Last Sunday’s sermon at Emmanuel Evangelical Church in London was on the subject of abortion. Since the release of the Planned Parenthood videos has made this something of a hot topic over in the US in recent months, I thought it might be helpful to mention a couple of things that arose during the sermon itself and in the subsequent discussion.
A couple of people expressed surprise (no, actually astonishment) at the article whose abstract I quoted during the sermon. The article from the 2012 Journal of Medical Ethics is available online, and is entitled “After-birth abortion: why should the baby live?” In it, the authors Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva expressed the view that what they call “‘after-birth abortion’ (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled.” Since the article is frankly almost unbelievable, perhaps it might be helpful to quote the abstract in full:
“Abortion is largely accepted even for reasons that do not have anything to do with the fetus’ health. By showing that (1) both fetuses and newborns do not have the same moral status as actual persons, (2) the fact that both are potential persons is morally irrelevant and (3) adoption is not always in the best interest of actual people, the authors argue that what we call ‘after-birth abortion’ (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled.”
Perhaps predictably, Giubilini and Minerva faced a barrage of criticism for their views. Indeed, they even reportedly received death threats from pro-life activists, which are of course no more morally justifiable than the threat to human life posed by abortion itself. (more…)
Eric Ferrero, vice president of Planned Parenthood, said in a statement. “The people behind these protests have a clear political agenda: They want to ban abortion, and block women and men from accessing basic reproductive health care.”
These people constantly have to resort to lies because what they really stand for is murdering children. So he says, “The people behind these protests have a clear political agenda: They want to ban abortion…” It’s not a political agenda, it’s an ethical agenda, but that noted, fine. His point is basically right. These people want to ban abortion. That is the ultimate goal. But because that doesn’t sound monstrous, he tags on “…and block women and men from accessing basic reproductive health care.” No. The only thing we want to block people from is being allowed to murder their children. That’s it. No one is protesting abortion *and* neonatal care. No one is protesting ob/gyns. There are no protests at the thousands of community care clinics across the country that don’t perform abortions.
So no, we do not want to block women and men from accessing basic reproductive health care. We want elective abortion, the willful termination of a human child’s life in utero to be unequivocally banned, abolished, and criminalized just as murdering any other human person is. That’s it. That is what we want. And of course, to that end we will protest those organizations that support, promote, and perform abortions, Planned Parenthood being the most prominent and egregious example. If that offends you fine, but please stop with the nonsense about wanting to block women’s access to basic medical or reproductive health care. It’s ludicrous.
“Today I announce with God’s help, with the help of liberty lovers everywhere, that I am putting myself forward as a candidate for President of the United States of America.” – Rand Paul
The two most conservative candidates, in my estimation, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, have announced they are going to run for president. Rand Paul’s announcement today has drawn remarkable coverage from the left and the right.
I speak as only one member of the KC community, but as it stands, my vote is with the Kentucky Senator. Here are five reasons I stand with Rand:
First, Rand Paul is already being attacked by hawkish, neo-conservative ads. According to the neo-cons, there is no room for diplomacy. We need sanctions and more sanctions. This line of reasoning is both archaic and a proven failure. What is it that makes Rand so unique in this field? The National Journal observes:
Despite being from the party often thought of as the home of defense hawks and ballooning defense budgets, Paul has spent most of his tenure in the Senate challenging foreign-aid disbursements, the U.S. spy apparatus, and—in a defining 13-hour filibuster—where to draw the line on overseas drone strikes.
Rand Paul’s constitutional principles mean that he will always seek congressional approval before voting in favor of war; a principle very few have followed. In this sense, Rand Paul’s skepticism of America’s foreign ventures makes him an excellent candidate, in my estimation.a
Second, Rand Paul opposes the government’s continual abuse of power by spying on millions of Americans. While many politicians are willing to give the government a carte blanche, Paul wants to constrain surveillance.
Third, Rand follows, at least in part, some of the Austrian school of economics as it relates to the Federal Reserve’s role in setting interest rates and its affect on the national economy. Who controls the money controls the country. Rand Paul, like his father before him, “wants a full review of the financial records of America’s central bank — and its decision making.” As Paul has stated in a recent op-ed piece:
“If the Federal Reserve was a real bank, without extraordinary powers, it would be insolvent.”b
Fourth, Rand Paul appears to be pro-life. The reason I say “appears,” is because I do not trust politicians’ claims until they are truly tested during the campaign. Paul’s position seems to be in principle pro-life. Life News reports:
When it comes to pro-life issues, there is little doubt Paul is pro-life and, on 10 votes on pro-life issues cast in the Senate during his tenure, Paul has a 100% pro-life voting record — voting against Obamacare, to stop abortion funding with taxpayer dollars, and protecting the conscience rights of pro-life people. Paul has said “personal religious belief” is that life begins at conception.
On his campaign web site, Paul makes his pro-life views very clear.
“I strongly believe in the sanctity of life. I believe that life begins at conception and that abortion takes the life of an innocent human being. Under the 14th Amendment, it is the government’s duty to protect life as defined in our Constitution,” he says. “As a physician, one of the first things we learn is to ‘Do no harm.’ Since Roe v. Wade decision, over 50 million children have been killed in abortion procedures. As President, I would strongly support legislation restricting federal courts from hearing cases like Roe v. Wade, in an effort to stop harming the lives of the unborn.”
Paul continues: “Our government should not be responsible for funding abortions, and as President, I will attempt to stop the flow of taxpayer dollars to groups who perform or advocate for abortion. I believe we may be able to save millions of lives, and do no harm, by allowing states to pass their own anti-abortion laws. By giving this power to the states, I sincerely believe we would save hundreds of thousands of lives.”
I will be closely monitoring his claims throughout the campaign, since the life issue is of tremendous importance to the flourishing of any society.
Finally, and this is the elephant in the room, I am thrilled about Rand Paul’s candidacy for president because he is Ron Paul’s son. I was a staunch supporter of Ron Paul’s platform, though not a strong supporter of Ron Paul as rhetorician and strategist. I think the elder Paul made some strategic blunders that I hope his son avoids. Rand needs to avoid spending time with Alex Jones and some of the media outlets that are too conspiratorial and hyper-libertarian for the general public. These interviews will simply distract people from seeing Rand as an authentic candidate that is not easily blown by every wind of doctrine.
Rand is much more capable of following his father’s footsteps and ideals with an irenic spirit. He is a reconciler, a compromiser in the healthiest of sense, and someone who can clearly work across the aisle. And in politics, you need to do that.
For these reasons, and certainly many others, I stand with Rand on this first day of his candidacy.
Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the United States Constitution, sometimes referred to as the War Powers Clause, vests in the Congress the power to declare war, in the following wording: [The Congress shall have Power…] To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water; (back)
For more information, get Ron Paul’s wonderful book “End the Fed” http://www.amazon.com/End-Fed-Ron-Paul-ebook/dp/B002N0ADQG (back)
Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the United States Constitution, sometimes referred to as the War Powers Clause, vests in the Congress the power to declare war, in the following wording: [The Congress shall have Power…] To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;
For more information, get Ron Paul’s wonderful book “End the Fed” http://www.amazon.com/End-Fed-Ron-Paul-ebook/dp/B002N0ADQG
Tomorrow is Christmas Eve, when Christians all over the world will gather to celebrate the nativity of Jesus Christ our Lord. The eternal Word becoming flesh is fundamental to the Christian faith; we would not be able to receive salvation apart from it (Gal. 4:4-5). One important aspect of Christ’s incarnation is his birth from Mary, a virgin. We re-tell this historic event each year, though many of us neglect its significance. Why did Jesus have to be born of a virgin? There is more than one answer to this question, but today we’ll look at one that has profound implications in the debate on abortion and the personhood of the unborn.
Jesus had to be born of a virgin because he is not a human person. Kallistos Ware summarizes the traditional doctrine:
“…Christ’s birth from a virgin underlines that the incarnation did not involve the coming into being of a new person. When a child is born from two human parents in the usual fashion, a new person begins to exist. But the person of the incarnate Christ is none other than the second person of the Holy Trinity. At Christ’s birth, therefore, no new person came into existence, but the pre-existent person of the Son of God now began to live according to a human as well as a divine mode of being. So the virgin birth reflects Christ’s eternal pre-existence.” – The Orthodox Way, pg. 76-77
An amateur video titled “Emily’s abortion” has gone viral on the internet this week, chronicling the experience of a young mother undergoing an abortion procedure. In the video, Emily Letts explains her intentions:
“I wanted to show it wasn’t scary — and that there is such a thing as a positive abortion story.”
It should be noted that we never see any part of the actual procedure. The camera is focused solely on Letts’ face, showing her talking, laughing, and humming. It’s as if nothing horrific is happening at all. When the abortion is over, she says, “Cool,” and exits the room. Yes, it is true, abortion is no scarier than a yearly pap test – at least for the mother. (more…)
The predictably and ferociously anti-life and anti-God, Dan Savage, opines whenever a microphone is available. While some in the homosexual community attempt to keep their lifestyles away from public scrutiny, Savage is harsh, indecent, and hateful towards those who oppose his viewpoint. He is part of the growing intolerista movement, to use a phrase coined by Douglas Wilson.
In a panel discussion, Savage was asked what dangerous idea would be good for society. Savage’s response was population control. Not satisfied with that, he continued, “I think abortion should be mandatory for about 30 years.” There it is! The real sentiment of the radical gay and diversity movement. Savage’s world is savage towards the weak and defenseless. His world offers a vision of mass murder and mass imposition of the will. Dan Savage may argue that he wants the right to be able to have their voice in the process, but ultimately, again to quote Wilson:
Diversity has 2 fundamental tenets, as far as I’ve been able to glean from my interaction with the tolerance police. The first is that they have an absolute commitment to free speech, the second tenet is “shut up!”
Diversity is self-defeating. Savage wants silence from those who claim the God who knows us intimately (Psalm 139).
Peter Hitchens observed that “All revolutionaries claim to be fighting the oppression of other people, when in fact they are fighting for their agenda.” Savage is fighting for a distinct agenda, which proves that this debate is a debate for the supremacy of a god over a culture and society. One god claims that a society ought to function with a remarkable level of disorientation; that Edenic and traditional claims ought to be reversed for a more multi-colored society where no one moral code rules. The other God, the Triune God of Scriptures, expresses an orderly world composed of divine laws established for our safety and joy.
Dan Savage’s brutal world is the conclusion of the worldview he espouses. His life view is the result of a chaotic beginning with no order or purpose; a life view which only comports with the obliteration of the unborn. Savage’s savagery is nothing more than consistent atheism.<>pudgehost.netраскрутка интернет магазин
Three weeks ago, Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson caused quite the controversy over his comments on homosexuality. Media and social networking sites were outraged. Robertson was called a homophobic bigot by critics while fans of the show supported Robertson by wearing camouflage to church and buying a lot of Dynasty merchandise. And as one might expect from a nationwide frenzy centered around the Bible and sexual ethics, it was only a matter of time before Liberal Jesus showed up.
What do I mean by “Liberal Jesus”? I’m talking about internet memes that paint Jesus as a pro-gay, pro-abort, long-haired, socialist hippie. These memes attempt to demonstrate just how stupid conservatives are for basing their views on the Bible when Jesus supposedly never advocated conservative views himself. I’ve addressed memes like this before (here and here), but I couldn’t resist saying something about the newest Liberal Jesus that popped up following the Duck Dynasty fiasco.
This meme (seen below) comes to us from comedian John Fugelsang, the guy who co-hosted America’s Funniest Home Videos in the late 90s. He’s no Danny Tanner, that’s for sure, and if this meme tells us anything, he’s no biblical scholar, either. (more…)
Midwifery is a noble calling. We’ve had a doula or midwife at four of our five births. The last two births were at home under the care of excellent Upstate South Carolina midwife Elizabeth Randolph. She is strong, competent, thoroughly educated, and very experienced. We have felt very safe in her hands, even during the more difficult birth of our fourth child.
More and more people around the country are turning to midwives, and so more and more women are being trained and apprenticed in this noble, ancient, and wholesome art. Midwives go out as missionaries and charitable workers, saving lives from Mexico to Afghanistan to South Africa, helping to restore and legitimize a calling that statist modern medicine had pushed to the fringes.
But now that the American state finds itself struggling to regulate midwifery away, it is making an unholy pact with witches and the devil. Oh, you thought I was going to say with midwives. No, they’ve made covenant with witches and the devil. Well, let me go back. They’re treating with midwives. Who are witches.
What, you didn’t know that midwives are witches? Historically, many were. Wiccans and open pagans will tell you that the New Testament prohibition against “witchcraft” uses the wordpharmakeia, one who uses poisons and drugs. So, they say, it’s not what we call witchcraft, it’s pharmaceutical work. In a way, that’s a load of bollocks, because it casts a modern eye back, pretending that potion-makers didn’t fall under the category of witch then simply because they don’t today. But in a way, they’re quite right. Potion makers is what witches are. Potion-makers, poisoners, and deceivers. Poisoners and deceivers in league with the devil, whether there’s ectoplasm and levitation involved or not.
Much has been made of the connections between midwives and witches in Christendom, and for good reason. There were many many many good midwives throughout medieval Europe. There were also hags, witches, and wild women hiding in groves and back alleys, hunting pennyroyal, hemlock, and mandrake root, making potions to poison babies. These women are still with us today, both the midwives and the witches. And many of these women, the good and the wicked, live in California.
• AB 154 by Assemblymember Toni G. Atkins (D-San Diego) – Permits a nurse practitioner, certified nurse-midwife or physician assistant, who completes specified training and complies with specified standardized procedures or protocols, to perform an abortion by aspiration techniques during the first trimester of pregnancy.
And so California and the United States fall deeper into their compact with Satan. Do not be deceived. All these things are happening around you, and they are not simply “social” or “moral” issues. They are ancient evils. They’re the same evils that give you the creeps when you watch the wrong movie or walk down the wrong dark road. Abortion is the work of devils and murderers, even when it happens in a clinic with a vacuum tube.
Yes, even under the smell of ammonia and ether.
Many are called to combat this evil directly. Pray to God for their success and the downfall of their enemies. But that is not what all the Church is called to do in the face of these evils. It falls to very few to hunt witches. To most of us falls the better task, the be freemen and goodwives in God’s good kingdom. To build a kingdom where darkness flees the light.
O Christians, and O women, will you not do good for us? Have children. Many children. Become midwives and old wives and wise women and prophetesses. Teach your daughters to be wives and midwives. Give us, O women, the Hebrew women, who saved God’s people from out under the devil’s nose.
I believe that God not only exists and that Jesus is His Son raised from the dead and elevated by the Spirit, but I believe all this matters a lot. Jesus is the king of the universe and he will, one day, judge every creature–both the living and the dead.
So why do I find it so easy to agree with (some) atheists and secularists on the issue of abortion?
I’ve wondered about this before, but this article recently disturbed me with the question once again:
Kelsey Hazzard is a 24-year-old, pro-life University of Miami alumna and recent graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law. She was raised in the United Methodist Church, but as an adult began having doubts about God.
“I took a break from religion for a while, and soon realized that it had no impact whatsoever on my morals,” she said. She now describes herself as an “apatheist,” meaning she does not care whether God exists or not, although she says she finds God’s existence “highly unlikely.”
“I was pro-life the instant I learned what abortion was,” said Hazzard, who is a legal fellow at Americans United for Life. “But my position became much stronger in college, when I took a course on prenatal development.”
In 2009, Hazzard founded Secular ProLife (SPL), a group whose vision is “a world in which abortion is unthinkable, for people of every faith and no faith.” Hazzard, SPL’s president, created the group in part to attract non-religious people to the pro-life movement.
OK, unlike Hazzard, I think God’s existent is immediately evident, and so firm that there is no possible world in which he could not exist. I was raised by Christian parents and, unlike in the case of Hazzard, a temporary break from it was not conceivable to me except as self-conscious (and dangerous!) apostasy.
But on abortion?
I don’t remember my parents ever giving me a specific religious or theological objection to abortion. Exactly as Hazzard describes, I only remember opposing abortion from exactly the same time I learned what it was.
And then there is this:
Hazzard points to opinion polls showing the US becoming less religious but more pro-life as compelling reasons to use secular arguments to support the pro-life position.
What other arguments has anyone used? Do I even know an argument that is different from Hazzard’s?
According to SPL member Julie Thielen, who identifies as a gnostic antitheist atheist, the best ways to reach secular people with the pro-life message are through biology and an appeal to human rights.
“When the sperm meets the egg, a genetically complete human being is formed, and all that is required for maturation is time and nutrition,” Thielen said. “As complete human beings in the most vulnerable stages, there should be protections afforded. As a society we are judged by how we treat the most vulnerable—the young, the aged, the infirm, those who can’t speak for themselves. The unborn belong here.”
OK, this is just getting surreal. I’m so old, I can remember when another name for the “pro-life” was “right-to-life.” That statement about sperm and egg uniting to be a new person is the only argument I have ever heard against abortion. What makes that a distinctively “secular” argument? And when have religious believers not appealed to human rights? The comparison between protecting the unborn and the infirm is also straight out of the “religious” movement.
I have to admit, as one raised under the tutelage of Cornelius Van Til from my late teens, and thus a Kuyperian believer in the antithesis, all this disturbs me. There is, in my view, not supposed to be any “real” common ground in the beliefs of believer and unbeliever. And yet, on abortion, the issue that is a major piece of contested territory in the culture war, I find the thinking of these secularists completely familiar.
It is what I and all my insular religious friends have always thought.
For many, the historical argument for human equality is the strongest secular argument in favor of life.
“History has many lessons about human beings who were not legal ‘persons,’” said Hazzard. “What seems like common sense to one generation—‘Of course Negroes aren’t real people’—is horrific to the next. What criteria can we set that will prevent this from happening? Every criterion proposed to exclude the unborn can also be used to exclude others. Consciousness? Then it’s fine to kill someone in a temporary coma; they merely have ‘potential.’ Physical independence? So much for conjoined twins. Human appearance? Discrimination based on appearance has been some of the most insidious of all. Birth? Totally arbitrary; there is no ‘personhood fairy’ residing in the birth canal, conferring rights upon exit. At the end of the day, human rights are for all humans. If we don’t protect them for the weakest among us, they’re rather worthless.”
This is again, the only argument that has ever been used. Is there any non-secular argument against abortion that Christians or other religious believers have ever invoked?
The article goes on to describe to long-time atheist heroes of mine, the Randian (except on this issue!) Doris Gordon and Nat Hentoff. I had never heard Gordon’s story of how she dealt with the illogic and self-contradiction from the likes of the ever-disgusting Nathaniel Brandon (my opinion; not Gordon’s as far as I know). So reading this article was a treat for me. And I had never heard how Hentoff came to his views either. Quite fascinating.
Toward the end of the article it finally dawned on me that this was a Catholic article so perhaps “religious argument against abortion” is simply the Church’s or the Pope’s infallible declaration.
But I’ve seen an Evangelical Protestant seem to worry about the same kind of things–not wanting listeners to think she came to a pro-life position on the basis of a religious dogma even though her change of mind on abortion was related to her conversion from agnosticism to Christianity. When Kirsten Powers was interviewed by Focus on the Family, she said, about sixteen minutes in:
My views of abortion really have almost nothing to do with believing in God. It is a pure ethical/ scientific decision. I was very very pro-abortion rights before I became a believer. But I didn’t switch my position because I read the Bible and thought it was in the Bible. I did it because I started to meet all these people who were pro-life, and they kind of peaked my curiosity about it. And I thought, “Well, these people seem very smart, and they don’t seem like they hate women.” And I started doing research–a lot of research, a lot of scientific research. And I was shocked at what I didn’t know. I did not know that a fetus has a heartbeat at three weeks. I mean I learned that at the Body’s Exhibit, not in the Bible… You have to talk to people in their language. And if somebody doesn’t believe in God, that’s just not the way to approach it. You have to approach it from a pure ethical standpoint and say, “Look, what kind of society are we that we allow people to dismember a baby inside the womb, that if the mother wanted and gave birth to, we would do everything we could to save it?”
But Powers could have and should have universalized her experience. No one ever learned from the Bible that a fetus has a heartbeat in three weeks.
Of course, because abortion is homicide and God forbids homicide in the Sixth Commandment of the Decalogue, one can articulate the case against abortion in a theological manner. Likewise, because there will be a Final Judgment for all people, and the Gospel tells us that we should think ahead to that Judgment Day in evaluating our own present character and conduct, a Christian can and often does invoke theological rationales in his ethical discussions and assertions. But surely any atheist can see that the basic affirmation, that abortion is homicide, is not a religious dogma but an application of a belief (in the case of believers, a religious dogma) that homicide is evil along with the scientific inference that a woman is pregnant with a baby human being if she is pregnant at all.
After all, everything said about about theology and abortion equally applies to Christian opposition to rape, theft, etc. Did any secularist say that Martin Luther King Jr arguments against apartheid in the United States were incapable of convincing secularists?
Of course, I could try to find the antithesis. Modern Darwinism seems like it should open up the ethical pandora’s box that we see most secularists embracing.
But as much as I think that Creational Monotheism and Trinitarian Christianity are the only rational foundation for life and thought–and that they are true to ultimate reality–I am frankly too happy to have any friends I can get to try to stop the homicides. I’ll certainly witness and try to persuade any unbeliever who will listen to me. But trying to draw a line in the pro-life movement between “us” and “them” does not strike me as a rational allocation of resources. Sometimes Christians get pagan companions who help them in an important area.
The proper response is to appreciate them and give thanks for them, even as you pray for their conversion.
But…
That being said, I think a lot of secularists and some Christians seem to think we’ve got a better chance of convincing secular people by using exclusively secular arguments. But the secular people themselves demonstrate to my mind that the arguments are out there, and even if they have some weird theological language attached, and secular person of reasonable intelligence should still be able to “get it.” I suspect one reason Christians don’t try that approach more often is because, while they are thankful for all the atheist/agnostic pro-lifers that are out there, they don’t find the response to such argumentation or presentation all that impressive. People want their legal homicides because they find it preferable to the constraints that would be imposed by acknowledging an unborn baby’s right to not be agressed against. So the appeal to God and Christ comes in the hopes that God will convert people to do the right thing. I realize that sounds silly to secular pro-lifers, but there it is.<>индексация а в google
Greenspan managed to get away with a low-interest boom in the nineties, thanks to the rise of cheap imports from overseas markets. China both kept their prices low and bought US treasuries so that government debt could increase with little consequence in popular perception.
The Fed’s low interest rates and the resulting cheap money fueled bubbles during the Clinton and Bush (the younger) years. When the NASDAQ crash occurred, we had an opportunity to suffer through a recession and reset the economy. Bush, however, probably believed he would never be a two-term president under such conditions. And it is easy to see the lure, since he would probably lose to a candidate who would pressure the Federal Reserve to inflate another bubble. So why take the thankless job of Martyr? Part of the answer is: So you don’t go down in history as the single president who destroyed the American economy, and so discredited the Republican brand, that the very worse possible successor to your stimulus precedents could win the office.
Remember: Bush picked Ben Bernanke to be the next Chairman of the Federal Reserve because he pretended that we were not facing a dangerous housing bubble. Since Bush, Mr. Hope and Change kept Bernanke in power where he has doubled down on the toxic stupidity that has degraded the economy further since the day he (Bernanke) stepped into office.
This brief history of recent events is commonly recited to explain why we are now poor, broke, underwater with debt, and/or unemployed. Everyone wants recovery. But I am rehearsing this recent history to make another point: we are headed into a far worse economic situation in the long term because of this recession and “slow recovery” so that, even if we had a fantastic recovery tomorrow, we will still suffer more economic pain in the future.
The engine of recovery and of real economic growth in general, is people working. And, while we were already headed toward problems, this recession has come at the worst cultural time. It is going to be much worse.
It is happening in several different ways at once. One area I have already written about is student debt combined with post graduate un- or underemployment. Couples are indefinitely delaying children because they don’t see how they can make it on their income with their expenses—a major expense being student debt.
For readers who have been taught the overpopulation myth, the impending disaster may be hidden from their view. But unless something changes dramatically, America’s de factoone-child “policy” is going to bring economic stagnation. (This is especially true in countries that provide for the aged by a pension system that requires more working young people than retirees.) Economic bubbles are misallocated investments and resources. …[D]uring a recession and anemic ‘recovery,’ in a culture when it is easier than ever to not get married and not have children, a further and more massive misallocation is easily made. A demographic winter gets arranged in order to pay bills. Present indebtedness leads to less people in the future.
Mish (who I think is the best Austrian economics blogger dealing with contemporary trends) touched on another aspect of this issue with his post, “Bernanke wants 2% inflation in a deflationary world. Who pays the price?” He points to a PEW study that provides this graphic:
So as married 31-year-olds reach their thirty-second birthdays, not enough younger people are getting married to replace them. And we can guess their probably not breeding either.
The reason they are not marrying isn’t too hard to figure out. Young women are rarely willing to move into the guy’s parent’s basement. And they are probably even less likely to want to bring a crib into the room.
Mish writes:
Bernanke wants 2% inflation in a deflationary world. Wages have not kept up with inflation as Fed policies exacerbate the trends. The result is apparent. Everyone pays the price, but especially young adults who cannot afford to get married, and they certainly cannot afford a house. The Fed wants home prices up to help out the banks, but what about the new household formation? And what about student loans and the ability to pay those loans back? And think about how cheap money allows corporations to borrow money for next to nothing to buy technology to replace humans with hardware and software robots.
This effect on young adults is far more perverse than the consequences of their absence from marriage, parenthood, or the workforce. The most toxic consequence is that they get used to it.
People who can’t live without the protection of authority figures, and who can never get married or form a household, are increasingly the future of America. Even those who do have some sort of role in the productive economy are being urged to see children as a problem they can do without. Of course, I actually agree that couples should be politically free to breed or not, but you know how that works out—with the non-parents turning into busybodies lording it over parents and telling them how to raise their children. This also often happens with the elective single-child parents over against the multi-breeders. That aspect of the future will also be ugly since it will amplify some ugly features of the present. This recession has hit us at a time when the culture is most inclined to decide that babies are a dispensable luxury, and when the resulting political environment will make it harder to parent children if you love lots of them.
All of this promises a future of economic decline, and probably far worse things. Human beings are being trained for domestic captivity without any real means to pay for the costs of the zoo.<>полный аудит а
There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, ‘Mine!’Abraham Kuyper
I believe that God not only exists and that Jesus is His Son raised from the dead and elevated by the Spirit, but I believe all this matters a lot. Jesus is the king of the universe and he will, one day, judge every creature–both the living and the dead.
