The great liberal death wish marches on. Zenit reported that on July 11, 2012 that World Population Day was observed at the United Nations. What has been traditionally celebrated at the UN, is not human population as such, but the call for a reduction in world population. Indeed, the main theme is not: “The more, the merrier.” But rather, “The less human beings there are, the better off the world is.” On the same day, the London Summit for family planning, sponsored by the British government and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, called for more funds for limiting population growth. It is projected that 4.6 billion dollars will be invested in such an endeavor in the coming years. As a matter of fact, the website for the London Summit had this to say: “Contraceptives are one of the best investments a country can make in its future.”The propagation of the overpopulation myth is simply amazing given the demographic crisis many nations find themselves in. “In recent decades,” for instance, “there has been a 60% drop in worldwide fertility rates and the number of people aged 60 or more has multiplied 3.5 times. The ratio of workers to retired people has fallen by 25% in the last 50 years and is expected to fall by another 55% by 2050.”
Still, the contraceptive mentality among world leaders continues unabated despite the demographic facts. But in actuality, this quest for furthering the demise of civilization should not surprise us. Proverbs says, “For he who finds me finds life, and wins favor from the LORD; but he who misses me harms himself; all who hate me love death.” (8:35) That’s right! For the first time in world history, nations are deliberately implementing measures to reduce the number of people being born into this world. As for Europe, such an attempt will result in demographic crisis not unlike the Black Death of 1348-1350. The unintended consequences of a worldwide push for “family planning” will be considerable.
Austin Ruse, president of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-FAM), said that fertility rates are falling off a cliff. Take, for instance, Germany’s economy. Among the European nations, it is prospering the most (which isn’t saying all that much). Yet, not even this nation will withstand the economic burden of a falling birthrate. Zenit provided the following statistics for us to consider:
• On July 3 Reuters reported that the number of births in Germany fell to a post-war low last year. This was despite government incentives designed to reverse the trend in what is the European Union's biggest economy.
• Preliminary data released by Germany's Federal Statistics Office showed 663,000 children were born in 2011, down from 678,000 in 2010, said Reuters…Every year since 1972 the number of people who died was greater than the number of children born.
• As for other countries: The latest U.N. projections estimate that by 2050, 75% of all countries, even in underdeveloped regions, will not have enough children to avoid population decline.
Many Americans fear that China is poised to be the world economic leader very soon. But due to their aggressive one-child policy and other human rights violations, China will suffer a seismic demographic collapse. Arguably, this may occur just when China is due to surpass the United States of America as the world's leading economic power. In any event, the report issued by Zenit provides just a few reasons why China may not be a long term economic threat after all:
• The world’s most populous nation has created demographic abnormalities that cannot be remedied for decades, he argued. There are 51.3 million more males than females as a result of sex-selective abortion.
• The country will also shortly be hit by an “age wave,” Gordon Chang noted (author and journalist). The age cohort of those aged 60 and more, currently at 12.5% of the population, will double by 2030.
• China is already short of workers and the working-age population is set to fall from just under a billion in 2015 to 789 million in 2050. This will have serious economic consequences for both China and the rest of the world, Chang pointed out.
The Hierarchy of the Catholic Church should be leading a discussion about what the contraceptive culture portends for humanity. I do not know about you, but I do not see it as of yet. Nevertheless, the Church has been that prophetic voice of Christ on this issue for 2000 years. I hope things do not have to get “so bad” and “so dire” in order for her to muster up the courage to use that prophetic voice. Demographically speaking (and even fiscally), things are looking pretty unstable.
So far, we have seen the widespread use of contraception wreak havoc on the Culture of Life; a culture that took so long to build-up. But now, we are just beginning to see the effects of what a low birthrate means for society in economic terms. As many studies suggests, the ratio of workers to retired people is due to fall precipitously. With this, State revenue for social programs and entitlements will fall with it. The socialistic dream will, I am afraid, turn into a nightmare.
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From the "Great Liberal Death Wish" by Malcom Muggeridge:
“The thing that impressed me, and the thing that touched off my awareness of the great liberal death wish, my sense that western man was, as it were, sleep-walking into his own ruin, was the extraordinary performance of the liberal intelligentsia…Once you eliminate the notion of a God, a creator, once you eliminate the notion that the creator has a purpose for us, and that life consists essentially in fulfilling that purpose, then you are bound, as Pascal points out, to induce the megalomania of which we've seen so many manifestations in our time - in the crazy dictators, as in the lunacies of people who are rich, or who consider themselves to be important or celebrated in the western world. Alternatively, human beings relapse into mere carnality, into being animals. I see this process going on irresistibly, of which the holocaust is only just one example.”
Muggeridge then says, “If you envisage men as being only men, you are bound to see human society, not in Christian terms as a family, but as a factory--farm in which the only consideration that matters is the well--being of the livestock and the prosperity or productivity of the enterprise. That's where you land yourself. And it is in that situation that western man is increasingly finding himself.”
