Free Republic

When all polls close by 8 p.m. Eastern tonight in Florida, the winner of the state’s Republican primary may not initially be apparent. After all, the winner takes all, which means the candidate who gets the most votes gets all of the delegates. But the state, with 10 different media markets and a cultural mélange that ranges from Alabama South to Cuba North, is by no means homogeneous. Here are five crucial indicators to keep track of as the returns come in: Absentee VotersThe first key factor is, about a third of Florida voters have already cast their ballots, and...

Sudan's Bashir 'masterminded' genocide: Prosecutor UN to withdraw staff as backlash fears grow Steven Edwards, Canwest News Service Published: Monday, July 14, 2008 UNITED NATIONS - The chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court formally accused the Sudanese president Monday of being the “mastermind” of what he called a genocidal campaign against three ethnic groups in Sudan’s western Darfur region.... They are expected to take about three months to review the evidence, which Moreno-Ocampo says shows al-Bashir used the Sudanese army and members of the Arab Janjaweed militias to escalate a conflict that has left 300,000 dead and driven 2.5...

With public attention focused on the GOP primaries, the White House quietly promoted another self-dealing lobbyist to serve as President Obama's top domestic policy adviser. Promises? What broken promises? Cecilia Munoz​, the current director of intergovernmental affairs at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., will now serve as head of the Domestic Policy Council. She'll wield heightened influence at Obama's daily morning briefings and expand her reach from immigration issues to education, health care and beyond. Gushing headlines heralded the advancement of Obama's top Hispanic civil rights "advocate" as a win for the "middle class." But Munoz is a veteran member of the...

Population decline is the elephant in the world's living room. As a matter of arithmetic, we know that the social life of most developed countries will break down within two generations. Two out of three Italians and three of four Japanese will be elderly dependents by 2050. If present fertility rates hold, the number of Germans will fall by 98% over the next two centuries. No pension and health care system can support such an inverted population pyramid. Nor is the problem limited to the industrial nations. Fertility is falling at even faster rates - indeed, at rates never before...

To those who've declared European civilization dead due to demographics, I've often replied that in Europe, there are ents. In J.R.R. Tolkein's "The Lord of the Rings" series, ents were extremely long-lived tree-like creatures who thought in terms of centuries, not years. They were painfully slow to act, but amazingly forceful when they do. What we're witnessing in Europe is a rebound of birth rates that is slow and incomplete, yet highly significant and growing. These rebounding birth rates are not due to Islamic and African immigrants. In many nations, the number of Islamic immigrants is much lower than perceived...

The current unemployment rate of 8.6 percent hides the extent of the economic crisis. The widely quoted rate misses not only the under-employed and discouraged workers, but also major demographic factors. The large demographic shift that has taken place over the last few decades—driven by the maturing of the baby boom generation—now places considerable downward pressure on the unemployment rate, which makes the current malaise look a bit better than it really is. As people (especially men) age into their thirties and forties they tend to hold onto jobs for longer, in part because they’ve usually acquired a modicum of...

David P. Goldman, who blogs at the Asia Times as “Spengler,” has written an insightful book challenging the truisms of the commentariat on both the rise of Islam and the decline of the West: How Civilizations Die: (and why Islam is dying too) History buffs will recognize that the pen name Spengler honours Oswald Spengler (1880-1936), author of Decline of the West. Goldman’s initial observations about the decline are most helpful but not unprecedented. From a much less religion-friendly perspective, American demographer Phillip Longman has been saying the same thing, and so has Canadian demographer David Foot. It is what...

John Hope Franklin, the famed black historian at Duke University, once told the incoming freshmen, “The new America in the 21st century will be primarily non-white, a place George Washington would not recognize.” In his June 1998 commencement address at Portland State, President Clinton affirmed it: “In a little more than 50 years, there will be no majority race in the United States.” The graduates cheered. The Census Bureau has now fixed at 2041 the year when whites become a minority in a country where the Founding Fathers had restricted citizenship to “free white persons” of “good moral character.” With...

I’m a Jersey boy. I was born there, went to high school and college there, and assumed I’d spend the rest of my life there. But though I loved the people and food, the Jersey Shore summers, and short rides through the Lincoln Tunnel to Broadway shows and Madison Square Garden, I gave it all up and moved south. Very far south. I’m not alone. According to the latest Census figures, and stories in USA Today, the Associated Press, and elsewhere, the South was the fastest growing region in America over the last decade, up 14 percent. “The center of...

It should no more be necessary to write this article than to prove that there were Jews killed in the World Trade Center on 9/11. And yet the mythology refuses to die. Just last week, two well-educated and well-known writer acquaintances of mine remarked in passing on the "fact" that those who serve in the U.S. military typically have no other career options. America's soldiers, they said, were poor and black. They don't mean this to denigrate their service—no, they mean it as a critique of American society, which turns its unemployed into cannon fodder. Especially today with high unemployment,...

To President Barack Obama and many other Democrats, Europe continues to exercise something of a fatal attraction. The “European dream” embraced by these politicians — as well as by many pundits, academics and policy analysts — usually consists of an America governed by an expanded bureaucracy, connected by high-speed trains and following a tough green energy policy. One hopes that the current crisis gripping the E.U. will give even the most devoted Europhiles pause about the wisdom of such mimicry. Yet the deadliest European disease the U.S. must avoid is that of persistent demographic decline. The gravity of Europe’s demographic...

Do you ever get the feeling that the middle class in America is shrinking? Well, you are not imagining things. A confluence of very troubling long-term economic trends has created an environment in which the middle class in America is being absolutely shredded. Today, most American families would be absolutely thrilled if they could live as well as past generations did. The dream of receiving a solid education, getting a good job, owning a beautiful home and enjoying the good things that America has to offer is increasingly becoming out of reach for a growing number of Americans. The...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Right before the recession hit, the U.S. was undergoing a mini baby boom. Now, birth rates are declining fast. The number of children born in the U.S. peaked with a record 4.3 million births in 2007, but has since fallen, dropping to 4 million births last year, according to estimates by the National Center for Health Statistics. The birth rate -- a measure of births per 1,000 people -- has dropped 10%. Historically, declines in birth rates have gone hand in hand with economic downturns. During the financial slumps of the early 1990's and 1970's, the...

How "The Bad Part of Town" and failed social policies are used for sinister attacks on the right to keep and bear arms, and help justify the law enforcement world and its budgets. While anti-rights activists speak emotionally about "gun violence""gun deaths" "human tragedy" and saving lives, what they refuse to say is this— Homicide in America has demographic, geographic, social and economic factors which, if acknowledged and openly discussed, would transform the debate, and place blame where it really belongs: on the causes and people that fuel the violence we hear about (but rarely actually see for ourselves, except...

44.6 million: Projected decline in China’s population of 15- to 24-year-olds this decade. China’s era as the world’s go-to provider of inexpensive labor may be drawing to a close. Workers are demanding higher wages and low-end manufacturers in coastal areas have in recent years complained of labor shortages. Rising affluence and increased opportunities in China’s interior certainly have something to do with that, but so does a profound demographic shift. Largely because of the one-child policy introduced in the late 1970s, the number of children per woman fell to 1.77 in 2000 from 3.78 in 1975, according to the World...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Rural America now accounts for just 16 percent of the nation's population, the lowest ever. The latest 2010 census numbers hint at an emerging America where, by midcentury, city boundaries become indistinct and rural areas grow ever less relevant. Many communities could shrink to virtual ghost towns as they shutter businesses and close down schools, demographers say. More metro areas are booming into sprawling megalopolises. Barring fresh investment that could bring jobs, however, large swaths of the Great Plains and Appalachia, along with parts of Arkansas, Mississippi and north Texas, could face significant population declines. These places...

For well over a decade urban boosters have heralded the shift among young Americans from suburban living and toward dense cities. As one Wall Street Journal report suggests, young people will abandon their parents’ McMansions for urban settings, bringing about the high-density city revival so fervently prayed for by urban developers, architects and planners. Some demographers claim that “white flight” from the city is declining, replaced by a “bright flight” to the urban core from the suburbs. “Suburbs lose young whites to cities,” crowed one Associated Press headline last year. Yet evidence from the last Census show the opposite: a...

No man is an island, especially in the markets. Our consumption basket includes the efforts of hundreds of millions of people around the world, and our right to consume depends on our ability to sell to hundreds of millions of people around the world. During the present century the number of adults in affluent and productive countries will shrink by about a third. All of us will be poorer. There will be a third fewer people earnings profits for businesses, paying taxes to governments, buying homes or cars, or taking vacations. Starting around 2015 the adult population will start to...

Children now make up less of America's population than ever before, even with a boost from immigrant families. And when this generation grows up, it will become a shrinking work force that will have to support the nation's expanding elderly population — even as the government strains to cut spending for health care, pensions and much else.

WASHINGTON (AP) - For the first time, minorities make up a majority of babies in the U.S., part of a sweeping race change and growing age divide between mostly white, older Americans and predominantly minority youths that could reshape government policies. Preliminary census estimates also show the share of African-American households headed by women - made up of mostly single mothers - now exceeds African-American households with married couples, a sign of declining U.S. marriages overall but also continuing challenges for black youths without involved fathers.

(Translation from Swedish into English:) Stockholm: More and more Swedish families have a third child. "Trebarnstrenden," - The "three children trend" which has become increasingly manifest since the 1990s, was unexpected by demographers at Statistics Sweden (SCB), which lies behind the study. - We had expected a reduction of third child births given that women become older when they have their first child, about 29 years, and therefore would have a hard time getting a third child, says Lotta Persson, demographer at Statistics Sweden who carried out the study. Even in the early 1990s there were many who got a...

Perhaps one of the most persistent and pervasive myths that have shaped the thinking of many people and, subsequently, public policy is the myth that the world’s population is spiraling out of control and that it will ultimately lead to catastrophic shortages of the essential resources necessary to sustain life. This whole concept of “overpopulation” can be traced to Thomas Malthus, the British scholar and Anglican clergyman (albeit a very misguided one) who, without any specific knowledge other than his own speculations, predicted in 1789 that the planet’s rapid increase in population would soon outstrip the planet’s ability to produce...

Bin Laden's Brother-in-Law Sa'd Al-Sharif: Bin Laden Considered the Problem of Unmarried Women to Take Precedence over Jihad Following are excerpts from an interview with Dr. Sa'd Al-Sharif, Osama Bin Laden's brother-in-law, which aired on Al-Arabiya TV on June 3, 2011: Interviewer: How is it that a man who is engrossed in Jihad and in battles does not neglect to get married? He has a propensity for marriage, hadn't he? Dr. Sa'd Al-Sharif: Right. Interviewer: How do you account for this? How could it be that even though he was dedicated to the cause, he found time, at the age...

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia‘s Orthodox Church teamed with Conservative parliamentarians Monday to push legislation that would radically restrict abortions in a nation struggling to cope with one of the world’s lowest birthrates. The legislation would ban free abortions at government-run clinics and prohibit the sale of the morning-after pill without a prescription, said Yelena Mizulina, who heads a parliamentary committee on families, women and children. She added that abortion for a married woman would also require the permission of her spouse, while teenage girls would need their parents’ consent. If the legislation is passed, a week’s waiting period would also...

If you buy into the public school rationale, you don’t necessarily also buy into the shove-as-much-money-as-possible-into-teacher-union-pensions-and-paychecks rationale. That’s why campaigns for higher taxes for public schools are always couched as “for the children” and never – let us repeat, never – as for the enrichment of public school unionized teachers. Unfortunately (for unionized teachers) people have begun to wake up to the hollow plea that “it’s for the children.” And now to make things worse . . .

China has claimed for several years a national fertility rate of 1.8 children born per female of child-bearing age. The latest census figures, released just weeks ago, report about 220 million children aged 0-15. This is consistent with a fertility rate of only 1.4. So why the discrepancy? Why would China lie about failing to reach a birth rate goal that it has succeeded in reaching? If China is lying about having as many as 1.8 children per female, doesn't that suggest that China finds it more advantageous to report the higher birth rate? The birth dearth in China is...

You probably can't describe the difference between Coke and Pepsi. Perhaps one cola seems sweeter, but you couldn't certainly distinguish them in a taste test. Yet you know without a doubt which one you like more. The fierce brand loyalties of Coke vs. Pepsi are a marvel of American marketing. Slightly older, Coca-Cola was always the dominant brand. Pepsi gained market share in the middle of the century with a series of ad campaigns. In 1975 the first Pepsi Challenge claimed that people preferred Pepsi in a blind taste test. The brand was also marketed as the soda of the...

The numbers are in: the white population is moribund. The latest figures from the 2010 census point to the emergence of a new America to be eventually dominated by minorities, especially Hispanics and Asians, the two fastest-growing ethnic groups in the land. By 2041 minorities will be the new majority. This demographic change is occurring at an even more meteoric pace than previously anticipated. America’s white population dropped from 69.1 percent in 2000 to 63.7 in 2010, while the minority population grew from 30.9 percent in 2000 to 36.3 percent in 2010.

A new Gallup poll reveals that voters who identify as more conservative, do not have college degrees and who make less than $24,000 annually are more likely to support former Alaska governor Sarah Palin over Mitt Romney for president in 2012. Romney, on the other hand, has evidently fared better with voters who describe themselves as “liberals to moderate”, have received degrees of higher learning and who make at least $90,000 a year. The split drives home the challenges facing any would-be GOP candidate: Catering to the party’s base without completely alienating those on the fence, and appealing to voters...

In this continuing series, Roy Beck, director of www.NumbersUSA.org , asks the question as to why the late U.S. Senator Teddy Kennedy pushed the 1965 Immigration Reform Act through Congress without any debate? What was the purpose for flooding America with 100 million more people in the last 40 years and another 100 million within 30 years by 2035? Please give us some background Mr. Beck: “I was dining in downtown Boston with a long-time acquaintance of Teddy Kennedy at the very time he died,” said Beck. “We had discussed what had caused Kennedy to pursueimmigration policies that so fundamentally...

Pencils ready? Here is today’s investment pop quiz: True or false: By the end of this decade, the percentage of U.S. population who are less than 15 years old will be higher than in China. The correct answer, believe it or not, is “True.” Don’t be too hard on yourself if you answered this wrong, since almost everyone does so as well. For years now, there has been a drumbeat from economists about the increasing proportion of the U.S. population that is in or approaching retirement. And that is indeed a powerful demographic trend. But the increasing proportion of the...

At a gathering some years ago, I had a political conversation with a man who had recently arrived here from Denmark. He was advocating his home country's socialist system, which, of course, led to profound disagreement. He was good natured and cordial, however, so the debate ended on a polite note. Yet it also ended on an ironic one: When asked if he wanted to return home, his answer was no. This is a common phenomenon. We see it, for instance, in liberal northerners who move to the South for the lower taxes and cost of living and greater freedom,...

Economies across the developed world are facing the threat of an aging population, increasingly reliant on a shrinking working age population, according to data from the OECD. While instances such as Japan are well known, the problem is endemic across Europe, with many countries seeing their dependency ratios, that is the amount of workers per retirees, shrink as we approach 2050. That has the potential to cause serious funding problems for everything from social security, to pensions, to health care across the developed world, and wreak havoc on countries fiscal policies. We've ranked the OECD countries projected to have the...

The most persistent myth of the Western Dhimmi narrative is that Muslims are a minority and must receive special protection and accommodation. But Muslims are not a minority. There are 1.5 billion Sunni Muslims worldwide, outweighing Catholics as the next largest religious faction at 1.1 billion and Hindus at 1 billion. They are still a minority of the overall population in Western countries, but a demographically trending majority. In the UK more people attend mosques than the Church of England, that makes Muslims the largest functioning religious group there. Mohammed was the most popular baby name last year, ahead of...

New census data confirm that some major metropolitan areas flipped from majority white to majority populations of minorities during the past decade. White people are now in the minority in 46 of the nation's 366 metro areas, including New York, Washington, San Diego, Las Vegas and Memphis, said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institute. That number is up from 32 in 2000, 10 in 1990 and nine in 1980, Frey said. The changes are a result of relatively slow growth among the white population, white people moving outside metropolitan areas, and huge increases in minority populations, especially Hispanic...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Hispanics now outnumber African-Americans for the first time in most U.S. metropolitan areas, shifting the political and racial dynamics in cities once dominated by whites and blacks. Census figures released Thursday highlight the growing diversity of the nation's 366 metro areas, which were home to a record 83.7 percent share of the U.S. population.

The notion that we are imperiled by the size of the human population has been around since Anglican priest Thomas Malthus first postulated it in the late 18th century. In regard to famine, immorality, war and human misery of all sorts, Malthus maintained that there is "one great cause," preventing "improvement of society," and that is "the constant tendency in all animated life to increase beyond the nourishment prepared for it." If the size of the human population were to go unchecked, Malthus' demographics suggested that people would soon outrun global food supplies. Yup, that tired notion has been around...

‘Why is there no looting in Japan?” wondered a headline in the Daily Telegraph. So did a lot of other folks. Various answers were posited: The Japanese are a highly civilized people — which would have been news to the 22 British watchkeepers on the island of Tarawa who were tied to trees, beheaded, set alight, and tossed in a pit less than 70 years ago.

Where have all the children gone? It's a problem that Mark Steyn first addressed in his book America Alone. Other than a piece Jonathan Last recently wrote for Weekly Standard, few if any reporters, pundits, politicians, or scholars seemed to take any interest. This is rather astonishing in so far as everything from our national security, economy, and future well-being depends on our ability to procreate. As Mark Steyn quipped, "...a people that won't multiply can't go forth or go anywhere. Those who do will shape the age we live in." If one is to glimpse at the TFR (Total...

Looking at population projections for Texas, demographer Steve Murdock concludes: "It's basically over for Anglos." Two of every three Texas children are now non-Anglo and the trend line will become even more pronounced in the future, said Murdock, former U.S. Census Bureau director and now director of the Hobby Center for the Study of Texas at Rice University. Today's Texas population can be divided into two groups, he said. One is an old and aging Anglo and the other is young and minority. Between 2000 and 2040, the state's public school enrollment will see a 15 percent decline in Anglo...

Risk analysis firm Maplecroft just released its new fiscal risk index ranking of 163 countries. Europe trumps all other regions with 11 out of twelve courtiers rated as "extreme risk." However, quite surprisingly, only one PIIGS country--Italy which takes the top spot--is in the top 12. The others include many big economies in Europe - Belgium (2), France (3), Sweden (4), Germany (5), Hungary (6), Denmark (7), Austria (8), United Kingdom (10), Finland (11) and Greece (12). Japan at No. 9 is the only other country not in Europe within the highest risk category (See map below). Aging Demographic While...

Bank of America/Merrill Lynch has published a huge report on Asian demographics. In it, the team lead by Sadiq Currimbhoy has published a fantastic set of population "pyramids" that show the way a given population breaks down by age at any given time. If you're in the developed world, you'll be depressed at how old you're getting. And if you're in the developing world, you'll see there's years and years of relative youth ahead. CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE CHARTS

The number of white residents in Washington's suburbs has dropped significantly in the past decade, a shift experts say will continue to increase over the years as the population ages. Meanwhile, the number of whites has risen in the more bucolic, outlying counties and in the District, where urban renewal has attracted new generations of professionals. Although every county in the region is becoming more diverse as their minority percentages increase, the change is accompanied by fewer non-Hispanic white residents in Fairfax, Montgomery and Prince George's counties, new census data show.

It appears as if this multicultural smack we’re being sold in the U.S. didn’t work out too well in the U.K. Just this past week British Prime Minister David Cameron echoed German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s sentiments from last October that their country’s Pollyanna policy of multicultural yumminess toward Islam’s “way of life” was, in retrospect, really stupid—as in really, really, really stupid. Yep, England’s giddy naïveté to prove to the thought police that they have evolved into nonjudgmental goo has led our snaggle-toothed cousins to open wide their borders to militant Muslims who hate the very ground that true Brits...

(New York) For 27 years the International Bulletin of Missionary Research (News Haven, Connecticut) has published a yearly report about the situation of Christians in the world. The "Status of Global Mission" - Report offers interesting and astonishing numbers every year of the numerical strength of Christians and other religions. The strength of the various denominations are also be included. In the report of 2011 (which deals with the year of 2010) puts the martyrdom of Christians right before your eyes. The report defines "martyr" Christians, as those "who lose their lives violently for their faith". The report estimates that...

WASHINGTON — Whites continued to decline as a share of the American population in 2009, and they now represent less than half of all 3-year-olds, according to a Brookings Institution analysis of census data released Monday. The country’s young population is more diverse than ever, with whites now in the minority in nursery schools, preschools and kindergartens in eight states — Arizona, California, Florida, Hawaii, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico and Texas — and the District of Columbia, according to William H. Frey, a demographer at Brookings. That was up from six states in 2000. “We are on our way to...

Department 15, La Prensa Grafica (El Salvador) 2/3/2011 Majority in U.S. and EU see immigrants as a problem The Transatlantic Trends survey is sponsored by several institutions in the United States and Europe. Most Europeans and Americans believe that immigration is a problem rather than an advantage for their respective countries, according to a survey published Thursday by a group of foundations. The survey shows that citizens whose personal situation worsened due to the economic crisis in the past two years believe that immigrants are to blame for it. 65% of Britons believe that immigrants are a problem, followed by...

A century from now, our first black president will be seen as a key transitional figure when America's superpower status was about to be sharply curtailed. Today is the midpoint of Barack Obama's first term as president of the United States of America. When scholars look back at this moment a century from now, what will they make of it? They, of course, will have the advantage of knowing facts about which we can only speculate, starting with whether Obama was re-elected to a second term. And with the passage of time, they will be able to put into calmer...

With Chinese President Hu Jintao's visit to Washington, there's a lot of talk about the rise of China as an economic and military power. But the Chinese may have only a small window in time to assert global dominance -- and Chinese leaders have to know it. China is, perhaps, twenty years from the start of a demographic implosion, one that will cause enormous internal strains, economically and socially. Could awareness of the hard demographic realities that lie ahead for China drive the Chinese to advance their interests militarily, if need be, before China is hampered by an aging population?...

FROM the moment they entered the workforce in the 1960s, baby-boomers began to shape America’s economy and politics. They will do the same as they leave. The first of the estimated 78m Americans born between 1946 and 1964 turn 65 in 2011, the normal age for retirement. As their ranks swell in coming years, the burden of financing their retirement will mount. So will their electoral importance. Retiring boomers will squeeze the economy from two directions. The number of people enrolled in Medicare (federally funded health care, available from the age of 65) will grow from 47m in 2010 to...