revolution, along with the utopian Idea of Progress, eventually took hold worldwide. The prevailing wisdom was that humanity was improving. The New Soviet Man concept is just one example.

But humanity was not improving. It was the same old humanity thriving under improved conditions – e.g., rising living standards, a critical distinction. Are we really more intelligent or somehow cognitively superior to the ancient Greeks or Persians? Will we ever learn that all the DEI social engineering in the world does not change human nature?

Modernism’s materialism, consumerism and convenience are secular values. How can God, faith, or belief in the transcendent help me get ahead in this world? Well, there’s the Prosperity Gospel. But I digress.

With the advent of Modernism, civilization’s diversions – art, science, politics, wealth, leisure and power – became preoccupations, ends in themselves, at the expense of family. We slipped our spiritual moorings.

Modernism’s mammon mania means that nothing should impede the pursuit of prosperity. We have creature comforts and high-tech gadgets galore. The old “bread and circuses for the masses” has long been surpassed. Materially things are better. What could go wrong?

But are we homo sapiens getting ahead of ourselves?

Has the complexity of civilization exceeded the human capacity to maintain and manage it, akin to a structural overload in engineering? Gleaming civilization with all its baubles and accoutrements has blinded us to certain eternal truths. Losing faith means losing our moral compass and survival instinct. Christianity is wilting in the West. The fatalistic Oswald Spengler said that when the continuation of your kind on earth becomes a matter of debate, it’s over. (To give you a taste of Spengler, he’s the guy who said, “Optimism is cowardice”.)

Absent religious faith or a common Zeitgeist larger than ourselves, civilization can mutate from benefit to burden.

Burden? Progress is a double-edge sword. The environment is fouled for economic gain. Institutions master rather than serve humanity. Perpetual mortgage and credit card debt must be serviced. Unfettered by faith, moral constraints or a common ethos, misery abounds. Artificial intelligence is amazing, but it is also a dehumanizing job-killer.

Modernism prioritizes economic growth, imperialism, and affluence. Everything, including people, is valued solely for economic utility. Mammon mania undermines the family. People choose between family and career as if there is a moral equivalency. For humanity at large, that is choosing between life or death. The produce-and-consume treadmill holds us captive to the lust/need for lucre. No creature breeds well in captivity.

Governments are devising all manner of schemes to reverse falling fertility. Hungary and Scandinavia are leading the way with subsidized childcare, affordable housing and expanded parental leave. It is too early to assess the impact. China is crafting the world’s most comprehensive fertility initiative to date. This includes mapping data on unmarried youth.

Japan has initiated a government-sponsored dating service. The Japanese call it konkatsu, or “marriage hunting.

Russia propagandizes for larger families. President Vladimir Putin has revived Josef Stalin’s Mother Heroine award of US$16,000 for mothers who bear ten children or more.

China, Russia, Hungary, and other countries are restricting abortion. With shrinking populations many are becoming aware of the critical necessity to choose life.

There is talk of taxing the childless. Renowned demographer Dr Paul Morland floated the idea in his Sunday Times op-ed “Should We Tax the Childless?” His reasoning: “We are approaching a population emergency, and if well-informed people cannot discuss these matters, the field is left to cranks and fanatics.” The idea was not well received; one magazine described it as a “rage-inducing viral masterclass”.

There is already overseas “bride-hunting” to compensate for gender deficits. The Faroe Islands is an example. There is even chatter about importing women from higher-fertility countries for breeding purposes, akin to livestock management.

Here’s an idea. Redefine prosperity in terms of intact families and children, rather than in fungible fiat currency per household.

Family life is being sacrificed on the altar of modernity. Shouldn’t government be doing some of the sacrificing? Multiple military bases, ginormous stadiums and over-the-top infrastructure projects are not as important as survival. Fund family-friendly initiatives instead.

How about meaningful tax relief for the middle class? In the US, real wages (those adjusted for inflation) have not risen since the 1970s. With everyone busy working, homes become dormitories. Living to work is unhealthy.

Reconfigure national economies and pay (bribe) people to have children. With our very survival at stake, just do it. But what does that say about our values?

As Henry David Thoreau observed, “There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.” Tight money is merely a symptom contributing to the family’s decline. The root cause is spiritual.

The world is ageing because we are not replacing ourselves. Why? The family is no longer the center of life. Children are a bother. They’re too expensive. It doesn’t matter if we die out. The survival instinct is gone. Is a brave new dystopian world ahead?

The most advanced civilization can’t fool Mother Nature. Is this natural selection coming back?

Humans, those self-aware bipeds with prominent prefrontal cortexes, emerged about 300,000 years ago. Civilization has been around only 6,000 years. Is civilization an aberration? Are we regressing to barbarism?

Modernism has failed. We’re on the path to extinction. The world’s most productive populations are the fastest declining.

The future of the family depends on individual and societal priorities. Priorities reside in hearts and minds. Only spiritual rebirth can turn things around.

How can we help that happen?

AUTHOR

Louis T. March

Louis T. March has a background in government, business and philanthropy. A former talk show host, author and public speaker, he is a dedicated student of history and genealogy. Louis lives with his family… More by Louis T. March.

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EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Troubling Trends: Is the Christian Era coming to a Close?

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Secularisation is decimating the world’s largest faith group.

We live in precarious times. The world is changing in ways we could not fathom a short forty years ago. Believing Christians, pro-family advocates and patriotic folks are fast becoming today’s marginalised communities.

For centuries the West, aka “Western Christendom”, was a dynamic and expanding enterprise that by the late 1800s effectively ruled the world. Even when warring among themselves, Westerners did their utmost to spread the faith. The world has been tremendously enriched by missions, schools, clinics and much else founded in the spirit of Christianity.

Today that is a flagging spirit, something painfully obvious. Two recent batches of demographic data seem to bear that out.

Replacement

The first came from the UK’s Office of National Statistics (ONS), reporting that only 42.6% of people in England and Wales identify as Christian. The UK Telegraph headline summed it up:

“Christians now a minority in England and Wales for first time”

ONS reports that in 2001, 72% of people in England and Wales identified as Christian. Those identifying as “no religion” increased from 15% in 2001 to 37.2% in 2021. In the last decade self-identified Muslims rose by almost a third to 6.5%. For the same period, Hindus realised a 13% increase, rising to 1.7%.

Interestingly, self-identified Muslims are more religious than Christians. More people attend mosque every week in the UK than attend church. It has been that way for a while. According to a Christian Research study from twenty years ago:

51 per cent of the Muslims quizzed in the 2001 census said they prayed every day, compared to just 6.3 per cent of Christians who attend church services each week.

A 2005 Christian Research study, “The Future of the Church”, predicted that the  number of Muslims attending mosque every week would double that of Christians attending church by 2040, forecasting:

[T]he number of Christians attending Sunday service could see a two-thirds drop over the next three decades. The current 9.4 per cent of the population currently in regular attendance at Sunday service is expected to be under 5 per cent by 2040.

The UK is well on the way to meeting that forecast.

Secularisation

The second batch of troublesome data is the Pew Research Center’s study, “Modeling the Future of Religion in America”. Their findings are that Americans are leaving Christianity   in droves and identifying as “atheist, agnostic or ‘nothing in particular.’”

[I]n 2020, about 64% of Americans, including children, were Christian. People who are religiously unaffiliated, sometimes called religious “nones,” accounted for 30% of the U.S. population. Adherents of all other religions — including Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists — totaled about 6%.

[P]rojections show Christians of all ages shrinking from 64% to between a little more than half (54%) and just above one-third (35%) of all Americans by 2070. Over that same period, “nones” would rise from the current 30% to somewhere between 34% and 52% of the U.S. population.

Similar figures are cited in British sociologist Stephen Bullivant’s just published book Nonverts: The Making of Ex-Christian America (Oxford University Press).

The same trend is found throughout the Anglosphere, Europe and even Latin America. Is the Christian Era coming to a close?

Consider: For the sake of “religious neutrality,” the Christian calendar devised 1500 years ago by Dionysius Exiguus, denominating history per the Incarnation, used B.C. (Before Christ) and A.D. (Anno Domini) for dating history. That practice has been abandoned for BCE (Before Common Era) and CE (Common Era). While doing so may well be more “inclusive”, it nonetheless attests to the diminishing influence of Christianity. This is just one of modernity’s thousand cuts.

While religious transition is usually a lengthy process — consider the Great Schism, the Renaissance and Reformation — the twentieth century vastly accelerated secularisation of the West. Depleted and demoralised by two world wars, quickly followed by unprecedented affluence and lightning technological progress, the West saw mammon thoroughly triumph by the 1960s, when religious expression was banned from the public square in America.

Sobering consequences

With secularism comes moral relativism, where there are no absolutes. Rather, all is relative, situational and governed by feeling rather than thinking. In fact, those steadfastly standing by absolutes are often the object of chattering class derision. Despite the proliferation of “Pride” festivals throughout the West, today any public declaration of pride in being Christian, Western or White can be a career-terminator.

Along with mammon-worshiping secularism, there has been, worldwide, a 50% decline in fertility in 50 years. This is most acute in the Global North countries and is leading to unsustainable economic and social conditions. Little wonder that governments in the West and elsewhere are doing backflips to boost birthrates. Nothing like the Biblical injunction “be fruitful and multiply” is to be found in globalism, mammon-worship or whatever label that comports with modernism/secularism.

In fact, the fanatical zeal of acolytes of the secular religion, aka “wokeism”, is comparable to that of the early Bolshevik regime. Just note the ostracising, cancelling and complete intolerance of those with whom they disagree. And these folks are in power in most of the West. If you have any doubt, remember your history: as a friend recently reminded me, statues are pulled down and place names are changed after revolutions.

It is long past time that people of faith, the family-friendly and the patriotic types trying to preserve their respective historical nations cease quibbling among themselves and circle the wagons. Yes, the best defence is offence, but we need to consolidate our position first. That is called building community.

Remember that appeasement doesn’t work. Virtue signalling and sacrificing kindred spirits to persuade your enemies that you’re not racist, bigoted, homophobic, etc., are just bending the knee to the bad guys. They validate the regime. That doesn’t build community and solidarity. As the folks say down home, don’t feed the alligator, hoping to be eaten last.

AUTHOR

Louis T. March

Louis T. March has a background in government, business and philanthropy. A former talk show host, author and public speaker, he is a dedicated student of history and genealogy. Louis lives with his family… More by Louis T. March

EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The power couple on a mission to save the world from demographic disaster

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Malcolm and Simone Collins have a game plan for pulling humanity back from the brink.

This month, the 8 billionth child entered the world. Demographers believe that the world’s population is moving towards 10 billion. But at some point, the curve will begin to move downwards. Families will shrink. People everywhere (except sub-Saharan Africa) will become older and older, leading to huge burdens on government social services.

The problem is that most countries have birth-rates below replacement level. And no one knows how to coax women into having more children, as China has discovered, to its dismay. It moved from a one-child policy, to a two-child policy, to a three-child policy – and fertility has edged even lower.

What is to be done? A solution comes from an improbable source – wealthy, geeky, tech and venture-capitalist pro-natalism activists.

Chapter 1: Elon talks about it

The eccentric billionaire Elon Musk has been married twice but now describes himself as single. He has had at least nine children with a combination of wives, girlfriends, and surrogates. Here are some of his recent tweets.

Chapter 2: Malcolm and Simone do something about it

Malcolm and Simone Collins radiate powerful self-confidence. As a married couple they have operated companies on five continents that collectively pulled in US$70 million every year; raised a private equity fund; directed strategy at top, early-stage venture capital firms; written three best-selling books; served as managing director of Dialog, an elite retreat for global leaders founded by Peter Thiel; and earned degrees in neuroscience, business, and technology policy from St Andrews, Stanford, and Cambridge.

Before marrying, they committed to having between 7 and 13 children. Since Simone was older, she had to ensure that her age would not be a barrier to their plans for an expanding family. In 2018, which they call the Year of the Harvest, they produced and froze as many embryos as possible. They already have three children: Octavian, Torsten, and Titan Invictus.

The evolutionary logic associated with transhumanism is an important theme in their plans. On the population level, whole cultures are in danger of extinction – like the Japanese or Armenians or Catalans. This would represent a tragic loss of cultural diversity. “We are about to experience the largest cultural mass extinction since the colonial period,” they write. Their “Project Ark” is to save as many cultures as possible by promoting higher birth rates.

On a family level, their proposals involve tinkering with embryos to ensure that their children have “good genes”. Their critics call this “eugenics”. They prefer to call it common sense. “What we advocate for is fairly vanilla—if aggressive—transhumanism: Improving and transforming the human condition with technology. Be against transhumanism all you want, but don’t call it eugenics.”

Chapter 3: Learn all about population implosion at pronatalist.org

From their home in rural Pennsylvania, this highly-connected couple is preaching the gospel of pro-natalism, the latest fad amongst the super-rich in Silicon Valley. For the past 20 or so years, billionaires have been obsessed with longevity – increasing lifespans to hundreds of years. Research on that continues, but some are turning their minds to demography. “The person of this subculture really sees the pathway to immortality as being through having children,” says Simone.

Pronatalist.org, a website created by Malcolm and Simone, alerts readers to the crisis:

Birth rates are falling precipitously around the world in both developed and developing countries. If dramatic action is not taken, we will witness the extinction of entire societies, expansion of totalitarian governments, and an unchecked rise of tribalism.

South Korea’s birth-rate is about 0.81, far below replacement level. The Collinses call this “genocide by inaction”. They have a knack for presenting the consequences of population decline in vivid analogies: “This is equivalent to a disease that wipes out 94% of the population. We need radical solutions to save endangered ethnic groups.”

They even see contemporary politics through a demographic lens:

“If you have ever wondered why different ideological factions in politics seem to be able to agree on less and less as time goes on, why they are becoming more authoritarian, and why tribalism seems to be increasing: You are witnessing the invisible hand of demographic collapse at work.

“Population numbers will eventually rebound within a few hundred years, but progress the world has made in terms of women’s rights, freedom of speech, environmentalism, racial equality, gay rights, etc. runs the risk of systematic erasure if we fail to intervene.”

What’s the answer? Only a profound cultural change will save us, they argue. Tax credits and baby bonuses are just tinkering around the edges:

“Only cultures with a strong external motivation to have kids are well above repopulation rate at the moment; all others will enter the dustbin of history. Essentially, every world culture that does not have strong religious convictions or educate and treat women as equals is being systematically deleted. …

“A single family having eight kids that successfully passes that practice to their own children can save their entire ethnic group. (One family having eight kids for ten generations leads to over a billion descendants.)”

Chapter 4: Malcolm and Simone have a survival plan

The best-known groups with high fertility are all religious. About a quarter of Israel’s population will be Haredi Jews by 2050, according to a recent estimate. In 1980, they were an insignificant minority of 4 percent. The American Amish may have the world’s highest birthrate; one demographer joked that in 200 years, all Americans will be Amish.

Of course, Malcolm and Simone are not conventionally religious. If pressed, they describe themselves as “secular Calvinists”. They are not Sunday church-goers but they are hard-working, hard-driving, abstemious, frugal souls on a mission from … Evolution.

Their unconventionally religious stand is to encourage fans to create family cultures which welcome children. “We’re trying to create a playbook for people who want to work their values and morals into durable cultures that are far more likely to endure intergenerationally (rather than go extinct due to low birth rates),” Simone explained in an email to MercatorNet. “One can create a durable culture from scratch, without any religious element, or one can reinforce an existing religion or culture to make it ‘durable’ (capable of lasting intergenerationally).”

They have nearly finished writing another book which sketches their philosophy of the intertwined themes of demography, evolution, family structure, and religion, called The Pragmatist’s Guide to Crafting Religion. “At its core,” they write, “this book is a meditation on how we can intentionally construct a culture/religion that will be ‘evolutionarily successful’ and spread.”

They have a Sisyphean job ahead of them. As they observe wryly: “It may be easier to coax a caged panda to reproduce than it would be to convince a cosmopolitan progressive to raise their own kid.”

Malcolm and Simone describe themselves as conservative Republicans, although in some ways, they are fully-paid-up progressives. They will be attending the LGBT-friendly Log Cabin Republican shindig at Mar-a-Lago in mid-December. They endorse experimental family structures, and their views on moral issues would disconcert traditional Christians.

But beneath the hipster veneer, they really are the “secular Calvinists” they claim to be. They are not shy of expressing stern and judgemental views about “pop culture” which offers sex, power, acceptance, prestige, wealth, and the life of Riley without hard work. They take a dim view of the “cultural super virus” – which is how practicing secular Calvinist hipsters describe woke culture.

As an aside, they are nonchalant about woke lunacies. From an evolutionary perspective, they contend, bad ideas literally go extinct. That cultural super virus is “a sterilizing disease and almost none of its husks reproduce above repopulation rate, hence our grandkids likely won’t have to deal with them.”

And on family dynamics, they are astonishingly conventional. They point out in their book that the best motivation for the next generation to have kids is a happy home life as a child:

“If a young girl grows up and sees her mom and people like her overburdened, unloved, and ignored by society, why would she choose to have kids herself? Why would she aspire to that? While we can’t fix this at the societal level, we can address this problem intentionally-designed cultures. If you want to create a durable culture for your family and inspire your children to have kids of their own, one of the best things you can do is ensure you have a strong relationship with your spouse. 

“For our family, this means ensuring daughters see their mothers glorified, appreciated, and even deified within family culture for the sacrifices they make while also demonstrating that none of those sacrifices require foregoing a career or stepping back from public life.”

In some respects, they may be even sterner than their God-fearing Calvinist forebears. Child-bearing is natural for women, they write in their book. There’s no reason to exaggerate its difficulties:

“In our House, having kids is just part of the yearly routine. While Simone is appreciated for it, she never hints that it would be justified for her to use pregnancy or childbirth as an excuse to step back from work. The productive glorification of motherhood requires never giving into society’s tendency to conflate gratitude and approval with justification to winge, whine, indulge, or lean out.”

No way that these guys have been infected by the “cultural super virus”!

Chapter 5: networking for pro-natalism

The Collinses want you to join them. “We are actively building a diverse network of families with the grit to make it through this maelstrom,” they say on the website. “If you are committed to a high birth rate and building a healthy culture for your family, we want to talk!”

AUTHOR

Michael Cook

Michael Cook is the editor of MercatorNet. He lives in Sydney, Australia. More by Michael Cook

EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Secularism: The Forgotten Factor in Falling Fertility

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The decline in faith has precipitated a drop in procreation.

James McHenry is a lesser-known American Founding Father. A Scots-Irish Presbyterian born in County Antrim, Ireland, he came to the colonies in 1771, just five years before independence.

McHenry eventually became a military surgeon, signer of the Constitution and Secretary of War for Presidents Washington and Adams. Fort McHenry, of Star-Spangled Banner fame, bears his name. James McHenry was of the early American elite. He wrote:

“The holy Scriptures… can alone secure to society, order and peace, and to our courts of justice and constitutions of government, purity, stability, and usefulness.”

Holy Scriptures? How unwoke can you get?

Are we to assume that McHenry was racist, “homophobic,” nativist or a bigot? Can you imagine a member of the Biden cabinet referencing holy Scripture? Why, that would be a violation of “separation of church and state,” the Jeffersonian doctrine intended to prevent government from meddling in matters of faith. Today that doctrine has been wholly transmuted, weaponised to eradicate religious expression from the public square.

A different century

McHenry wasn’t the only American Founder whose words would get him cancelled today. How about the “father of our country” George Washington? Here is what Washington told a gathering of Delaware Indian leaders:

You do well to wish to learn our arts and our ways of life and above all, the religion of Jesus Christ. These will make you a greater and happier people than you are. Congress will do everything they can to assist you in this wise intention.

A compilation of religious sentiments by early American leaders would consume more terabytes than MercatorNet can handle. Needless to say, the Founders were people of faith. Back then, the West was commonly referred to as Christendom. As far as I know, no one found that offensive.

What does any of this have to do with demography?

Well, according to the World Atlas, “American women reaching child-bearing age in 1800 had on average of seven to eight live births in the course of their reproductive life.” In 1800, America was mostly rural and practising Christian.

In the early 1800s, two overarching factors influenced family life. The first was faith. The Biblical injunction “And you, be ye fruitful, and multiply; bring forth abundantly in the earth, and multiply therein.” (Genesis 9:7, KJV) was taken quite seriously.

Also, having children was sound economics. Children meant more hands on deck at the farm and family business. That was early American family planning.

From 1800, however, US fertility steadily declined, bottoming out in the 1940s. Then the postwar “baby boom” brought a 60% bump. The decline has since resumed, attributed to better public health (lower infant mortality), urbanisation, industrialisation, higher incomes and women in the workforce.

However, one tremendously significant reason for fewer children is usually omitted from demographic analyses: secularism.

What is secularism?

The term was coined c.1850 to denote a system which sought to order and interpret life on principles taken solely from this world, without recourse to belief in God and a future life. It is now used in a more general sense of the tendency to ignore, if not to deny, the principles of supernatural religion.
— The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church

According to Merriam-Webster, secularism is “indifference to or rejection or exclusion of religion and religious considerations.”

The US is today’s secularist imperium. Secularism is a major contributing factor, usually overlooked, for persistent below-replacement fertility worldwide.

It is no secret that, on average, religious folks have more children than the non-religious. Why? Quite often, people of faith seriously follow the Biblical injunction to go forth and multiply. They believe in salvation and are usually somewhat less egocentric and materialistic than the average modern Joe.

But today we are in the age of Economic Man, defined by Merriam-Webster as

… an imaginary individual created in classical economics and conceived of as behaving rationally, regularly, and predictably in his economic activities with motives that are egoistic, acquisitive, and short-term in outlook.

By adopting the model of Economic Man, Western societies abandoned believing that humanity’s intellectual, spiritual and moral essence were in the image of God, a view that had sustained them for at least 18 centuries. This stone-cold secularism would eventually lead to Communism and the many other atheistic ideologies we suffer from today.

Major General JFC Fuller, in volume 3 of his Military History of the Western World, posited that “the myth of Economic Man [was] the fundamental factor in Capitalism, Socialism, and Communism.”

We are also addicted to the Idea of Progress, defined by the web’s Conservapedia as

… a worldview mainly promoted by globalists and liberals that argues “that the human condition has improved over the course of history and will continue to improve.”[1]

It is closely associated with the concept that man is perfectible and at some point in the future will, in fact, be perfect. While popular in contemporary culture, this idea has several serious flaws.

Flawed indeed. Shallow belief in the inevitability of human progress and unlimited temporal advancement disregards the transcendent, giving rise to the “prosperity gospel” and rank materialism.

Many prosper, but post-World War II affluence is proving to be ephemeral. Something is lacking. That is why China popularises Confucius, Russia subsidises Orthodoxy and Hungary promotes Catholicism in hopes of boosting birthrates. The US mandates wokeism and relies on immigration.

Today politicians rarely invoke religious faith except in throwaway lines for public consumption. People made of sterner stuff like James McHenry and George Washington are vilified and cancelled, their names expunged and statues removed. What will tomorrow’s children know of their heritage?

Yes, we’re oh-so-modern, high tech, sophisticated and secular. Having children is uncool. Modernity is slowly but surely killing us. The idea of progress that venerates Mammon, radical environmentalism, egocentrism and wokeism has Homo sapiens on the path to extinction. But as the old saying goes, “Fish are the last to notice the water.”

AUTHOR

Louis T. March

Louis T. March has a background in government, business and philanthropy. A former talk show host, author and public speaker, he is a dedicated student of history and genealogy. Louis lives with his family… More by Louis T. March

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EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

America must take care of its families, or go the way of the Roman Empire

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Time to turn away from materialism and imperialism.

One thing demographers have known all along is something you cannot deny: “Demography is destiny.” The phrase was coined by 19th century Frenchman Auguste Comte. Agree or not with his positivist philosophy, he nailed it about demography.

While clickbait comes at us with news of wars, markets and celebrity gossip, the bigger story, the backstory behind so much of everything, is demography.

Demography didn’t get much attention in legacy media until 2020 when the British medical journal The Lancet released the most comprehensive world fertility study to date. The study documented a mysterious, unprecedented earth-shattering trend: a 50% decline in world fertility over 50 years, with no end in sight. Even the study’s scholarly authors described their findings as “jaw-dropping.”

We are only beginning to realise the social, economic and political impact. Look no further than the United States. Trends in America are followed worldwide and tell quite a tale.

Rising cost of living

For decades, well into the 1960s, US pensions and retirement benefits proliferated. Why not? Back then, relatively few people lived beyond 80, and it was a given that there would be four or more workers to support every retiree.

But things have changed mightily since Social Security and elderly healthcare schemes came of age. The heady days of easy money are gone.

First, people live much longer and have fewer children. The US fertility rate is 1.7 children per female, 20% below replacement level.

Also, the dominant world reserve currency — the US dollar — has diminished in value. Back in the 1960s you could buy a Coke for a dime. Now it’s at least ten times that. Is the soda worth more, or your money worth less?

Today two incomes are necessary to support the average family. That wasn’t the case back when a Coke cost a dime. Women, mostly out of necessity, entered the workforce.  That meant less family time. In such a system, children become a financial liability.

Then there is the uniquely American higher education industry, a colossal con commanding exorbitant subsidies and insanely inflated fees for a ticket to upward mobility. For the average American family, the costs of college are their largest expenditure apart from the family home.

Covid, the economy and lower fertility are testing the diploma mills as never before.  Also, a growing number of Americans are beginning to push back against a pious professoriate that subordinates authentic education to woke indoctrination.

Today there are over 65 million Social Security beneficiaries and 132 million people who work full-time, just two workers kicking in for each beneficiary. And a lot of those full-time folks don’t make much. On top of that we have Medicare, Medicaid and a vast global imperial footprint, all financed by a fiat currency that is losing value. Without at least replacement fertility, these systems will see a slow-motion collapse.

Thus two troublesome trends confront American families: A diminishing currency (chronic inflation) and declining fertility. Each exacerbates the other.

Also in the mix is an American popular culture promoting consumerism and instant gratification, prioritising creature comforts over children. Hedonism is not family-friendly.

Stop-gap measures

Over time the powers-that-be have tried to fix things with:

  1. Immigration: For years, cheap labour flacks told us that importing vast numbers of unskilled low-wage workers would save Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc. Not true. Mass immigration does not generate sufficient revenue to offset social welfare costs. (Funny thing about immigration: moneyed interests privatise the profit [cheap labour] and socialise — via taxpayers — the costs). Mass immigration instead suppresses wages, making it harder to rear children. Not only that, recent immigrants and their descendants feel the squeeze like everyone else, and their fertility is now below replacement-level.
  2. Printing money: In order to finance the welfare/warfare state, the government just continues to spend. We’ve become accustomed to debt financing and printing money to prop up a broken system. This works for a time if your money is the dominant world reserve currency. Imagine if you maxxed out your credit and could print your own money to finance it. Works fine until creditors say your money is no good or worth much less than you think. Inflation hurts families.

The above short-term fixes have not worked. And let’s face it: the days of global dollar dominance are numbered. There is a disastrous disconnect between public policy and demographic reality. Try as we might, there is no substitute for children.

America has a large middle class that binds the social fabric and includes most intact families. What is good for the American middle class is good for the family. But the middle class — the establishment’s cash cow — is shrinking.

At the very least, supporting families and children should take priority over subsidies for the elderly. But the elderly vote, and politicians care more about the next election than the next generation. However, supporting parents and children is the solution to preserving retirement programs and the society at large.

Superpower status at the expense of family is a Faustian bargain. We need to hunker down and focus on the family instead of propping up the wastrel welfare/warfare state. Yes, it can be done, though it will require changing our ways, establishing new priorities and investing in the future of families.

If not, look no further than ancient Rome. They also dumped their Republic, became an Empire, spent like crazy and came to neglect the welfare of families.

Is there a lesson here?

AUTHOR

Louis T. March has a background in government, business and philanthropy. A former talk show host, author and public speaker, he is a dedicated student of history and genealogy. Louis lives with his family… More by Louis T. March

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