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-- An extremely important and informative article - a must-read!!!
An extremely important and informative article - a must-read!!!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20...nA2BHNlYwM3NDI-
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The liberal baby bust
What's the difference between Seattle and Salt Lake City? There are many differences, of course, but here's one you might not know. In Seattle, there are nearly 45% more dogs than children. In Salt Lake City, there are nearly 19% more kids than dogs.
This curious fact might at first seem trivial, but it reflects a much broader and little-noticed demographic trend that has deep implications for the future of global culture and politics. It's not that people in a progressive city such as Seattle are so much fonder of dogs than are people in a conservative city such as Salt Lake City. It's that progressives are so much less likely to have children.
It's a pattern found throughout the world, and it augers a far more conservative future - one in which patriarchy and other traditional values make a comeback, if only by default. Childlessness and small families are increasingly the norm today among progressive secularists. As a consequence, an increasing share of all children born into the world are descended from a share of the population whose conservative values have led them to raise large families.
Today, fertility correlates strongly with a wide range of political, cultural and religious attitudes. In the USA, for example, 47% of people who attend church weekly say their ideal family size is three or more children. By contrast, 27% of those who seldom attend church want that many kids.
In Utah, where more than two-thirds of residents are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 92 children are born each year for every 1,000 women, the highest fertility rate in the nation. By contrast Vermont - the first to embrace gay unions - has the nation's lowest rate, producing 51 children per 1,000 women.
Similarly, in Europe today, the people least likely to have children are those most likely to hold progressive views of the world. For instance, do you distrust the army and other institutions and are you prone to demonstrate against them? Then, according to polling data assembled by demographers Ron Lesthaeghe and Johan Surkyn, you are less likely to be married and have kids or ever to get married and have kids. Do you find soft drugs, homosexuality and euthanasia acceptable? Do you seldom, if ever, attend church? Europeans who answer affirmatively to such questions are far more likely to live alone or be in childless, cohabiting unions than are those who answer negatively.
This correlation between secularism, individualism and low fertility portends a vast change in modern societies. In the USA, for example, nearly 20% of women born in the late 1950s are reaching the end of their reproductive lives without having children. The greatly expanded childless segment of contemporary society, whose members are drawn disproportionately from the feminist and countercultural movements of the 1960s and '70s, will leave no genetic legacy. Nor will their emotional or psychological influence on the next generation compare with that of people who did raise children.
Single-child factor
Meanwhile, single-child families are prone to extinction. A single child replaces one of his or her parents, but not both. Consequently, a segment of society in which single-child families are the norm will decline in population by at least 50% per generation and quite quickly disappear. In the USA, the 17.4% of baby boomer women who had one child account for a mere 9.2% of kids produced by their generation. But among children of the baby boom, nearly a quarter descend from the mere 10% of baby boomer women who had four or more kids.
This dynamic helps explain the gradual drift of American culture toward religious fundamentalism and social conservatism. Among states that voted for President Bush in 2004, the average fertility rate is more than 11% higher than the rate of states for Sen. John Kerry.
It might also help to explain the popular resistance among rank-and-file Europeans to such crown jewels of secular liberalism as the European Union. It turns out that Europeans who are most likely to identify themselves as "world citizens" are also less likely to have children.
Rewriting history?
Why couldn't tomorrow's Americans and Europeans, even if they are disproportionately raised in patriarchal, religiously minded households, turn out to be another generation of '68? The key difference is that during the post-World War II era, nearly all segments of society married and had children. Some had more than others, but there was much more conformity in family size between the religious and the secular. Meanwhile, thanks mostly to improvements in social conditions, there is no longer much difference in survival rates for children born into large families and those who have few if any siblings.
Tomorrow's children, therefore, unlike members of the postwar baby boom generation, will be for the most part descendants of a comparatively narrow and culturally conservative segment of society. To be sure, some members of the rising generation may reject their parents' values, as often happens. But when they look for fellow secularists with whom to make common cause, they will find that most of their would-be fellow travelers were quite literally never born.
Many will celebrate these developments. Others will view them as the death of the Enlightenment. Either way, they will find themselves living through another great cycle of history.
Phillip Longman is a fellow at the New America Foundation and the author of The Empty Cradle: How Falling Birthrates Threaten World Prosperity and What to Do About It. This essay is adapted from his cover story in the current issue of Foreign Policy magazine.
this article just proves why the liberal philosophy and way of life is dangerous to western civilization. Funny how liberals mock church going conservatives for their beliefs, especially in europe where less and less people attend church, but these liberals will not even survive very long.
liberals support gay unions, and the result is a state like Vermont with the lowest fertility rate. That along with abortions is not going to ensure the survival of western society.
The reason why this is not just a democrat or republican issue and why its a danger to western civilization is because the west will be overcome by muslims. just look at the recent statements from the radical imam in Norway.
article
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| We're the ones who will change you," Krekar told Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet in his first interview since an uproar broke out over cartoons deemed offensive to Muslims. "Just look at the development within Europe, where the number of Muslims is expanding like mosquitoes," Krekar said. "Every western woman in the EU is producing an average of 1.4 children. Every Muslim woman in the same countries are producing 3.5 children. "By 2050, 30 percent of the population in Europe will be Muslim." |
Re: An extremely important and informative article - a must-read!!!
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| Originally posted by HardTranceProd |
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| Originally posted by sponger at that rate the west can't survive, thanks to liberals and their gay unions and abortions and no family values |
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| Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN \"the west\" |
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| Originally posted by shaolin_Z pkc, I never understood why you why your quotes are always followed by a back-slash |
Yeah, I must say that I've noticed the trend too and that the author pinpointed my exact fears. Overall I have a feeling that this does not look like it might end up as a good thing. Secular and liberal people often fail to realize that it's not just their social influence that matters, it's often their families that do more to carry on their legacy. The thing is that with the rise of feminism and anarchism in the 60's the traditional family values have been relativized in the minds of the average liberal person, and that led to a decreased number of their children. All that can be done to prevent that sequence of events is either embracing the chinese 1 or 2 child policy (which would probably be a demographic disaster), or to reinstate the family first mindset into secular and liberal people in order for them to have more kids (which I really have no idea how to achieve).
anyone care to do the statistics research and math to figure out how long before we are left with around 10% forward-thinkers or less?
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| Originally posted by Psy-T anyone care to do the statistics research and math to figure out how long before we are left with around 10% forward-thinkers or less? |
"forward-thinkers" 
how ironic that "forward-thinkers" can't think ahead far enough to ensure the survival of their thinking. i think by the end of this century we will see europe and their "forward-thinking" completely overrun by middle-eastern/muslim ideology.
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| Originally posted by sponger "forward-thinkers" how ironic that "forward-thinkers" can't think ahead far enough to ensure the survival of their thinking. i think by the end of this century we will see europe and their "forward-thinking" completely overrun by middle-eastern/muslim ideology. |
genes vs memes is fascinating. it's interesting that more highly educated people are less likely to have as many children as those from uneducated or impoverished backgrounds. Predicting what will become of this sociological trend is impossible; the world may become much more conservative than it already is, or perhaps those children who come from smaller, educated, secular families will be more able to adapt to change in a future that is bound to be very different from our own. Now compare these future adults to those who've grown up in larger more conservative families that rigidly stick to their traditions and values and whom are less ready to embrace change than the liberal minority. Perhaps its this minority who will become the leaders of tomorrow? who knows.
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| Originally posted by Psy-T if 'we' would breed as much as 'you' do, the world would be in an even bigger mess by now (overpopulation among other things) |
That was a great article, and it is a great theory about one of the causes of the recent rise of religious fundamentalism and fanaticism around the world.
I alluded to this problem over a month ago when talking about how Bush got elected and how it's going to get worse because of birth rates and posted some links to stats - http://www.tranceaddict.com/forums/...12&pagenumber=3
It's really sad that some of you idiots think that overpopulating the planet and having a population race with opposing cultures is a good thing. It's the same stupid philosophy that caused the nuclear arms race between the US and the Soviets. BTW, can you imagine the Cold War if it were fought between religious fundamentalists on both sides 
Lastly, these people may have more bodies to use as cannon fodder when a big relgious war breaks out, but they sure won't be of the intelligent sort. If you'd compare the education levels and IQs of that one kid born to the liberal minded family, i'd take it over the same for 5 kids born to conservatives who don't really have time to fully raise all of them well because they overburdened themselves.
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| Originally posted by Groundhog Boy I alluded to this problem over a month ago when talking about how Bush got elected and how it's going to get worse because of birth rates and posted some links to stats - http://www.tranceaddict.com/forums/...12&pagenumber=3 It's really sad that some of you idiots think that overpopulating the planet and having a population race with opposing cultures is a good thing. It's the same stupid philosophy that caused the nuclear arms race between the US and the Soviets. BTW, can you imagine the Cold War if it were fought between religious fundamentalists on both sides |
| quote: |
| Lastly, these people may have more bodies to use as cannon fodder when a big relgious war breaks out, but they sure won't be of the intelligent sort. If you'd compare the education levels and IQs of that one kid born to the liberal minded family, i'd take it over the same for 5 kids born to conservatives who don't really have time to fully raise all of them well because they overburdened themselves. |
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| Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 I don't think that the amount of children, as long as it's kept in reasonable bounds, has too much of an impact on the quality of upbringing. I know people who had a single child and raised it horribly, as well as some people who had 5 kids and raised them pretty succesfully. |
I wonder who posted this topic first, the PD kids or that WhiteManAwake fool who got banned for double posting this stuff in MD. The aging population is old news, we've been underbreeding for a long time, yet the population continues to grow from people mostly outside the western world. It doesn't really bother me tbh, this isn't a war, they aren't trying to whipe us off the earth, they just want to survive.
Maybe being American distorts my persective on this, I'm a mixed breed, I see no problems in being genetically outnumbered because I have no single ethnicity that I can identify with. I feel like alot of these articles are attempts to scare us into having children, to fight to outnumber the other group, but that other group really isn't so bad, not to mention being conservative doesn't pass down through genes. I was born and raised in a religous fundie family but I changed my mind about some things when I got older.
Personaly I think there are more people on the planet than nature can sustainably support, but I'm not so cruel to suggest killing 3 out of 4 people. I can do my part to make the world better without mass producing children.
I suspect population growth worldwide will come to a screeching halt, which is a necessity for the survival of future generations. Until now nature has usually had checks & balances to the population growth of anything until humans interrupted the cycle. My predictions.
1) Bird flu will kill a large portion of the World Population, especially in countries where health care is poor.
2) Aids will continue to kill off a large part of the African Poplation, and will probably spread into the Middle East. The largest growth in AIDs victoms is women in Sub Saharan Africa, which will cause a massive drop in birth rate. The cost for caring for those victoms plus the likeliness of massive famines due to increased drought from global warming will make having more children very unpractical.
3) I would suspect that Iraq's civil war will continue for years. Not too many women will want to raise children in those conditions.
4) As South Americas & Indias consumer wealth grows, and as sending children to university becomes a priority of most children, parents will have smaller families. The size of families in Chile is getting as low as that in Western Europe.
5) The birth rate in Central America is rapidly falling, and family planning is becomming more popular there despite objections of the Catholic Church. Many of those countries plus ones in the Caribbean are already extremely crowded and migration to the U.S. & increasingly Canada will continue. Canada has actually announced last year that they plan on accepting 10 million new educated immigrants in the next 10 years to remain competitive, especially with the U.S. population being more than 7 times larger.
I really cant complain that there is a large immigrant population in my area, including myself. Alot of my friends belong to many different backgrounds, and I've been to many different ethnic festivals & like foreign food, and from my observations - most of the good restaurants in my area are run by Latinos & Asians. While there has been alot of press on problems caused by the MS 13 recently, what they dont report is that there is a huge & growing legal Latino Middle Class of which many run their own businesses. As for the Electronic Music Scene, I cant really think of many countries that I havent met people from at Glow. It is a truly international scene there, and I've met alot of very interesting people there.
Also in the previous metro area I lived - Windsor, Ontario; that area is very diverse, especially with alot of Italians, Portugese, Greek, Serbian, Croatian, Lebanese, Pakistani & Chinese. The fact that there are people from almost every country in the world becomes obvious in the citywide ethnic fest "Carousal of the Nations" in June. Living there, if you really look at issues of crime, most of the problems there were from lazy, non immigrant, white trash ( just my own observation that immigrants tend to be better workers ) who want money, drugs & alcohol, but dont want to work for it, or obnoxious underage drunken tourist from Detroit.
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