No Babies, No Problem

I'm with Rod Dreher: I went into this Nation piece on conservative demographic panic hoping for a smart, nuanced left-wing take on the thorny problem of the West's changing demographics - one that took some jabs at the "demographic winter" hype and accused social conservatives of using the spectre of population decline to justify their nostalgia for pre-modernity and the patriarchy (which would be a fair accusation, in some cases), but also acknowledged that demography is going to cause some real problems for developed societies over the next century, and grappled seriously with the possibility that falling birthrates might be one of the larger challenges facing the socialist, tolerant, post-historical paradigm so dear to readers of The Nation.

Instead, the piece basically reads: Patriarchy patriarchy patriarchy, Catholic evangelical fascist, Mussolini Hitler, racist racist racist. I guess The Nation knows its audience, but still ...

Comments

Agreed, lousy article.

It's a familiar style of argumentation-- present data scarcely and tendentiously, throw in an anecdote or two, and present the names and orientations of your ideological rivals with an underlying eye-roll or sneer.

"No refutation needed," the writer implies, "these guys are politically incorrect, with historical roots in fascism/communism/whatever other badism."

It's the same style as the National Review or the Weekly Standard.

The key difference is that the Nation is regarded as fringish and without influence, whereas people from and influenced by the WS and NR have been running the country for the better part of the past decade.

Let me offer a bold "Third Way" proposal-- lock the chick who wrote this article in a room with Victor Davis Hanson and Mark Steyn for the next few months or years.

Posted by Elvis Elvisberg | February 21, 2008 9:18 AM

Wait a minute? You're sure it was "..fascist, Mussolini Hitler, racist..."? There was nothing about Rove?

Posted by Sanjay | February 21, 2008 9:35 AM

All right, I'll take a stab at a 'smart, nuanced, left-wing take' on the West's changing demographics. (Beware-long post, but I am an ecologist and therefore take these things seriously).

Of course population decline is going to cause some problems in Western societies, some of them quite severe and painful. It will mean, among other things, that we have to adjust to a somewhat lower standard of living. (As an anti-materialist, I think that's a _good_ thing.) But these problems are 1) better than the alternative 2) not limited to the West, 3) can be dealt with, and 4) temporary.

1) Ross, I'm not sure why you never mention the flip side of the coil, overpopulation. Surely no one thinks it isn't a problem? In the long run, overpopulation is a bigger threat to our maintaining a healthy civilization and planet than underpopulation. There is lots of reason to believe that there are already too many people in the world for our natural resources to support at a healthy standard of living and in balance with the natural environment. Fisheries, water, forests, oil, agricultural area, take your pick- most of our natural resources are being drawn down far beyond sustainable levels. Species overshoot their carrying capacity all the time, and when they do, the result is population collapse caused by famine, disease, and the struggle for existence. The falling birthrates over most of the world are one of the great successes of the last 30-40 years (to avoid the threat of overpopulation) and we shouldn't forget that. I know of no biologist who thinks that overpopulation isn't a problem, and in fact I have a hard time even conceiving of how anyone could think that somehow 'human ingenuity will always provide' or whatever.

2) Birthrates are falling not just in 'the West', but all over the world. East Asia, Southeast Asia, South America, Central America, South Asia, are all, at most, a little bit above replacement. A broad swathe of countries, from a variety of cultures and economic levels, have reached replacement fertility or below- Brazil, Costa Rica, Vietnam, Thailand, Guyana, Chile, Iran, Lebanon, South Africa....It's not just a feature of the West, it's a global feature and it's a good thing, for the most part. Of course birth rates in some of the European countries are unhealthily low, and they should try to raise them a little bit, but a total fertility rate of about 2.1 or slightly below (to _slowly_ relieve global population pressure) is what each country should be aiming for. Only two major regions of the world still have high birth rates, Africa and (with some exceptions) the Muslim world.

3)We can deal with the problems of population decline. It will mean later retirement ages, longer working hours, and in general getting used to a somewhat lower standard of living- no more of this consumption-oriented society. But those changes would be inevitable anyway, given the near-future reality of intense resource shortages, and as long as the sacrifices are spread around equally, I don't think that accepting a somewhat lower standard of comfort is a bad thing.

4)No society is going to dwindle away to nothing. In the long run, populations tend to be self-correcting, at least in the case of a species as adaptable and self-aware as humans. When the population of a country drops low enough, then land will be cheap enough and the cost of living will be low enough that it will be to more people's interest to have larger families, just as when populations are to high, their birthrates tend to fall. Density dependent birth and death rates are the bread and butter of population ecology- I don't see why this wouldn't apply to humans as well.

Abnormally low birth rates in a few countries like Germany and Japan are without doubt a big problem, but the fact that, say, Brazil has reached replacement level fertility is a _good_ thing (all the more since it was able to achieve small families without legalizing abortion.) The bigger problem is the two areas of the world, Africa and the Muslim Middle East, which still have high birth rates. How are they going to support their expanding populations, and are they doomed to decades of war, famine, disease and environmental degradation? That's the question that keeps _me_ up at night.

And if you're worried about Muslims taking over Europe, the solution is simple- lock the doors, and keep them out. Europe doesn't _need_ high immigration rates, and if they were willing to accept a more austere economy and a lower standard of living, they could maintain a stable or slightly declining population without having to invite in tons of Muslims.

Posted by Hector | February 21, 2008 9:39 AM

Help me out here, Ross. Because it would be much easier for me to understand this if I actually knew what your concerns about the demographic changes are. I'm sure there are some concerns that don't, following logic down its inevitable rabbit holes, eventually wind up as some version of "the brown people are going to take over." But I haven't seen them. Honestly. And I've looked. And as much as the Nation may have failed in its obligations to explore the conservative argument against demographic change, surely the burden of proof is on the conservatives to actually make the positive argument in the first place.

(By the way, why is it still ok to call the Nation or its readers socialist, but not to call The National Review and its readers fascist?)

Posted by Freddie | February 21, 2008 10:36 AM

Freddie,

To be fair to Ross, there are some legitimate arguments for being concerned about low birth rates that I could share to some extent. Ross might believe that having children is important to one's spiritual development, and that people who refuse to have children are depriving themselves of something important. He might believe that a society with fewer children is inevitably one that will be less welcoming and accomodating of those people who do choose to have larger families. Or he might be concerned about the fact that all over the world, Muslims are having more children than Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, or anyone else. This is a big problem in places ranging from England to Lebanon to India, and it's worth paying attention to. Lebanon, which was founded explicitly as a Christian homeland, is now about 60% Muslim, due in equal part to Christian emigration, Muslim immigration, and higher Muslim birth rates (Christians in Lebanon, like Christians in South India, have birth rates similar to those of people in France or England despite being much poorer.) I don't think that calling on everyone to have large families again is the solution, but i do recognize this is a problem.

Posted by Hector | February 21, 2008 10:50 AM

I'm with Freddie. This seems to be a very broad claim:

demography is going to cause some real problems for developed societies over the next century, and grappled seriously with the possibility that falling birthrates might be one of the larger challenges facing the socialist, tolerant, post-historical paradigm so dear to readers of The Nation.

What "real problems", Ross? Why do you characterize them as problems? What is the evidence of their existence?

Posted by DivGuy | February 21, 2008 10:53 AM

I second the commenters above. What are Ross's worries about demography? I can think of some that seem legitimate, others not.

Posted by Brendan | February 21, 2008 11:38 AM

Instead, the piece basically reads: Patriarchy patriarchy patriarchy, Catholic evangelical fascist, Mussolini Hitler, racist racist racist.

LOL, so it reads like a MoeLarryAndJesus post then.

Posted by Deuce | February 21, 2008 11:42 AM

I guess Ross's point is that if a weak article claims racism is involved in the we-need-more-white-babies movements in Europe then that proves there is no racism involved in those movements.

Of course Ross saw no hint of racism in Saint Reagan's "welfare queens driving Cadillacs" anecdotes, either, or in his own "welfare duchess comments, so I'd have to conclude that he has a blind spot in this area.

From the article: "The racial preferences behind Berlusconi's "baby bonus" came into embarrassing relief when immigrant parents were accidentally sent checks for their offspring and then asked to return the money: the Italian government hadn't meant to promote those births."

Of course they hadn't. It's certainly "the right babies" that are wanted by most of these "activists." That's been true in this country, too, as seen in writings by Ben Wattenberg (for over 20 years) and Zulu-loving Pat Buchanan.

Apocalyptic scenarios should be laughed at generally, and this "not enough babies" frightfest is no different. And if the Catholic Church is so concerned about it, why not set their priests lose to fornicate away and help populate? Just tell them to stick with the white women to keep the (yes) fascists happy.

Posted by TheBannedMoeLarryAndJesus | February 21, 2008 11:47 AM

Il Duce quotes and writes: "Instead, the piece basically reads: Patriarchy patriarchy patriarchy, Catholic evangelical fascist, Mussolini Hitler, racist racist racist.

LOL, so it reads like a MoeLarryAndJesus post then."

I have never said anything about the "patriarchy."

Posted by TheBannedMoeLarryAndJesus | February 21, 2008 11:56 AM

I think Hector basically gets it right (and I can't believe that I just said that).

I would pile on to what others have said about the issue of racism. I really do believe that racism does have more than a little to do with this issue. The natalist movement seems to have a lot of people who are far less concerned about whether birthrates are going down than they are about whether white birthrates are going down. Even Hector has a bit of this in his concern about whether Muslim birthrates are still high while others are lower.

Obviously, to a liberal who believes in racial and ethnic equality, this is a very troublesome argument and line of thought, because we really don't want to get into the frame of mind where we think, for instance, that white births are good but dark-skinned births aren't, or that Anglo births are good but births to Latino familes are bad, or that Christian births are good but Muslim births are bad.

I might also say that I don't totally buy the premise either. Who one's parents are is only one determinant of what you grow up to be. And this is only more true in our modern world of globalized culture. I suspect that just like the Christian world has seen, the Muslim world is going to see more and more secularization, and, in fact, some of what is going on with respect to Islamic fundamentalism is probably a reaction to the budding signs of that. Over time, there's no guarantee that all those Muslim babies are going to grow up to be even devout Muslims, let alone potential terrorists or enemies of the US.

And I certainly don't buy that, for instance, a Hispanic American birth is any different from a white birth. The children of immigrant families tend to assimilate quite a bit.

So I do think there's a certain type of person who sees in natalism a chance to fight back against minorities and non-Christians. And there is quite a bit of prejudice in that worldview.

Posted by Dilan Esper | February 21, 2008 12:24 PM

Dilan,

Re: I suspect that just like the Christian world has seen, the Muslim world is going to see more and more secularization, and, in fact, some of what is going on with respect to Islamic fundamentalism is probably a reaction to the budding signs of that.

I don't know that secularization is an irreversible thing. It seems to me that secularization is dependent on prosperity, and if the world enters a prolonged economic crisis (as I think it will, based on my concerns about natural resources), people in the Christian world will probably become more religious again. It's also worth pointing out that Latin America hasn't really _secularized_, even while the Catholic church has lost some influence there. Unlike in Europe, when people in Latin America turn away from Catholicism they usually become evangelical Protestants rather than agnostics.

Whether globalization will last the coming energy crisis is also a question admitting of some doubt.

I have no preference for one race over another, but I do have a preference for Christianity over Islam, if that counts as 'prejudice'.

Posted by Hector | February 21, 2008 12:44 PM

Ha. Having lived in Japan for over 10 years I can say that a lot of the drop in Japanese birth rates can be directly traced to the lousy situation women and families are placed in when women do give birth: pressure from Japanese companies for mothers to quit, the mind-boggling boringness of being a housewife with little interaction with society, difficulties in getting back on the career track when mothers do try to come back years down the road, lack of day-care facilities, the financial burden of having kids, etc. etc. and so forth.

Is it any surprise that Japanese women have been voting with their feet?

Is it any surprise that in ANY country where women are faced with the choice: "you can either have kids and raise them, or have a career" that women decide upon the latter? Until we figure out a way to bring back childraising as something EVERYONE (mothers, fathers, business) is responsible for, rather than something that is shoved off on the mothers (who are also supposed to be making all the career sacrifices--remember all the stories about The Mommy Track?), many women will make the decision to have fewer or no children.

The other economic mechanism to entice childbearing is to turn back into being an agricultural economy, where extra children meant extra hands on the farm. Anyone want that?

Posted by grumpy realist | February 21, 2008 12:59 PM

grumpy realist,

I suspect that Japanese family life looks rather different from American family life, even when both are middle-class families with stay-at-home moms. American families with stay-at-home moms are often highly egalitarian, with a high level of paternal involvement. I don't know how it is now, but older American surveys cited in "The Second Shift" said that husbands in working-mother families did not do much more housework than husbands in stay-at-home mom families. Being an American housewife and being a Japanese housewife are not necessarily very similar occupations.

Posted by Amy P | February 21, 2008 1:12 PM

Grumpy Realist,

I agree with that. I think our society should be set up so that fathers take on a bigger share of childrearing. (If i recall correctly, Castro's Cuba at one point in the '60s actually passed a law decreeing that men had to do 50% of housework and child care.) I also think that the state, and employers, and communities (churches, extended families, etc.) should take on a bigger role. Without doubt. (Of course in my utopian society the 'employers' would be workers' and peasants' cooperatives, and so forth.)

I would suspect that actually agriculture is going to employ a lot more people in the society of the future, after we start running out of cheap energy to fuel our tractors and supply us with cheap fertilizer and trucking. Some aspects of that peasant society might be coming back whether you want them or not.

Posted by Hector | February 21, 2008 1:16 PM

Just to throw out what I think Ross' concerns with demographics would be:

Social democracies employ large social safety nets that provide through redistribution tax revenue from taxpayers to at risk populations (the poor, unemployed, the elderly, the disabled, etc). As such those safety nets require large and continuous tax revenues. The problem is that such systems were designed and based on demographic patterns from an earlier era. A substantial change in demographics (a reduction in birth rates, the addition of too many poor immigrants, what have you) can make the foundations of the safety net untenable by messing with the revenue flow that funds them.

Thus the concern for the Northern European countries is that as their population becomes older and there is a smaller tax base to fund the promised safety nets, how will that effect those programs. Like I said, that is a brief sketch of what Ross' concerns might be.

Posted by Civilized Crank | February 21, 2008 1:20 PM

Gee, Ross, you sneer at the word 'tolerant' as if it were... well, a bad thing. Do you think tolerance of other races and religions is a bad thing? I assume not, but you don't make that assumption an easy one to make.

Posted by tgb1000 | February 21, 2008 1:29 PM

Mr. Douthat

“accused social conservatives of using the spectre of population decline to justify their nostalgia for pre-modernity and the patriarchy (which would be a fair accusation, in some cases),

I hate to see an author as influential as Mr. Douthat fall into the contrived nomenclature of the left & the nostrums it inherently supports.

It is inherently false & anti-intellectual to characterize contemporary social conservatism & concern over population decline as “nostalgia for pre-modernity”

As recently as late 60’s & early 70’s the entirety of the western world had birth rates well above replacement level. Marriage rates were high, divorce & illegitimacy by comparison very low.

Are we expected to believe that this post industrial revolution & scientifically literate world was pre-modern?? How does championing the values of sexual restraint and fidelity to & within marriage make someone “pre-modern” in their thought?

This is the height of foolishness. There is nothing inherently “modern” about the values of the sexual revolution. By the same token there is nothing pre-modern about vigorously critiquing those values.

Can anyone honestly make the argument that conservative rags like National Review and The Weekly Standard are less radical and of a higher intellectual level than The Nation?

Posted by RICKM | February 21, 2008 1:34 PM

(sorry this is the full post)

“accused social conservatives of using the spectre of population decline to justify their nostalgia for pre-modernity and the patriarchy (which would be a fair accusation, in some cases),

I hate to see an author as influential as Mr. Douthat fall into the contrived nomenclature of the left & the nostrums it inherently supports.

It is inherently false & anti-intellectual to characterize contemporary social conservatism & concern over population decline as “nostalgia for pre-modernity”

As recently as late 60’s & early 70’s the entirety of the western world had birth rates well above replacement level. Marriage rates were high, divorce & illegitimacy by comparison very low.

Are we expected to believe that this post industrial revolution & scientifically literate world was pre-modern?? How does championing the values of sexual restraint and fidelity to & within marriage make someone “pre-modern” in their thought?

This is the height of foolishness. There is nothing inherently “modern” about the values of the sexual revolution. By the same token there is nothing pre-modern about vigorously critiquing those values.

The only people who say there is are those who (vainly) wish to conflate feminism & sexual license with scientific discovery & the critical method. No such link is justifiable.

Like wise “nostalgia for the…patriarchy” need beg the question… “what IS this “patriarchy.”????

Do 70% illegitimacy rates among African Americans make the underclass a “matriarchy”? Does desperation for a return to intact married childbearing/rearing denote “nostalgia for the…patriarchy” or simple humanity?

Are the married couples next door who both are in the paid labor force “post-patriarchal” & therefore represent a greater equality? What of the myriad of married couples who chose a traditional division of labor? Are they throwbacks to “post modernity” & therefore regressive?

Is not (as so many maintain) marriage itself the ultimate expression of the patriarchy, so therefore any married couple is regressive.

What of concern for woman who desperately want to have husbands & children yet find today’s sexual culture extremely un-conducive to stable family formation. Are these women harboring “nostalgia for the…patriarchy” ? Should they “raise the consciousness and resign themselves to being pioneers in the struggle for “gender equality”?

Please Ross…. Do not uncritically except their terms. Doing so risks you becoming them. And to be “them” is to be a very narrow, anti-intellectual, and ill-liberal mind.

Posted by Fitz | February 21, 2008 1:38 PM

Conservative concerns over the future of demography tend to be about maintaining American (or Italian, French, etc.) culture, not race.

I think Civilized Crank's point above about the social safety net is a second-order problem, but related.

Posted by right | February 21, 2008 1:52 PM

Civilized Crank,

All that means is that the social democracies will have to get used to a _lower quality_ welfare state, and will have to work harder to get the benefits of the welfare state (longer hours, later retirement age, more sharply rationed social services, etc.) That doesn't mean that they will give up on the idea of the welfare state itself. Indeed, if they enter a period of long-term hardship it seems to me that there would be even more social pressure to preserve what remains of the welfare state. The welfare state can have two functions- to spread around the wealth in times of prosperity, and to more equally spread around the burdens and sacrifices in a time of privation. The Second World War, after all, saw an expanded government role in the economy.

Posted by Hector | February 21, 2008 2:01 PM

I agree the article could have been much better, but to say it just the reason it comes off as "patriarchy, racism, facism" is because everyone involved in "natural-family" movement is either a racist, mysoginist, or facist. Sorry, but it's true, are we saying that the author of the piece should have reached out to the rational, even-tempered advocates in the "quiverfull" movement? If you think a woman's prime role in life is pushing out a litter of babies with the express purpose of increasing the ranks of a particular race/religion then you're pretty much a lunatic.

I think the strongest part of the article was the extent to which the idea of sex for pleasure is the real schism in the culture wars in this country. Or at least on this board that has a strong current of anti-sex prudery and nice-guy centered whining. Abortion, contraception, and the sexual revolution in general have largely divorced sex from procreation, which is either great or awful depending on who are. I get the sense that a lot of guys here and elsewhere have been largely left in the dust by the increased social capital that woman can exercise in 1st world western democracies, and resent this naturally. I'm not comparing anyone here to the Natural family maniacs in the article, but they do represent the logical conclusions of a contingent of broadly-speaking, begrieved men. Either divorced, single, or just lonely, women in general and the sexual revolution/feminists specifically are largely to blame for the condition that this particular breed find themself in.

Posted by dearleader nyc | February 21, 2008 2:04 PM

I went into this Nation piece on conservative demographic panic hoping for a smart, nuanced left-wing take on the thorny problem of the West's changing demographics

Well, why? This was clearly not a piece about overpopulation concerns vs actuarial difficulties in graying societies. If anything, there was more here about the Longman-esque type problems of graying societies then there was about the environmental problems of high population.

This was just noting that there are same damned creepy motivations that are sometimes behind pronatalist policies. Which is a perfectly valid point to make--if you're going to support pro-natalist policies, you're going to have to go through some extra legwork to distinguish yourself from the racists.

Posted by Consumatopia | February 21, 2008 2:09 PM

dearleader nyc writes: "If you think a woman's prime role in life is pushing out a litter of babies with the express purpose of increasing the ranks of a particular race/religion then you're pretty much a lunatic."

And how.

The seeming inability of many right-wingers to see such obvious bigotry in their own ranks is particularly important now - since we're about to go into a presidential campaign where the real wackaloon racist wingnuts will be a-quivering to go after Obama with every last sleazy race-baiting trick they can muster. Some demented cretin at the National Review has already all but claimed that he's a communist plant because his parents had an interracial marriage and only communists did such things back then. (I'm not sure the world is ready for the news that Franco Harris and Roy Campanella were commies, but there you go.) By the time Coulter and Limbaugh and O'Reilly get through most of their sheeple will think Obama is a Mau Mau who sleeps with a bone in his nose and dreams exclusively about raping white women.

Where will the, uh, more sober-minded right-wingers be while this is happening? Will they be writing about welfare queens and the urgent need for more white babies? Or will they finally stand up and show a little disgust towards the monsters who've been doing their dirty work for them all of these years?

Posted by TheBannedMoeLarryAndJesus | February 21, 2008 2:18 PM

It would be easier to dismiss charges of racism in the demographic debate without comments like this:

"Conservative concerns over the future of demography tend to be about maintaining American (or Italian, French, etc.) culture, not race."

Why should one believe that American culture is dependent on race? Are the values this country represents only applicable to anglos?

Let's look at the big demographic question the US right now, the increasing population of Mexican and Central American immigrants. I'm puzzled by the concerns that they represent some kind of threat to our "culture" because a) langauge aside, Mexican immigrants embody all of the values conservatives are constantly touting: very traditional, hard-working, Christian, large families, and they come from a democratic country, and b) "American Culture" has changed so much and so often since this countries founding that any claim to some kind of baseline constant "culture" this is now threatened rings hollow to me.

Posted by dearleader nyc | February 21, 2008 2:21 PM

It would be easier to dismiss charges of racism in the demographic debate without comments like this:

"Conservative concerns over the future of demography tend to be about maintaining American (or Italian, French, etc.) culture, not race."

Why should one believe that American culture is dependent on race? Are the values this country represents only applicable to anglos?

Let's look at the big demographic question the US right now, the increasing population of Mexican and Central American immigrants. I'm puzzled by the concerns that they represent some kind of threat to our "culture" because a) langauge aside, Mexican immigrants embody all of the values conservatives are constantly touting: very traditional, hard-working, Christian, large families, and they come from a democratic country, and b) "American Culture" has changed so much and so often since this countries founding that any claim to some kind of baseline constant "culture" this is now threatened rings hollow to me.

Posted by dearleader nyc | February 21, 2008 2:22 PM

True, an older population plus smaller tax base will put a strain on the welfare state. But isn't this by nature a fairly temporary problem that arises during the transition from a period of high birth rates to period of lower ones? Eventually the population will reach some new equilibrium.

But let's say we grant that birth rates are falling in the Western states, and it's a problem for non-racist/patriarchy reasons. Even if that's the case, doesn't the appropriate reaction depend on what is causing the decline? If, on the one hand, people would like to be having more children, but can't afford it, then this calls for some kind of policy response: make it easier for people to have the children they want through more tax credits, education subsidies, etc. I doubt anyone, including the people at the Nation, would object to this.

On the other hand, there's a sense that conservatives who worry about falling birth rates attribute it to some kind of moral corruption of society, whether they say this outright or not. Bracketing the merits of that claim (which I think is problematic, but not necessarily 100% crazy), it seems like a self-limiting phenomenon over time, since people who've bought into whatever pernicious modern ideology is responsible don't have kids to whom they can pass it on.

Posted by Brendan | February 21, 2008 2:23 PM

Hector,

I don't disagree with you, just simply putting out my guess at Ross' view since it had been questioned earlier. As an answer you are certainly right that demographics doesn't necessarily mean the end of the welfare state, though it could mean the end of the welfare state as we know it (by ushering in smaller safety nets, lower standard of living, etc).

Posted by Civilized Crank | February 21, 2008 2:25 PM

It's also worth pointing out that Latin America hasn't really _secularized_, even while the Catholic church has lost some influence there. Unlike in Europe, when people in Latin America turn away from Catholicism they usually become evangelical Protestants rather than agnostics.

You aren't incorrect about the relationship betwen secularism and prosperity, but in fact, prosperous parts of Latin America are secularizing. Sure, if you go to Ayacucho, Peru, you will still find lots of Christians, but if you go to Buenos Aires, you will see a society that is getting far away from the teachings of the Church.

And there are plenty of prosperous parts of the Muslim world, despite all of its problems. I would suspect that we will see more secularization in places like Dubai and Cairo, for instance, as well as in places outside the Arab world like Indonesia. There's plenty of secularization even in a place like Pakistan; that's really the base of support for the Pakistan People's Party that was headed by the late Benazir Bhutto.

The underlying theme of all these population arguments is a sort of pessimism (similar, ironically, to the pessimism of the anti-overpopulation arguments of the 1970's). People see lots of Muslims having babies and assume that means lots of radical Muslim babies, but that doesn't necessarily follow. Remember, mortality rates are high in poor places, so the places that have lower mortality rates (and therefore where fertility rates have the most impact) are the places most likely to be secularlized.

Finally, I do think that the preference for Christianity over Islam is a form of irrational prejudice. I'd cetainly prefer Muhammed Ali's form of Islam to the Christian Identity movement's form of Christianity, for instance. What is wrong with Islam is the parts of it that are too fundamentalist, too apologetic about terrorism, and too intolerant of other faiths. But there are plenty of Muslims who are not fundamentalist, are horrified of terrorism, and are perfectly tolerant of non-Muslims.

Rather than trying to reverse the demographic trends, I would rely on secularism and make efforts to support moderate, secular elements within all religious factions (including Christianity).

Posted by Dilan Esper | February 21, 2008 2:33 PM

"I don't know how it is now, but older American surveys cited in "The Second Shift" said that husbands in working-mother families did not do much more housework than husbands in stay-at-home mom families"

I saw some more recent studies that showed overall working men have less leisure time then working women. It's more than some women don't consider doing any type of "man jobs" to be housework. I do laugh when stay at home moms complain that their husband who provides from them doesn't do 50% of the house work.

Posted by JordanT | February 21, 2008 2:49 PM

The knee-jerk leftist canard of “racist-fascist-anti-sex, anti-women, insecure masculinity, xenophobic, etcetera… etcetera… etcetera…ad nausea” is just that: foul and noxious.

Such formulations are meant to stifle & shut down debate much more than enlighten.

If Swaziland was experiencing unprecedented population decline so that increased immigration was necessary for continued economic growth & labor shortages it would have every right to be concerned.

Psychologists mark a will to live (as opposed to resignation toward death) as a sign of a healthy mind.

Business leaders routinely recognize that companies that are not actively expanding their growth are poor investments.

I have never met a self described “natalist”. I have meet multiple scholars, authors, activists, and citizens concerned with western culture, the health of particular cultures, and more generally centered on optimal family formation & insuring their children’s dreams of marriage and family don’t go unfulfilled.

It’s a very strange left that can so readily shed a tear the lack of a formal “marriage” license in the hands of a committed gay couple but shares no sympathy or ideological elbow room for the single black Mothers & her child’s need of Husband and Father ;…nor the single career minded woman starring down her fertile years.

It’s a very strange left that can talk of “root causes” & “systemic change” while ignoring a Hispanic immigrant class that is following the black underclass into the cycles of illegitimacy & its in attendant poverty & tangle of pathologies.

Micro trends have macro consequences. Pointing out civilization decline is not chicken littlish (much less racist), rather: such observations are to be redaliy expected of any intellectual class that has a healthy love & respect for its own shared heritage.

Far beyond the more snide observation of Mark Steyn are a myriad of authors & scholars as diverse as David Hart, Bat Y’eor, Bruce Thornton, Kay S. Hymowitz, Sylvia Ann Hewlett, Bernard Lewis, Lawrence Wright, Melanie Phillips, George Weigel, Bruce Bawer, Ian Buruma, George Akerlof… (the list goes on)

All of whom realize the causes & consequences of what the U.N’s 2006 World Population prospectus called “an expected global upheaval that is without parallel in human history”

Posted by Fitz | February 21, 2008 3:58 PM

...fascist, Mussolini Hitler, racist racist racist.

Isn't this a page out of the Jonah Goldberg playbook? Isn't this the only page in the Jonah Goldberg playbook?

Posted by rj3 | February 21, 2008 4:09 PM

The Nation, trying to be oh so sophisticated, hasn't a clue about European realities. A harder headed fellow, Mark Steyn, speaks truth:

To avoid collapse, European nations will need to take in immigrants at a rate no stable society has ever attempted. The CIA is predicting the EU will collapse by 2020. Given that the CIA's got pretty much everything wrong for half a century, that would suggest the EU is a shoo-in to be the colossus of the new millennium. But even a flop spook is right twice a generation. If anything, the date of EU collapse is rather a cautious estimate. It seems more likely that within the next couple of European election cycles, the internal contradictions of the EU will manifest themselves in the usual way, and that by 2010 we'll be watching burning buildings, street riots and assassinations on American network news every night. Even if they avoid that, the idea of a childless Europe ever rivaling America militarily or economically is laughable. Sometime this century there will be 500 million Americans, and what's left in Europe will either be very old or very Muslim. Japan faces the same problem: Its population is already in absolute decline, the first gentle slope of a death spiral it will be unlikely ever to climb out of. Will Japan be an economic powerhouse if it's populated by Koreans and Filipinos? Very possibly. Will Germany if it's populated by Algerians? That's a trickier proposition.

Posted by Peter Leavitt | February 21, 2008 4:12 PM

If the shoe Fitz: "It’s a very strange left that can so readily shed a tear the lack of a formal “marriage” license in the hands of a committed gay couple but shares no sympathy or ideological elbow room for the single black Mothers & her child’s need of Husband and Father ;…nor the single career minded woman starring down her fertile years."

Hoo boy. Imagine having this thing in your family and having to listen to it pontificate on holidays.

Posted by TheBannedMoeLarryAndJesus | February 21, 2008 4:15 PM

"All that means is that the social democracies will have to get used to a _lower quality_ welfare state, and will have to work harder to get the benefits of the welfare state" Hector.

Oh that's all? I think if you told most nations this the "all that" would sound like quite a lot. Most people aren't ascetic or austere. The idea of a future of lower quality is going to sound pretty dour. I'm not sure Europeans have really faced something like that since the depression.

The rest isn't directed to you.

The demographic decline is the worst is Eastern Europe and Japan not France or Germany. In my case I think it'd be good if African immigrants could somehow come in and shore up the aging populations in Latvia or Bulgaria. Or if Southeast Asians shored up Japan. However I don't think that's very likely or realistic. Eastern Europe is not going to be as desirable an entry for immigrants and Japan is too insular to accept such a thing.

And the cry of "racism, racism" from advocates of population reduction strikes me as a bit hypocritical. Population "control" has a long history of racism. When Catholic bishops were ordering schools in Louisiana to integrate, birth control advocates tended to still be concerned that swarthy people were overproducing. Even now the birthrates of black Africans tends to be their main concern. True this is mostly for good reasons, but many African countries have not passed their "carrying capacity" and have reduced their birthrate. The "Fear of a Black Planet" stuff has come as much, or more, from their side of the aisle.

Posted by Thomas R | February 21, 2008 4:41 PM

Also "African immigrants" doesn't have to mean Muslims and Muslims doesn't have to mean radicals. Many West African Muslims are fairly moderate. A good deal of sub-Saharan Africa is Christian or pagan. Granted immigrating from Ghana to Europe might be harder, but it should be possible as the USA gets some sub-Saharan African immigrants.

Posted by Thomas R | February 21, 2008 4:47 PM

Thomas R wrote: "The idea of a future of lower quality is going to sound pretty dour. I'm not sure Europeans have really faced something like that since the depression."

The post-WW2 years weren't exactly a walk in the park for most Europeans. And, of course, a huge segment of the Europeans were living under Soviet domination until recently. I think they're very familiar with "lower quality."

I also think increasing numbers of US citizens are going to be finding out about this as the true fruits of the Bushpig Era ripen.

What kind of condiments go best with Soylent Green?

Posted by TheBannedMoeLarryAndJesus | February 21, 2008 4:54 PM

And the cry of "racism, racism" from advocates of population reduction strikes me as a bit hypocritical. Population "control" has a long history of racism. When Catholic bishops were ordering schools in Louisiana to integrate, birth control advocates tended to still be concerned that swarthy people were overproducing. Even now the birthrates of black Africans tends to be their main concern. True this is mostly for good reasons, but many African countries have not passed their "carrying capacity" and have reduced their birthrate. The "Fear of a Black Planet" stuff has come as much, or more, from their side of the aisle.

Thomas, it is very true, as a historical matter, that 100 years ago, plenty of advocates of contraception and voluntary motherhood were also advocates of eugenics. That doesn't indict concerns about overpopulation, any more than freeways are a bad idea because Hitler built some of them.

Of course, it is also true that conservatives have advocated a lot of very ugly things of much more recent vintage (such as opposition to civil rights in the 1950's and 1960's and opposition to women's rights in the 1970's) and continue to advocate ugly things today (homophobia).

But all that said, the issue isn't what Margaret Sanger believed but rather where the ideas are coming from today. Personally, I take no real position on the population other than that I don't want anyone either coerced into having children or coerced into not having them. But, suffice to say, whatever the reality was in the past, plenty of pro-natalists DO have racist and prejudiced motivations, wanting to increase the populations of whites and Christians, trying to outbreed the Muslims, etc. The fact that those racists might have been on the other side of the debate 100 years ago seems to me to be neither here nor there.

Posted by Dilan Esper | February 21, 2008 4:58 PM

If i recall correctly, Castro's Cuba at one point in the '60s actually passed a law decreeing that men had to do 50% of housework and child care.

And I'll bet that solved the problem, eh? Jolly good show!

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | February 21, 2008 5:24 PM

Dilan Esper

Are you even capable of addressing the substance of one of Ross's posts or must it always be a strained smear.

Why your above.. "So what if the progressive's were the eugenicists(although we cant condeme the culling of down syndrome children today) that was a long time ago"

Instead please cast your attention over here were I claim: "Southern Dixiecrats = conservative = opposition to abortion = misogyny = support of marriage & family"

"plenty of pro-natalists DO have racist and prejudiced motivations, wanting to increase the populations of whites and Christians, trying to outbreed the Muslims, etc"

Were??? Who??? The authors I mention above??? A healthy regard for ones own civilization??? Cocern for the family & family formation??? A fear of Islam-ization & Sharia law????

It’s your own fetid imagination that wants to demonize a central & crucial conversation that any society must always have with itself.

Posted by Fitz | February 21, 2008 5:26 PM

Dilan: I think it's a bit ludicrous to take the liberal "doesn't matter" to your extreme here, and assume that ethnic/religious background of parents has (in the long run) NO correlation with cultural factors. Do you like the culture of Pakistan precisely as much as you do that of Britain? Do you really think modern democracies are magic acid that rapidly, without changing itself, destroys all traits and political habits from other kinds of polity?

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | February 21, 2008 5:30 PM

The demographic decline is the worst is Eastern Europe and Japan not France or Germany.

Germany is sucky too. France not so bad.

Posted by Joyjay | February 21, 2008 5:47 PM

"But, suffice to say, whatever the reality was in the past, plenty of pro-natalists DO have racist and prejudiced motivations, wanting to increase the populations of whites and Christians, trying to outbreed the Muslims, etc. The fact that those racists might have been on the other side of the debate 100 years ago seems to me to be neither here nor there."

What about pro-choicers who think infanticide is permissible, on the utilitarian theory that they are less aware than some advanced primates? What about people who actually want the West's birthrate to go down because they just don't like Western society? Does that mean we can smear all pro-choicers or unconcerned-with-birthrate liberals with that motivation?

No, and that is Ross's main point in this post. Name-calling and guilt by association aren't arguments.

Posted by Ed | February 21, 2008 5:49 PM

What about people who actually want the West's birthrate to go down because they just don't like Western society?

Are there such people? Maybe there are. Point me to one.

Posted by roac | February 21, 2008 6:21 PM

Do you really think modern democracies are magic acid that rapidly, without changing itself, destroys all traits and political habits from other kinds of polity?

Well, yes, that's pretty much what I for one think, based on the historical evidence. If by "without changing itself" you mean "without changing itself for the worse."

Of course, you may think that the US has been changed for the worse by one or more contingents of immigrants in the past. Feel free to list them.

Posted by roac | February 21, 2008 6:26 PM

Dilan Esper writes: "make efforts to support moderate, secular elements within all religious factions"

Yes, and I think we should make efforts to support religious elements within secular factions.

or to support oil elements in water factions

or vice versa

Posted by sj | February 21, 2008 6:29 PM

"Thomas, it is very true, as a historical matter, that 100 years ago, plenty of advocates of contraception and voluntary motherhood were also advocates of eugenics." Dilan E

I'm not talking a hundred years ago. International Planned Parenthood was at least somewhat approving to modern Singapore's period of semi-eugenic population efforts. There's still a racist element among those with overpopulation concerns. I can't remember her name, but there was a feminist interviewed at NewScientist who emphasized this.

Nations like Indonesia or Brazil are more depleting of resources and forests than many of the African nations with high fertility rates. However Africans are the concern. To the point that the AIDS epidemic causing population decreases in such "overcrowded" nations as Botswana was almost seen as not such a bad thing by some in that crowd.

Posted by Thomas R | February 21, 2008 6:36 PM

If fearing a future in which the majority of the population of my country will consist of culturally alien new arrivals and their descendants who, worse yet, have and will have their natural in-group preference, and anti-white prejudices, honed and rewarded by official policies of multiculturalism and various set-asides, makes me a racist, fine, I'm a racist. I'd prefer to think of it as simple prudence, as such a future America will be one that, in addition to being an even less pleasant place to live by virtue of the hundreds of millions of new people, will be one a great deal more hostile to me, my offspring, and my relatives. Not in a "race war" sort of way, but just in terms of political rhetoric, political fact, access to services and benefits, and all the daily frictions, and occasionally irruptions, that are more frequent the more diverse a society is.

Race still matters to most of the people in the world who aren't white, and they are going to prefer their own kind to us just as they do now, and when they have the power that a majority gives them, they will use it at the expense of the still economically-dominant racial minority for which they've been taught (by status-climbing members of that racial minority!) to blame their problems. You may not be interested in racial identity politics, but racial identity politics are interested in you.

As for the displacement of white Europeans, simply put, a Europe most of whose inhabitants look to the Maghreb, or Sengambia, or China as their ancestral home and an important source of their identity will no longer be Europe at all, anymore than Muslim, Turkish Anatolia is still Hatti or the Byzantine Empire. Or more to the point, since we're discussing genetic as well as cultural replacement, it will no more be Europe than Massachussetts is still the land of the Wampanoag. Sure, there are some place names, some archeological digs, and some kitschy remembrances, but essentially, they're dead and gone.

Posted by Anonymous Coward | February 21, 2008 6:54 PM

Of course, you may think that the US has been changed for the worse by one or more contingents of immigrants in the past. Feel free to list them.

Hold on. This is precisely the kind of "you must be a racist" nonsense that makes this kind of thing hard to discuss intelligently with some people. It is surely a plausible thesis (you know, the Londonistan idea, etc.) that at least in some places in contemporary Europe, Muslim immigration has had dangerous effects on free speech and the democratic debate. Trying to force the debate to the context of the US -- which has been particularly assimilationist compared to most democratic societies -- is stealing several bases.

Moreover, I think that the RATE and NATURE of Mexican immigration into the US has been instrumental in certain negative changes in California.

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | February 21, 2008 6:59 PM

" Mexican immigrants embody all of the values conservatives are constantly touting"

This bullshit again. Their children adopt the feminized american lifestyle of single motherhood. 45 percent of all hispanic births occur outside of marriage.

Posted by Mark | February 21, 2008 7:15 PM

If fearing a future in which the majority of the population of my country will consist of culturally alien new arrivals and their descendants who, worse yet, have and will have their natural in-group preference, and anti-white prejudices, honed and rewarded by official policies of multiculturalism and various set-asides, makes me a racist, fine, I'm a racist.

The majority -- the vast majority -- of the population of your country consists of the descendants of immigrants who were every bit as "culturally alien" as anybody entering the country today. You can't tell them from anybody else.

Of course, they tend to have white skins.

Posted by roac | February 21, 2008 7:30 PM

roac: yes, but the numbers immigrating were quite different than the current Hispanic immigration in the US -- and the demographic trends in Europe (and the differences with the Muslim population) are quite, quite, different.

This is akin to arguing that global warming CANNOT be a problem now, because the seas didn't drown us all during the Industrial Revolution.

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | February 21, 2008 7:47 PM

TMoC quotes and writes: "If i recall correctly, Castro's Cuba at one point in the '60s actually passed a law decreeing that men had to do 50% of housework and child care.

And I'll bet that solved the problem, eh? Jolly good show!"

I had the same cynical reaction... I wouldn't have used "jolly good show," though.

Posted by TheBannedMoeLarryAndJesus | February 21, 2008 7:53 PM

BannedMoe:

Yeah, it was a poor stylistic choice.

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | February 21, 2008 7:59 PM

Fitz types: "Were??? Who??? The authors I mention above??? A healthy regard for ones own civilization??? Cocern for the family & family formation??? A fear of Islam-ization & Sharia law????

It’s your own fetid imagination that wants to demonize a central & crucial conversation that any society must always have with itself."

Is it just me or is Fitz clearly not in control of his faculties these days? I realize the impending demise of the conservative movement must be putting a lot of pressure on him, but he's just cranking out gibberish here.

There's a greater chance of the US being ruled by Uranian sponge creatures than of it falling under Sharia law. That goes for Europe as well. Why are conservatives desperately seeking out the Apocalypse these days?

Posted by TheBannedMoeLarryAndJesus | February 21, 2008 8:00 PM

the numbers immigrating were quite different than the current Hispanic immigration in the US,

I seriously doubt that. I suspect that the numbers of immigrants, in proportion to the existing population, during the latter half of the 19th Century were larger if anything that what they are today. I haven't got time to look it up -- if I'm wrong, somebody can show me.

There were whole counties in the Upper Midwest where everybody was German or Scandanavian and nobody spoke English.

Posted by roac | February 21, 2008 8:01 PM

I'm actually curious -- Hector, do you think that law did anything but make a rather silly statement? Do you think it would be a good idea for the state to enforce such a law, in any way? To have the law but not enforce it?

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | February 21, 2008 8:04 PM

TMoC says: "Moreover, I think that the RATE and NATURE of Mexican immigration into the US has been instrumental in certain negative changes in California."

That's nothing - you should have seen how pissed the Mexicans of California were when the first wave of Anglos came pouring in. They were beside themselves.

And more recently California was sickened by the Okie invasion... bunch of hillbillies with their sloppy families and their holyroller churches and their drunken ways and loud, crazy music.

HARRUMPPPHHHH!

Posted by TheBannedMoeLarryAndJesus | February 21, 2008 8:05 PM

roac -- a few points:

The numbers at any one time, proportionally, may no=t have been higher (I'm not sure, I will look later). However, most earlier immigration took place in waves, from distant countries, with occasional "hard stop" periods. It also took place in a context lacking in the idea of multiculturalism -- sure, an ethnic group could dominate local politics of a city with parochial concerns, but it didn't have folks of other groups, at the state level, whose very profession was agitation, in an extra-political way. It also was an immigration into a country without a modern welfare state.

This is a pretty seriously apples and oranges comparison -- that it is a bad comparison doesn't prove the case of the more extreme restrictionists, but it makes it a dubious argument against their claims. Today is not yesterday. Mexico is not Europe. The USA now is not the USA then.

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | February 21, 2008 8:09 PM

That's nothing - you should have seen how pissed the Mexicans of California were when the first wave of Anglos came pouring in. They were beside themselves.

What? And you don't think they had a point?

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | February 21, 2008 8:15 PM

Re: It will mean, among other things, that we have to adjust to a somewhat lower standard of living.

Huh? History suggests otherwise. When population falls but without physical destruction, standards of living increase as the survivors fall heir to a larger physical capital base. Best example: the 15th century after the Black Death cut Europe's population by about a third (and birth rates remained abysmally low for years).

Re: I think the strongest part of the article was the extent to which the idea of sex for pleasure is the real schism in the culture wars in this country.

Has there ever been a culture that did not espouse sex for pleasure? OK, some disapproved of women taking plesaure in sex, but I don't think you can ever find a culture that disapproved of men having a jolly good time in the sack, accepting, when necessary, a double standard and a madonna-whore distinction for women.

Re: A harder headed fellow, Mark Steyn, speaks truth

Mark Steyn is just as full of taurine byproduct as the hysterics who fretted that we would be destroyed by the "population bomb". There's an old saying which needs to be written in neon red and shoved under the nose of anyone who poredicts ruin based on some current trend continuing indefinitely into the future: "Trees do not grow up to the sky". Absent some major external calamity, Europe's population will drop for a couple generations then stablize, and at numbers still much higher than the population of the continent in 1900 when it ruled much of the planet.

Re: Sometime this century there will be 500 million Americans,

Unless the nation expands to take in Canada, Mexico and maybe the Carribean, that also will not happen. The population of the USA will also stabilize and begin a gentle decline.

Re: Or more to the point, since we're discussing genetic as well as cultural replacement, it will no more be Europe than Massachussetts is still the land of the Wampanoag.

A very poor analogy. The Wampanoag were technologically (and probably culturally) inferior to the Europeans. That's not true of Europe (or the US) vis-a-vis its immigrants. If anything, the opposite is true albeit not to the extent that Europeans once overshadowed the Native Americans. A better analogy would be with the African populations imported to the New World: even where they were a large majority (Haiti, Jamaica, etc.) they mostly lost their own culture and adopted, however imperfectly, the culture of the overclass. That's the pattern when a socially/economically/politically inferior people, howesoever numerous, settle in alien lands among others with more wealth and power than themselves. In fact, that can ever happen when they come as conquerors not as inferiors, which is why Russia speaks Russian not Mongol, England does not speak Norman French, and the languages of Spain are Latin-based, not Arabic or Gothic.

Re: Why are conservatives desperately seeking out the Apocalypse these days?

Why does anyone? Liberals have their apocalypses too: global warming, peak oil, even the subprime meltdown.

Re: you should have seen how pissed the Mexicans of California were when the first wave of Anglos came pouring in. They were beside themselves.

Not true. The European population of California (and most of the Southwest) thought of themselves as Spanish, not Mexican, and they despised the regime in Mexico City. Many of them joined the American settlers in the revolt against Santa Ana. Of course they were treated very shabbily afterward, and probably regretted it then.

Posted by JonF | February 21, 2008 8:35 PM

TMoC quotes and replies: "That's nothing - you should have seen how pissed the Mexicans of California were when the first wave of Anglos came pouring in. They were beside themselves.

What? And you don't think they had a point?"

Don't ask me. I'm too busy bitching about those goddamned English and Scot $%&@ers who immigrated into Ireland.

Posted by TheBannedMoeLarryAndJesus | February 21, 2008 8:35 PM

Mexican immigrants embody all of the values conservatives are constantly touting"

This bullshit again. Their children adopt the feminized american lifestyle of single motherhood. 45 percent of all hispanic births occur outside of marriage.

Your data is out of date. Romney stated the same obsolete data in his concession speech. The latest figure is up to 49.9%.

Posted by scottynx | February 21, 2008 8:42 PM

However, most earlier immigration took place in waves, from distant countries, with occasional "hard stop" periods.

I doubt this, at least for the period before 1920. But the data are out there.

It also was an immigration into a country without a modern welfare state.

Is there data to show that recent immigrants are more likely to be on welfare, however defined, than native-born Americans in the same socio-economic bracket? Certainly not the illegals. Anecdotally, the immigrants where I live (and there are lots of them) are visibly working their butts off.

It also took place in a context lacking in the idea of multiculturalism

OK, it's late in the thread to start this, but I have wanted to ask this since blogbrowsing rose to the top of my time-wasting list: Just what the HELL does the Right think "multiculturalism" is, and why is it so bad?

sure, an ethnic group could dominate local politics of a city with parochial concerns, but it didn't have folks of other groups, at the state level, whose very profession was agitation, in an extra-political way.

I don't have the slightest idea what this is about. Yesterday I saw it argued somewhere that there is a secret plot, abetted by the President of Mexico, pursuant to which the Hispanics of California will rise up in the night and seize the Southwest by force. I have to say, you seem too smart to believe that. But if "extra-political" doesn't mean armed insurrection, then what? Who are these people? Are they related to the Outside Agitators who stirred up the happy proletariat in the South in the 1950s?

Posted by roac | February 21, 2008 8:47 PM

Dilan:

"plenty of pro-natalists DO have racist and prejudiced motivations, wanting to increase the populations of whites and Christians, trying to outbreed the Muslims, etc."

speaking of prejudices! Any evidence about this "plenty"? Have you met any? I have not. However, I do know personally many people like you who have elitist, self-righteous prejudices about those who do not share their abstract universalist pieties. Perhaps it is because I live in the NY area...

Posted by Carlo | February 21, 2008 8:51 PM

Carlo writes: "I do know personally many people like you who have elitist, self-righteous prejudices about those who do not share their abstract universalist pieties."

Is that an intentional self-parody?

Posted by TheBannedMoeLarryAndJesus | February 21, 2008 9:05 PM

JonF replies: "Why does anyone? Liberals have their apocalypses too: global warming, peak oil, even the subprime meltdown."

Is there really something "liberal" about any of those things? Conservatives seem to be responding to all three, albeit belatedly.

Posted by TheBannedMoeLarryAndJesus | February 21, 2008 9:09 PM

"Just what the HELL does the Right think 'multiculturalism' is, and why is it so bad?"

This is one area I'm out of step with the Right on, or at least a bit. The US has been multicultural from the beginning. In 1776 a family in Lancaster, Pennsylvania was quite different in culture to one in Baltimore, Maryland and those two aren't that distant geographically. To some degree complaining about multiculturalism just seems like a smart way to justify bigotry.

However I think some of them mean something a bit more plausible that I could see as negative. I think the idea is that "multiculturalism" means virtually no common values and no need for any culture to adapt to new surroundings. So a Mexican immigrant to the US should not even be encouraged to learn English while immigrants from Pakistan would be within their rights to kill adulterers. (For extreme examples) I'm not sure anyone believes in that kind of "multiculturalism" though.

Posted by Thomas R | February 21, 2008 9:17 PM

Thomas R writes: "However I think some of them mean something a bit more plausible that I could see as negative. I think the idea is that "multiculturalism" means virtually no common values and no need for any culture to adapt to new surroundings. So a Mexican immigrant to the US should not even be encouraged to learn English while immigrants from Pakistan would be within their rights to kill adulterers. (For extreme examples) I'm not sure anyone believes in that kind of "multiculturalism" though."

They don't - at least not in any significant numbers.

I think the genesis of the right-wing complaints about multicurturalism cam about because schools were exposing kids to the cultures of the "newcomers" among us. They figured kds should just be steeped in turkey/cherry tree/cowboys vs injuns/Honest Abe storylines and leave that newfangled stuff out.

Since all of that old stuff is still taught (over and over again) and there's value in learning about other cultures, particularly when they're being assimilated into your own, I think those complaints were and are extraordinarily stupid and mean, but there you go.

Posted by TheBannedMoeLarryAndJesus | February 21, 2008 9:32 PM

Dilan: I think it's a bit ludicrous to take the liberal "doesn't matter" to your extreme here, and assume that ethnic/religious background of parents has (in the long run) NO correlation with cultural factors. Do you like the culture of Pakistan precisely as much as you do that of Britain?

Marquis:

1. I tend to think that over time, cultures move (if sometimes in fits and starts) towards the secular models, and the children of immigrants tend to assimilate much faster.

2. Whether, in the end, race matters or not, I have found, for what it is worth, that one of the fundamental differences between liberals and conservatives is that conservatives don't seem to see the dangers in attributing causation to race and gender and other such characteristics , whereas liberals know that there are all sorts of reasons why it's best to be cautious in that area.

Posted by Dilan Esper | February 21, 2008 9:35 PM

I'm not talking a hundred years ago. International Planned Parenthood was at least somewhat approving to modern Singapore's period of semi-eugenic population efforts. There's still a racist element among those with overpopulation concerns. I can't remember her name, but there was a feminist interviewed at NewScientist who emphasized this.

Thomas:

Perhaps you might remove the log from your side's eye before worrying about the mote in my side's eye.

Posted by Dilan Esper | February 21, 2008 9:37 PM

Every minority produces self-promoters who like to think of themselves as leaders, who try to persuade "their people" to resist assimilation into the majority culture. (It seems to me that there were more of them around 20 years ago, but maybe it's just that the media got tired of them, or maybe it was just me.) The hostility-to-multiculturalism thing may be a reaction to these people who God knows are irritating enough.

I however refuse to get upset about the preaching of this message, because I am confident that the intended audience is smart enough to perceive that the road to success lies in assimilation.

Posted by roac | February 21, 2008 9:43 PM

Moreover, I think that the RATE and NATURE of Mexican immigration into the US has been instrumental in certain negative changes in California.

Living in California, I think it is paradise on earth, and that one reason for that is the "rate and nature" of Hispanic (by no means limited to Mexican) immigration. We are rich, prosperous, and diverse, with the best food in America, the most interesting culture, some of the nicest people.

People who think that Mexicans have harmed California (how could they? they were here before Americans were) need to either move here and learn what we Californians already know, or live somewhere else and leave us alone.

Posted by Dilan Esper | February 21, 2008 9:45 PM

It also took place in a context lacking in the idea of multiculturalism -- sure, an ethnic group could dominate local politics of a city with parochial concerns, but it didn't have folks of other groups, at the state level, whose very profession was agitation, in an extra-political way.

As someone who knows a few Hispanic activists, I would laugh at something like this-- a completely ignorant, conservative media-driven delusion of what such groups do-- if it weren't so dangerous that so many people believe it.

Posted by Dilan Esper | February 21, 2008 9:50 PM

speaking of prejudices! Any evidence about this "plenty"? Have you met any? I have not.

Carlo, they are quoted in the article linked in Ross' original post. And a few of them have shown up on this thread.

Posted by Dilan Esper | February 21, 2008 9:53 PM

Whether, in the end, race matters or not, I have found, for what it is worth, that one of the fundamental differences between liberals and conservatives is that conservatives don't seem to see the dangers in attributing causation to race and gender and other such characteristics , whereas liberals know that there are all sorts of reasons why it's best to be cautious in that area.

Translation: whenever evidence of racial differences comes up, the conservatives do not stick their fingers in heir ears and go "la, la, la, la!" like the liberals do.

Posted by Glaivester | February 21, 2008 10:15 PM

Wow! Lots to respond to here.

Marquis:

Re: I'm actually curious -- Hector, do you think that law did anything but make a rather silly statement?

No, I don't think the law accomplished anything much. I was being semi-ironic, and making a bit of fun of the penchant of charismatic governments to believe that every social problem can be solved by a decree from the Charismatic Leader. Obviously you couldn't _enforce_ such a law without being _quintessentially_ totalitarian in a way that would do Stalin proud, and Cuba certainly never enforced such a law.

That said, 'making a silly statement' seems like it would be more or less the point of such a law, much like the laws against sodomy in the United States were intended to make a statement, and not really to be enforced. I don't think that men and women sharing housework and child care more equally is a bad thing, in fact I think it's a very good thing (particularly in a society like Cuba) so I think that while it's a silly and unenforceable law, it's no sillier than many laws of many other countries, and considerably less silly than some. If maybe 2% of men decided to be inspired to lend a hand to their wives more often, then the law would have accomplished some good purpose, whether or not it was ever actually 'enforced'.

Posted by Hector | February 21, 2008 11:02 PM

Glaivester quotes and writes: "Whether, in the end, race matters or not, I have found, for what it is worth, that one of the fundamental differences between liberals and conservatives is that conservatives don't seem to see the dangers in attributing causation to race and gender and other such characteristics , whereas liberals know that there are all sorts of reasons why it's best to be cautious in that area.

Translation: whenever evidence of racial differences comes up, the conservatives do not stick their fingers in heir ears and go "la, la, la, la!" like the liberals do."

Some conservatives have the same conception of "evidence" when it comes to racial matters that creationists have for their own silly-ass ideas. I don't see many conservatives suggesting that we turn America over to Asians just because they tend to do better on standardized tests than Glaivester's favored race does. I would think they were idiots if they did make such arguments.

The weird obsession that Glaivester and his idol Steve Sailer have for race seems to be on a par with sexual fetishes for amputees or dwarves or being tied up - there's something inherently prurient about it. I wouldn't want either one of them looking after a child.

It all seems right up there intellectually with traditional religious teachings saying that god punished Cain by making him black, etc. How pathetic and bleak.

Posted by TheBannedMoeLarryAndJesus | February 21, 2008 11:03 PM

Back to agree with Dilan, with a distinction. I grew up in LA, used to get back there from time to time, haven't been for quite a while. Even in 1955 there were too many people and too many cars to match my picture of paradise . . .

But recently my job took me to New Mexico, another place I hadn't been in some time. I love it! Politically dominated by Hispanics, most of whose ancestors were there when most of ours were still on the other side of an ocean, conspicuously comfortable in their own skins and exhibiting no perceptible hostility towards the Anglos. Wonderful indigenous food, available for incredibly cheap in any random hole in the wall. I am seriously thinking, maybe I want to retire here. I am definitely thinking, if this is multiculturalism, I like it.

(And then of course there is Hawaii, where the haoles are an absolute minority and always have been. Last I heard it was still a place people wanted to go.)

Posted by roac | February 21, 2008 11:09 PM

Hector writes: "That said, 'making a silly statement' seems like it would be more or less the point of such a law, much like the laws against sodomy in the United States were intended to make a statement, and not really to be enforced."

But they were enforced, and were meant to be when they were passed. Over time, of course, they became mainly a club used to beat up on homosexuals, and the only people who expressed regret when they were tossed out by the Supremes were the lowest sort of angry, hate-filled conservatives. In other words, Scalia and people who think like Scalia.

Posted by TheBannedMoeLarryAndJesus | February 21, 2008 11:12 PM

Dilan,

I wouldn't say that Buenos Aires is 'secular'. Modern Argentines may differ from the Catholic church teachings in some regards, but you just go there and try to argue for abortion on a street corner. You may be surprised. Hell, Argentina still has a law saying that no non-Catholic is allowed to run for president (although they have had a president, Carlos Menem, who was a former Muslim who converted to Catholicism.) Moreover, as I'm sure you know, religion has played a _major_ part in Argentine social conflicts both in the 19th and 20th centuries- as late as the 1970s, both the Montoneros and the right-wing Colonel's Regime claimed to be basing their ideology to a large measure in Catholic social thought.

as for Islam vs. Christianity, I am only secondarily interested in the fact of Islamic social mores or political behavior. My primarily reason for preferring Christianity to Islam is theological- I think that as a point of fact, Jesus Christ was divine in nature, and did die on the cross and was resurrected, and therefore the essence of Muhammed's theology is a tissue of fabrications, and Muhammed was no true prophet at all. I won't even get into the details of Muhammed's personal life, but suffice to say the details of his relationship with the 9-year-old Aixa do not bear thinking about. Were you aware, Dilan, that the Shariah law permits one to marry a nine year old girl?

i do not want Europe to become the province of a religion which celebrates a man who raped a nine-year-old girl, lied about the nature of Christ, and inspired a reign of rapine and conquest which spread from Java to Granada.

Posted by Hector | February 21, 2008 11:25 PM

Fitz,

The fact that we believe that a business that is not healthy if it isn't growing, is merely proof that there is a moral sickness at the heart of 1) capitalism and 2) America. In the Middle Ages, a steady state economy was accepted as a fact of life. Why do we have to assume that bigger is better, and that an institution must grow or die? Better look towards an ideal of _sufficiency_ rather than endless growth and accumulation. E.F. Schumacher, a devout Catholic by the way, had choice words for that kind of people.

Wouldn't it be a problem if every country in the world was having above replacement fertility? It would be a very big problem. Overpopulation has not gone away you know. Where are we going to get the water, arable land, fisheries, forests, energy, and other natural resources to support that many peopel? Do you want to put them all in the Sahara Desert?

The demographic decline is not unprecedented, our species has gone through demographic declines before. What is really unprecedented is the demographic surge that took place with the Industrial Revolution and has wreaked havoc on our balance with nature. If you don't think that that is a problem that needs to be dealt with, then it's hard to take you seriously.

Of course I don't want Germany and Spain to depopulate themselves or to have to import lots of Muslim immigrants, and I think that they should take steps to replenish their populations to at or slightly below replacement level. But _no_ country in the world right now should be aiming for birth rates that are _well above_ replacement level, perhaps with the exception of a few of the very sparsely populated ones like Bolivia or Mongolia. Overpopulation is a _global_ problem and while one or another country may be over- or under-populated and have to deal with that problem, the bigger problem on a _global_ level is definitely birth rates that are too high (in Africa and Middle East) not too low.

Please read up a little bit about population ecology and density dependent birth and death rates.

Posted by Hector | February 21, 2008 11:37 PM

"Perhaps you might remove the log from your side's eye before worrying about the mote in my side's eye."

It's true I hadn't known there was much of a racial element to concerns of aging populations until now. This is sort of new to me. Mostly I've only seen it as an allegation of the Left. Maybe a few radicals at NRO or American Conservative mention it. To me it's still weird a person could get that from the concern about an aging populace.

The racial element to population control however seems historic, present, and obvious to me. So much so it's difficult for me to see how a person could emphasize overpopulation without having it dovetail or support any racial angle whatsoever. There are several Asian nations below replacement that have reason to worry about "greying." These nations are not Christian or "white." However if you're concerned about overpopulating nations you're going to be pretty much only concerned about Arabs and Africans.

Granted this is a tad unfair. The main concern of overpopulation is overtaxed systems of sanitation, agriculture/soil, etc. Still the solution named tends to be making sure there won't be so many of these kinds of people in the future. It's not, so far as I've heard, making sure Africans get settlements in depopulated regions of Eurasia or North America.

The solution to a greying population in Europe and North America includes immigration. I certainly know of people who suggest that. I suggest that. Millions more Latin American Catholics in the US is obviously not going to upset me. I am against large amounts of illegal immigration, but pretty strictly for "rule of law" reasons. Well that and concern it's ultimately not good for Mexico. However a large amount of legal immigration from various Latin natios is fine by me. I certainly wouldn't share Derbyshire's fear of little brown Romanists overrunning my WASP heaven.

Posted by Thomas R | February 21, 2008 11:49 PM

Hector writes: "My primarily reason for preferring Christianity to Islam is theological- I think that as a point of fact, Jesus Christ was divine in nature, and did die on the cross and was resurrected, and therefore the essence of Muhammed's theology is a tissue of fabrications, and Muhammed was no true prophet at all. I won't even get into the details of Muhammed's personal life, but suffice to say the details of his relationship with the 9-year-old Aixa do not bear thinking about. Were you aware, Dilan, that the Shariah law permits one to marry a nine year old girl?"

Oh, come on, Hector. There's no reason to think Muhammad actually had sex with a child. Such marriages took place in Christian Europe among royalty - for reasons of alliance and so forth - and not always with consummation. For that matter I was taught as a kid that Mary was 15 when the Holy Spook knocked her up, so does that make your god a pedophile?

You vacillate between high bigotry (towards Muslims and gays) and humane principles, Hector. I wonder where you'll untimately end up. I hope you marry a Muslim woman and have a gay child, it would be good for you.

Posted by TheBannedMoeLarryAndJesus | February 21, 2008 11:49 PM

"inspired a reign of rapine and conquest which spread from Java to Granada." Hector.

This is a tad hyperbolic. In several parts of Indonesia Islam arrived by merchants and voluntary conversion. The Minangkabau of, I believe, Sumatra melded Islam with a matrilineal pagan culture. In West Africa conversion often came from wandering Sufis. Even in the nations conquered by Islam conversion was often a gradual process of centuries. I believe Egypt was majority Christian for several centuries after Islamic conquest. Although Muslims became harsh to Copts, the Byzantines had also been harsh as they saw them as non-Chalcedonian heretics. The exact age of Aisha is also in some dispute and child-marriage was not unheard of in many societies. (Including some Christian ones)

That said I do think "true Islam" of a full, non-heretical, and legalist form has many problematic elements. Compared to Jesus (or the Buddha) Muhammad strikes me as demanding, sexist, and somewhat casual about violence. He was also a political leader whereas Christ or Buddha weren't, at least not in an ordinary sense. On research most Muslims/Muslim-societies I've admired were mystical, half-pagan, or heretical. Like the Ahmadis Abdus Salam and Yusef Lateef. Or some of the more peaceful Senegalese Sufis. Still I think some Westerners of late make it sound worse than it really is/was.

Posted by Thomas R | February 22, 2008 12:06 AM

I also predict that if I were to go back through US newspapers and pamphlets, I could find a continuous litany from 1776 onwards of How Them Rotten Furriners Are Outbreeding Us And Bringing Us To Ruin. First it was the Germans, then we had the Yellow Peril, then it was Those Ghastly Irish and the Eyeties.....now it's Those Horrible Muslims and Those People Who Eat Spicy Food.

Le plus ca change, c'est plus la meme.

Posted by grumpy realist | February 22, 2008 12:07 AM

Moe,

There's a difference between 15 and 9- 9 Moe, 9! Anyway St. Mary was probably at least 16 when she conceived, as the age of menarche was around 16 those days. Even the Muslims don't deny that Aixa was a child when Muhammed consummated his 'marriage'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Muhammad#Aisha

"Muhammad's marriage to Aisha is particularly controversial, mainly because of her age during the marriage. D. A. Spellberg states that in Ibn Sa'd, the age of Aisha at marriage varies between six and seven.[18] She stayed in her parents' home till she had reached puberty at nine (or maybe ten according to Ibn Hisham) and then her marriage with Muhammad was consummated.[18][19] Spellberg states that "all these references to the Aisha's age reinforce Aisha's [premenstral] status, and, implicitly her virginity."[18]"

Oddly enough, large families be more likely to have a gay child- there is some evidence that correlates being born gay with having more older male siblings- it's apparently related to hormonal changes in the mother's womb.

I'm glad you at least accuse me of 'high' bigotry- as opposed to low....is that something like being a 'high' anglican? b/c I'm one of those too.

OK, I'll take a stab at the race question. I'm no racist, and I'm certainly not white, and actually I'm very dark skinned. I have no preference in one race or another and I don't believe one race is superior to another. But I do like racial diversity, and I think it would be sad if fair skin were to pass out of the gene pool entirely. I find fair skin an attractive trait especially in women. I also would not like if northern European culture fades out of the world cultural pool, as I like things like English history, medieval European legend, English folk music, etc.

Posted by Hector | February 22, 2008 12:10 AM

"Oh, come on, Hector. There's no reason to think Muhammad actually had sex with a child. Such marriages took place in Christian Europe among royalty - for reasons of alliance and so forth - and not always with consummation."

I'm going to have to agree with the not-so-banned Innie-Minnie-Minee-Moe on this. I'm not sure they went as young as 9, but I do know of marriages as young as 11 with European royals. Usually this was with other children, but I imagine there were exceptions. In any event in sixth-seventh century Near-East I don't think political marriages to youths were that common.

As mentioned though I am a bit uncomfortable with the idea of a religious founder having dynastic plural marriages in the first place. I've gotten along fine with Muslims and I think Muhammad has many good qualities. However I think a person can make a judgment that some religious founders appeal to them more than others. For me I'd put Muhammad in the range of Joseph Smith. Kind of wacky and too political for me, but having noble qualities.

Posted by Thomas R | February 22, 2008 12:18 AM

"In any event in sixth-seventh century Near-East I don't think political marriages to youths were that common."

I meant "uncommon."

Posted by Thomas R | February 22, 2008 12:19 AM

As someone who knows a few Hispanic activists

Ok, I'm really just being a jerk here, but this reminds me. Back in another thread, you asked:

Marquis, do you know anyone who lives in an urban area and doesn't go to a very conservative church every week? Do you know any people who go to college? Do you know any people who frequent clubs and bars?

I answered (for the record, I'm a scientist, teaching at a top-10 research university, in one of the largest urban areas in the US, so yes, I know a rare few who aren't from Mayberry -- heck, I suspect I may not live that far from Dilan, and I probably spend more time than he does outside the US). Now to my question -- Dilan, I'm sure you know Hispanic activists*, and various other fine folks of sundry types -- but sometimes, listening to your views, I wonder:

Do you know anyone who goes to a (conservative) church weekly? Do you know any non-urban people? Do you know anyone over age 45? Do you know any people who don't frequent clubs and bars? Do you know any people who didn't go to college, who aren't poor or minorities?

* By extra-political I didn't actually mean anyone seeking a revolution or what-not, I meant that the favors/power grab was partly ensconced in an educational establishment, and that parts of it were curiously not in fact from people of the group being agitated for, which is a somewhat unusual and silly arrangement, world historically.

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | February 22, 2008 12:23 AM

Woah Hector. Whenever I see someone use Wikipedia on anything concerning religion I kind of gasp. I know tech-world loves it, but tech-world is generally stupid about these things anyway. I've worked off&on at Wikipedia since 2005. If you want to know "The Simpsons" episodes or obscure math trivia it's a great place. However the awfulness of its religion coverage is almost breathtaking. Religion-related articles I worked on in 2005 are still horribly written and just as slanted as when I started.

Now you did pick something cited, but even that's not a total guarantee. It's pretty common on religion articles to use slanted or disreputable sources. Or worse they'll indicate that "All members of X-faith agree about Y" when they don't at all.

Posted by Thomas R | February 22, 2008 12:27 AM

Hector replies: "There's a difference between 15 and 9- 9 Moe, 9! Anyway St. Mary was probably at least 16 when she conceived, as the age of menarche was around 16 those days. Even the Muslims don't deny that Aixa was a child when Muhammed consummated his 'marriage'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Muhammad#Aisha

"Muhammad's marriage to Aisha is particularly controversial, mainly because of her age during the marriage. D. A. Spellberg states that in Ibn Sa'd, the age of Aisha at marriage varies between six and seven.[18] She stayed in her parents' home till she had reached puberty at nine (or maybe ten according to Ibn Hisham) and then her marriage with Muhammad was consummated.[18][19] Spellberg states that "all these references to the Aisha's age reinforce Aisha's [premenstral] status, and, implicitly her virginity."[18]""

I'm just going to file all of that in the "don't believe everything you read" file, Hector. As for the "age of menarche was around 16 those days" - I'll file that in the "you've got to be f**king kidding me" file.

Thomas R provided some additional context. Read it. I'm sure it was claimed that all of those marriages were "consummated" as well, but I'd like to think that even in those dark days grown men wouldn't be picking on young girls just for form's sake. Wouldn't you?

And I'm supposed to be the cynic.

Posted by TheBannedMoeLarryAndJesus | February 22, 2008 12:29 AM

"I also would not like if northern European culture fades out of the world cultural pool"

That probably won't happen. For example there's Iceland. It preserves elements of its culture to an almost obsessive degree. I also have doubts Muslims are going to just flood into Reykjavik in a huge wave. I doubt will ever talk of "Reykjavikistan." (Iceland's fertility rate is also a good deal higher than much of Europe's, it's about at replacement I think. They do get immigration, but they have maybe 500 Muslims tops)

Posted by Thomas R | February 22, 2008 12:34 AM

Although their Muhammad article does indicate an area where I find Muslims strange.

Muslims right now are protesting that article I guess. Are they protesting things in it that implies he's a pedophile? No. They're protesting that it contains sixteenth-century paintings, from the Muslim world I take it, of their Prophet. These paintings, or ones essentially identical, are easily available in books you can find in many/most college libraries. Many books on Medieval Persian art will have paintings of Muhammad. Usually veiled, but sometimes not.

Posted by Thomas R | February 22, 2008 12:41 AM

Moe,

This is a journal article from Peter Laslett,'Journal of Interdisciplinary History', 1971. It claims that age of menarche was 17 in Norway and 17.5 in Britain during the mid-19th century (No mention of first century Palestine, but probably it was even earlier.)

Early menarche is simply one of the manifold scourges of modern society, not something natural to the human race.

http://www.jstor.org/view/00221953/ap010027/01a00030/0

The Muslims _themsleves_ say that Muhammed consummated his 'marriage' to Aixa, Moe, it's only you that deny it. I do agree with you that it is sick and perverted.

Posted by Hector | February 22, 2008 12:49 AM

Hector replies: "This is a journal article from Peter Laslett,'Journal of Interdisciplinary History', 1971. It claims that age of menarche was 17 in Norway and 17.5 in Britain during the mid-19th century (No mention of first century Palestine, but probably it was even earlier.)

Early menarche is simply one of the manifold scourges of modern society, not something natural to the human race.

http://www.jstor.org/view/00221953/ap010027/01a00030/0

The Muslims _themsleves_ say that Muhammed consummated his 'marriage' to Aixa, Moe, it's only you that deny it. I do agree with you that it is sick and perverted."

Hector, so all Muslims say this? Seriously?

You're not usually that stupid.

In addition, in marriages of alliance it would always be said that the marriage had been consummated - it wouldn't be considered a legitimate marriage until it had been. I think you're well aware of that.

As for what some journal article claimed almost 40 years ago - so what? You really think it's definitive? And, of course, there'd always be deviations from the norm, so what's your point?

In a time where the average lifespan was probably less than 40 years, and where 13 was considered the age of manhood in more than one culture, why do you insist on applying modern standards in a pejorative way? It's beneath you. Especially since your own tradition is also vulnerable to that sort of thing. It all just seems sort of pointless.

Posted by TheBannedMoeLarryAndJesus | February 22, 2008 1:40 AM

Hector is there a reason you're spelling her name "Aixa"? Is that the preferred transliteration?

You also still seem to be seeing Wikipedia's statement of what "Muslims themselves say" as valid. I'm a bit staunch on this matter, but even people more relaxed about Wikipedia tend to agree you must not trust it on religious matters. Just look at the stated demographics of Wikipedians and you'll find atheists outnumber Muslims, or Catholics, like 4 to 1. You might as well trust what Christopher Hitchens says about Muhammad.

The idea that Aisha was nine when they had sex is indeed based in a respectable collection of "Sunnah" and many Muslims therefore believe it. However there is debate in Islam about what even counts as "true Sunnah" and what Hadiths are valid. The idea that she was nine when she lost her virginity to him is not universally accepted. Those who do accept it seem to believe that she was "special" and became "fully a woman", even in mind going by some sources, at about age 9. The Sunnah that says she consummated at 9 apparently has her pregnant soon after.

Do I think a 9-year-old can be "truly a woman"? Well not naturally no. There have been girls even younger than age 9 who get pregnant and there are girls that young who go to college, but neither of them is "truly a woman." Still if you believe in God than a miracle like "fast maturation" should be possible. (For all I know it might theoretically be possible at some future point using advanced biotechnology)

Posted by Thomas R | February 22, 2008 2:24 AM

Re: Is there really something "liberal" about any of those things?

No, nothing inherently liberal, just that some on the Left exaggerate them from the serious problems which they are into world-ending catastrophes.

Re: Such marriages took place in Christian Europe among royalty - for reasons of alliance and so forth

Can you cite an example? It is certainly true that betrothals took place involving children, but canon law did require a minimum age (14 I think) for actual marriage.

Re: For that matter I was taught as a kid that Mary was 15 when the Holy Spook knocked he

Huh? No one (except Mormons) thinks that God had physical sex with Mary. And 15 was a marriageable age at the time, indeed, well into modern times it was marriageable.

Re: She stayed in her parents' home till she had reached puberty at nine (or maybe ten according to Ibn Hisham)

Puberty at nine or ten? Is that even possible? Maybe her age was miscounted?

Re: I also would not like if northern European culture fades out of the world cultural pool"
That probably won't happen.

Also, consider that Europe draws large numbers of non-Muslim immigrants, from Africa, the Caribbean and India. The Netherlands, for example, has more Christian than Muslim immigrants and their birth rate is higher.

Posted by JonF | February 22, 2008 6:35 AM

'Aixa' is the Spanish transliteration, since they don't have a 'sh' letter cluster- I prefer it stylistically as it sounds a bit more archaic.

Yes I suppose it's possible that Muhammed's 'wife' matured in all ways at the age of 9- although the God I believe in presumably would never rob a young girl of her childhood to satisfy a man's lust. With God all things are _physically_ possible, but not all things are _morally_ possible- God cannot do what is evil.

Moe, the falling age of menarche is a well established fact, I'm not sure why you seem to think its irrelevant. Sure there was variation, but since St. Mary was from a poor family, and quite possibly overworked and underfed, that would tend to _raise_ the age of menarche- she may not have matured till she was 18 or 19.

The fact is that some Muslim countries today, including Yemen and Iran, explicitly _in their legal code_ allow a man to marry and have intercourse with a nine year old girl, and they justify this on the precedent of Muhammed and Aisha. Personally, I think that's horrible.

Posted by Hector | February 22, 2008 9:08 AM

Hector

Thank you for responding to my views intelligently. I believe that we hold not so much opposing views as different perspectives in approaching the issues Ross & the Nation brought up.

“The fact that we believe that a business that is not healthy if it isn't growing, is merely proof that there is a moral sickness at the heart of 1) capitalism and 2) America. In the Middle Ages, a steady state economy was accepted as a fact of life. Why do we have to assume that bigger is better, and that an institution must grow or die? Better look towards an ideal of _sufficiency_ rather than endless growth and accumulation.

My point about business leaders & growth was not to say anything about economics specifically, but rather I was using it in general (along with the reference to psychology) to point out that decline is commonly seen as pejorative. That is: there is nothing unusual about people being concerned when things are not growing.

“E.F. Schumacher, a devout Catholic by the way, had choice words for that kind of people.”

Yes, I am aware of his work. Better then he is the work of Hilaire Belloc, specifically The Great Heresies. One of Catholicism & the 19th centuries greatest historians, Mr Belloc correctly diagnosed capitalisms many troubling impacts on the human soul.

In general I don’t assuage your opinion about “having to learn to have less” as a people. I find this stance not just conducive to more sustainable development but worthy of multiple Catholic principles about, greed, sloth, vanity, prudence & solidarity with the poor.

“If you don't think that that is a problem that needs to be dealt with, then it's hard to take you seriously.”

I do take environmental issues seriously, along with the stresses overpopulation can bring on those issues. If you read my posts above more charitably you will notice that I am also dealing with the maintenance of culture’s, ways of life, deep seated humane longings like childbearing, family formation & relation’s between the sexes.

“Please read up a little bit about population ecology and density dependent birth and death rates.”

I have: Perhaps you can point me to available sources. Nevertheless: as I point out above, I am not dealing generally with humanity as a “species” but rather the Western World and its attendant cultures specifically. The environment is a worthy topic but it is only one such issue that the Nation article & Ross reference in this debate. You seem to take it as the controlling issue; I do not.

Posted by Fitz | February 22, 2008 10:26 AM

Translation: whenever evidence of racial differences comes up, the conservatives do not stick their fingers in heir ears and go "la, la, la, la!" like the liberals do.

That's a fair critique of liberalism, Glav. The problem is that conservatives don't seem to understand that there's an equally fair critique of conservativism as not recognizing that we humans have tendencies to stereotype and assume group characteristics very quickly and without enough evidence, especially when we see patterns that are in agreement with our cultural prejudices. Thus, a certain type of conservative will latch onto any data to show that men and women have different aptitudes and attitudes and that these things are biologically determined, without seeing that those conclusions are often reached in a hasty fashion because they accord with preexisting prejudices.

The other thing conservatives don't recognize (or perhaps do, but don't care about) is that some in their lot are looking to impose discriminatory policies and would love to latch onto scientific evidence to justify it, even if the evidence is weak and even if the discriminatory policy would have very bad consequences.

Look, there are good reasons to be careful about these types of conclusions. Liberals tend to understand this, and many conservatives don't.

Posted by Dilan Esper | February 22, 2008 1:19 PM

Do you know anyone who goes to a (conservative) church weekly? Do you know any non-urban people? Do you know anyone over age 45? Do you know any people who don't frequent clubs and bars? Do you know any people who didn't go to college, who aren't poor or minorities?

I know all of those people, Marquis, and I believe in a government that respects their rights to live their lives the way they want to. What I object to is the fact that many folks from less-diverse, less-urban, more-religious, less-educated parts of the country do want to use government power to stop urban sophisticates from living their lives the way they want to.

Posted by Dilan Esper | February 22, 2008 1:25 PM

I'm just going to file all of that in the "don't believe everything you read" file, Hector. As for the "age of menarche was around 16 those days" - I'll file that in the "you've got to be f**king kidding me" file.

The better argument against Hector's position as to how old the virgin Mary was is that anyone who believes that God could and did impregnate a virgin is in no position to get hung up on her age and whether she was menstruating. Obviously, if the story of the Christian God is true, that God would also have the power to impregnate a girl who hadn't menstruated or to cause a young girl to start menstruating early.

Posted by Dilan Esper | February 22, 2008 1:28 PM

What I object to is the fact that many folks from less-diverse, less-urban, more-religious, less-educated parts of the country do want to use government power to stop urban sophisticates from living their lives the way they want to.

Hey, give us real federalism and let the "rubes" set their law and you yours, and we might have an arrangement. And yes, when it comes to murder, I see no reason why the correct folks shouldn't be able to impose a ban on the wrong, whatever their respective educations/locations (just as the North had a plausible right to impose a ban on slavery on Southerners, with different views of the matter).

And note that some of the things you, in particular, want, not all urban folks want (go to the black churches in your local big city and see how big a march for gay marriage you can set up).

More to my particular personal grievance here: I imagine that I'm as much an "urban sophisticate" as you, in terms of education, the kinds of people I know, and so forth. It's a bit irritating to presume (as you did) that our differences in seeing the world are mere byproducts of biography, in the sense of where we've been -- and suggests that perhaps the city is not the invincible acid for all beliefs other than a polite and tolerant weak-kneed sexually hedonist semi-nihilism.

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | February 22, 2008 1:55 PM

Hey, give us real federalism and let the "rubes" set their law and you yours, and we might have an arrangement. And yes, when it comes to murder, I see no reason why the correct folks shouldn't be able to impose a ban on the wrong, whatever their respective educations/locations (just as the North had a plausible right to impose a ban on slavery on Southerners, with different views of the matter). And note that some of the things you, in particular, want, not all urban folks want (go to the black churches in your local big city and see how big a march for gay marriage you can set up). More to my particular personal grievance here: I imagine that I'm as much an "urban sophisticate" as you, in terms of education, the kinds of people I know, and so forth. It's a bit irritating to presume (as you did) that our differences in seeing the world are mere byproducts of biography, in the sense of where we've been -- and suggests that perhaps the city is not the invincible acid for all beliefs other than a polite and tolerant weak-kneed sexually hedonist semi-nihilism.

1. Abortion is an issue of women's rights, not murder, and basic civil rights are quite properly recognized as part of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and should be guaranteed to all human persons. Same with gay rights.

2. Nonetheless, I do see quite a lot more room for federalism than your crowd does. It isn't my side of the debate that wants to put medical marijuana dispensaries out of business, or prohibit Oregon from allowing assisted suicide, or prohibit the Florida Supreme Court from deciding how it wishes to count votes.

3. The reason I talked in terms of urban sophisticates is not because I was characterizing you as not one but because you brought up people who weren't and asked if I knew any.

4. Nonetheless, I do think that religious conservativism-- the belief that one of God's fundamental cares is where people should and shouldn't place their penises, for instance-- is a pretty stupid belief system. It is constitutionally protected, to be sure, and I would defend to the death your right to believe in it, but it isn't the mark of an intelligent person who has a clear conception of what God might be.

Posted by Dilan Esper | February 22, 2008 5:35 PM

To make one more point about abortion, one huge difference between the pro-choice and pro-life sides is that the pro-choice position doesn't affect the pro-lifers at all. They may be offended that people are having sex and not procreating, and they may suffer because some miniscule life form that is nothing like a born human being is being snuffed out, but it doesn't prevent them from living their own lives and not having abortions one bit.

In contrast, the pro-life position is all about interfering with those women who would want to have abortions, and having the government come in and dictate what they must do.

So pro-lifers shouldn't be so smug about the federalism principles upheld by an overturn of Roe (even if we assume that they will not seek to ban or restrict abortion at the federal level). The pro-choice position makes sure that NOBODY, even in the same locality, interferes with any particular woman's decision. Pro-lifers can continue to have children, and pro-choicers can continue to have abortions. It is the ultimate in local control.

Pro-lifers, of course, take great offense at the idea that anyone would want to stop them from regulating someone else's sex life.

Posted by Dilan Esper | February 22, 2008 6:12 PM

quite properly recognized as part of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Recognized by who? All good men? All right-thinking NYT readers? All left-thinking Nation readers? All hedonist atheists? Some portion (at best around 50%) of Americans?

What community actually universally acknowledges any such thing as our magic Declaration here? Even the US founding documents, much more rooted in some community and context, are hardly universals.

I have no problem with medical marijuana myself (or other kinds, for that matter).

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | February 22, 2008 6:16 PM

Pro-lifers, of course, take great offense at the idea that anyone would want to stop them from regulating someone else's sex life.

You have expressed a fine defense of slavery, as soon as one grants the same premises (blacks aren't people, fetuses aren't people).

You know, and I know, that it comes down to the moral status of the unborn, not to something like federalism -- and your defense isn't of "federalism" at all -- it's of pure libertarianism, which is a completely alien beast. And I suspect you know that too, but want to conflate the terms for your benefit.

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | February 22, 2008 6:34 PM

Re: In a time where the average lifespan was probably less than 40 years, and where 13 was considered the age of manhood in more than one culture, why do you insist on applying modern standards in a pejorative way?

Ancient life expectancies are deceptive: they are so low mainly because the mortality rate of children was appallingly high (and that continued to be the case well into the 1800s). People who made it through childhood, often by dint of a superior immune system, had a reasonable shot of living out to the traditional three score and ten.

Re: ...St. Mary was from a poor family

Where do you get that? Per the main Church legends, Mary came from priestly lineage (and the Gospel of Luke agrees since she is kin to the family of John the Baptist whose father was high priest). The same legends also claim that Mary spent much of her childhood in service (and schooling) at the Temple, until puberty. I doubt she was overworked and underfed, at least no more so than any other person of her class.

Posted by JonF | February 22, 2008 7:26 PM

"basic civil rights are quite properly recognized as part of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights" Dilan.

(Yeah I know, I'm bad about commitment) As far as I know the Universal Declaration does not mention abortion. You are placing abortion as a basic civil right, but this is an assertion not really recognized by any of the major human rights bodies. Even Amnesty International's statement is mostly that it is a basic right for rape victims or those having risky pregnancies.

"In contrast, the pro-life position is all about interfering with those women who would want to have abortions, and having the government come in and dictate what they must do."

All laws and regulations interfere with things people want to do. By the "logic" you're using advocates for total lawlessness are better. After all they aren't interfering with you obeying any legal code you want. However those who believe in laws are forcing them to obey traffic rules and repress their desire to have sex in the Wal-Mart checkout line.

Laws and rules, even on the human body, exist for a reason.

And Pro-Choicers are certainly interfering with my rights. The Pro-Choice position allows, nay encourages, people like me to be aborted in utero. This makes people like me even rarer. As well as people with any congenital disability. That might sound great to you, but an in-utero culling is not what I was looking forward to. I was born in a good time for people like me and I once assumed if I'd been born even later it would've been better. Now I'm not so sure. As congenital disability becomes rarer, not through aid but the culling, the desire or ability to deal with it is likely going to decline. It might already be starting. Finding a new wheelchair now is harder for me than it was a decade ago.

And there's also the nations where ultra-sound plus abortion is causing a shortage of girl babies. Yeah laws and rules do interfere. They do limit your choices. However that's the price of living in a society.

"Pro-lifers, of course, take great offense at the idea that anyone would want to stop them from regulating someone else's sex life." DE

You should maybe actually talk to real Pro-Lifers. (Plural, not some reactionary great-uncle or something) Even those who take a conservative view of sexual morality, as I do, usually don't want to regulate people's sex lives. Well at least not anymore than you would want to. I'm assuming you are okay with rules against rape, parent/child incest, and pedophilia. Or for that matter encouraging AIDS patients to use condoms if they're sexually active.

As for everything else I honestly don't care if you have a threesome with the Olsen Twins. Granted I think you should have to face any consequences of that if there are any. I don't think the government has to make promiscuity, polyamority, or monogamy easier for you. So I don't think it has to buy condoms for you or teach you how contraception is properly used. Neither can it be allowed to restrict you on private consensual adult whatever.

Posted by Thomas R | February 22, 2008 9:03 PM

Re: Sometime this century there will be 500 million Americans,

Unless the nation expands to take in Canada, Mexico and maybe the Carribean, that also will not happen. The population of the USA will also stabilize and begin a gentle decline.

Bullcrap. THe US Census estimates are US population growing from 300 million to 438 million in 2050. They also say that US population growth is 80% driven by immigrants or children of immigrants. Until you stop the wretched refuse from other countries teeming shores being dumped here, population will never stabilize and all the talk of getting off Saudi Oil, energy conservation, and "exiting smallscale energy sources" will remain sorry jokes all overwhelmed by population growth most Americans hate and wish to stop.

*********************
ThomasR - The US has been multicultural from the beginning. In 1776 a family in Lancaster, Pennsylvania was quite different in culture to one in Baltimore, Maryland and those two aren't that distant geographically. To some degree complaining about multiculturalism just seems like a smart way to justify bigotry.

Another pound of horseshit.

Both settled by white German-English Protestants, hard-working, highly intelligent, and genetically indistinguishable. 80=85% culturally indistinguishable, differing only in religious beliefs. Working side-by-side in mostly peaceful harmony for centuries. I met a nuclear power plant supervisor who was a Mennonite, and ex-Amish Marines.
Quite a difference from 3rd Worlders of greatly alien cultures and beliefs that do not cross paths, or assilimate with the West very well.

As for anyone that complains about the creed of multi-culti being a bigot, that is an argument best debunked by where multi-culti societies lead to:

Sudetanland. Athens v. Sparta. Reconquista/Andalusia. Yugoslavia. Europe and the Demography of Islamists. Zimbabwe. US Civil War. England's Civil War. 100 years war. 30 years war.
200 US cities transformed from flourishing centers and made into 3rd world shitholes by the oppositional multi-culti of underclass blacks.

Posted by chris ford | February 22, 2008 11:46 PM

"Both settled by white German-English Protestants"

Buzz. Maryland was created as a haven for Catholics. Although Protestant, largely Anglican I assume, by 1776 it retained a noticeable Catholic element. (Baltimore Catechism, etc) In addition to that those weren't the only examples I could cite or the only differences between the two.

If you'd rather I could've compared the Jewish population of Rhode Island to the then Gaelic-speaking portions of North Carolina. I know "but they're still both white people." Even if I concede that means anything, you still have a population distinct in

Religion
Diet
Language
Genetics and Genetic illnesses - Unless you think Celts are the lost tribe of Israel.
Sexual ethics - Gaelics and Jews of that period had different views on what counted as incest, among other things.
Outlook toward violence
Outlook toward death

And many other things.

Now you could say "but they're both still from Western or Westernized cultures." That's true, but contemporary Mexicans and Guatemalans aren't exactly Pre-Colombian Americans. Their culture is mostly Christian and Westernized. Granted a person might say to that "but they still aren't white people." In which case I could just sneer at them.

Granted Europe's situation is different when it comes to immigrants. Eastern Europeans, even most Balkan Muslims, are essentially Westernized or at least compatible to Western values. North Africans much less so, but even there I'd say there was a Westernized element. Particularly in Egypt and Algeria. If it were Copts or French-speaking Algerian secularists streaming into Europe I'm not sure the matter would be seen quite the same by the European right.

Lastly the examples you give of multicultural societies aren't the best analogies to likely situations in the modern West. Sparta and Andalusia involved conquest. Although to an extent the US did as well. Do you think all American Indian Reservations should be shut down and their people assimilated to avoid them rebelling? Other examples you give are of nations created almost arbitrarily or as an experiment. Lastly you seem to be playing a bit fast-and-loose. The differences between the Amish and Baltimore are piffle to your view. Yet the difference between what Cavaliers and Roundheads or Messenians and Spartans is what completely total? How does that work?

Posted by Thomas R | February 23, 2008 12:25 AM

That said I'm not a cultural relativist. Some values are better than others or at least more useful here. Immigrants must learn English, obey the same laws, and respect the values of their new country. I don't think they have to act like Anglos or develop a fondness for American Idol, well unless they want to.

Posted by Thomas R | February 23, 2008 12:32 AM

Re: They also say that US population growth is 80% driven by immigrants or children of immigrants.

Check out fertility rates in Mexico. That's going to change immigration from that source, which is where the bulk of our immigrants come from. US population growth will slow considserably because Mexican population growth will come to a halt.

Posted by JonF | February 23, 2008 7:34 AM

JonF, the current mexican total fertility rate is 2.39, above replacement. The phenomenon of demographic momentum means that the mexican population will grow for several decades after the fertility rate goes to replacement as the cohorts born in higher fertility years come of age and have children. And it isn't even certain that it will go to replacement. If it went to replacement tomorrow, we could still expect around 25 years of mexican population growth. If it takes 10 years from now to get to replacement fertility, that pretty much brings us to the mexican population still expanding until mid-century.

Posted by scottynx | February 23, 2008 11:33 AM

Re: JonF, the current mexican total fertility rate is 2.39, above replacement.

Where are you getting this? I've seen several stories recently (in diverse places, online and in print) which state that Mexican fertility has fallen to just barely above replacemnt. Are you sure you are looking at current (and credible*) figures?

Re: If it went to replacement tomorrow, we could still expect around 25 years of mexican population growth.

True, but I was making a fairly long-range statement, not talking about next year.

* i.e., not published by entities with an agenda

Posted by Jonf | February 23, 2008 2:12 PM

The CIA world fact book is my source for the 2007 estimated total fertility rate of Mexico:
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/mx.html

Posted by scottynx | February 23, 2008 2:33 PM

wikipedia states: "The replacement fertility rate is roughly 2.1 births per woman for most industrialized countries but ranges from 2.5 to 3.3 in developing countries because of higher mortality rates.[1] Taken globally, the total fertility rate at replacement is 2.33 children per woman."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate#_note-0

So replacement fertility is probably a little bit higher for mexico than for the US, but I doubt *too* much higher since Mexico has a decent life expectancy at birth of 75.63 (CIA world fact book).

Here is Encyclopedia Brittanica: "Q: What is the total fertility rate for Mexico?
A: Mexico - Fertility rate: (2004) 2.2 average births per childbearing woman"
http://www.britannica.com/eb/question-379167/15/fertility-rate-Mexico

In December 2004 Philip Longman stated: "Mexico has just slipped below replacement fertility rate. "
http://origin.mckinsey.com/aboutus/mckinseynews/pressarchive/heraldtribune.asp

It looks like you are right about mexican fertility. OTOH, Decreased population pressures will make it easier for Mexico to develop, but it remains to be seen how much they can develop and and how much less immigrant flows that results in. Maybe mexico will just start depopulating with people still coming to the US in large numbers.

Posted by scottynx | February 23, 2008 2:58 PM

Dilan,

To be fair, you didn't say this, but you should be careful not to imply that the UN Declaration of Human Rights should protect abortion rights. It absolutely does not. The UNHDR was passed as the result of a compromise between states from a variety of cultures, and depended largely on support from the Catholic Latin American countries. Catholic intellectuals also played an important influence on drafting the declaration. There is absolutely no grounds for believing that abortion rights formed part of the original intent of the UN. Particularly since even Soviet Russia banned abortion at the time. Moreover probably a majority of the world's countries severeley restrict abortion at this time, and only a few are as liberal as the United States. Assuredly abortion would not be approved by an up or down vote in the General Assembly.

Posted by Hector | February 24, 2008 2:00 AM

> "UNHDR was passed as the result of a compromise between states from a variety of cultures, and depended largely on support from the Catholic Latin American countries. Catholic intellectuals also played an important influence on drafting the declaration"

Indeed. Historically, the framers of the UDHR were nowhere near as supportive of FSLAOD as were Madison and Jefferson in 1787, or a fortiori Congressmen Bingham and Stevens in 1865-66.

Posted by Rod Blaine | February 24, 2008 3:40 AM

Wait another week and this "right-wingers a century ago said about the Irish and Italians exactly what right-wingers today are saying about Muslims" piece will be followed by another Nation article warning - in passages that could have been lifted straight from Black or Blanshard - that, now the Catholics have a 5-4 absolute majority on the Supreme Court, it's only a matter of time before they start rescinding Americans' traditional civil liberties under orders from the Vatican.

Posted by Rod Blaine | February 24, 2008 6:11 AM

JonF,

The fertility of Hispanics who immigrate to the US actually increases. The most recent fertility estimates for the Hispanic population by nativity are for California in 1998, by Hill and Johnson (2002). The TFR for all Hispanic women in California was 2.8, very similar to the U.S. national average for Hispanic women; it was 3.2 for foreignborn Hispanic women and 2.3 for native-born Hispanic women.

There is a similar phenomenon for Muslim immigrant fertility in Europe.

Hill, Laura E., and Hans P. Johnson. 2002. Understanding the Future of California’s Fertility:
The Role of Immigrants. San Francisco, CA: Public Policy Institute of California. cited in
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1540-6237.2006.00427.x?cookieSet=1

Posted by Nick | February 24, 2008 7:44 AM

Re: The fertility of Hispanics who immigrate to the US actually increases.

I suspect this is a very temporary phenomenon. As they assimilate (and yes they do) they will approach US niorms in this as in other things. But it'salso irrelevant to my point which is that the drop off in Mexican fertility will ultimately mean fewwer young men (who are the main or at least initial imnmigrants) and less population pressure driving immigration.

Re: There is a similar phenomenon for Muslim immigrant fertility in Europe.

Interestingly enough though non-Muslim (=Christian and Hindu mainly) immigrants to Europe show higher fertility rates than Muslim immigrants, so we're morel ikely to end up with a Euribbea, a Eurindia or a Eurafrica than a Eurabia (or a mix of all these elements). However I suspect this fertility increase is a passing phenomenon. Something similar happende with the 19th century Irish in America: they had more kids than in Ireland because 5they could afford them (and were not politically oppressed and not on the verge of starvation). But what is the fertility rate of Irish-Americans today?

Posted by JonF | February 24, 2008 9:09 AM

You have expressed a fine defense of slavery, as soon as one grants the same premises (blacks aren't people, fetuses aren't people).

Marquis, this is a really stupid argument. One could define ANIMALS as "people", for instance, and then any meat eater is the equivalent of a slaveholder. Heck, one can define ANYTHING as a person if one wants to. The problem, is, though is that it is begging the question-- just because some right-wingers who either don't care about the interests of women or actively oppose women's rights have DECIDED that the fetus is the same as a human person doesn't mean it is one in the relevant sense.

And meanwhile, banning abortion WILL screw over women, and your side LIKES that or doesn't care.

Posted by Dilan Esper | February 24, 2008 2:04 PM

And Pro-Choicers are certainly interfering with my rights. The Pro-Choice position allows, nay encourages, people like me to be aborted in utero. This makes people like me even rarer. As well as people with any congenital disability.

Thomas:

1. Nobody killed you. Your rights are intact.

2. Getting killed before someone is a conscious person is not a violation of anyone's rights. Or would it have been a violation of your rights if your dad had gotten a vasectomy or used a condom that day?

Posted by Dilan Esper | February 24, 2008 2:28 PM

JonF,

You are probably right, but I had inferred from the Magnificat that St. Mary was of humble birth (either with respect to economics or to lineage), viz. the reference to the 'lowliness of His handmaiden.'

Mexico's fertility rate is, I think, somewhere between 2.2 and 2.4- not a _big_ difference in any case, and it will probably settle somewhere around replacement level. That will probably decrease the influx of people into the US, but maybe not that much- some of the Caribbean countries currently have replacement level fertility but are depopulating because of massive emigration rates. I don't know that Mexico is that _overpopulated_ and its emigration rates are driven largely by unequal distribution of resources more than overpopulation.

Dilan,

At least within the Christian tradition, believing that early-term fetuses are people dates back to the early Church. It is _you_ who are trying to change the definition, and you've given no grounds to do so. Actually, one could argue that even if we don't think that fetuses are people, as long as we are not absolutely _sure_, then we should play it safe and give them the right not to be killed. When you're hunting a deer, you don't fire into a bush unless you are _damn sure_ that there is no human being inside- just being 'pretty sure' is not enough.

Moreover, I don't believe that banning abortion 'screws over' women (as long as a basic health exemption is granted) because, as I say again, I don't believe that _unlimited_, _absolute_ freedom (sexual, reproductive, personal, economic, or even political) is a legitimate good or a right worth having, _especially_ when it involves manslaughter.

Posted by Hector | February 24, 2008 2:30 PM

> "Getting killed before someone is a conscious person is not a violation of anyone's rights"

Memo to the death-penalty states: execute 'em while they're sleeping next time. What they don't know won't hurt 'em.

Posted by Rod Blaine | February 24, 2008 4:56 PM

"1. Nobody killed you. Your rights are intact." Dilan

Wow nobody killed me. Gee I wasn't aware of that. I thought I was speaking to you from beyond the grave. Like a modern version of those Twilight Zone episodes where someone delivers a "beyond the grave" phone call.

More seriously to indicate that my right to be born is so much less than someone else's certainly effects my life. On some level it effects my rights. Imagine if the law indicated that restrictions on abortion need an exemption for when a non-black woman gets pregnant by a black man. So long as no racially discriminatory laws for born-people exist this, using your logic, does no damage to black people at all. It's not killing any of them or restricting their rights. It's not even forcing white or Asian women to abort fetuses from black fathers, it's just allowing them to do so in more cases.

Pro-Choice position clearly states if I got a woman pregnant she'd have much more right to abort than if Rod or Hector got a woman pregnant. Because my condition is inherited about half the time.

Now granted my condition comes with increased child mortality, but conditions like generalized dwarfism or congenital blindness are also at times included with things like this. But why should they care as they're not getting violated? They're still alive too. They'd just be whiners I gather.

"2. Getting killed before someone is a conscious person is not a violation of anyone's rights. Or would it have been a violation of your rights if your dad had gotten a vasectomy or used a condom that day?"

You're missing the point in a way rather extreme.

People like me can be aborted later in a pregnancy and the Pro-Choice position almost universally supports that. If you think me, or a Down Syndrome fetus, at twenty-weeks after conception compares to sperm you're hopeless.

And anyway yes there were violations of my family's rights after I was born. When my Mom got pregnant again she was pressured to abort. She didn't of course, we're Catholic, and so I have a perfectly healthy younger sister who I care about very much. She speaks Japanese, can play the piano, and was once one of the state's best female chess players. However if my Mom hadn't been religious, or had just been younger, she might've caved. And on many levels the Pro-Choice world wants such women to cave. And on many levels they become more like "pro-abortion" when they see someone like me get born. And yeah I resent that.

Posted by Thomas R | February 24, 2008 7:31 PM

just because some right-wingers who either don't care about the interests of women or actively oppose women's rights have DECIDED that the fetus is the same as a human person doesn't mean it is one in the relevant sense.

Hey, Dilan.

1) They're not all right-wingers, you know -- Hector isn't. Nat Hentoff isn't, I'm pretty sure. Before the long march through the Democratic party of the radical leftists, the economic left had plenty of people who were resolutely anti-abortion (you can look it up, if you're too young to recall that kind of thing).

2) Just because a bunch of do-gooder Northerners and Quakers and stupid preachers decided darkies were people doesn't mean they were, in any relevant sense.

3) Back to my little King Charles' head, since you annoyed me -- do you have any friends who are socially/sexually conservative, practice serious orthodox Christianity or Judaism, or the like?

it isn't the mark of an intelligent person who has a clear conception of what God might be.

Frankly, Dilan, I'm pretty sure I'm more intelligent than you are by quite a bit, so I'm obviously lacking in the other department. Pray tell, enlighten me as to what God might be!

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | February 24, 2008 11:01 PM

I find it amusing that someone who doesn't even believe in God thinks he has a clear idea of what the God he _doesn't_ believe in _wouldn't_ look like. Isn't Dilan the dude who is always saying that any vision of God is no sillier than any other one because they're all equally silly?

Personally, since sexuality is such an important aspect of human nature, even for people who are celibate or not currently sexually active, I can't imagine that a God that cares especially _for us_ (to the extent that He took on human form for us) would _not_ be concerned with how we pursue our sexual natures.

Posted by Hector | February 24, 2008 11:30 PM

Dilan,

More to the point, you're wrong that legalizing abortion does _not_ have an impact on the lives of those of us who don't believe in abortion.

Are you not diminished by living in a society that practices or tolerates evil? Aren't you diminished by some of the foreign policy that our government has carried out over the years?

You're commiting the error of thinking that morality and 'values' are something that individuals each pursue for themselves, you can stick with your values and I can stick with mine. But most people, on the left or the right, reject that concept of values, because frankly it's a silly concept. Morality is ultimately a collective endeavor that can only be pursued by people within the context of a society or community. Who was it who said, 'We can be lost alone, but we can be saved only with others?" I cannot be truly a pro-life person as long as I live in a society which does not embody pro-life values.

Posted by Hector | February 24, 2008 11:43 PM

"the belief that one of God's fundamental cares is where people should and shouldn't place their penises, for instance-- is a pretty stupid belief system."

So if a man sticks it in a child, a comatose woman, his own mother, or an ape God is uninterested?

This is certainly a position one can take. One can believe in an impersonal God that is only interested in large-scale phenomenon. An individual who brutally rapes and murders twenty people would be of no interest to such a God. Instead he'd be focused on overall demographics, climactic change, and such. Or possibly the Earth itself would be too minor and this God would be focused on Galactic mergers, dark energy, entropy, and fundamental forces. Mankind would just be the "rats in the ship" to steal a line from "Candide."

That said in most people a belief in God at least contains some notion that God is interested in human welfare. Even in systems where God or gods are more impersonal, like the Chinese, they're still petitioned on certain matters. Those matters were in fact involved sex and sexual propriety a good deal of the time. Fertility, infertility, fidelity, and infidelity were fairly basic matters in earlier times view of God(s) and nature. Even in societies that were fairly loose on sex there was usually some sense of sexual taboo, this was supported or encouraged by the supernatural. Granted in some it was very basic, but it usually existed. One universal being that no culture I'm aware of tolerated men "placing it" in their own mothers. (Hence a certain swear-phrase is fairly universal)

"One could define ANIMALS as "people", for instance, and then any meat eater is the equivalent of a slaveholder." DE

I believe in modern societies apes are afforded certain protections. If you have someone procure a bonobo for you and then you kill it when it starts to bore you there's likely going to be consequences.

For that matter this can work with other animals. Killing specimens of even the non-endangered dolphin species is generally a no-no. Cock-fighting is generally forbidden even though we eat chickens. (Admittedly that one strikes me as a tad weird, but there's probably a logic I'm not seeing) Hunting usually has specific seasons and some animals are verboten.

So a second trimester fetus has equal or less rights to a merganser duck in this society. An embryo is about at the same level of some kinds of insect. I know that makes sense to you, but what with advancing ultrasound and all I'm not sure how long this can make sense to most people.

Posted by Thomas R | February 25, 2008 1:13 AM

(to the extent that He took on human form for us) would _not_ be concerned with how we pursue our sexual natures.

Hector: I think this actually points up two useful things to keep in mind:

1) the Incarnation remains a scandal: it is folly to the "wise," always and everywhere. Things that follow from the Incarnation will also be folly and scandal to those so-minded.

2) many atheists and agnostics are inclined in a semi-"Gnostic" direction: flesh and the body and trivialities, things that no worthy God could possibly be interested in: only mind is important. God is a big magic brain in the sky, rather like a New Age guru on infinite steroids, or perhaps (in the more scientifically inclined types) a deified computer from an early Star Trek.

There's something peculiar about point #2: the same folks who will often talk up orgasm as if it were THE one truly valuable moment in human life tend to be horrified at the idea that God might take interest in anything of interest to us. I wonder if this stems from Gnosticism, or from a strange notion that God's attention is (like ours) finite, and so he couldn't spare a thought from contemplating mitosis or star formation or our wonderful wonderful wonderful MINDS (or His own navel) to consider anything of important to mere meatbags?

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | February 25, 2008 12:55 PM

In other words:

1) Sex is so important that it's reasonable to murder for it (abortion) or distort society so as to make the raising of children extremely difficult. Some go even "further", such as Dawkins, who openly espouses that those who have sexual jealousy -- and don't, even when they haven't been informed about it -- approve of the efforts of their "mates" to attain better orgasms are horrid people.

2) Sex is so unimportant that it is impossible that God could have any interest in it, though it might be possible that he cares if we RECYCLE, or if we have a progressive enough tax policy. Never mind that the ordering of their sex lives is probably at least as important to the poor who would like to live materially better lives as the structure of taxation is.

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | February 25, 2008 2:01 PM

At least within the Christian tradition, believing that early-term fetuses are people dates back to the early Church. It is _you_ who are trying to change the definition, and you've given no grounds to do so.

So because a bunch of people who had no idea about basic facts about the universe and therefore took refuge in fairy tails should be deferred to?

Come on. Aquinas and Augustine and the other great Catholic thinkers were very impressive people, acting on very limited information. We now know more, so there's no reason we should give creedence to them any more than we should give creedence to Aristotle and Ptolemy. Knowledge has moved on.

And importantly, we know far, far more about women's rights now than they did then. That alone makes Catholic intellectual tradition completely bankrupt on issues relating to gender.

Memo to the death-penalty states: execute 'em while they're sleeping next time. What they don't know won't hurt 'em.

Rod:

You have a will to live before you go to sleep, and a will to live after you wake up.

In contrast, a fetus has never had a will to live.

People like me can be aborted later in a pregnancy and the Pro-Choice position almost universally supports that. If you think me, or a Down Syndrome fetus, at twenty-weeks after conception compares to sperm you're hopeless.

And anyway yes there were violations of my family's rights after I was born. When my Mom got pregnant again she was pressured to abort. She didn't of course, we're Catholic, and so I have a perfectly healthy younger sister who I care about very much. She speaks Japanese, can play the piano, and was once one of the state's best female chess players.

So your argument is because you weren't aborted, no woman should ever be able to abort any other fetus no matter how difficult the circumstances she is in and even if she has no chance to be able to take care of a baby with a severe disease or disorder?

Great argument. Shows you really care about women, Thomas.

Further, I don't see how "pressure to abort" your sister is any greater a violation of your rights than if your mom or dad didn't feel like screwing that night and pressured his or her partner not to have sex. Either way, your sister is never born.

Just because a bunch of do-gooder Northerners and Quakers and stupid preachers decided darkies were people doesn't mean they were, in any relevant sense.

Marquis, again, it begs the question. You can do the same thing with animals. You can define animals as persons and then say that anyone who kills one or eats the meat is like a slaveholder. You have a massive self-regard with respect to a totally meritless argument.

In any event, the real analogy to slavery is the way your church and others on the right want to force women to submit to their husbands and your alleged God and your male church leaders. Your side is the side of the slaveholders, not mine.

Back to my little King Charles' head, since you annoyed me -- do you have any friends who are socially/sexually conservative, practice serious orthodox Christianity or Judaism, or the like?

Yes.

Frankly, Dilan, I'm pretty sure I'm more intelligent than you are by quite a bit, so I'm obviously lacking in the other department. Pray tell, enlighten me as to what God might be!

Marquis, if God exists, She created the universe, keeps black holes from swallowing it, makes sure time and gravity function properly, and similar enormous tasks. God is bigger than you, Marquis, and organized religion tears Her down and demeans Her by making her nothing more than the President of human societies on this pipsqueak little planet we live on.

It's a stretch that God even cares about earth in particular at all, let alone the creatures that live here. Only a total idiot thinks that where we put our penises is a concern of God.

I find it amusing that someone who doesn't even believe in God thinks he has a clear idea of what the God he _doesn't_ believe in _wouldn't_ look like.

Hector, I am agnostic, not atheist. There very well may be a God. The God that you and Marquis worship, however, quite certainly is a figment of your imaginations.

Are you not diminished by living in a society that practices or tolerates evil?

If I lived in Nazi Germany or Stalin's USSR? Sure. But I love living in America. It doesn't diminish me at all. Especially since it resists the urge to adopt the evil beliefs of the pro-lifers and instead legislates the social good of equality for women.

Again, you are only diminished in that you can't force your evil schemes on America's women. Live with it.

Posted by Dilan Esper | February 25, 2008 2:10 PM

Dialn Esper (writes)

"Abortion is an issue of women's rights, not murder, and basic civil rights are quite properly recognized as part of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and should be guaranteed to all human persons. Same with gay rights."

Strange thing for a Left commenter to bring up. Based of very little knowledge - they tend to wield anything the U.N. has approved as necessarily commensurate with their worldview.

The truth however is much more conducive to natural rights & the worldview of the traditionalists.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the UN General & chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt, was assembled in December 1948 and widely recognized as the "constitution" of the modern human rights movement They were well aware that no document, however skillfully crafted, could immunize their project from abuse, but they were convinced that progress in respecting human dignity required a framework based on a few commonly held principles

The “right to abortion” is not now, nor has their ever been “recognized as part of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights”

More tellingly and clearly discernable than any supposed & manufactured right to abortion is what the Declaration lays out specifically.

John Humphrey, the Canadian law professor who prepared the initial staff report for the declaration. Humphrey was the man who noted in his diary that what they had achieved was “something like the Christian morality without the tommyrot,” by which he meant all the unnecessary accretions of prayer and miracles and faith and sacraments and chapels.

The UNESCO committee’s rapporteur, Richard McKeon, anticipated this problem. Thus, McKeon correctly predicted that, down the road, "difficulties will be discovered in the suspicions, suggested by these differences, concerning the tangential uses that might be made of a declaration of human rights for the purpose of advancing special interests." That is a philosopher’s way of saying, "Watch out, this whole enterprise could be hijacked."

The people who drew up of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were so confident in their conclusions—their Christian morality without the tommyrot—that they thought it unnecessary to agree about where those rights came from or what they meant. (“Yes, we agree about the rights,” Jacques Maritain said of their deliberations, “but on condition that no one asks why.”)

U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Article 16 declares the right to marry based on the traditional definition of marriage, and states that such a family is "the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State."

Article 16

1.Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.

2.Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.

3.The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

The Convention states in Article 7 that the child has "as far as possible, the right to know and be cared for by his or her parents". Article 3 states that "In all actions concerning children, whether undertaken by public or private social welfare institutions, courts of law, administrative authorities or legislative bodies, the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration."

As we can see from the ironclad nature of article 16, the Tommyrot ends up being quite important indeed. For without it; and as the original drafters anticipated; the U.N. Declaration on Human Rights can & will be hijacked and twisted beyond all recognition by those with agendas having nothing to do with either “humans” or “rights”.

Posted by Fitz | February 25, 2008 2:29 PM

Marquis,

With all due respect, I should point out, before I go on to poke holes in Dilan's silliness, that I don't really embrace your traditionalist view of sexual morality either, although I do agree with it on certain points. I don't think that 'the poor' really think that their poverty is caused by disordered sex lives or anything of that nature. (To be fair, there's little evidence that most of the poor in America think their problems are caused by unjust socieconomic structures, either.)

I would be against casual sex, sure. More difficult divorce, no abortion, more social and legal sanctions against adultery, closing down the porno magazines and the disgusting swingers' clubs. But when you say _the propering ordering of our sex lives_ I presume that you really mean _no_ divorce, _no_ premarital sex (even between a college girlfriend and boyfriend who have been going out for a couple years), _no_ birth control. And I can't agree with you on any of those. I don't think that there's anything wrong with the latter two, and I think divorce is sometimes a tragic necessity. Moreover, I don't think that telling 20-year-old college couples not to sleep with each other is _remotely_ related to any of the social problems that we have been talking about, and it's not something that I would ever agree with you on.

Posted by Hector | February 25, 2008 2:39 PM

Marquis, if God exists, She created the universe, keeps black holes from swallowing it, makes sure time and gravity function properly, and similar enormous tasks. God is bigger than you, Marquis, and organized religion tears Her down and demeans Her by making her nothing more than the President of human societies on this pipsqueak little planet we live on.

1. There is usually no good reason to discuss theology with people who think it's the height of cleverness and wisdom to arbitrarily use the female pronoun for God: it would make perfect sense, given Dilan's views on the matter, to use "it" -- but using "She" is like wearing the right kind of sneakers: more a sign to be seen than a meaningful choice.

2. Again, the Incarnation is a scandal: it is extremely important to Dilan that life not mean anything, that God not care about human beings. As I suggested, I think this comes from anthropomorphizing on Dilan's part, actually, ascribing a finite attention to God. In this conception, God sounds like a super-engineer ("keeping" black holes from swallowing us and so on), whose hands are full of this great important work of time. It's Dilan who puts God in a little bitty box -- a God who can just, with effort, manage to keep the universe running (I'm picturing DeNiro with a cosmic monkey wrench), and doesn't have time for the little details. It's philosophically unsophisticated to assume that size is importance, or that God would have to limit attention to certain levels of reality. Keeping the universe working isn't an "enormous" task to any reasonable conception worthy of the name God -- not only in a Christian framework, but in the classical tradition of natural theology. "Organized religion" produced Aquinas and Augustine and the great mystics, the via negativa, Barth's "totally other", and such concepts that begin, at least, to consider how profoundly different God must be, how the scale of galaxies and physical process does not begin to address the difference of true infinity. Dilan, who I'm guessing doesn't have that strong a scientific education, ends up talking about how much "bigger" his notion of God is, while ending up describing, again, a rather limited Star Trek fiction: a frantic cosmic engineer, with no time for the small stuff, scurrying to keep up with a universe larger than itself. There's a respectable (though wrong) line of thought here, in finitary process theologies, but I think this is coming more from college BS sessions thinking about "gosh man, the stars are big, so if there's a god, she's gotta be pretty cool to make STARS."

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | February 25, 2008 2:47 PM

Dilan,

Exactly what do we 'know' more than St. Augustine that compels us to believe that the fetus is not a human being. Actually, with the advance of embryology, we are compeled to that conclusion more than we were before. Moreover, the idea of abortion being the destruction of a human life is older than St. Augustine (and really, Dilan, Aquinas was in no way part of 'the early Church'....do you know what century he lived in?) And 'women's rights', obviously, is a matter of values as much as facts. You might persuade an Islamist of all the 'facts' about men and women but you would never persuade him, by argument alone, that men and women have equal rights. That is a truth, like most really important ones, that can only be grasped by the heart, not the head.

On what grounds do you argue that this is a pipsqueak little planet? That there are other _bigger_, _older_ planets? That it isn't the gravitational center of the solar system? Get used to the fact, Dilan, that the physical and observable is not all there is. The earth, and each person on it, has infinite value in the mind of God. God doesn't have a finite attention span.

If you were to argue that what counts for God isn't so much marriage as being in a loving long-term relationship, I would probably agree with you. If you argued that you don't think that using the Pill is immoral, I would agree too. If you argued that God has mercy on those couples who just can't keep their marriage going, I would probably agree a third time. But you don't think God cares _at all_? About whether we cheat on our wives and girlfriends, use pornography, go to a prostitute, etc?

God has a specific plan for each one of us. We may not know what that plan is, and I don't think we can always find the answers in organized religion. But to argue that He doesn't _care_ what we do with our lives- with our thoughts, our words, and our actions- is to set up a strange kind of God that as far as I know, no one has ever worshiped.

Perhaps a better question is this- Dilan, do you believe in a devil? Not necessarily the orthodox Christian devil, but any power of evil opposed to God? If you do, then what's ultimately the difference between God and the devil, in your mind? Because presumably the devil could care about black holes and gravitation too.

Posted by Hector | February 25, 2008 2:59 PM

I don't think that 'the poor' really think that their poverty is caused by disordered sex lives or anything of that nature.

Ok, I should have said the "semi-proper" ordering. Look, I don't think that sex lives are the only cause of poverty (of the entrenched, squalid kind -- poverty itself is not inherently evil). Admittedly, I'd think the poor aren't always very aware of why their lives are the way they are, and I don't think it's due to the economic system (which I have other grievances with) the way that you do.

But I'm not talking about that here -- I'm talking about basic ordering. Fathers staying with children, less irresponsible casual mating, and a marriage-oriented ethos (which, despite some flings, those 20-something college kids you approve of probably have). That's more about practicalities or life than morality, really, and I don't think we greatly disagree on it, actually.

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | February 25, 2008 3:02 PM

I don’t know how a discussion on the macro problems of demographic decline in the west has reduced itself again to a mere argument about abortion.

Nevertheless such arguments need not bring in the incarnation, Thomas Aquinas, or the like (as interesting and even germane as that may be)

It is a matter of basic scientific fact, that:
Any adult human being— Dilan Esper, for example. is the same whole living individual human organism—i.e., the same human being—that was at an earlier stage of his life an adolescent.And the adolescent Dilan Esper was the same whole living individual human organism that was at earlier developmental stages a child, an infant, a fetus, and an embryo. By contrast, he was never an ovum or a sperm cell. The gametes whose felicitous union brought the embryonic Dilan Esper into existence were parts of other organisms, his mother and father. But Dilan Esper was once an embryo, just as he was once a fetus, an infant, a child, and an adolescent. From the embryonic stage forward, Dilan Esper was a complete (though in the beginning developmentally immature) and distinct (both genetically and functionally) organism. He developed by an internally directed and gapless process from the embryonic into and through the infant, child, and adolescent stages and ultimately into adulthood with his organismic determinateness, distinctness, and unity intact.

Posted by Fitz | February 25, 2008 3:50 PM

Fitz,

I agree -- and it's bizarre how we get drawn into abortion over and over, in a sense. Not, perhaps, completely bizarre (I imagine an 1850s internet might have had slavery as a King Charles' head), but annoying.

Maybe the drift here came from the part about sex-for-pleasure in the article itself, though, as nyc said:

Or at least on this board that has a strong current of anti-sex prudery and nice-guy centered whining. Abortion, contraception, and the sexual revolution in general have largely divorced sex from procreation. . . I get the sense that a lot of guys here and elsewhere have been largely left in the dust by the increased social capital that woman can exercise in 1st world western democracies, and resent this naturally.

Which was, of course, the same "you say these things (which I won't analyze) only because of your messed-up psychology" argument that many pro-abortion types lean on.

Given nyc's little psycho-analyzing:

Either divorced, single, or just lonely, women in general and the sexual revolution/feminists specifically are largely to blame for the condition that this particular breed find themself in.

It's amazing the thread didn't collapse into this kind of thing EARLIER. For the record, I'm quite happily married myself, can't speak for the other traditionalists around. But it's nice to see the "you only believe these things because you can't get any" viewpoint -- it's rather like some hyper-capitalists who ascribe envy of financial success to anyone with opinions left of Ayn Rand, even if those people are, in fact, richer than the Randites.

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | February 25, 2008 4:11 PM

The Marquis of Carabas & Hector

Yes I noticed those comments by nyc and found them (like yourself) to be just so much dime-store-Freud ad hominum: Much like the nation article as a whole.

A few thoughts come to mind. It is my understanding that married couples have the most sex. In a world were people married younger & staid married....It would seem to me that a traditionalist culture provides more access to sex & (as some conclude) more actual & better sex for the vast amount of people.

Hardly anti-fun or anti-sex.

Its also interesting how such arguments are self reinforcing. The healthy non misanthropic modern man & women pursue sexual pleasure purely for its own sake, absent any greater ethic & concern. Any thing less than this is mindless prudery or worse…rank misogyny.

I think you and Hector hit on a serious point when you say (respectfully)

“I would be against casual sex, sure. More difficult divorce, no abortion, more social and legal sanctions against adultery, closing down the porno magazines and the disgusting swingers' clubs. But when you say _the propering ordering of our sex lives_ I presume that you really mean _no_ divorce, _no_ premarital sex (even between a college girlfriend and boyfriend who have been going out for a couple years), _no_ birth control. And I can't agree with you on any of those.”

“Ok, I should have said the "semi-proper" ordering.”

I generally agree with such sentiments. I am not an absolutist & am looking for progress on multiple fronts.

An easy sell for the majority of people I meet (especially young people) is an advocacy for less promiscuousness, less divorce, more marriage mindedness, more courtship, more dating, less hook-ups, more emphasis on restraint, less salaciousness…

More seriousness and realism about what marriage requires (i.e –shared sacrifice) more emphasis on marriage as an institution and less on it as a vehicle for personal satisfaction. Less pornography, less illegitimacy, more father oriented initiatives,

And so on.

The truth of the matter is that the sexual revolution of the sixties is outlier. Our shared moral heritage & that of mankind has always put an emphasis on sexual restraint & proper family formation. This is how individuals and cultures thrive.

Such a re-emphasis on our shared moral heritage need not take specific policies as immediately necessary. Legal measures and popular stigma will naturally flow from a renewed and open debate. All such measures require the accent of the people as per the democracy that the cultural left abhors.

Posted by Fitz | February 25, 2008 4:40 PM

Actually, I found nyc's remarks interesting and compelling, and startlingly familiar. I think it would be fair to say that young men who are the sincere, kind, child-oriented, responsible caregiver type, and who would never wish to 'use' women (nice-guys in other words) have in fact been left in the dust by the casual hook-up culture. The people who have profited are largely the same people who profit from 'freedom' in its other guises- the aggressive, the assertive, the rich men and beautiful women who know how to look out for Number One-- in other words the
Joe Francises and Lindsey Lohans of the world. Those of us who are neither Joe Francis nor Lindsey Lohan, somehow the Dilan Esper sexual free for all utopia has little to say to us. There are curiously Nietzschean overtones to this business of the quest for the perfect orgasm. As long as the superman and superwoman can have their perfect orgasms, who cares about all the people left behind. And yes, I would include myself in that boat. What does the world of the quest for the perfect orgasm have to offer me, nyc?

That of course is neither here nor there. No doubt Dilan has his unconscious motivations too. At the end of the day, the only important question is are our unconscious motivations helping to push us in the direction of the truth, or away from it?

Posted by Hector | February 25, 2008 5:50 PM

what's a King Charles' Head? some reference to the Stuart king beheaded by the 'Republic of the Saints', I imagine?

Posted by Hector | February 25, 2008 5:52 PM

Hector -- hmmm, true. It says something about my own immersion in "modern" thinking that I took being called nice as a bit of an insult, in a way. I still dislike the "let us look at your real motives" approach, though I'll admit I sometimes unkindly indulge in it with respect to Dilan (who seems adept at getting our respective goats).

"King Charles' head" is a phrase for a bugaboo, an (irrational) obsession returned to over and over, even in contexts where it is out of place. The good, but quite mad Mr. Dick, in David Copperfield, is the source: he is attempting to write a letter to (I can't recall who) on (some perhaps unspecific topic), but keeps having King Charles' head (indeed that of the very Stuart king) appear before him and intrude into the text.

In no way was it meant as an allusion to your abstract taste for the Republic of the Saints! It's just an allusion that I fear I use too much, given that almost nobody seems to have a clue what I'm talking about. It used to show up in books all the time, but perhaps it has died.

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | February 25, 2008 6:10 PM

Re: Abortion, contraception, and the sexual revolution in general have largely divorced sex from procreation

Something important to note: sex and procreation in humans were divorced a very long time ago, perhaps a million years or more, when some vagary of evolution deprived human females of the sorts of blatant estrual cycles that all other female mammals (and many other living things) display to signal that they are fertile. As a result humans have had to be sexually interested at all times, or the species would die out. Natural law enthusiasts need to take this stark fact into account: nature, or nature's God if you prefer, separated sex from reproduction for us long, long ago. Nothing we've done in the last 50 years holds a candle before that fundamental revolution.

Posted by JonF | February 25, 2008 7:13 PM

JonF,

If I recall correctly, the reason for concealed estrus is that when the woman's fertile period was unknown, it would be necessary for a man to stay with her on a long-term basis in order that he would have a good chance of impregnating her, and so such men were more likely to be caregivers and help increase the survival of her offspring. Thus women with the concealed estrus trait were favored and this trait eventually became universal. Chimpanzees on the other hand lack the same kind of pair bonding, because a male chimp can tell when the woman is fertile, so when she isn't, he goes off and looks for another one.

As far as I know, donkeys, pygmy chimpanzees and humans are the only mammal species with concealed estrus.

Posted by Hector | February 25, 2008 8:10 PM

John F

"Something important to note: sex and procreation in humans were divorced a very long time ago, perhaps a million years or more, when some vagary of evolution deprived human females of the sorts of blatant estrual cycles that all other female mammals (and many other living things) display to signal that they are fertile. As a result humans have had to be sexually interested at all times, or the species would die out."

As Hector above points out, I believe he is correct. Multiple evolutionary theorists do indeed speculate that the concealment of the estrus was a evolutionary advantage that promoted pair bonding. This pair bonding is seen as necessary for the enlarged brain of human children that required longer periods of dependency. This in turn required the concentrated efforts of both the male & female.

"sex and procreation in humans were divorced a very long time ago"

It is also important to not that the divorce of sex & procreation that is talked about in reference to abortion & contraception is not of the type John is referring to. Rather it is the certainty or near certainty that children will not result. As opposed to the probability that they MAY not result. In this regard the work of Nobel Prize winning economist George Akerlof is particularly instructive.

“Natural law enthusiasts need to take this stark fact into account: nature, or nature's God if you prefer,…”

I am afraid you have a misapprehension of what is entailed in the term “natural law”. Rather than this being coda for nature quo “nature” – it refers to the tradition of natural reason. That is: human reason alone as opposed to divine revelation. That is: in the sense used when one talks of “natural” philosophy.

A good example of the type of reasoning with particular emphasis on what we are discussing would be (the following) by Professor Germain Grisez

“Though a male and a female are complete individuals with respect to other functions – for example nutrition, sensation, and locomotion- with respect to reproduction they are only potential parts of a mated pair, which is the complete organism capable of reproducing sexually. Even if the mated pair is sterile, intercourse, provided it is the reproductive behavior characteristic of the species, makes the copulating male and female one organism"
"it is a plain matter of biological fact that reproduction is a single function, yet it cannot be carried out by an individual male or female human being, but by a male and female as a mated pair….”

A though experiment by Grisez

“Imagine a type of bodily, rational being that reproduces, not by mating but by some individual performance. Imagine that for these beings, however, locomotion or digestion is performed not by individuals, but only by biologically complementary pairs that unite for this purpose. Would anybody have any difficulty understanding that in respect to reproduction the organism performing the function is the individual, while in respect of locomotion or digestion the organism performing the function is the united pair?”

Posted by Fitz | February 25, 2008 8:36 PM

To return to an earlier debate, clearly what is needed is a massive campaign to encourage homosexuality among the Muslims of Europe and the Middle East. Wherever possible, and this will be tricky, teh gay must be promoted throughout the Muslim world to save us from the terrible scourge of non-Christian babies. Who's with me? Hector? Fritz? My lord Marquis?

Posted by Little Boots | February 25, 2008 8:52 PM

Re: It is also important to not that the divorce of sex & procreation that is talked about in reference to abortion & contraception is not of the type John is referring to.

Abortion is not really part of this discussion, since it occurs after procreation has occured. Indeed, one of the biggest mistakes of the pro-Life movement has been to treat abortion as a sex issue and not as a life issue.
Contraception meanwhile does not *guarantee* that conception does not ocur (since it is never foolproof); it merely increases the odds that it will not.

Re:I am afraid you have a misapprehension of what is entailed in the term “natural law”

Natural law seems to mean different things to different people. There is one sense in which is means the "natural" sense of right and wrong that people have-- though it can be difficult to disentangle this from mere ignorance and prejudice (see claims by some medieval anti-Semites that Judaism outrages Natural Law). However there is another sense of "natural law" theory in morality which relies on perceived teleologies in natural processes. When people claim that homosexuality is "against nature" or when Aquinas claimed that usury was counter to natural law because gold shows no natural increase, that is the sense they are appealing to. And that is what I am talking to. Before founding a morality based on the notion that "The purpose of human sex is procreation" one had first best ascertain if the premise is true, and as I have noted it rather decidedly is not. Now as you may have noticed I am not at all hostile to an ethos that promotes sexual continence (recall that I argued rather strongly against Dilan's "If it feel's good do it" philsophy") but I see no advantage to trusting one's moral philosophy to a vessel that is leakier than a sieve.

Re: If I recall correctly, the reason for concealed estrus is that when the woman's fertile period was unknown, it would be necessary for a man to stay with her on a long-term basis in order that he would have a good chance of impregnating her, and so such men were more likely to be caregivers

This is a theory that I do not find persuasive. Humans are social animals: a woman did not necessarily need a single man to stay with her because she was surrounded by the entire band or clan with whom she lived (who were often close relatives) who could then help her with childbearing and child-rearing. There were no nuclear families in the Paleolithic (though there may have been monogamous pair bonding), as humans lived in small and very communal societies with their close kin. I actually think the loss of estrus was an accident (I don't see the need to find deep telos in everything that happens in nature) and one that was compensated for by the creation of deep-bonding among human mates-- but not so much for the benefit of offspring, who would be cared for regardless, as for the benefit of the whole band, since such deep interpersonal bonding would strengthen it against the individualizing forces tending to rupture it as humans grew more intelligent, more self-conscious and more self-willed. I also think this is something still very much incomplete, and if we are to survive and transform into something more than we are we will have to realize even deeper forms of personal bonding, a means perhaps of realizing agape in eros, of enfleshing the love of heaven in the things of Earth. I have no idea exactly what form that may take, but it's going to be about a lot more than just bringing up children and continuing the species.

Posted by JonF | February 25, 2008 9:49 PM

"Great argument. Shows you really care about women, Thomas.

Further, I don't see how "pressure to abort" your sister is any greater a violation of your rights than if your mom or dad didn't feel like screwing that night and pressured his or her partner not to have sex. Either way, your sister is never born."

I was on the verge of apologizing for being too strident, but your cluelessness really is breathtaking. I think I might as well be writing in Sanskrit when I respond to you.

Still my point was clearly about Pro-Choice vs Pro-Life people and whether they interfere with others. You claimed Pro-Choice people are somehow more virtuous and less busybody. I try to argue against that and your response is to argue some other issue. I reiterate that I'm not wanting to argue on this other issue, but you decide to keep doing so.

I'm going to try one last time to just spell out for you what I am saying. I will try to avoid big words.

I am saying those who want legal abortion want people like me aborted. I am saying they tell people that having a child born with disability is even worse than it is. They encourage or pressure abortion. I say this is what I was talking about and that it does effect my life. So your claim that Pro-Choice people do not affect me is wrong. I will add that many nations that have greater restrictions on abortion than us are in many cases more sexually liberal and do well on female empowerment. This is what I was talking about in the responses to you.

Now if you want to talk to me you may, but talk to what I'm saying and not what you'd like to believe I'm saying. If you can't do that, don't bother responding at all. Sheesh.

Posted by Thomas R | February 25, 2008 10:29 PM

It's Dilan who puts God in a little bitty box" Marquis

I think that's a tad unfair. I think the idea is just that the interest is relational to size or extent. The Universe is billions of light years in extent so a planet less than 1 light second in length is tiny. There is a certain logic in a God that orders by size. It's not precisely a God that's "itty bitty" it's just a God that's callous and I'd agree finite.

Because if God is infinite than any subdivision would also be infinite. (See set theory, Cantor, etc) In addition caring about size rather than complexity or sentience indicates God is indeed like some sort of Engineer with Asperger's. He'd rather pay attention to big, but mindless and basically simple, machines like stars rather than tiny complex things like people.

Such a God would not exactly be anthropomorphic. If we found a race of tiny people, like a real life version of "The Smurfs", we'd be more interested in them than some giant star in Andromeda. Our interest in the quantum world is nearly as great as the relativistic and maybe moreso.

"To return to an earlier debate, clearly what is needed is a massive campaign to encourage homosexuality among the Muslims of Europe and the Middle East." lb

There's evidence of a fairly large underground homosexual population among Muslims. The thing is even homosexual Muslims are going to have children as having children is still highly valued in their culture. Homosexual sex is non-procreative, but this doesn't mean homosexuals can be "counted on" not to procreate. Many of them will, I don't know think of Arabia or even use artificial means. (Many Islamic societies accept artificial reproduction, a fair amount do accept the embryo destruction it causes)

Besides that you can't make people be homosexual, except maybe in certain isolated situations, so I'm aware you're just kidding.

Posted by Thomas R | February 25, 2008 10:53 PM

Just to get the conversation back on track. One of the aspects of demographic changes that I find fascinating is the way the issue pulls into it gravitational orbit the entire spectrum of “culture war” issues. Yes abortion is implicated (more specifically a culture that values & welcomes new life). Male & female roles are implicated, as is feminism, sexual restraint or permissiveness, - identity, race, religion, and theological questions.

To bring us back to the Macro question: I offer the following analysis from the U.N’s 2006 World Population prospectus.

http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/wpp2006/wpp2006.htm

“The expected global upheaval is without parallel in human history”

“Underlying these varied patterns of growth and changes in the age structure are distinct trends in fertility and mortality. Below-replacement fertility prevails in the more developed regions and is expected to continue to 2050…..” ”Slow population growth brought about by reductions in fertility leads to population ageing, that is, it produces populations where the proportion of older persons increases while that of younger persons decreases. In the more developed regions, 20 per cent of population is already aged 60 years or over and that proportion is projected to reach 33 per cent in 2050. In developed countries as a whole, the number of older persons has already surpassed the number of children (persons under age 15) and by 2050 there will be more than twice as many older persons in developed countries than children….” “Fertility is also below-replacement level in all 45 developed countries or areas, which account for 19 per cent of the world population. In 27 of them, including Japan and most of the countries located in Southern and Eastern Europe, fertility remains below 1.5 children per woman. Since 1990-1995, fertility decline has been the rule among the vast majority of developed countries and has resulted in rapid population ageing.”

Posted by Fitz | February 26, 2008 10:50 AM

There is a certain logic in a God that orders by size. It's not precisely a God that's "itty bitty" it's just a God that's callous and I'd agree finite.

Fair enough -- but I think any finite "God" is reasonably described as "boxed in" compared to a true infinite God. And while Whitehead and friends and WRONG, they seem to me to have something a bit less trivial than a notion that the only possible God is a -- well, you said it well -- an "Engineer with Asperger's." I know some engineers with Aspergers, and while they are sometimes fine folks they really are a very pecuilar (I won't say "dumb" though that's Dilan's constant level of discussion for my theology, which has a bit more to it) idea of a God. I guess Dilan is just really really really impressed with his IT crew, whereever he works?

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | February 26, 2008 12:06 PM

Fitz,

The culture war issues are implicated, certainly, but so are issues of natural resource availability. It is _perfectly_ natural, in the natural world, for the fertility rate of a species to decline at high population densities. Often it falls below the replacement rate, and then the population density declines for a while until it stabilizes back around the carrying capacity. The human race, post-Industrial Revolution, is the only recorded example of a species whose fertility rate actually increased for a while with increasing population.

It's true that the very drastic drop in some countries below 1.5 child per woman or so is probably unprecedented in at least modern history, but so were our population growth rate from 1750-1950 unprecedented. We are actually on track to re-establish what is a more 'natural' demographic pattern- i.e. steady state population. Contraception is simply reversing the effect that improved medicine, sanitation and nutrition had on our population growth rate.

Again, do I think that _some_ countries have too low of a birth rate? Of course. I think that countries like Germany, Spain and Japan would do well to make their societies more child-friendly, and try to achieve a birth rate closer to France or Iceland (an example of a society in balance with its environment, if there ever was one.) Some countries indeed have too low of a fertility rate, and other countries have one that's too high. Each country needs to deal with their specific problems on a national level. But on a global level, overpopulation is still a bigger threat than underpopulation.

I spent three years living in rural Africa and (in my free time from other work) trying to educate people about how their country really does not have enough land anymore for every woman to have five or six children. I think it would be irresponsible for us to stop trying to encourage smaller families in those parts of the world where people still have very large ones. And incidentally, African countries (the same ones with the highest birth rates in the world) tend to be _quite_ sexually permissive, so I don't think that that part of your argument holds, at all. (On the flip side of the coin, Japan and China have very low birth rates and are also substantially more conservative in sexual issues than the United States.)

Posted by Hector | February 26, 2008 12:25 PM

Hector:

Yes: I should have added "the environment" in the list of issues it pulls into its gravitational pull.

I understand your enthusiasm in this area and its implications in the debate. As far as my perspective I believe I addressed your concerns generally in my post by Fitz - February 22, 2008 10:26 AM (above)

I would add that If you view the trailer that the "demographic winter" Link in Ross's original post. You will not that at one point one of those interviewed remarks...

(Total paraphrase here.)
"The consciousness of many facing this issue was formed under a Malthusian "population bomb" mentality... and this presents a problem in reorientation to this set of problems"

Obviously they address (to some degree) your concern for the environment & the implications of population stabilization and so forth.

More interesting to me (staying on the culture & civilization sides of things)
Was your comment above.

Actually, I found nyc's remarks interesting and compelling, and startlingly familiar. I think it would be fair to say that young men who are the sincere, kind, child-oriented, responsible caregiver type, and who would never wish to 'use' women (nice-guys in other words) have in fact been left in the dust by the casual hook-up culture. The people who have profited are largely the same people who profit from 'freedom' in its other guises- the aggressive, the assertive, the rich men and beautiful women who know how to look out for Number One-- in other words the
Joe Francises and Lindsey Lohans of the world. Those of us who are neither Joe Francis nor Lindsey Lohan, somehow the Dilan Esper sexual free for all utopia has little to say to us. There are curiously Nietzschean overtones to this business of the quest for the perfect orgasm. As long as the superman and superwoman can have their perfect orgasms, who cares about all the people left behind. And yes, I would include myself in that boat. What does the world of the quest for the perfect orgasm have to offer me….That of course is neither here nor there. No doubt Dilan has his unconscious motivations too. At the end of the day, the only important question is are our unconscious motivations helping to push us in the direction of the truth, or away from it?

My answer to your last question here would be both…depending..

Carbas & myself obviously recoil from the insinuation that anyone interested in these issues is a misanthrope of the new sexual order.

There is a certain truth in your “nice-guys” thesis. Current sexual norms make for a rapacious sort of serial–monogamy that can turn many off from “the game”. This is true for both men & woman. However: multiple factors are at work. Those who find a stable spouse may be compelled to marry earlier & treasure that relationship precisely because the environment seems so inhospitable to serious commitment.

In general I tend to focus on who is really “weak” in regards to this new sexual order. Most dramatically it has come down on women, children & the poor. They are “weak” in multiple senses. #1. The woman cant get reliable breadwinners to reasonably depend on during childbearing/rearing. #2.Children cannot be assured of both their natural parents due to high rates of illegitimacy & divorce. #3. This hits the poor the hardest who have the least social & economic capital to fall back on.

The scourge of illegitimacy and the cultural pathologies it generates tend to be the focus of my concern with post sexual revolution norms. Europe’s demographic winter prove useful in raising the consciousness of people to the long term, futile nature of today’s sexual norms. They also point to the difficulty any society will have when it tries to reverse or emolliate these trends. 9a policy focus only now beginning)

Anyway…. Just a few more of my observations.

Posted by Fitz | February 26, 2008 1:13 PM

There is usually no good reason to discuss theology with people who think it's the height of cleverness and wisdom to arbitrarily use the female pronoun for God: it would make perfect sense, given Dilan's views on the matter, to use "it" -- but using "She" is like wearing the right kind of sneakers: more a sign to be seen than a meaningful choice.

Using "She" mocks the absolutely stupid belief of so many monotheists that God has a penis.

If you believe that God must have a gender, than why can't She be a "She"? She gave birth to the universe, after all.

As I suggested, I think this comes from anthropomorphizing on Dilan's part, actually, ascribing a finite attention to God.

Marquis, it isn't that God can't care about where humans put their penises. It's that She doesn't.

You seem to think that God is finite unless God cares about every bacterium. But there's no reason to believe that. We aren't that important. We'd like to believe that we are that important. Some of us have big egos and insist that we are that important. But there's no reason to believe that we are.

God may well be infinite; nonetheless, there's no reason She would or should give a poop about us.

Exactly what do we 'know' more than St. Augustine that compels us to believe that the fetus is not a human being.

We know that women have equal rights, and an equal right to participate in society. Making the philosophical claim that personhood begins at conception is easy to do if women don't count for anything and have to bear a baby whenever men want them to.

We further know that there is no necessary relation between sex and procreation.

Finally, we know that Christianity, like all old organized religions, is a false religion made up by ignorant people, at least as to its moral and historical claims, because so many of them have been proven false or inoperative by the advancements of science. At best, only a highly allegorical sort of Christianity could be true.

So there is simply no reason to listen to St. Augustine, coming out of a deeply patriarchal and ignorant society, about any issue relating to women's rights, including abortion.

It is a matter of basic scientific fact, that: Any adult human being— Dilan Esper, for example. is the same whole living individual human organism—i.e., the same human being—that was at an earlier stage of his life an adolescent.

I don't want to get off on a tangent, Fitz, but this is not a scientific fact at all. Scientists do not know basic things about consciousness and personhood. This is a matter for philosophers.

Further, I might add that you religious folks shouldn't take this exaltation of science too far. Saying that the organism creates a single consciousness from conception to death, after all, completely rules out an afterlife and establishes Christianity as total BS.

You guys like what your rather monochromatic conception of science says about birth, but you guys wouldn't like what it says about death.

I am saying those who want legal abortion want people like me aborted. I am saying they tell people that having a child born with disability is even worse than it is. They encourage or pressure abortion. I say this is what I was talking about and that it does effect my life.

Thomas, no it doesn't:

1. I'm glad you were born, and glad you are here to argue the pro-life position on this comment thread.

BUT

2. All of our lives are contingent on so many things-- such as which sperm met which egg, whether the parents used contraception that day, whether we were spontaneously miscarried or didn't make it into the endometrium, whether the parents even decided to screw that day, whether the parents even met or stayed married, etc. So to point to abortion and say "I'm hurt because my sister might not have been born" misses that there are all sorts of reasons your sister might not have been born, or you, or me. We are all so fricking lucky to be alive that we can't point to abortion as being a uniquely bad thing because it snuffs out lives that could have been unique individuals given that 99.999999999999999999999999999999999 percent of the potential unique individuals in history were snuffed out and never were born. There might have been 1000 more Shakespeares, for instance. But there weren't, because one thing or another happened before birth or even before conception. Abortion isn't causing any unique harm in that context.

Posted by Dilan Esper | February 26, 2008 1:51 PM

Ross & All
Ryan T. Anderson references the Nation we are discussing article and Mr. Douthat’s characterization of at today’s First Things Blog here…

http://www.firstthings.com/blog/2008/02/26/more-on-mothers/

It has an interesting link to another Blog illustrating how specious the take on traditionalists often is.

Dilan Esper
We have been around this particular mulberry bush before I’m afraid. It always stalls out at your common elision between a human being & consciousness and personhood.

“I don't want to get off on a tangent, Fitz, but this is not a scientific fact at all. Scientists do not know basic things about consciousness and personhood. This is a matter for philosophers.”

Of course I never said anything about consciousness or personhood much less philosophy. I did correctly state that it is a matter of basic scientific fact, that: Any adult human being— Dilan Esper, for example. is the same whole living individual human organism—i.e., the same human being—that was at an earlier stage of his life an adolescent…….

Posted by Fitz | February 26, 2008 2:27 PM

Any adult human being— Dilan Esper, for example. is the same whole living individual human organism—i.e., the same human being—that was at an earlier stage of his life an adolescent…….

Yeah, but that's actually not true from conception. Twins, for example, were not the same whole living individual human organism from conception.

In any event, that argument proves too much. A butterfly may hve been the same whole living individual organism as the catarpillar that preceded it, but that doesn't mean that a catarpillar is the same as a butterfly or is entitled to the same treatment.

Posted by Dilan Esper | February 26, 2008 3:21 PM

Dilan,

It's always fun to watch you flounderingly attempt to talk about theology.

No one, except possibly the Mormons, believes that God has a male organ. God the Father is traditionally referred to by a masculine pronoun because He has characteristics (of kingship, domination, power, etc.) that in a patriarchal society were associated with men. But no one ever argued that God was actually 'male'. The Holy Spirit is referred to by a feminine pronoun in modern Aramaic (rucho qudesho parakeletho) after all. God has some feminine as well as some masculine characteristics. If you wanted to refer to specifically the Holy Spirit as 'She', I wouldn't have a problem with it.

Moreover God did not 'give birth to' the universe, in the sense that a woman gives birth to a child, you're making the same mistake between creating and begetting.

So we are as unimportant as a bacterium. We are? How do you know? You're simply setting that up as axiomatic. I disagree. A God that would be indifferent to the well being of our souls is by definition a less perfect God than one who would.
The God that I believe in cares infinitely for each of us, enough to take on human form and to die for us.

And Dilan, science says nothing, and can say nothing, about the soul, one way or another, or about life after death. How could it, when life after death is by definition something that cannot be _observed_ except through mystical experience or inference from others' experiences. I would agree that the _limitations_ of science, in particular our inability to come to a good understanding of consciousness, free will, or the evolution of morality from a materialistic perspective, do lead us to infer the existence of an immortal soul- but science _itself_ can say nothing on the matter.

Posted by Hector | February 26, 2008 3:58 PM

No one, except possibly the Mormons, believes that God has a male organ. God the Father is traditionally referred to by a masculine pronoun because He has characteristics (of kingship, domination, power, etc.) that in a patriarchal society were associated with men. But no one ever argued that God was actually 'male'.

Hector, I admit that I am not exactly a theologian, but I think you are fundamentally wrong about this (perhaps Marquis, whom for all my disagreements with him clearly knows his Catholic theology, can weigh in). My understanding is that the purported male gender of God is actually quite important to Christianity as well as other monotheistic faiths. Specifically in Christianity, it matters because of how Jesus was conceived (he had a heavenly father and an earthly mother); it matters because of suppositions as to whom can lead the Church (the debates about women in the priesthood and the papacy, etc.); it matters because of the structure of the family (women are supposed to obey their husbands as their husbands obey their heavenly father); etc. This isn't just the matter of the familiar linguistic device of using a masculine pronoun when one means a nonspecific gender. Plenty of Christians believe in and conceive of a masculine God (indeed, how common is the depiction of God as an old man in Western Christian art?), and my understanding is that it is quite important doctrinally as well.

Yes, I kind of tweak you guys when I conceive of God with a penis, but that's because I find the whole enterprise of applying the human/certain animals characteristic of gender to the infinite and omnipotent power that is claimed to have created the universe. (Indeed, the very arguments you make against my contention that God doesn't care about the activities of humans-- that God can't be finite in that way-- are clearly applicable to the argument that God has a gender; an infinite God would either transcend gender or have every conceivable characteristic of every conceivable gender, right?)

So we are as unimportant as a bacterium. We are? How do you know? You're simply setting that up as axiomatic.

It is axiomatic. We are simply more complex organisms.

At any rate, if you contend that we are more important than bacteria, than you are actually trapped by that argument, because that suggests that there are other things (as there surely are) that are more important than us. I would suggest that the sorts of cosmological and physical issues that I set out above are exactly that.

Either everything is equally important to God, and we are no more important than bacteria, or God is concerned with the important things, in which case we aren't one of them. Either way, it is only the fact that you guys have huge egos that makes you think that God cares about you individually. You might show a little more humility before the awesome God in the future.

Posted by Dilan Esper | February 26, 2008 4:36 PM

And Dilan, science says nothing, and can say nothing, about the soul, one way or another, or about life after death. How could it, when life after death is by definition something that cannot be _observed_ except through mystical experience or inference from others' experiences.

I agree with this in a certain sense, Hector. Science can tell us that we appear to be conscious because of the functioning of our brains and when our brains cease to function, we no longer appear to be conscious. Science, however, can't tell us whether there are other forms of consciousness.

But the problem is that this isn't consistent with your side's reliance on science to say that human personhood begins at conception. Your side says that "science" tells us that when that sperm and egg unite and form a zygote, that creates an organism that is the same organism that will become a baby and then an adult, and therefore abortion is murder. And the problem is science doesn't tell us that the zygote is a person precisely because science can't tell us if there is personhood before conception or whether personhood comes at some later time or enters the organism at any particular time. The only way to claim that science actually resolves the abortion debate is to say that a person only exists at the time when a unique organism is created. But if one is that formalistic about what "science" tells us, then there could be no life after death, because that unique organism ceases to exist upon death.

The point is, pro-lifers selectively rely on a strict materialistic conception of science when they like the results (i.e., at the start of the life cycle) but ignore it when they don't like the results (i.e., at the end of it).

I really have no idea about questions of the soul. I have my doubts, but I also know that there are conceptions out there like the many-worlds hypothesis that might allow for an afterlife. I certainly wouldn't claim that science has disproven the existence of the afterlife.

But for the same reason, I don't think we can look at the formation of an individual organism for the definition of personhood.

Posted by Dilan Esper | February 26, 2008 4:44 PM

We know that women have equal rights, and an equal right to participate in society.

So, by and large I think this is true (not what you mean by it, which would include unlimited abortion license, but something similarly stated that is true) -- but I'm curious. How do we know it? What experiment did we perform to find that this was true, or did we perhaps reach this conclusion by mathematical argument or philosophical reasoning from first principles?

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | February 26, 2008 4:52 PM

On the issue you contend with Hector, Dilan, you have a minor point but I think Hector's closer to correct as far as I know. Yes, the masculine pronoun has real meaning in orthodox Christianity, generally, but Hector is right that feminine pronouns for the Holy Spirit are a long-standing tradition as well, which means that indeed there are feminine characteristics ascribed to God in orthodox language on occasion. The problem, I think, is that you have the analogy wrong way around: the orthodox position is not remotely that God "has a penis" (except in the case of the Incarnation), or is "a man." Rather, it's that human fatherhood is a kind of weak analogy for the kind of Fatherhood that God the Father has. I'm not sure how to say it concisely, but while the origins of the terms were probably anthropomorphizing, the theology has, for a long time, been the other way around.

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | February 26, 2008 5:00 PM

It is axiomatic. We are simply more complex organisms.

I think "it is axiomatic" on as contentious a case as this usually means "I don't have an actual argument for this, so I'm going to claim it's just plain as day."

But then you (sort of try to) give an argument:

At any rate, if you contend that we are more important than bacteria, than you are actually trapped by that argument, because that suggests that there are other things (as there surely are) that are more important than us. I would suggest that the sorts of cosmological and physical issues that I set out above are exactly that.

Well, in a sense there ARE other things in orthodox Christian thought that are "more important" (in some senses) than us -- the Incarnation makes us special, but in general angels are much more impressive servants of God than human beings. Stars are nice and pretty and useful, but they don't have free will, and thus are far less "mirrors" of God than the most idiotic, ugly, shambling mess of a human being (or angel).

Either everything is equally important to God, and we are no more important than bacteria, or God is concerned with the important things, in which case we aren't one of them. Either way, it is only the fact that you guys have huge egos that makes you think that God cares about you individually. You might show a little more humility before the awesome God in the future.

The problem is that your "importance" seems to come down to a size relationship, or perhaps (computational?) complexity, or some such (it really seems to reduce to Dilan's "gee whiz" factor, which is pretty egotistical itself). But unless you presume God is finite, that doesn't really make much sense. Gee, Dilan, even plenty of atheists these days are awed by the (accidental, of course, in their view) point that human beings are self-reflective, have models of our own minds, and experience consciousness, which few believe that stars or bacteria or galaxies do. I think Douglas Hofstadter would think you're out to lunch on this one, even from a rather limited POV. The funny thing is, I don't get the feeling that you're the kind of scientifically knowledgeable person who might have some actual appreciation of galactic structures or the like -- am I wrong? You seem more like someone with a humanities background.

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | February 26, 2008 5:07 PM

Marquis,

C.S. Lewis says the same thing in 'Perelandra', I think, in much the same language that you use. "Gender is a more fundamental reality than sex" and fatherhood happens to share some of the characteristics that God the Father has, etc. (Similar language was used, oddly enough, by the 16th century female Hindu mystic Mira Bhai, who said that in relation to God, we are all feminine, and that God is the only truly "masculine" being.)

My church (Anglican) does have female priests. I'm not particularly fond of it, in part because it makes us look like fools in the eyes of the rest of Christendom, and for some reason I tend to prefer a priest being male, but nor do I think it's a horrible outrage.

Posted by Hector | February 26, 2008 5:13 PM

Re: it matters because of how Jesus was conceived (he had a heavenly father and an earthly mother);

The Mormons teach that God is a physical, male being who had sex with Mary. No other church does. The standard teaching is that Jesus was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit (the decidedly non-male person of the Trinity). The Father-Son relationship is not due to Jesus's birth at all; per orthodox Trinitarian doctrine it antedates all time, the Son being eternally begotten of the Father. Dilan is welcome to regard that as mystical balderdash of course, but I am mentioning it to correct his misapprehension about what relationship God the Father and Christ the Son have to one another. Theirs is decidedly not a biological one, and the terms
"Father" and "Son" are metaphorical not literal.

Re: it matters because of suppositions as to whom can lead the Church (the debates about women in the priesthood and the papacy, etc.)

This is due to Jesus' maleness (and Jesus was a male human being after all). The argument is that a priest or bishop must stand as an image (ikon) of Jesus, and therefore must share his maleness-- again, nothing to do with the gender of God as God.

Re: women are supposed to obey their husbands as their husbands obey their heavenly father); etc

Uh-uh. Men are also supposed to obey a wide range of authorities, not just God. Their employers (masters), their civil rulers, Church authorities etc.

Posted by JonF | February 26, 2008 7:28 PM

I think you guys are minimizing the extent to which believers think of God as "male". Indeed, if you were right, it wouldn't bother believers at all for someone to call God "She". And yet it clearly does.

Further, I chose those as examples, but in fact, patriarchy infects the entire Christian religion and the Jewish tradition it drew upon. I could have mentioned, for instance, the scriptural passages that God created man in His image, and that woman was formed from Adam's rib. Or the fact that other than Mary, every single important figure in the Christian tradition is a male.

Indeed, the incarnation of God as Jesus is a pretty clear manifestation of a male God-- and Jesus, of course, did indeed have a penis.

In contrast, the holy spirit is usually NOT referred to in any gender at all, but rather just as the holy spirit or holy ghost. The gender of the holy spirit certainly isn't an emphasized part of Christianity; in contrast, the gender of God and Jesus is constantly asserted.

And, of course, God has been portrayed in Chistian art as a male for over 1,500 years.

The fact of the matter is Christianity believes in a single male God. And that belief is idiotic. Indeed, you guys know it is idiotic, and that's why you are downplaying it so much and making it sound like it is a linguistic convention rather than a fundamental doctrine of the faith.

Posted by Dilan Esper | February 26, 2008 9:38 PM

On a practical level most Catholics in the religious life are women. Despite declines nuns still outnumber monks, priests, bishops, archbishops, and cardinals combined. Last time I checked anyway. In addition the laity is majority female. Judging by the experience of the Anglicans women would eventually start outnumbering men in the seminaries. The plus side is essentially taking men out of the religious life would reduce sex abuse as women are much less proned to this. The downside though is the religion would likely become even more gender unbalanced.

Another issue is men need more guidance than women. Even if it's just a parable the story of Adam and Eve sort of shows this. Eve has some discussion where the snake persuades her. Adam just kind of goes "well Eve says it's okay why not?" Men are much more emotionally unstable, self-destructive, and easier to lead astray. True that sounds sexist, but many things back it up. Murder and to a lesser extent suicide are almost universally more common with men. Fascist movements were up to 90% male dominated. Men often feel much more estranged from their fathers than women do from mothers. So men need more guidance and positive examples.

This isn't getting to the theological reasons, but it gives some sense why religions with female clergy are almost always small or in decline. As the Methodists, Anglicans, and a few others are. Granted in the US people leaving Catholicism is the largest numerical religious change, but in percentage terms Catholics have a much greater "retention rate" than Methodists or Anglicans. Any declines from religious change are largely due to Catholics getting comparatively few converts. In Asia or Africa this is much less true. As far as I know Methodists and Anglicans have low retention in general, exempting in the parts of Africa where the churches discourage women priests or gay marriage.

Posted by Thomas R | February 26, 2008 10:04 PM

"Or the fact that other than Mary..."

And Ruth, Esther, Rebecca, Rachel, Sarah, Deborah, Judith (for Catholics and EOC), Mary Magdalene, etc.

The Bible was written in a patriarchal society, but women generally have greater significance to it than in many other ancient works. The notable women in Sima Qian's histories are generally harpies or passive. In the Iliad women were fought over, but rarely had say in their life. When they did they tend to be vixens and schemers. You don't get much like this in either.

"And there was at that time Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lapidoth, who judged the people. And she sat under a palm tree, which was called by her name, between Rama and Bethel, in Mount Ephraim: and the children of Israel came up to her for all judgment. And she sent and called Barac, the Son of Abinoem, out of Cedes, in Nephthali: and she said to him: The Lord God of Israel hath commanded thee: Go, and lead an army to Mount Thabor, and thou shalt take with thee ten thousand fighting men of the children of Nephthali, and of the children of Zabulon: And I will bring unto thee in the place of the torrent Cison, Sisara, the general of Jabin's army, and his chariots, and all his multitude, and will deliver them into thy hand. And Barac said to her: If thou wilt come with me, I will go: if thou wilt not come with me, I will not go. She said to him: I will go, indeed, with thee, but at this time the victory shall not be attributed to thee, because Sisara shall be delivered into the hand of a woman. Debbora therefore arose, and went with Barac to Cedes." Judges 4:4-10

A women considered wise, making judgments, going off to battle? In the Greeks this only occurs with Amazons and foreign women. In the Chinese she would be revealed as a conniving tramp or worse. Then there's Judith which is accepted by Catholics and Orthodox. That woman saved her people by decapitating an enemy general and became a hero. A hero a tad too provocative for Judaism or Protestantism, and in fairness the morality of strategic assassinations is dicey, but still...

Posted by Thomas R | February 26, 2008 10:17 PM

Dilan,

The Holy Spirit is referred to as 'it' in our culture because it's a neuter noun in Greek and a masculine one in Latin. (Blame the Romans.) But when Jesus said, "And I will pray the Father, and He shall give you a Comforter, that He may abide with you forever," He was speaking Aramaic, and He was using a feminine phrase. If you go to the churches in South India where neo-Aramaic is the liturgical language today, you will hear the Holy Spirit referred to as 'rucho qudesho parakeletho', a feminine noun. And come on, Dilan, what's up with not capitalizing 'Holy Spirit'? That actually gets my goat more than the 'She' business.

_Every_ figure in the Christian tradition other than St. Mary is male? What about Mary Magdalene, St. Julian of Norwich, Felicity and Perpetua, Thecla, St. Theresa of Avila, St. Therese of Lisieux, Hildegarde of Bingen, St. Clare, St. Joan of Arc, and many others. Even in the Old Testament there are a fair number including Judith, Ruth, Esther and others.

No doubt the Christian religion as it has existed in history was often deplorably patriarchal. This was an inevitable part of arising out three traditions- the Jews, Greeks and Romans- which were extremely patriarchal themselves (and ironically the Jews were probably less patriarchal than the other two.) But the essence of the teaching of the Christ and the apostles was that women and men are essentially alike in nature and equal in status, and this was the core of what led to women's liberation in the West.

Posted by Hector | February 26, 2008 10:23 PM

Thomas R.,

The Episcopal church had done plenty that is irreligious, immoral and/or just plain wrong over the last few decades, but to be fair, I don't think you can put their decline in membership all down to women's ordination and the other 'cultural' issues. I just saw a statistic today that about 32% of Americans who were born into the Catholic faith are no longer Catholics (of course the Catholic Church has been able to replenish its numbers through immigration). That is much higher than I thought and is not that far from the 33% decline in membership in the Episcopal church over the last few decades (although to be fair that statistic is a few years old...probably more Anglicans have left in recent years over the Katharine Schori fiasco and other things). Retention of communicants seems to be a generalized problem of American churches.

Posted by Hector | February 26, 2008 10:35 PM

I may have exaggerated the matter as there are other reasons for any decline.

Still the decline with Anglicans is probably greater percentage-wise than it is with Catholics. They listed 32% of Anglicans either switching to a non-*Protestant religion or abandoning religion. On it's own this would give the same retention rate of 68%, but an additional 10% switch to Evangelical churches. I think it's fair to say that at least some of that 10% is not switching to Evangelical forms of Anglicanism. Others switch to "mainline Protestant" or "predominately black churches" that may not always be in communion with Anglican/Episcopalianism. Retention to the denomination they started in is below 50%.

http://religions.pewforum.org/pdf/report-religious-landscape-study-chapter-2.pdf

Among Christians Eastern Orthodox Christianity seems to do the best with retention.

Catholics have made some mistakes on retention. For example the sex abuse crisis, but also poor education on the faith and developing a too lax view on marrying outside the faith. Hindus almost exclusively remain "in the faith" for marriage and have about the best retention.

*Pew refers to Anglicanism as Protestant. I think that's debatable, but in any event they are clearly stating they switched to a new religion.

Posted by Thomas R | February 27, 2008 12:05 AM

Indeed, you guys know it is idiotic, and that's why you are downplaying it so much and making it sound like it is a linguistic convention rather than a fundamental doctrine of the faith.

Well, that's mainly because to the extent it's a fundamental doctrine (do you know what the term means?) it isn't quite in the sense you're using it. In one sense, yes, Christianity IS patriarchal. God the Father is, explicitly in the Creed, God the Father. It doesn't, in a way, get more patriarchal than that. But that doesn't mean every negative associated with patriarchy can therefore be included as a core doctrine of the faith. Many religious people, good souls with a sincere and acceptable faith if you ask me, have ludicrous anthropomorphic views of God and heaven, surrounded by a vast and splendid and often gauche and degrading array of superstition. This is humanity -- this is James Joyce's "here comes everybody!" -- you know?

And really, with respect to the Incarnation -- what would you have had? God come down as female, which would be equally biased (but in the "right" PC way)? As a freakish hermaphrodite or sexless automaton?

PS Hector -- is Bhai the originator of that excellent phrase? I had read it here and there, but always assumed it was from some Christian mystic.

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | February 27, 2008 2:07 AM

Re: Indeed, if you were right, it wouldn't bother believers at all for someone to call God "She".

If we were posting this in Georgian or Chinese or any number of other modern language we could not be having this debate at all as those languages do not have pronouns marked for gender. The English language has a rule, which feminists are welcome to take umbrage over, that any animate, (or at least sentient) being is referred to as "he" unless said being is explicitly female. Should we someday meet a bunch of aliens whose gender realties are very different than ours we will call one of them a "he" because of that rule. Robots in scifi (unless very anthropomorphic in female-like bodies) also get a "he" as a pronoun. Calling God "she" violates this grammar rule, and implies that God is in fact female, which is why it grates.

Re: patriarchy infects the entire Christian religion and the Jewish tradition it drew upon.

Patriarchy infests all human civilizations period.

Re: God has been portrayed in Chistian art as a male for over 1,500 years.

Strictly speaking God the Father is not supposed to be portrayed at all except as the True and Uncreated Light, though this stricture has been ignored for centuries. The Holy Spirit may be portrayed in the form of a dove asat the baptism of Christ.

Re: The fact of the matter is Christianity believes in a single male God.

Nope, and repeating it endlessly does not make it so. God is God-- beyond gender and matter, except necessarily in incarnate form.

Re: the Jews were probably less patriarchal than the other two.

Hector, how do you figure? Maybe less patriartchal than the Greeks who were notorious in that regard, but the Romans were one of the least patriarchal cultures of antiquity, allowing women just about all rights except purely political ones (they could not vote or hold office- and they didn't property pay taxes because of that exclusion).

Posted by JonF | February 27, 2008 6:43 AM

"or Chinese or any number of other modern language we could not be having this debate at all as those languages do not have pronouns marked for gender."

The spoken word for he, she, and it are all the same in Chinese. However in writing the character for "he" is different than the character for "she." As this is a written, and not spoken, conversation we could still be having this discussion in Chinese.

This is mostly just pedantic and to show I do remember something of the year of Chinese I took.

More seriously it doesn't matter to me if someone calls God "She." It seems like a rather obvious liberal affectation, but it doesn't offend me as such. The Shakers alternatively referred to God as "he" and "she" depending on the context or just whatever. God as masculine is sometimes preferred because God as feminine often leads to implying God gave birth to the Universe rather than create it. If the Universe is the "Child of God", rather than his creation, this leads to basically what Dilan indicated. We're just some eyebrow mite or something in God's child. Still the idea that women are passive and non-creative is largely rejected these days so in theory I think you could believe in a Goddess who also creates the Universe rather than gives birth to it. For a variety of reasons, some psychological, I do maintain the idea of God the Father as masculine. However calling God she or it is benign compared to other possible views.

Posted by Thomas R | February 27, 2008 7:47 AM

I should note that I'm with Thomas -- God as "she" doesn't offend me, I just find a very very very high correlation between those who call God "she" and those who are unable to say anything useful in the realm of theology. "God" as "She" usually marks either a flippant trendiness and ignorance or the dedicated mindless PC-as-theology of a very liberal Episcopal minister (usually female, or Spong-like). But yeah, it's not some grave insult to God, it's just usually a marker for silliness.

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | February 27, 2008 12:58 PM

Strange tangent this comment section evolved into.

I could flesh out the theology on the Trinity & gender.It is enough to say that God is: Both male & female, Neither Male or Female, More than Male & Female.

I think (obviously) the conversation has moved way off target from were documentary films like “demographic winter” would naturally lead. (But often don’t because they get hijacked by superfluous, often leftist issues)

In an effort to reorient this thread (I submit)

I have always noted that it speaks volumes that in a capitalist, consumer & status driven society so many women voluntarily give up large salaries (perhaps millions of dollars over a lifetime) in order to have children & raise them.
Contrary to the gushing of feminism about women’s triumphs in the labor market: It is this phenomenon that strikes me as the more profound and telling one.

The situation in Europe is a dire one. It comes down to personal & cultural attitudes toward childbearing/rearing that are forged by history, economics & ideology.

I remember speaking at length with two young girls from Germany. The culture of that country was such that they could not afford to dream of young Motherhood. Rather: they felt that they MUST establish themselves in careers first, that men & marriage were too economically tenuous.
Desire for children was considered contingent on getting married at some future date & then and only then perhaps barring a limited number of children according to financial wherewithal. (Given the high tax rates)

Interestingly enough, (and this corresponds with several things I have read) they spoke of the German emphasis on ‘Kinderkind’ (childcare) so rooted in their culture. This (in their minds) created a perverse disincentive to having children. So strong was the belief that a good Mother stays home & concentrate exclusively of childcare; that not having children was more ethically/culturally responsible than having children & relinquishing them to daycare or a nanny.

Once again, with European tax rates being so high, it was their expectation that only a very successful husband could afford them the opportunity raise children in an ethically & culturally responsible manner. The realization was; that in Germany most couples end up with two incomes to get by. This further reinforced their conception that it was best to tamper any enthusiasm for marriage & family.

Dilan (writes)
“Yeah, but that's actually not true from conception. Twins, for example, were not the same whole living individual human organism from conception.”

Yes, twinning: the fact that one thing becomes two doesn’t jeopardizes the “oneness” of the original being. Twinning a not a problem Prior to splitting, an embryo is an individual; after splitting, there are two, one of which is the original, the other of which is new

Similarly, prior to dividing a clump of day lilies, there is one plant, subsequently there are two. And prior to cell division, there is one bacterium, subsequently there are two.
Prior to cutting a flat-worm in two with a razor blade, there is one worm, subsequently there are two. The flatworm can be split and the result will be two whole flatworms: but that of course does not show that prior to that division there was not a determinate individual flatworm

The fact that monozygotic twinning sometimes occurs in humans provides no evidence for supposing that human embryos are not (or are not yet) individuals. The plain fact is that they are. With human embryos, it is clear that at fertilization, a new and complete organism comes into existence—a distinct, actively self-developing human organism—for he or she exhibits internally directed, complex development between fertilization and the last point in time at which twinning may occur. So, the original embryo A lives until twinning occurs, and at that point, either A continues to exist and a new embryo comes to be by “budding” from the original one

Most twinning occurs after day 5, and since in many cases one of the twins has more qualitative likeness to the original than the other, the “budding” scenario is more likely what occurs. Twin B is a sort of natural clone of Twin A. Twin B comes into being as an embryo, just as twin A did. The fact of twinning does nothing to show that the original embryo was not a determinate, individual human organism.

Posted by Fitz | February 27, 2008 1:00 PM

JonF,

You might be right....my impression of the Romans is that they were highly patriarchal and that the woman was the husband's property. Wasn't it the case that Roman women didn't even have distinct personal names, being called the female derivative of their father's name- 'Cornelia', 'Lucia', 'Julia' and so forth.

Thomas R.,

No doubt you read the article more carefully than me- I didn't even realize they went into such detail! The 33% decline in Anglican membership is something that i vaguely remembered reading some years ago. It seems that in the sense that matters the relaevent statistic is more like 50% drop in membership, which is indeed much bigger than with the RC Church.

Oddly enough though the Anglican church seems to be flourishing in other parts of the world- Africa, the Caribbean, possibly India. Hopefully they can keep the faith alive. And thanks for referring to Anglicanism as 'debatably' Protestant....I'm personally drawn to the more High Church side, but to be honest at this point I wouldn't blame any of you guys if you derisively snickered whenever they heard the phrase 'Anglo-Catholic'.

Marquis,
I don't know if Mirabhai 'originated' it...apparently she came to a pilgrimage site and wanted to enter the temple of Krishna, the ascetic in charge of the shrine told her that women were not allowed inside, so she said something like 'Krishna is the only true _man_ here and in relation to Him all of us are women'. She was in that poetic tradition that uses erotic and romantic imagery as a metaphor for the believer's union with God, probably not unlike St. Theresa of Avila. I'm sure Christian mystics came up with the phrase independently.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirabai

Posted by Hector | February 27, 2008 1:30 PM

Well, that's mainly because to the extent it's a fundamental doctrine (do you know what the term means?) it isn't quite in the sense you're using it. In one sense, yes, Christianity IS patriarchal. God the Father is, explicitly in the Creed, God the Father. It doesn't, in a way, get more patriarchal than that. But that doesn't mean every negative associated with patriarchy can therefore be included as a core doctrine of the faith. Many religious people, good souls with a sincere and acceptable faith if you ask me, have ludicrous anthropomorphic views of God and heaven, surrounded by a vast and splendid and often gauche and degrading array of superstition. This is humanity -- this is James Joyce's "here comes everybody!" -- you know?

Marquis, given that we've had so much disagreement on this thread, I think I will close my part with a note of agreement. I think you've basically got it right-- on the one hand, God's "maleness" is important for Christian doctrine; on the other, many believers make it more important than it has to be.

Bear in mind, when I call God "She", that it's those believers whom I am making fun of.

Posted by Dilan Esper | February 27, 2008 2:55 PM

Re: my impression of the Romans is that they were highly patriarchal and that the woman was the husband's property.

This decidedly incorrect. It applied to (some) of the Greeks, but definitely not the Romans, except in the very limited matter that a Roman paterfamilias had authority over every member of his household, male and female both, and (in principle) could order their death, though by late Republican time doing so (except in regards to a slave) would have horrified any Roman.

Re: Wasn't it the case that Roman women didn't even have distinct personal names, being called the female derivative of their father's name- 'Cornelia', 'Lucia'

This is true, but something similar applied to firstborn sons: Gaius Julius Caesar was the son of Gaius Julius Caesar, who was the son of Gaius Julius Caesar, and so on as far back as the direct father-son lineage was unbroken. To get around this confusion nicknames and diminuitives for both men and women were widely used.

Roman women could own property in their own name, as adults they could choose their own husbands and (after marriage) they could socialize with men. They could testify in court, operate businesses, practice trades, initiate divorce. Roman social ethic strongly dispproved of wife-beating, and Roman women were free enough that they had a surprisingly large number of affairs (at least among the elite). That Christianity could attract so many female converts is evidence that Roman women had a great deal of latitude in their lives, and they were not prisoners in their homes, under their husbands' and fathers' thumbs. Despite feminist claims that Christianity "enslaved women", Roman law and Roman custom in these matters survived largely intact in the Middle Ages (divorce even survived at Byzantium, with the grudging tolerance of the Orthodox Church), and the position of women in later times in Europe owes a great deal to Roman custom and attitudes.

Posted by JonF | February 27, 2008 7:58 PM

I don't think the Romans were as liberal as you're implying, but it's been some time since I took Roman history. Roman women may have had affairs, but the punishment for it was much stricter than men usually received. Unlike in Egypt women rarely had political power in their own right. The Romans also criticized the Etruscans for allowing too much socializing between men and women.

Posted by Thomas R | February 28, 2008 6:58 AM

...fascist, Mussolini Hitler, racist racist racist. Isn't this a page out of the Jonah Goldberg playbook? Isn't this the only page in the Jonah Goldberg playbook?

Posted by rj3 | February 21, 2008 4:09 PM

No, the other 399 & 9/10 or so pages are what's called supporting evidence.

Posted by Randy M | February 29, 2008 5:43 PM

For what it's worth, the pro-natalist postion, at least mine and any that I've ever actually read, has NOTHING to do with race.
If I woke up tomorrow and the USA consisted of 100% of some race/ethnicity not mine (pick any), but all or most of them belived in limited government, personal responsibility, and traditional morality, (and spoke my language, but that's just a convention--people able to communicate with e/o should be encouraged) I'd call it paradise. I don't care about race at all.

Unfortunately, radical multicutluralism (as opposed to e pluribus unum) posits that immigrant communities should be encouraged to cling to their old cultural VALUES, despite the fact that in many cases those values created the social and economic situtations that they flee.

So a much higher birthrate among people from very different cultures (and I for one wouldn't by and large call Latin America so different) combined with radical multicultural policies and norms WILL change the culture over time.

Europe, with a history of valuing ethnicity anyways, and so ironically unprepared to assimilate immigrants, is much closer to great change than America--but if European attitudes towards multiculturalism prevail over American assimilation (e pluribus unum) we could face such a shift from traditional American values towards others as well.

I don't think this is likely, but Europe, from what I read, is headed for major changes. Not racial ones, or at least I don't give a damn about racial changes, but changes in values, towards Sharia.

Posted by Randy M | February 29, 2008 7:06 PM

Re: and I for one wouldn't by and large call Latin America so different

It's pretty different, really. Not in terms of _religious_ values, but if your definition of 'culture' involves 'limited government', 'liberal democracy', American style capitalism, etc. then those values are definitely less inherent in Latin AMerican culture than in Anglo-American. Latin American cultures generally value things like charismatic leadership, obligations to the collective, personal loyalty to one'es leaders, one's friends and one's family more than we do, and value things like freedom, rule of law and individualism quite a bit less.

Political and economic liberalism would probably not survive if America changes its cultural makeup. That's no skin off my back, as I don't like liberalism to begin with, and I would probably prefer a more 'Latin' United States. But you might not like it so much.

Posted by Hector | March 2, 2008 8:42 AM