The unfolding extinction of western Europeans shows the fallibility of the infallible

The Report, February 3, 2003, p. 51

The unfolding extinction of western Europeans shows the fallibility of the infallible

By TED & VIRGINIA BYFIELD
All through our lives, from our distant youth onward, people of our generation were repeatedly warned of a dire circumstance threatening the world. It was called "the population explosion," and the warnings came from unimpeachable sources—earth scientists, demographers, and economists, men whose authority one dared not challenge. Their message was always the same.

By the 1980s, or at the latest some time in the 21st century, they predicted, vital resources would run out, massive starvation beset the world and people perish by the millions. The cause of this doom was that the human race was having far too many children. Organizations such as Planned Parenthood, therefore, deployed their forces about the globe, wildly wielding contraceptives and frantically opening abortion mills in a desperate effort to save humanity.

Many took their message to heart. Single men in North America voluntarily opted to be vasectomized, ostensibly to escape personal responsibility for the coming disaster. Parents would announce the advent of unplanned children with undisguised shame. "We may have one, possibly two, but certainly no more," newlyweds would typically vow, convinced that any more hungry young mouths would constitute wanton excess.

But now, it turns out, all this was balderdash. The experts, we are told, were dead wrong, and the problem is the precise reverse. There's a critical threat all right, but it stems from too few babies, not too many, and the process is rapidly reaching a point of no return.

In Europe, where birth rates are far below replacement levels, the Caucasian race may soon become a beleaguered minority or vanish entirely. Already, workforces cannot be maintained, economies are imperiled, and the most massive migration since the fall of the Roman Empire is replacing the missing Caucasians with Middle-Eastern workers. Since these continue having numerous children, Europe's democracies in the not-very-distant future will yield to Muslim autocracies and her great cathedrals become mosques. Europeans prefer not to talk about this. A French teacher was actually prosecuted for asking her students to calculate the date when France would have a Muslim majority. The newspapers covered the story—but did not reveal their conclusions.

Canada, with a birth rate 15% to 20% below replacement level,^[1] also must maintain heavy immigration. U.S. figures are much the same, although complicated by an avalanche of Latino "illegals." Illegal or no, however, they are necessary to the U.S. economy.

Four recent books on the subject are reviewed in the current issue of Touchstone magazine by Leon ]. Podles, one of the magazine's senior editors.* The figures he quotes are more startling than ever. To maintain zero-population growth, women of childbearing age must have an average of 2.1 children, but Spain and Italy—lowest in Europe—are now down to 1.2. In Canada, the province of Quebec is a prime contender for the world's lowest birth rate, but the city of Bologna in Italy, at 0.8, probably still retains that title. And there are other ominous trends. In Vienna, Austria, for example, half the population is single.

The inevitable effects are indeed striking. As our population ages, the proportion of seniors expands while the proportion of people who must support them diminishes. Newcomers brought in to do this job—replacing, in effect, our own non-existent children—will soon constitute a majority. But these replacements may not remain all that keen about providing massive tax subsidies for elderly Caucasians.

Meanwhile, our social planners are beginning to ask themselves why people, especially women, do not want to have children. Here are a few possible explanations:

Because for 50 years we have employed every possible instrument of social propaganda to persuade women to embrace careers, which usually limit them to one child or none.
Because our entire social apparatus emphasizes material well being as "success," and raising children erodes material well being.
Because hare-brained "anti-spanking zealots work to prohibit effective discipline of children, which makes raising them extraordinarily difficult.
Because teachers are encouraged to undermine parental authority in sex-education courses.
Because divorce has been de-stigmatized and made into a common occurrence easily acquired, thereby depriving the family of the social support it has received in every previous era.
Because wage levels and job opportunities no longer favour heads of families.
Because State funding continues to support anti-birth lobby groups, although their efforts are socially detrimental and destructive.

Most serious of all is the pervasive anti-Christian bias of most of the media and at every government level. The greatest incentive for having children comes from the belief that they constitute a precious gift from God. No God means no children, which is why birth rates follow church-attendance rates downward. But failure to recognize God also entails divine judgment, as surely as effect follows cause. In this century, we may discover to our sorrow just what that means.

*A Question of Numbers, by Michael S. Teitelbaum and Jay Winter; Hill & Wang, New York. The Death of the West, by Patrick J. Buchanan; St. Martin's Press, New York. World Population Prospects, United Nations Publications, New York. The New Christendom: the Coming Global Christianity, by Philip Jenkins; Oxford University Press, New York.

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My note:

The latest figures for Canada show a much more serious extent of the shortfall of the Canadian 'birth rate'. StatCan reported that, with an average of 1.49 children born to each Canadian woman during her fertile years (age 15 - 49), the fertility rate of Canadian women had in the year 2000 fallen to an all-time low. With a fertility rate of 2.1 children per woman being required to maintain population levels, that puts the shortfall in the fertility rate at 29% for Canada. (The Daily, 2002 09 26, StatCan).
In 1999 the Canadian fertility rate was at 1.52.

The Report

February 3, 2003

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