Fear of Too Many Babies is Hard to Bear - Mark Steyn

Chicago Sun-Times ^ | October 22, 2006 | Mark Steyn

[Tom D.]

Fear of Too Many Babies is Hard to Bear

October 22, 2006 BY MARK STEYN Sun-Times Columnist

Last Tuesday morning, in a maternity ward somewhere in the United States, the 300 millionth American arrived. He or she got a marginally warmer welcome than Mark Foley turning up to hand out the prizes at junior high. One could have predicted the appalled editorials from European newspapers aghast at yet another addition to the swollen cohort of excess Americans consuming ever more of the planet's dwindling resources. And, when Canada's National Post announced "'Frightening' Surge Brings US To 300m People," you can appreciate their terror: the millions of Democrats who declared they were moving north after Bush's re-election must have placed incredible strain on Canada's highways, schools, trauma counselors, etc.

But the wee bairn might have expected a warmer welcome from his or her compatriots. Alas not. "Three hundred million seems to be greeted more with hand-wringing ambivalence than chest-thumping pride," observed the Washington Post, which inclines toward the former even on the best of days. No chest-thumping up in Vermont, either. "Organizations such as the Shelburne-based Population Media Center are marking the 300 million milestone with renewed warnings that world population growth is unsustainable," reported the Burlington Free Press. Across the country, the grim milestone prompted this reaction from a somber Dowell Myers. "At 300 million," noted the professor of urban planning and demography at the University of Southern California, "we are beginning to be crushed under the weight of our own quality-of-life degradation."

I, on the other hand, was feeling pretty chipper about the birth of the cute l'il quality-of-life degrader. The previous day, my new book was published. You'll find it in all good bookstores -- it's propping up the slightly wonky rear left leg of the front table groaning under the weight of unsold copies of Peace Mom by Cindy Sheehan. Anyway, the book -- mine, not Cindy's -- deals in part with the geopolitical implications of demography -- i.e., birth rates. That's an easy subject to get all dry and statistical about, so I gotta hand it to my publicist: arranging for the birth of the 300 millionth American is about as good a promotional tie-in as you could get and well worth the 75 bucks he bribed the guy at the Census Bureau. But, even if you haven't got a book to plug, the arrival of Junior 300 Mil is something everyone should celebrate.

So why don't we? The answer is that too many people who should know better are still peddling the same old 40-year-old guff about "overpopulation." What does Professor Myers mean by "quality-of-life degradation"? America is the 172nd least densely populated country on Earth. If you think it's crowded here, try living in the Netherlands or Belgium, which have, respectively, 1,015 and 883 inhabitants per square mile compared with 80 folks per square mile in the United States. To be sure, somewhere such as, say, Newark, N.J., is a lot less bucolic than it was in 1798. But why is that? No doubt Myers would say it's urban sprawl. But that's the point: you can only sprawl if you've got plenty of space. As the British writer Adam Nicholson once wrote of America, "There is too much room in the vast continental spaces of the country for a great deal of care to be taken with the immediate details." Nothing sprawls in Belgium: It's a phenomenon that arises not from population pressures but the lack thereof.

As for other degradations the weight of which is so crushing to Myers, name some. America is one of the most affordable property markets in the Western world. I was amazed to discover, back in the first summer of the Bush presidency, that a three-bedroom air-conditioned house in Crawford, Texas, could be yours for 30,000 bucks and, if that sounds a bit steep, a double-wide on a couple of acres would set you back about $6,000. And not just because Bush lives next door and serves as a kind of one-man psychological gated community keeping the NPR latte-sippers from moving in and ruining the neighborhood. The United States is about the cheapest developed country in which to get a nice home with a big yard and raise a family. That's one of the reasons why America, almost alone among Western nations, has a healthy fertility rate.

Everywhere else, for the most part, they've taken the advice of Myers and that think tank in Vermont. In America, there are 2.1 live births per woman. In 17 European countries, it's 1.3 or below -- that's what demographers call "lowest-low" fertility, a rate from which no society has ever recovered. Spain's population is halving with every generation. These nations are doing what Myers and the Vermont "sustainability" junkies would regard as the socially responsible thing, and having fewer babies. And as a result their countries are dying demographically and (more immediately) economically: They don't have enough young people to pay for the generous social programs the ever more geriatric Europeans have come to expect.

By the way, I wonder if any helpful reader would care to provide a working definition of "unsustainable." We hear it all the time these days. You can hardly go to an international conference on this or that global crisis without Natalie Cole serenading the opening-night gala banquet of G-7 finance ministers with a couple of choruses of "Unsustainable, that's what you are." Two centuries back, when Malthus warned of overpopulation, he was contemplating the prospects of a man "born into a world already possessed" -- that's to say, with no land left for him, no job, no food. "At Nature's mighty feast," wrote Malthus, "there is no vacant cover for him." But that's not what Myers and Co. mean. No one seriously thinks 400 or 500 million Americans will lead to mass starvation. By "unsustainable," they mean that we might encroach ever so slightly onto the West Nile mosquito's traditional breeding grounds in northern Maine. Which is sad if you think this or that insect is more important than the developed world's most critically endangered species: people. If you have a more scrupulous care for language, you'll note that population-wise it's low birth rates that are "unsustainable": Spain, Germany, Italy and most other European peoples literally cannot sustain themselves -- which is why, in one of the fastest demographic transformations in human history, their continent is becoming Muslim.

As a matter of fact, you don't have to cross the Atlantic to see the consequences of a loss of human capital: The Burlington Free Press would be better occupied worrying less about the 300 millionth American and more about the ever emptier schoolhouses up and down the Green Mountain State. I used to joke that Vermont was America's leading Canadian province, but in fact it's worse than that: demographically, it's an honorary member of the European Union.

The reality is that in a Western world ever more wizened and barren the 300 millionth American is the most basic example of American exceptionalism. Happy birth day, kid, and here's to many more.

©Mark Steyn 2006

[Criminal Number 18F]

The Wellstone quote made me laugh. If Paul Wellstone had been a hypocrite, he'd be alive now. But he wanted his flight crew to look like the Democratic Party's ideal of identity politics.

So he picked one pilot who was an ex-con and phonied up his logbook a la John Kerry's war record; and one who was a black guy who didn't have the native ability to fly, but between dogged persistence and the lowered bar of affirmative action had won his ratings despite flunking every checkride at least once.

Wellstone wound up where identity politics always lead.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

[dufekin]

Many--probably most--immigrants from Latin America and East Asia and even sub-Saharan Africa actually want to assimilate into American culture. Legal or illegal, these immigrants--and especially their children and grandchildren--see this country as their future and embrace our founding ideals, our capitalist economy, our language, our Christian religion, our military struggle against the Islamofascist enemy, and our common future. In this era of liberalism, tolerance, and diversity, however, assimilation can prove difficult, particularly for immigrants who live in ethnic enclaves, especially in border towns where immigrants from a particular country comprise a majority of the population.

In some respects, ethnic enclaves differ little from those of the heyday of immigration in the late 1800s/early 1900s. Large Italian, Spanish, Greek, Polish, German, and other ethnic neighborhoods dotted New York City. These neighborhoods today have yielded to Dominican, Korean, Chinese, Mexican, Colombian, Ethiopian, and other new ethnic enclaves. They offer new immigrants a place where they can converse with others who share their former nationality, its culture, and its language. Learning English in a non-Anglophone foreign land can prove almost impossible; therefore, most immigrants begin understanding the language only after they arrive in America, and fluency can require years of practice.

Of course in the "more civilizationally confident era" of a century ago (as Mark Steyn would say), various societies attempted to enroll immigrants in programs designed to assimilate them into American society. These programs went beyond an occasional simple literacy class for those lucky enough to find an open seat at an acceptable time. They went so far as to include cooking classes that taught housewives the art of serving American foods according to American custom. Others taught immigrants in our ways of fashion, in imitating our peculiar accents, other proper housekeeping techniques, and various other aspects of American culture that we often overlook. And America was as divided and provincial a land then as it is now, between the agricultural homesteads of the prairie states to the Solid South to the industrial Midwest to the booming ports of the Eastern Seaboard to the Mormon Mountain states and the Pacific coast.

PS: "Civics instruction" should occur in the public schools, including economics, American history, world history, and quite possibly religion/theology (if it's still Constitutional to portray Christians as morally superior to crazy Muslims).

[pray4liberty]

Its liberals who are not breeding and having kids.

Yeah but they're spending their time indoctrinating our kids.

No wonder they support the terrorists who want us dead. Somehow in their naive way, they think terrorist bombs will only hit people who aren't liberals.

[Taxman]

Now, that is a great story!

I'd love to read the full story on those two guys!

[hinckley buzzard]

"we are beginning to be crushed under the weight of our own quality-of-life degradation."

I felt this way when we hit 200 million. For that extra 100 million souls we pay in a thousand small ways, with the loss of things which can hardly be explained to those who missed them.

[cpforlife.org]

Life begins at conception—NOT birth.
Birth is one day in the life of a person who is already nine months old.

Pro-Life PING

Please FreepMail me if you want on or off my Pro-Life Ping List.

[goldstategop]

I'm one those who believes people are blessing to the world. When I think of the 6 million Jews killed in Europe, I mourn for the loss of new discoveries and insights that would made all of our lives better. That's a staggering waste of intellect and talent that's all gone. Human life is precious and we must all do our part to nurture it and safeguard it.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus

[F.J. Mitchell]

That is so obvious knowing what we know today about conception and birth, that anyone denying that truth is either a liar or a complete imbecile.

[Clemenza]

Could we just get over this concept of the "Third World?" It is an antiquated term from the cold war era.

Better Indian doctors than fat white tavern habitues.

[Clemenza]

1. Spanish is a EUROPEAN language.

2. I hope your daughter marries your Mexican gardner.

[BLS]

Perhaps people ought to use widely available birth control rather than murder their unborn children.

[Salvation]

No overpopulation at all. In fact, many countries do not have enough people to work.

[Conservative til I die]

We oppose abortion out of principle. But from another perspective, we shouldn't stand in the way of liberals aborting themselves out of existence.

What a wonderful thing to say. I'm not one that thinks abortion should be even joked about.

[ElkGroveDan]

I made five little resource gobblers, and we drive them around in a Ford Excursion.

[xjcsa]

We oppose abortion out of principle. But from another perspective, we shouldn't stand in the way of liberals aborting themselves out of existence.

They're not aborting "themselves". They're murdering innocent children.

[nathanbedford]

Thank you for your book on immigration. I have about one third of the way through and find it quite interesting. I view unrestricted immigration as one more arrow in the leftists' quiver to be deployed in their war against Western civilization. Other weapons of the left we have defined is cultural Marxism, relativism, multiculturalism etc. they seek to break down the foundation stones of our society: family, Church, nation.

Below I offer two citations of two remarkable essays by Commander Atkinson United States Navy (retired)

> Dr. Atkinson's post military service crusade is breathtaking in its hypothesis: The cultural war being waged by the left is not a series of skirmishes spontaneous and diffuse in origin but the calculated campaign of a core conspiracy.

The core conspiracy was originally founded in 1923 by a Soros-like multimillionaire who funded a group of Jewish Communist intellectuals by creating the School for Social Research. Cultural Marxism metastasized to Spain, Great Britain, and the United States as these Jews were disbursed in a kind of Communist diaspora. Able, even gifted, these intellectuals insinuated themselves into America's important institutions including academia, journalism, and the OSS where they gained astonishing influence as they waged their war on the institutions of America. The original charter of the Frankfurt School was to undermine those institutions which in their view had succeeded in preventing the expected communist revolution from spreading to Germany from Russia. These institutions included, first, the family, which constitutes the nuclear building block of society. If one can destroy the family one has nearly succeeded in undermining the whole of traditional society. Hence the scorn heaped on the "leave it to beaver" family of the 1950s. Such a structure is anathema to the left.

The next institution which they seek to destroy is the church, both Catholic and evangelical, for this is the institution which consecrates the family and justifies it. Hence the relentless war waged by Hollywood against figures of these churches like preachers and priests.

Their eschatology is as breathtaking as the scope of the conspiracy, that is, they have sent out to change the way man sees his world. This is the "deconstructive" aspect of the conspiracy. It undertakes, first, to tear down and tear apart every value and every tradition upon which we rely. As both a tool and an end goal Freudianism has been wielded like a battle ax to bludgeon the modern psyche. It's evil twin, relativism, makes the seduction of the modern mind complete. With one foot in Freudianism and the other stuck in the relativism, modern man, without faith in God, is sinking in quicksand and is virtually defenseless to every new siren.

When one reads Atkinson's series of essays on this subject is clear that he believes that this state of affairs is the product of nothing less than a conspiracy. It is this part of his thesis which I find fascinating. Is there such a conspiracy? How big is it? Who are the generals and who are the foot soldiers, who share the conspiracy and who are merely willing dupes, the useful idiots of the Frankfurt School ?

I am quite aware that when one utters the "C" Word one practically begs at best to be blackguarded as a McCarthyite, or, at worst, crowned with a tinfoil hat. Nevertheless, I believe as a conservative that it is imperative that we understand the nature of the opposition. Are we fighting a virus whose DNA lurks somewhere deep in the spinal column, or are all the battles in the cultural war unrelated "whack a mole" eruptions which can be resisted ad hoc?

Whether conspiracy or not, it is clear that every tactic in the cultural war waged by the left at least coincidentally advances the strategy of Marxism and that point should be made plain to every American citizen who exercises his franchise.

What is the Frankfurt School? ©

by

Dr. Gerald L. Atkinson CDR USN (Ret.)

Copyright 1 August 1999

http://www.newtotalitarians.com/FrankfurtSchool.html

WHO PLACED AMERICAN MEN IN A PSYCHIC "IRON CAGE"

The Thread of culture Marxism

By Dr. Gerald L. Atkinson

http://lesbianstudies.com/oldsite/frankfurt.htm

[GladesGuru]

WHen Steyn pinted out that Vermont has many empty school houses, he hit my panic button.

Without Vermonters, WHO's Gonna Make Maple Syrup ? ? ??

This is gettin downright series!

Does anyone know how old a Mexican has to be to successfully tap a maple tree?

[GladesGuru]

"ts liberals who are not breeding and having kids. Demographics is also having an impact on our domestic politics."

You just made my day. Imagine a world without Liberals ;-)

[marc costanzo]

These Hispanics are not from SPAIN (Europe), that is the point !

What we are getting dumped on us from Mexico
is their riff-raff, their low-life !

For every Hindu(Indian) computer scientist, we also get a dozen widget-turners !

Programmers or menials, they are both brought here for one reason: to cause wage depression for us Real Americans .

This has been going on for many many years now !