Everybody likes a good apocalypse. The thought of an imminent end of the world gives a certain pungency and urgency to life.
For some Protestants Christ is going to return in glory and all the true believers will be raptured from the face of the earth. Catholics of a certain type focus on the prophecies of Fatima and apparitions of Mary the mother of Jesus.
Secularists have their own apocalyptic stories. At the end of the last century the millennium bug was going to cause a global meltdown. Forty years before that an exchange of A-bombs was going to obliterate humanity. Then the “population bomb” was going to bring us to the brink. The doom merchants said the world would be so over crowded that we’d be standing shoulder to shoulder fighting for food.
The present apocalypse craze is climate change. The bizarre thing is, while the left bite their nails and predict the extinction of the human race because of global warming; they are ignoring another very real human disaster: the demographic winter.
The number of births in the US dropped in 2018 to 59 births per 1,000 women, continuing a general downturn that started with the great recession of 2008. It is the lowest number of births in 32 years. Plummeting from 3.6 kids in 1960, the rate is now 1.7, well below the replacement level needed for a population to replace itself – 2,100 births per 1,000 women. The fact is, in the long term, Americans seem to be facing extinction. No wonder Toys R Us went out of business. There aren’t enough kids to buy toys for.
The left is not only ignoring the falling birth rate, they seem to be applauding it. In a punchy article at the website Medium, Ryan DeLongpre linked to a collection of articles about antinatalism, which is dingbat terminology for “having kids is immoral and bad.” DeLongpre managed also to come up with some numbers for show and tell. It seems that the dingbats who think murdering babies is good have a fertility rate of 1.58 up to 1.61. Moderates, on the other hand have a fertility rate at 2.14 while Conservatives range up to 2.62.
Time to rejoice Conservatives. It looks like the only good thing that will come from the current culture of death is the death of that particular culture. If you don’t product – you don’t survive.
It’s the same in Europe. The fertility rate there is even lower than the USA. European liberals need an immigrant workforce to keep their show on the road. They not only need workers for their infrastructure and factories, they also need doctors and nurses. They know the birth rate is dropping. They realize as they get old there aren’t going to be enough young people to look after them.
This sort of explains why the left in America is so desperate to open our borders to anyone and everyone – they are going to need someone to take care of them in their old age. But immigration won’t solve the problem – they are going to have their own old people to look after. And even if there are enough workers the money will run out. As long as the bottom line, short term, cost-effective, pragmatic solutions are the only philosophy that drives policy, more ominous solutions will be looming.
Ominous solutions would explain why the wolves of euthanasia are lurking at the door. Without family who will be there to stop the bureaucrats from pulling the plug or giving the injection? The generation of dingbats who though having kids was a bad idea will be faced with a generation of doctors who think having old people is also a bad idea. Such a nightmare scenario is indeed an apocalypse.
There has to be a better way. The positive solution is the pro-life solution. We need to shift funding for Planned Parenthood to health care for single moms who chose life and help subsidize families who adopt or foster kids. Instead of supporting the murder of unborn children why not underwrite the cost of adoption?
What if our schools offered marriage education instead of sex education? What if our local communities, charities and churches went even further in living out the culture of life? What if our churches became extended families — offering compassion, care and support for all their members from the moment of conception to natural death?
Then instead of an apocalypse we’d have an abundant life and a positive future. Of course that may have to wait until the culture of death is dead.
Source: The Culture of Death Isn’t Sustainable. Our Future Depends on a Culture of Life By Dwight Longenecker, The Stream; Three Culture of Death Tipping Points by Wesley J. Smith, First Things
