archenemy blog

Having read Steyn’s latest, NZC opines

And for example, the whole assumption that societies with low birth rates will continue to decline is persuasive but not at all obvious. People can change their behaviors. I’m not saying they will, I’m far from certain it’s in any sense likely, but the Europeans and the Japanese could start having more children.

and provokes some rambling, semi-coherent thoughts from me: IIRC, Steyn and the various other blogospheric entities sounding the alarm don’t quite go so far as to paint replacement rates in developed western countries as moral failure or crisis of confidence, but many probably see it that way. Are declining fertility rates just a sign of progressive self-loathing? IMO there’s far more to it. What pressures might drive the fertility of a western, developed population down?

At least partly to blame is the unprecedented-in-human-history levels of wealth, health and freedom we’ve achieved. Between women voting and entering the workforce, the automobile, longer lifespans, an increasingly socialist government providing family-replacing subsidies to the retired and unemployed, reliable birth control and legal abortions, people are not channeled into building families as they once were. So, if it’s the sum of these new forces that has given us falling fertility rates, how easy would it be to counter them? Not so easy, IMO. I suspect one of the first major side effects we’ll see is the inability of European welfare states to continue delivering welfare. I think it’s far more likely that people who are used to rioting over entitlements, subsidies and protectionism will wreck their own goverments long before doing something constructive like taking responsibilty for the problem and starting to have more children again. Further, as European welfare-states begin to deliver less and less welfare, I’m guessing immigration will drop off, slowing the dilution of westernism somewhat.

It seems to me that the parts of the world where cultures are most screwed up and fertility rates are highest will, if the Bush Doctrine is success, eventually fall prey to these same downware pressures on fertility rates themselves. So, exporting Anglospheric values - with all due enthusiasm - seems like an important thing to me.