When your government cares!

A very important video by Tucker Carlson, which I found by using DuckDuckGo. I typed in "Tucker Carlson on Hungary". First I tried Google to no avail. Lo and behold, it was the first item to come up on the DuckDuckGo search!

Do we really need children?

At American Thinker, Tom Trinko reports,

To maintain a stable population the fertility rate, the number of children an average woman has, needs to be about 2.1. In 1960 the American fertility rate was about 3.6 and in 2015 it was about 1.8.

This is a big deal; a similar problem is what is driving the Islamification of Europe. Contrary to some conservatives, Frau Merkel didn’t invite millions of poorly educated sharia law-loving Muslims into Germany just because she likes Islam. She did so because you can’t sustain a welfare state when your population is shrinking. The fertility rate in Germany has always been lower than the U.S., about 1.5 in 2015, so Germany is facing a serious problem due to a lack of Germans.

Read more here.

How demographic changes are affecting the Mountain West

Reid Wilson has the story at The Hill

"It is the biggest story of our time, and no one is telling it!"

The demographic extinguishment of the people who built the modern world: but nobody is writing about it!

Japan: one-third of their citizens under thirty have never dated! They do not allow immigration.

President Trump in Poland spoke about faith and family. Europeans are averaging 1.3 children per couple. Muslims are averaging 3.5 children per couple, and Erdogan is urging them to increase that to 5 children per couple. Muslims are now a majority in Belgium.

The majority of elementary students in Arizona are Hispanic. I think that is probably true here in New Mexico, too. Demographics underlie everything.

By mid-century the majority of Austrians will be Muslims. The new song there will be, "How do you solve a problem like Sharia?"

There are now 1 billion Africans, and by the end of the century that number is expected to be 4 billion.

Demographics

43 per cent of people aged 18 to 34 from the island nation of Japan say they are virgins.

And what about the United States? Ariana Eunjung Cha reports in the Washington Post,

According to provisional 2016 population data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday, the number of births fell 1 percent from a year earlier, bringing the general fertility rate to 62.0 births per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44. The trend is being driven by a decline in birthrates for teens and 20-somethings. The birthrate for women in their 30s and 40s increased — but not enough to make up for the lower numbers in their younger peers.

Read more here and here.

Japan's demographic crisis

Business Insider has seven signs that Japan faces a demographic crisis.

Can we move beyond our cultural self-loathing?

Bookworm writes,

About one-fifth of all crime committed in Japan is done by the elderly. Most of it is petty theft and shoplifting.

As crime rates among the elderly rise, prisons have effectively turned into nursing homes. Guards are made to bathe the inmates and help them get dressed, and experts say living conditions are too good to keep recidivism rates down.

Normally, younger relatives would take care of the inmates once they’re released. But in some cases the costs (and loneliness) are simply too much to bear in a troubled economy, and seniors look to prison as the better alternative.

It’s not just that the Japanese have stopped having children. Lots of economically advanced nations cut back on making babies. The difference with Japan is that they’ve entirely stopped having sex. Japan is becoming a simulacrum of a country, rather than a real country. So far, Japan has resisting Europe’s decision to invite in Muslims from Turkey, the Middle East, and North Africa in order to make up for a serious demographic slump. At some point, though, the Japanese are going to have to do something.

Americans are holding level, but just barely. Our demographic slump can easily be cured by allowing more legal immigration from Latin America. I would do so, though, only if we have moved beyond our cultural self-loathing. Immigration works when the immigrants assimilate in their new country. It does not work when they don’t. And it’s a bloody freaking disaster, as we see in Europe, when the immigrants insist that their new country assimilate to them.

Read more here.

Japan's virgins

Then UK Telegraph reports that over 40 percent of Japan's single adults

aged 18 to 34 found that around 42 per cent of men and 44.2 per cent of single women had never had sex.

The study is carried out by Japan's National Institute of Population and Social Security every five years.

Read more here.

The self-extinction of the races who, for good or ill, shaped the modern world.

Mark Steyn writes,

When it comes to forecasting the future, the birthrate is the nearest thing to hard numbers. If only a million babies are born in 2006, it's hard to have two million adults enter the workforce in 2026 (or 2033, or 2037, or whenever they get around to finishing their Anger Management and Queer Studies degrees). And the hard data on babies around the Western world is that they're running out a lot faster than the oil is. "Replacement" fertility rate--i.e., the number you need for merely a stable population, not getting any bigger, not getting any smaller--is 2.1 babies per woman. Some countries are well above that: the global fertility leader, Somalia, is 6.91, Niger 6.83, Afghanistan 6.78, Yemen 6.75. Notice what those nations have in common?

Scroll way down to the bottom of the Hot One Hundred top breeders and you'll eventually find the United States, hovering just at replacement rate with 2.07 births per woman. Ireland is 1.87, New Zealand 1.79, Australia 1.76. But Canada's fertility rate is down to 1.5, well below replacement rate; Germany and Austria are at 1.3, the brink of the death spiral; Russia and Italy are at 1.2; Spain 1.1, about half replacement rate. That's to say, Spain's population is halving every generation. By 2050, Italy's population will have fallen by 22%.

...in its reliance on immigration to ensure its future, the European Union has adopted a 21st-century variation on the strategy of the Shakers, who were forbidden from reproducing and thus could increase their numbers only by conversion.

...The old definition of a nanosecond was the gap between the traffic light changing in New York and the first honk from a car behind. The new definition is the gap between a terrorist bombing and the press release from an Islamic lobby group warning of a backlash against Muslims.

...Then September 11 happened. And bizarrely the reaction of just about every prominent Western leader was to visit a mosque: President Bush did, the prince of Wales did, the prime minister of the United Kingdom did, the prime minister of Canada did . . . The premier of Ontario didn't, and so 20 Muslim community leaders had a big summit to denounce him for failing to visit a mosque... But for whatever reason he couldn't fit it into his hectic schedule. Ontario's citizenship minister did show up at a mosque, but the imams took that as a great insult, like the Queen sending Fergie to open the Commonwealth Games.

Nobody makes that mistake these days. Six Canadians working for a Quebec Catholic humanitarian organization repairing schoolrooms in Burkina Faso get slaughtered by Muslim terrorists, and the Prince Minister skedaddles to a mosque run by a woman-hating loon to hold the moment of silence.

Like I said, I did all the jokes way back when, and it's not so funny after ten years. My thesis was straightforward: a semi-Muslim France will not be France; it will be something other, and - if you happen to value things like freedom of speech and women's rights - it will be something worse:

...Permanence is the illusion of every age. In 1913, no one thought the Russian, Austrian, German and Turkish empires would be gone within half a decade. Seventy years on, all those fellows who dismissed Reagan as an "amiable dunce" (in Clark Clifford's phrase) assured us the Soviet Union was likewise here to stay. The CIA analysts' position was that East Germany was the ninth biggest economic power in the world. In 1987 there was no rash of experts predicting the imminent fall of the Berlin Wall, the Warsaw Pact and the USSR itself.

...Somewhere, deep down, the European political class understands that the Great Migrations have accelerated the future I outlined way back when:

Can these trends continue for another 30 years without having consequences? Europe by the end of this century will be a continent after the neutron bomb: The grand buildings will still be standing, but the people who built them will be gone. We are living through a remarkable period: the self-extinction of the races who, for good or ill, shaped the modern world.

It's the biggest story of our time, and, ten years on, Europe's leaders still can't talk about it, not to their own peoples, not honestly. For all the "human rights" complaints, and death threats from halfwits, and subtler rejections from old friends who feel I'm no longer quite respectable, I'm glad I brought it up. And it's well past time for others to speak out.

Will New Year's Eve in Cologne soon be a year-round event?

Mark Steyn writes,

A decade ago, in my book America Alone (personally autographed copies of which, etc, etc), I wrote about "the People's Republic's most distinctive structural flaw":

The most gender-distorted demographic cohort in global history, the so-called guang gun – "bare branches": Since China introduced its "one child" policy in 1978, the imbalance between the sexes has increased to the point where in today's generation there are 119 boys for every 100 girls. The pioneer generation of that male surplus are now adults. Unless China's planning on becoming the first gay superpower since Sparta, what's going to happen to those young men? As a general rule, large numbers of excitable lads who can't get any action are useful for manning the nuttier outposts of the jihad but not for much else.

Indeed. Unfortunately, China's "most distinctive structural flaw" is no longer quite so distinctive:

Professor Valerie Hudson, a Texas A&M University professor, said gender imbalances could cause serious problems in the community.

She said societies where men outnumbered women were more susceptible to higher levels of violence, insurgence and mistreatment of women.

Sweden is of particular interest to Professor Hudson, because it has the second-highest number of asylum applications in Europe, relative to its population.

"I looked specifically at the figures that Sweden had provided on its migrants — 71 per cent of whom are male," she said.

"And then in the age group 16 to 17 years old, which is what I focused on, over 90 per cent are male."

Professor Hudson estimated there were about 123 boys for every 100 girls in Sweden.

It took Beijing three decades of a ruthlessly enforced totalitarian crackdown to arrive at a sex imbalance of 119 boys for every 100 girls. Sweden has caught up in nothing flat simply by being the second most welcoming country of "Syrian" "refugees". And Germany is nipping at China's heels, with about 114 boys for every 100 girls - which means New Year's Eve in Cologne may soon be a year-round event:

Professor Hudson said regardless of where the gender balance was the consequences were broadly the same.

"What we have found uniformly is a rise in crime, particularly violent crime, property crime, crime against women," she said.

"We also see much more ease of recruitment into criminal gangs, or quasi-rebel/social movement-type gangs.

"We also see across the board a more constrained lifestyle for women and there's also a significant rise in demand for trafficked women, either as 'brides' or prostitutes."

The most enlightened progressive feminists in the planet are ushering in a world where Rotherham and Cologne are the new normal. Fortunately for Frau Merkel, she's a bit long in the tooth to have much value to sex-traffickers.

Where is our future?

Chuck Devore writes at The Federalist,

Demographers estimate that in less than 30 years America will be “majority-minority,” with the white, non-Hispanic population dipping to under 50 percent. The future has already arrived in California, Hawaii, New Mexico, and Texas. Of those four states, California and Texas have demographic profiles most closely matching our nation’s demographic future. Which version of America’s future provides opportunity for all Americans, the California model or the Texas model?

A state’s poverty level is a good place to start for measuring the effectiveness of state policies that encourage job creation, self-sufficiency, and upward mobility. Since, for a variety of reasons, average poverty rates are higher among minority groups and immigrants, it’s important to both measure overall poverty rates and to compare rates between like demographic groups.

...The familiar official measure is more than 50 years old, and is showing its age. It has two huge shortcomings: it considers the cost of living to be the same in the 48 contiguous states (a patently ridiculous proposition when considering that the average rent in San Francisco in the first quarter of 2015 was $3,458 vs. $867 in Houston), and it doesn’t account for in-kind benefits, such as Section Eight housing subsidies and Electronic Benefit Transfer cards (food stamps).

Thus, the federal government’s main poverty gauge undercounts material poverty levels in high-cost states such as California, New York, and Hawaii, while over-counting true poverty in much of the low-cost Midwest and South.

...Both California and Texas have official poverty rates above the national average. But, under SPM, Texas’ poverty rate matches the national average while California’s is the nation’s highest with proportionately 47 percent more people living in poverty than in Texas and the United States.

Much of California’s nation-leading poverty rate is due to the high cost of housing in the Golden State, a significant portion of which is driven by hyper-controls on development, greenhouse gas fees, restrictive zoning, and taxes. It takes five years to get permission to build in California what commonly takes five months in Texas. If California is America’s future, then that future is overrun with poverty.

What’s remarkable (or not, depending on your worldview) about the huge disparity in poverty rates between California and Texas is that the states are diametrically opposed in their taxing, spending, and regulatory policies. California, featuring America’s highest marginal income-tax rate, ranks as the fourth-most taxed state in the nation, according to the Tax Foundation, while no-income-tax Texas came in at forty-seventh. In a broader survey of economic freedom that includes labor law and regulation, Canada’s Fraser Institute rated Texas and South Dakota as tied for first with California lagging far behind at forty-third, just ahead of New Jersey at forty-fourth.

In the time it will take for a child to be born, gain self-sufficiency, and start a family, America will become a majority-minority nation. Some politicians who size up this eventuality fear it and demagogue against demographics, while some pander to it, exchanging promises of government largess to buy allegiance. Neither path is worthy of our ideals. Neither path will lead to a prosperous America.

When developing policies and platforms to attract the support of America’s emerging majority, conservatives would do well to point to California as a cautionary tale while drawing inspiration from Texas—confidently and boldly asserting that freedom and hard work remain the main ingredients of the American Dream.

Read more here.

The need to recover our faith

David Warren writes,

Faith is the great life-giving force, and the loss of faith is death-dealing. By this we do not mean only Christian faith, for the same principle applies in all cultures, and has applied since time out of mind.

The classical example is “the decline and fall of the Roman Empire.” As the pagan Romans lost faith in their own civilization, they stopped having babies. They rehearsed almost all the features of our modern West in their own later decadence: the sophisticated rejection of religious observances; the confident smugness of the half-educated; the degradation of family life; the acceptance of public pornography, and openly perverse liaisons; couch-potato obsessions with circus and professionalized gladiatorial sports; the shift from pride in productivity, to a shameless consumerism; the aesthetic decline in all manufactures; the spread of dishonourable trade practices; the inflation of money, and in all other kinds; debt crises; the growing dependence upon immigrant slaves and other cheap labour for all unpleasant work, including everything required of the Roman armies; the appeasement of enemies, and extravagant buying off of the tribal savages, now being let inside their frontiers.

The modern West will not go the way of Rome. It will go some other way; perhaps even to a restoration of sense, and recovery of faith — in our own Lord, and by extension, in our own future as a civilization. For after all, not everyone has stopped having children, as the faithless diligently weed themselves out of the garden of genes. All the symptoms of decline are there, but also symptoms of the Western “exceptionalism.” The Catholic Church, for instance, is not dead in the West, by a long shot. (See the millions of kids at those papal “youth days.”) She wins converts regularly among the best-educated, and that regardless of what is done in Rome. In the balance the Church is wanting, but she has always been wanting, in a world that has always been in a mess.

All trends are reversible, and I do not think the West can be counted out. Without the Christianity that formed it, and gives it meaning, it is of course stone dead. But we have, itching under our skin, a religion that is better than we are, and for all evidence to the contrary it will not simply go away. We evict Christ by the front door, but our servants keep letting him in the back. And in our hearts, and our worst misfortunes, we still instinctively reach for Him. Secretly, we don’t want to die.

Demography is not destiny, because the trends can change. In some parts of Europe the birthrate is such (Hungary for example, now below one child per woman) that a nation must surely go down the plug hole; in other parts, the numbers are beginning to rise again. As David Goldman (also known as “Spengler”) elaborately explains, something worse than what has happened in Europe is happening all around Europe. The birthrates in the Islamic countries (Algeria, Tunisia, Turkey, Iran, &c) have plummeted to below Europe’s. In a single generation, Iran for instance has gone from 6.0 to 1.6 children per woman, and that birthrate is still falling. Similar drops may be tracked elsewhere in the “third world,” and in the “tiger economies” of the Far East. The demographic sepuku of Japan is stunning; but also through China and South-east Asia populations must fall; India is now following them onto the slide. By its comparatively gradual decline, Europe has been holding up relatively well, and over here in North America, we have held up a little better.

The collapsing birthrates, in cultures that were intensely child-friendly, everywhere proclaim this abandonment of hope.

Whether in West or East, however, the mechanism of societal disintegration is the same. It could be described in one phrase as “the liberation of women.” The modern economy lures women away from home and family with (ludicrously false) promises of wealth, pleasure, and freedom. Industry required a more docile labour force, the State required revenues from double-income taxation. At a level more fundamental than economics, the times have offered atomizing ideologies — the promise of “democracy” in which everyone will be treated the same, whether man, woman, or some other thing.