It is not only the Russians and the Chinese who have a demographic problem (follow the link to "The Withering Away of Russia," "President of a Disappearing Russia," and "Cradle Robbing in China"). It is very much a European and, yes, even a North American problem. Seven million people have viewed this "Muslim Demographics" video. See what you think.



The problem with video arguments is that they generally do not support what they say with footnotes. How true are these claims? The 8.1 fertility rate among Dutch Muslims seems overstated. No country in the world has a rate anywhere near that high. Also it does not account for immigrant rates dropping once their community settles into prosperity. This video questions some of the figures.



Nonetheless, we most certainly have a problem. When I was in high school, we were warned of an overpopulation problem. The planet, we were told, could not support the world population growing as it was. They gave us the figures, made their scientific projections, and assured us that having babies was a form of planetary suicide. Here we are just one generation later, and we're vanishing from the face of the earth.

The CIA World Factbook estimates that for 2009, 104 of the 225 countries (including the EU) have a fertility rate of less than the 2.11 needed for replacing a previous generation. For example:

USA 2.05 (not the 1.6 that the video claims)
France 1.98
Sweden 1.67
Netherlands 1.66
Britain 1.66
Canada 1.58 (notice they lag far behind their liberty-oriented American neighbor)
European Union 1.51
Germany 1.41
Italy and Spain 1.31

That's Europe.

But many other countries have extremely low fertility rates. Our major geo-political competitors are also doing poorly. China has a fertility rate of 1.79 and Russia a devastating 1.41. The industrialized East is rapidly depopulating. Japan and South Korea are at 1.21. Taiwan is 1.14 and Singapore has a rate of only 1.09. Poor Eastern Europe is doing even more poorly than their cousins to the west. The entire region is reproducing itself at a rate between only 1.2 and 1.5 per couple, except for Albania, a country close to my heart, which is close to thriving at 2.01. It is not just the rich materialist nations that are declining. Poor materialist countries are also languishing. Cuba's rate stands at 1.83, and Vietnam at 1.61.

Iran is not atheist and materialist, but their fertility rate is 1.71. Perhaps oil funded social security programs are the cause.

I would not presume to speak with confidence on the situation in places like Vietnam or Chile (1.92), but what is bringing the West to this civilizational suicide is fairly obvious. It is first of all self-indulgent secular materialism. If this world is all there is and if the fundamental good is my own comfortable self-preservation, then the only reason for having children at all is to provide for one's old age when one is no longer able to work. The wealthy of course don't have that concern, and so have no need of children beyond carrying on the family name, if that is even an issue.

The welfare state removes this concern for everyone. The state provides for your old age, as does a growing economy together in conjunction with wise investments. Medicare and Social Security give you all the benefits of children without the expense and the headaches.

Lastly, there is feminism, the all purpose poison. When we break down all sorts of barriers--cultural, legal, logistical, etc.-- so that women may enter the workforce and pursue any career they choose, it is soon culturally expected that they will take this course. It also becomes economically necessary. Salaries adjust so that one income is no longer sufficient for a middle class way of life. Children become both too expensive and too inconvenient to have more than one or two of them.

The United States has by far the highest fertility rate (2.05) of all western industrialized nations (though followed closely by France at 1.98, oddly enough). My suspicion is that this has something to do with the unusually great strength of religious faith among Americans.

Catholics used to be known for their large families, but they have conformed to the culture and are pursuing their enlightened self-interest like everyone else. You still see large families with four to eight children in some Evangelical churches, but they are exceptional. If people who know the Lord and trust him to provide for their families and bless both them and the world through their families do not have but one or two children*, what hope is there that anyone else will populate our future, and thus that America and the West will have a future?

What I find most interesting about this video is the call to action for Christians at the end of it. The call to action is to evangelize Muslims (a good thing, in my view), not to have large families. Having a large family and taking the necessary steps to raise your children in godliness is a profoundly important way of loving your neighbor. With that in mind, examine yourself for what your attitudes are with regard to (1) self-indulgent secular materialism, (2) the welfare state, and (3) feminism, or the interchangeability of men and women in society. Are you part of our civilizational suicide or part of the remedy?

With a view to that, here is the first of several parts of Mark Steyn's Heritage Foundation speech, "America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It" (Jan. 10, 2007). You can navigate your way to the rest of it on YouTube. He describes how Europe is depopulating itself irreversibly and allowing itself to be replaced demographically by Muslims through immigration and much larger families.

On the demographic problem and the general civilizational collapse, you may explore this bibliography.

Bat Ye'or, Eurabia: The Euro Arab Axis.

Melanie Phillips, Londonistan.

Bruce Bawer, While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying The West From Within.

Mark Steyn, America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It.

Walter Laqueur, The Last Days of Europe: Epitaph for an Old Continent.

George Weigel, The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America, and Politics Without God.

Bernard Lewis, The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror.

Joseph Ratzinger, The Dialectics of Secularization.

Claire Berlinski, Menace in Europe: Why the Continent's Crisis is America's Too.

*Keep in mind that some people are biologically unable to have children or have not been able to have more than one or two. Furthermore, some people have had to limit the size of their family for medical reasons. So we can make these broad observations and judgments, but no one should jump to conclusions regarding particular couples.

"The more time people spend before the computer screen or any screen, the less time and desire they have for two human activities critical to a fruitful and demanding intellectual life: reading and conversation. The media invade, and in many instances destroy altogether, the silence that promotes reading and the free time required for both solitary thinking and social conversation." -- Susan Jacoby, The Age of American Unreason (New York: Pantheon, 2008), p.247.

I was explaining to a prospective student for the fall at The King's College why I do not permit the use of laptop computers in my classroom. She was surprisingly agreeable to this policy, and I found her reason illuminating.

She told me that relationships among her peers are mediated by screens, whether computers and cell phones. Their social life centers on Facebook and MySpace. The communicate via text messaging and cell phone. Consider all the 14 year olds walking around constantly on the phone. One way or another, they're distant when they do not have to be. Face to face relationship is one of the most precious goods in life--when it is done right. A kiss between two people is a particularly intimate face to face relationship. God's promise to his redeemed people is that they will see him one day "face to face" (I Cor. 12). But it is disappearing among those of the emerging generation.

This self-imposed distance between close friends is changing the nature and quality of human relationships. In electronically mediated relationships, people are more careless in what they say, and in particular they are bolder in what they say to the opposite sex. They say things they would never say "to your face." People of the rising generation are socially more awkward and have a more difficult time sustaining a friendship. Marriage will be even more difficult than it has been for previous generations.

You might find Maggie Jackson's recent book, Distracted, on the effect of email on one's attention span interesting.

An older and more philosophical writing (and more difficult to find) is George Grant's essay with the intentionally ironic title, "The computer does not impose on us the ways it should be used" (in Beyond Industrial Growth, Abraham Rotstein ed. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1976. 117-31).

In the wake of President Obama's commencement address at University of Notre Dame, controversial because of the university's Roman Catholicism and the President's passionate commitment to killing any unborn baby that anyone suggests killing (and sometimes even born ones), this video-text of John Piper's response to the President's statements on "reproductive freedom" back in January are well worth the three minutes it takes to view it.



(The text graphics are artsy, perhaps post-modern, and I suspect they corrupt us as we watch them appear and move and explode and such.)

Read on, then hold onto your seats. Given the way we have chosen to ride out this recession, we could be in for a bumpy landing.

This is an interesting and encouraging development. Explorers is a branch of the Boy Scouts that trains young people in the techniques and discipline of law enforcement, including counter-terrorism and border patrol. ("Scouts Train to Fight Terrorists, and More," New York Times, May 13, 2009.) No doubt the left, upon reading this, will raise the roof, even though law enforcement is not only a necessary function, but also a noble ambition.

Notice, however, that even though this is a program of the Boy Scouts, it includes girls.

In 2005, Anthony Esolen published a marvelous article on the effect of the sexual revolution and its inevitable consequence, homosexual liberation, on friendship between men, and the devastating consequences of that for the sustainability of our civilization. Yes, it's that serious. ("A Requiem For Friendship: Why Boys Will Not Be Boys and Other Consequences of the Sexual Revolution," Touchstone, Sept. 2005.)

The prominence of male homosexuality changes the language for teenage boys. It is absurd and cruel to say that the boy can ignore it. Even if he would, his classmates will not let him....

For good reason boys used to build tree houses and hang signs barring girls. They know, if only instinctively, that the fire of the friendship cannot subsist otherwise. If the company of girls is made possible, then the company of girls becomes a necessity, if only to avoid having to explain to others and to oneself why one would ever prefer the company of one’s own sex. Thus what is perfectly natural and healthy, indeed very much needed, is cast as irrational and bigoted, or dubious and weak; and thus some boys will cobble together their own brotherhoods that eschew tenderness altogether—criminal brotherhoods that land them in prison. This is all right by us, it seems....

In the name of protecting homosexuals, we ignore the feelings of boys and snatch from them their dwindling opportunities to forge just such friendships whereof homosexual relations are a delusive mimicry....

Reader, the next time you feel moved to pity the delicate man in the workstation near you, give a thought also to an adolescent somewhere, one among uncounted millions, a kid with acne maybe, a kid with an idea or a love, who needs a friend. Know then that your tolerance for the flambeau, which is little more than a self-congratulating cowardice, or your easy and poorly considered approval of the shy workmate’s request that he be allowed to “marry” his partner, means that the unseen boy will not find that friend, and that the idea and the love will die....

No civilization has been built without that foundation of male camaraderie directed toward civic ends: not Athens, not Rome, not Japan, not India. It remains to be seen whether any civilization can long endure without it. Looking at what used to be our cities, I’d say not.

Of course, these are just samples of the deep wells of insight that Esolen offers on this matter in the article. You must read the whole thing if you read anything.

Some of this insight can be found in popular culture, but only traces of it. Here is "Guy Love" from Scubs.

Anthony Esolen is Professor of English at Providence College in Providence, Rhode Island. He is a senior editor of Touchstone.