We listen to Mark Steyn when he sits in for Rush Limbaugh or catch him on Fox News.
Mark is usually funny but also rather serious, specially when he is talking about Europe. He is warning the Europeans ,and the rest of us in the West as well, that you can not have a future without babies:
"The developed world, like Elisabeth, is barren.
Collectively barren, I hasten to add.
Individually, it's made up of millions of fertile women, who voluntarily opt for no children at all or one designer kid at 39.
Individually, it's made up of millions of fertile women, who voluntarily opt for no children at all or one designer kid at 39.
In Italy, the home of the Church, the birthrate's somewhere around 1.2, 1.3 children per couple – or about half "replacement rate."
Japan, Germany and Russia are already in net population decline.
Fifty percent of Japanese women born in the Seventies are childless.
Between 1990 and 2000, the percentage of Spanish women childless at the age of 30 almost doubled, from just over 30 percent to just shy of 60 percent.
In Sweden, Finland, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, 20 percent of 40-year old women are childless.
In a recent poll, invited to state the "ideal" number of children, 16.6 percent of Germans answered "None."
We are living in Zacharias and Elisabeth's world – by choice." (Steyn)
Why do babies matter?
First, how do you pass on your culture, language and customs when everybody is "50-something" and the population is declining? Who is going to appreciate all of those cathedrals, statues and traditions?
Second, how do you support older people collecting generous monthly benefits? You don't do it with low birth rates. After all, demography is destiny!
Last, but not least, who is going to defend what we value, such as freedom of speech, the rights of women, respect for dissent, the rule of law, etc? How can you defend that with an army of "60-year olds" spending their retirement years in senior homes?
Steyn is right and the Europeans are in trouble.
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