Friday, April 06, 2007

LifeSite Divorced from Reality (Again)


I'm sure that there are many ways to make credible and/or principled arguments for things that LifeSite advocates (whether or not you agree with them). This is not one of them. Ian Hunter writes for LifeSite an article titled "A world without children a result of worldwide 'demographic death spiral'" and uses Mark Steyn's dubious demography to suggest that the whole world, starting with Japan, is on the edge of a demographic death spiral.

That's odd, because, well, the last time I checked, on a global level, human population is still exploding. One or two regions of population decline has done little to alter that reality.

Hunter's article is consumed with this panic that there will be no more children anywhere - kind of a sad thought I suppose (unless you've been on a jetliner with a crying baby recently). But if you look closer, that's not the problem for Steyn or Hunter, the real problem seems to be that there will not be any white babies in the future:
"In some places in Europe, birthrates are even lower; these countries look to immigration -- increasingly from the Muslim world -- to bolster a shrinking workforce. But grief awaits anyone who warns that this might be sowing the seeds of our own destruction."
Oh, so its not a problem of no babies then is it? Hunter predicts that anyone suggesting this would be called a "racist." Okay, Ian Hunter, tell me what you would call someone who holds the position "white babies are preferable to brown babies." Of course he'd discard me as the sort of snooty person who is "more concerned about careers and possessions than about replenishing the Earth or continuing the species."

Let me counter that by saying, if there's one way to "replenish the Earth" and continue with our species it's surely to limit our populations. Unless of course you are in denial about just how taxing humans are on the planet. For the rest of us though it isn't clear how LifeSite expects to ever be taken seriously.

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