The following brief news item from AGI shines a spotlight on what has the West has done to itself over the past fifty or sixty years. The Italian bishops have inadvertently revealed the rationale — at least the original rationale — for the mass immigration that has been imposed upon us against our will:
Immigrants in Italy Will Reverse Falling Birth Rate
(AGI) Vatican City, Nov 6 — The Italian Episcopal Conference, in its annual message for the Day for Life conference to be held on Feb. 1, 2015, with the slogan “Support for Life”, has emphasized the devastating effect of falling birth rates and how children born today will be the point of an inverse social pyramid, carrying the overwhelming burden of previous generations. Italian bishops also emphasized how immigrants are playing the greater role in terms of new citizens.
The demographic crisis that is unfolding now has been expected for at least forty years. I remember reading the predictions back in the 1970s, and then later revisions in the ’80s and ’90s. Businesses and government agencies for whom actuarial information was important — insurance companies and the fiduciary bodies for pension funds come to mind — were well-motivated to make reliable projections of the demographics of the West for several generations into the future. By 1980 it was obvious that the birthrates in the European diaspora would not be sufficient to sustain existing welfare states for more than another half-century or so.
There were several reasons why Europeans and their cousins in the former colonies were not procreating fast enough:
| 1. | The welfare state itself. When the state is responsible for taking care of you in your old age, you don’t need to have children to fill that role, which was the traditional strategy. | |
| 2. | The welfare state imposes high taxes to pay for itself. As a result, having children becomes a more expensive proposition. People are rational economic actors, so they have fewer children. | |
| 3. | The availability of cheap birth control. This makes #2 possible for ordinary citizens. | |
| 4. | A hedonistic popular culture that encourages self-gratification and discourages the postponement of pleasure. Narcissism and live-for-the-moment cultural memes make parenthood and family life seem boring and passé, something to be ridiculed and avoided. |
The obvious solution was to import a new cohort of young, productive workers who would do the jobs and pay the taxes that all the non-existent children of the natives would otherwise have been doing and paying.
A great idea, right?
The Catholic bishops of Italy must be the last of the cultural elite that still believe that immigration is a panacea for the demographic implosion. They seem to think that the old Italy will somehow continue the same with a cohort of new, swarthier faces inhabiting it. Vineyards, wine, prosciutto, and buxom young women in low-cut dresses strolling down the streets of Rome or Milan. How could all this ever come to an end?
The politicians, of course, have long since realized that their brilliant strategy has failed, and failed miserably. But they continue with their lies and prevarications, because they have to — their little game has gone past the point of no return.
Twenty years ago they could say that they “didn’t know.” That is no longer possible. None of the major parties in currently existing governments can acknowledge their mistake, and still survive.
So they double down. They continue to sing the praises of Multiculturalism, tout the “benefits” of immigration, and crack down on any uppity citizens who dare to disagree with them.
Oh, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in’t!— Lines spoken by Miranda in The Tempest, by William Shakespeare
Hat tip: C. Cantoni.
The Germans seemed to be first out of the gate by importing Turkish Gastarbeiter. I dimly recollect that one of their rationales was to finance social welfare for Germans with additional contributions from Turks. The guest worker status permitted seemed to me an obvious way to hold the Turks at arm’s length while fleecing them. Perhaps they thought the Turks would eventually go home.
Ditto for Mexicans in the U.S. but w/o the fig leaf of any kind of legal status, all the better to signal legal vulnerability.
This is still not particularly satisfying as no person of modest intelligence can fail to be aware of the simple realities of mixing races and cultures.
Only a visceral hatred of traditional society and its restraints on hedonistic excess and its demand for discipline and effort that is the hallmark of the far left satisfactorily explains the seeming Western “madness.”
Then there’s simple venality. Blair was just revealed to have a juicy financial deal with the Saudis. No doubt Saudi and Qatarish money has fattened many a Western official’s pension.
Mere demographic decline could not lead to such destructive policies.
Wasn’t there a report on this site about something like 15, 000 GErmans murdered by foreigners since the fall of the wall, so the architects of the gastarbieter program were either stupid or subversive.
Being a German myself, I must object. Gastarbeiter programs began in the 1950s, when industrial production developed quicker than workforce growth. Turks were included into these programs around 1960 – following a recommendation from the United States who were interested to better integrate Turkey into the NATO. Already at around 1970 the German government tried to finish the Gastarbeiter programs. Thereafter Turkish immigration was mostly chain migration by relatives. I never until now have read that the motive was fleecing Turkish workers for the sake of German pensioneers.
Then, the guest worker status was hardly a German specialty (Switzerland had it much longer). Eventually, most politicians and industrialists – and even most of the guest workers themselves – believed that they would return to their home country after having made a decent income, either in order to build up a business in their home country (a typical workers’ dream) or as pensioneers. This prognosis was contested only by a minority of German nationalists, who were heavily attacked for that, but ended up being right.
The emergence of the excessively hedonistic lifestyle and the evaporation of traditional morals is the direct result of de-Christianisation of the West.
By de-Christianisation I mean not just the growing indifference of the general public to Christianity, but also the degradation of mainstream Western Christianity that has lost its ascetic nature and is ready to swallow every fashionable craze of secular society – from gay marriages to multiculturalism, no matter how alien it might be to the Bible or Church Fathers.
Christianity seems the only force in Western civilisation that could restrain hedonistic excesses and give a higher meaning to life than mere pursuit of pleasure. It was the only firm basis for morality and family life. But modern Western Christianity is a parody of the real thing, it is toothless and useless. Which means that European civilisation is dying. And Europeans are dying out quite literally leaving their land to whoever would care to take it. Apparently, it is Muslims who now have the best chances to appropriate Europe.
Bearing in mind the uncritical immigration that has occured (we could have had all the Filipinos and Cambodians we wanted!) another of Shakespeare’s lines from the Tempest comes to mind:~
“Hell is empty and all the devils are here.”
Children “cost” so much to have – yet it’s poor people who have more of them… how does this add up?
My guess is – point 4 is the most important. Why settle down, have children and a family when life offers so many other “pleasures”? Besides – these days, a family doesn’t need to last forever. So why make the sacrifice? Easier to let the immigrants do the work? As you say – what could go wrong?
I am a priest and worked in a small parish in the south of Spain and I found out that it is mainly the women who don’t want to have children. I used to ask the couples about to be married about their desire to have children and for the most part the men wanted several children and the women no.
Why did you stop asking? Why would men want children and women not? What disappointing experiences did these women have in their homes as children? What experiences of their mothers did they not wish to repeat in their married lives? What lack of affection in their lives did they experience that would be preventing them from nurturing children that they brought into the world? These women knew the answers to these questions! Did you know the answers already, so you did not have to ask?
it is mostly economic. There was a time when a bus driver could buy a home, support his wife and 4 children without the wife having to work outside the home. Now families need two incomes and the job of working mothers is never ending. Woman still end up with most of the childrearing as well as the bulk of the house work even if they work outside the home. What Europe should have done and still must do if they are to avoid civil unrest, even outright civil war, is to bring in workers from non-Muslim countries. There are plenty of Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean and Indian who are willing to work hard and make great citizens. The problem is not multi-culuralism, it’s Islam. Hindus and Buddhists don’t blow them selves up in pizza shops. They don’t hate and despise their host countries and usually feel great affection and gratitude for their hosts. Islam doesn’t and can’t if it is adhered to strictly because so much of the Koran is about the Kuffar that it is impossible to settle in as equals when your scriptures tell you in no uncertain terms that your hosts are apes and pigs or worse and that you should not befriend them in any sincere way.
Andrew Sapia: yes, I agree that the problem is not immigration per se, but specifically Muslim immigration, for the reasons that you outline.
The problem doesn’t become smaller with importing Azians. White Europeans will never and can replaced by asians.
There is an additional reason and it certainly has played a role in my own limited procreative goals. Since the 1960s it’s the first time in modern history that the surrounding culture and all large social institution sabotage the brains and souls of the young and set them at cross purpose to parents who believe in traditional things like virtue, quality, striving, merit-based elitism, social classes, manners, distinct genders and races, heteronormativity, cultural cohesion, and so on. The only solution is to cut off the child from public schooling, mass media and entertainment, peer influence, all advertising, all popular food and drink choices (i.e. sugar+carbos+bad fats) etc. Not everyone has the conditions for maintaing such a total wall around one’s children, particularly since the elites have sabotaged our economies as well to the point where to be a stay-at-home mother is a rare luxury; two incomes are necessary where one once sufficed. And so, to me and people like me who do not have the conditions for at-home schooling and constant companionship to the child, it’s better not to have one (since 1974 in my case) than to see a brain-altered moron and puppet of the toxic pop culture growing under one’s roof.
I couldn’t agree more.
I was a stay-at-home father who home-schooled the future Baron for eight years. The most important factor was that we had no TV. As a result, the fB is a well-educated traditional-minded person who can think for himself, understand reasoned arguments, and has a broad understanding of history.
Yes, we had to give up affluence to live like that. But we were already used to being poor due to my chosen occupation as a landscape artist. We lived well for poor people (and still do).
The trick is to discard the cravings for MORE MORE MORE — more material goods, more gadgets, more vacations in exotic locales, etc. etc. A family can live quite cheaply if it makes the collective decision to forego most of the frantic acquisitiveness that is part of the surrounding cultural matrix.
Not having a television is the key. Most of the unassuageable cravings and urges for a hedonistic lifestyle are inculcated by the TV.
You’re so right, Baron. “Too much telly makes your brain turn to jelly” I used to say (repeatedly) to my eldest. Now of course, it’s anything that makes your eyes square–and there are so many electronic options to choose from. One must be very strict with these gadgets, too. I often wonder if we’re creating a different kind of brain by inundating ourselves and our children with a steady diet of electronic (mostly) vapidness.
Actually not square, but rectangular, but who’s counting?
Yet here in England, when I say I don’t watch TV (apart from sport!), people don’t understand how it’s possible. Hour-long conversations concern the latest developments in TV soaps a la East Enders.
In Poland though, I know a number of people with no TV – hopefully meaning a few more independent-minded youngsters there 20 years down the line.
Btw, I myself was for a while heavily watched TV. Although mostly football and other sports, as well as old-school British comedy a la Monty Python and Carry On films, and somę new shows such as the Ali G show. None of which really did much to convert me to leftism, or consumerism for that matter. Compared to these, new-style British “comedians” such as Russell Brand really aren’t up to it…
On the other hand though – the one part of the world probably most-glued to the TV screen, with satellite dishes in almost every house, is the Arab world… how do their youth not get Westernised and liberalised, despite masses of music channels and other media promoting ultra-consumerism (especially an obsession with fast cars, indoor ski slopes and the like)? Could TV, under certain conditions, actually promote a conservative lifestyle?
It is enforced into those future Islamists that what they watch on TV from the West will be all theirs one day.
Also, don’t forget that they often watch arabic TV channels and these are quite anti-Western.
When I was a kid in Ireland almost everyone was poor but we didn’t really consider outselves poor. Neither did we have a TV. We did have enough to eat, especially potatoes. I now live in Peru and there are places where there is no electriccity and as soon as the government give them electricity almost the first thing they buy is a TV and gone is conversation, gon are family meals etc. It is the best instrument for destroying families.
I have been to Peru many times and while it seems at first glance to be a poor country, it is blessed with a plentiful supply of good food and many people who aspire to improve their lives through education.
I remember going to a mass and the priest implored people to turn off their soap operas and talk with their families.
Totally agree with you about the no tv thing Baron, I haven’t had one for a couple of years and I enjoy life more, more time for reading with the radio in the background. BLISS
My family has no TV at home and while our children are small, my wife and I can, can to some extent control, what cartoons they watch on YouTube.
I belive, the most important thing is to develop your children’s tastes and general perception of life while they are small. Even if they rebel against you later, something will stick.
But, on the whole, we rely more on God than on ourselves, we take the children to church, we pray for them and try to gently, tactfuly push them towards traditional Christianity.
“O brave new Brussels EU that has such people in it!” It wouldn’t be so bad if the immigration flows here consisted of people who were going to be pulling the cart instead of riding in it.
Vote for the peoples army of UKIP next may and we may yet stop the rot.
The situation shared by clerical, political and financial “elites” is that they do not need (nor want) to produce anything of physical value. Their “work” and income depends on others doing the productive work. In so called “welfare” states the clergy is even financed from the same pool as the politicians and bureaucrats. They have no incentives to change the system until workers of all kinds put their foot down. It is up to the “customers” to make the change.
Pcjamucation is the edjamucation that keeps the infidel masses numb while they are slowly but surely gorged by the muslim serpent. Through multi culturalism we have become nothing’s. Ripe for conquest. If we are to survive it will be from a groundswell of revulsion from ordinary non muslim people who just can’t take it any more – I imagine.
Step One>
Slowly make the country unlivable under a layer of bureaucratic obstructions designed to make every citizen a nominal criminal.
Step Two>
Wait for the population to eliminate itself while importing its more tractable replacement.
The church has ALWAYS supported the rulers.
This point of increasing immigration attitudes;- the deliberately selling down of western civilization by supposed university intellectuals and into pc., mc., governmental systems absolutely riles me.
Do they not see the pressures of housing, taxation, the improved education, though I detest the curriculum devised from politically correct, multi-cultural, nihilistic, etc., and a I will stop further reasons and descriptions.
William Shakespeare’s ,
When you realize that so often that Shakespeare would have really lived with the plagues that ravaged London in 1563, (born in 1564) 1593-94 when the theatres were closed because of plague, and 1603 plus 3 more major times up to 1665 reducing its population by 10 to 30% during those years. It is thought that the lives of 4 of his siblings were taken by plague.
Yes, life would have had great value, with great faith,
Emigration may have been touted, but not immigration. Those far off lands of the new world were considered empty of much population.
Why this hassle about population numbers, they can decrease as per black plague, when in 1340 -1353
In many European towns and cities looking at death rates of over 50%.
Still as the Black Plague was still springing up into the until about 1720 there were wars, like the 30 year war in central europe 1608 -1648 knocking populations by about 30 % .
The ravages of pestilences, wars and famines, really reduced European populations, for a number of centuries.
Yet several centuries later they went out to the new countries in the “Americas” and many around the globe, with the concept of western civilization. Not always understood and not so great for some native populations, though that as a conscience came into being, also changed and with reparations and endeavors to make amends.
It is now a free world in the west, we the people should be able to decide what out population level should be.
A motivation in one decade can change our birth rate, that a woman of child bearings years, if she so wants, can easily have 5 children, and a younger woman, easily 10+ in her life time.
It makes me think it is the ponzi scheme of taxes to support pensions, education, health, and all those well paid governmental jobs, just do not seem to be making a return, as an individual family used to be able to account for things. If it is our culture, then surely it is the people’s right to keep a low population number.
Then the fabulous life style we can have and enjoy, that has reduced our birth rate, yet we must work and work and stress like rats on a tread mill.
All this new technology, increased productivity, automatic this and thats, and then in western countries high unemployment. The economics and measured GDP, some how is not working out.
Apologies if this does not quite make full sense. I just do not understand and I am sure some one can come up with more reasons and ideas.
I have not got an exact answer, to why and there fores of the lower western birth rate, but if immigration is the answer, I do not think the correct questions have been asked.
We even denigrate where we have colonized and in many places have pulled out in very large bulk numbers, yet it is ok for others to colonize us.
What I do know if one puts too many sheep in a paddock and winter comes, then the death rate is higher for the older sheep and the death rate for the younger is also higher, as the mothers have less energy to develop the lamb for the spring birth. The farmer is the “dictator” to the stocking rate, for the winter spring season. In the summer and autumn he fattens and kills off the surplus in lambs and culls any older or “weaker” sheep, prior to winter and the beginning of the new season. It from my simple way of thinking, that not only cross breeding, (only need one ram to about 100+ girl friends) but the intellectual way is an overwhelming number( ram with all his + girl friends/family) to come graze on the economy.
Yet efficient farmers these days, have reduced deaths with vaccinations, more twins being born with a higher survival rate and so productivity of mutton and lamb meat has increased, with fewer sheep.
Simpleton
While reading your column I’m hearing the old Mitch Miller tune, ” Istanbul was Constantinople, now it’s Istanbul not Constantinople…”. Apparently, we will have to learn many different names for the nations of Europe.
Concerning the idea of… “Vineyards, wine, prosciutto, and buxom young women in low-cut dresses strolling down the streets of Rome or Milan. How could all this ever come to an end?”
Your answer is in #4: Hedonism, live for the moment.
The Italians currently living with the vineyards, wine, etc. couldn’t care less if it comes to an end. If Italy collapses five minutes after they die, they don’t give a damn.
It used to be in Europe that people began work on cathedrals that they would never see finished. In America, people struggled in ghettos, scrimped and saved to send their kids to college, expecting their offspring to have a better life than they themselves enjoyed.
That idea is dead.
Now we have people exploring ways to download their consciousness into computerized bodies (I’m not making this up!) so that they can “live forever” and never let any future generations even exist at all. Even if that idea proves impossible, just the notion that people WANT to do that; that they EVEN THINK along those lines, is disturbing.
It’s a weird world and it will become weirder.
Interesting. So the causation presumably works both ways: We’re having less children (partly) because we’re focused on ourselves and the present. Because we have fewer descendants to concern ourselves with, we are more focused on our precious selves and don’t give much of a thought to the future (post-us future, that is).
You’re right: it *is* a weird world.
“The obvious solution was to import a new cohort of young, PRODUCTIVE workers who would do the jobs and pay the taxes that all the non-existent children of the natives would otherwise have been doing and paying.”
This is where I start to get paranoid and conspiratorial.
It’s not like there aren’t millions of productive people just dying (literally) to immigrate to Europe. No muslims, a simple IQ test, maybe a genetic test, and only accepting from ‘elevated’ cultures would guarantee ultra productive new citizens. INSTEAD, they do the EXACT OPPOSITE. They can’t be that politically correct and stupid. Can they?
If these immigrants are NOT there to fix the socialist utopia. Then why are they there? This is where the One World Government / New World Order / Illuminati conspiracists start to sound almost logical.
Maybe these ‘cultural enrichers’ are there to destroy the socialist state so it can be replaced with a right wing fascist state. Or maybe their real function is to bring about a civil war so that ‘certain populations’ can be eliminated. Or possibly they (will) serve to distract the ‘real’ populace from the (rapidly) diminishing state benefits.*
*(This one might already be working. For example, GoV writes 20 articles about islam for every one article about how socialism sucks [sic].)
Fascism is left wing. Right wing is for limited or no government.
The paradigm of left and right cannot properly model the different political ideologies of today. The Pournelle chart yields a better model. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pournelle_chart
When you look at the chart, it is apparent that to speak of a Fascist as right-wing is meaningless. Fascists are anti-rational statists. Libertarians are — according to the chart — rational individualists.
I figure I score 2/2′ on the chart. Leaning toward 1/1′.
” Or possibly they (will) serve to distract the ‘real’ populace from the (rapidly) diminishing state benefits.*
*(This one might already be working. For example, GoV writes 20 articles about islam for every one article about how socialism sucks [sic].)”
This is already happening in the UK,
try getting a same day doctors appointment, or even the same fortnight FFS!
Parents of gifted kids have to move homes so their offspring will go to the best state schools (And still get a brainwashing), so they are in the right catchment area for the schools. If they don’t move they’re kids get a third rate education hampered by many enriched kids slowing them down.
We now understand the wave of automation that is coming. The first world had it right, and the effects of lower reproduction rates would have hit just about the same time as the loss of many low skilled jobs. It was almost as if it were planned, but the elite class [committed an embarrassing mistake], yet again.
I’ve noticed that the Japanese seem to have adopted a different aproach to the problem, none of that mass immigration multi-culti nonsense for them, robots are the solution. Since Japan is not a Western nation the Japanese cannot possibly be racists.
Japan does allow a limited influx of permanent and semi-permanent foreign residents, and it that it shows itself even wiser (or just more patriotic?) than the vermin ruling the West. The criteria are what’s good for Japan rather than what’s good for the incoming foreigners.
There is a shortage of nurses, so some nurses are allowed from the Philippines — but not on a path to citizenship and on the condition they learn Japanese first. The young leave the countryside in droves, there is a shortage of working hands and of brides for young farmers. So there is some scheme to allow in Chinese contract workers and Chinese and other Asian mailbrides for the farmers.
Both nursing and agriculture have also been implementing far-reaching tech and robotics solutions. Tiny female nurses are able to lift patients off their beds, turn them over etc. through the use of Robocop-like exoskeletons, without the assistance of another person. The back-breaking and labor-intensive task of rice planting is now handled by small, sophisticated tractors, no bigger than a small American riding lawnmower rather by the whole assembled village as was the case in the past, and so on.
There are some anomalous exceptions. Japanese are amazingly “square,” unable to cope with wiles and street smarts of the sort highly developed in the 3rd world. And so, for several decades now, Iranians can be seen by the dozens in the Ueno district of Tokyo, and Nigerian and other African street touts drive the foot traffic to clubs and strip joints in Roppongi. Residential burglary is a Chinese trade– it was virtually unknown in Japan until 25 years ago.
How all these people managed to get to Japan is a mystery, though the Africans probably get help from the Japanese mafia.
It’s an interesting social experiment, whether or not Japan will continue as an essentially mono-racial, mono-cultural society or succumb to multiculturalism. Imagine if any Western country adopted Japan’s policies, the screams of “racism” would be deafening, instead the Japanese get a ‘free pass’.
Note that Americans living in Japan have plans for changing all that; we can’t allow “racist” countries, can we?
Recent article on one of them: http://www.vdare.com/articles/a-cultural-marxist-tries-to-deconstruct-japan-guess-what-hes-american
But Japan is dying out. It is the oldest society in the world, and more people die than are born. It will soon turn into a one big home for the elderly.
We’re seeing the beginning of another 600 year dark age, circa 1960 – 2600 AD.
World war against islam will occur circa 2020, with atrocities, the destruction of Rome, the culling of the pope etc. in the mid 2020s. A British royal will be one of the media darlings leading the war against the darkness.
…or so Nostradamus said.
He was “discredited” conveniently just at the time his prophecies would have had direct application – 1999 the d’afreyeur king (paymaster king) reviving the great king of the mongols (China) – Bill Clinton let China into the circle of civilised societies despite their economic miracle being bogus… and so on.
Always wondered why Nostradamus had such a media campaign against him.
A guess:
Some deep thinkers ??? after the world wars thought “we can never again have these lethal wars and lose 50-100 million people. We have to change the nationalistic cultures that brought about this carnage. The only way to do this is to dilute the autochthonous culture by massive immigration.”
Surprise! Then they chose the wrong immagrant culture.
I guess in time a viable and apparently acceptable solution might be lots of west Euro Kosovos. An EU Schmalkans?
National demographics have fluctuated throughout history. Everyone adapted accordingly and carried on. The nation survived. What we have now is something different. The nation will not survive.
Indeed, it is different. I can not understand our economy here in Canada. While it is somewhat resource based, most of it isn’t. It appears to be smoke and mirrors. Will it fall? Perhaps, or can it be continually furthered with more tricks?
Well at least there is some cold comfort in the fact that we will soon have all the results in the coming months and a year or two of where the “elete’s” little game of “let’s take the cash and get them occupied by muslims and see what happens”. What?