A Chesterton Advent Calendar, Part III

Explanation here.

17 December

Damn it, I sometimes think the only English thing left in England is cherry brandy. —The Quick One

18 December

When, in "[A] Christmas Carol," Scrooge refers to the surplus population, the Spirit tells him, very justly, not to speak till he knows what the surplus is and where it is. The implication is severe but sound. When a group of superciliously benevolent economists look down into the abyss for the surplus population, assuredly there is only one answer that should be given to them; and that is to say, "If there is a surplus, you are a surplus." And if anyone were ever cut off, they would be. —Charles Dickens

19 December

The writer writes these words before Christmas; some readers will read them after Christmas: an awful thought. For I always dimly and dumbly think of life after Christmas as of life after death. I hasten to add that I believe that both will occur. I also add that, as becomes any healthy man, I fear death, but do not fear Christmas—no, not even if it result in death. But I do unconsciously count them both as the end of something and all days beyond them as comparatively vague and visionary. Whenever the year is ending I feel that the world is ending, and I desire to make a good end. I think the best end ever made by mortal man—better than Nelson shot through his stars or Douglas hurling the heart of Bruce—was the death of Faber, who confessed and received all the sacraments of his Church, and on being told he had an hour to live, said: "Then I can hear the last number of 'Pickwick,'" and died hearing it. —Illustrated London News, 11 January, 1913

It Was Only Very Recently

...that I learned there is a group of people who style themselves Cornucopians.

And after reading their Manifesto, I realize I'm one of them.

Overpopulation Underpopulation Is the Problem

Population Research Institute has just released the second installment in its "Overpopulation Is a Myth" series— a slickly produced video that explains in easy-to-understand terms why underpopulation is the real looming demographic disaster:



I first saw this video last week, and about an hour later I received an e-mail from a journalist in the UK asking for a brief comment for a story he was writing about a young British woman who, based on a belief that having children would have damaging effects on the quality of life of people already living, had decided to be sterilized.

I commented on how how tragic it is that someone would decide to not have children based on a mistaken belief that the world is somehow overpopulated—and that, quite the contrary, the real danger in our world is underpopulation. I further pointed out that this is the looming demographic and economic threat that no one wants to talk about. If there are not enough babies being born today, who will support tomorrow's pensioners?

It's a shame that such frantic handwringing about overpopulation still persists in our day. How much more stuck in the Stuck-in-the-Sixties can you get? It's as if Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb had just hit bookstore shelves (and thus had not yet been proven completely wrong), and the writers of Star Trek were still hard at work producing birth control propaganda.

[Cross-posted at Pro-Life Action League and Generations for Life]

Who Knew

...that John and Yoko recognized that the Neo-Malthusians' fear-mongering blather about overpopulation was exactly that?



"Oh, I don't care."

Heh!

[HT: Creative Minority Report]

A Chesterton Advent Calendar, Part IV

Explanation here.

18 December

When, in "[A] Christmas Carol," Scrooge refers to the surplus population, the Spirit tells him, very justly, not to speak till he knows what the surplus is and where it is. The implication is severe but sound. When a group of superciliously benevolent economists look down into the abyss for the surplus population, assuredly there is only one answer that should be given to them; and that is to say, "If there is a surplus, you are a surplus." And if anyone were ever cut off, they would be. —Charles Dickens

19 December

The writer writes these words before Christmas; some readers will read them after Christmas: an awful thought. For I always dimly and dumbly think of life after Christmas as of life after death. I hasten to add that I believe that both will occur. I also add that, as becomes any healthy man, I fear death, but do not fear Christmas—no, not even if it result in death. But I do unconsciously count them both as the end of something and all days beyond them as comparatively vague and visionary. Whenever the year is ending I feel that the world is ending, and I desire to make a good end. I think the best end ever made by mortal man—better than Nelson shot through his stars or Douglas hurling the heart of Bruce—was the death of Faber, who confessed and received all the sacraments of his Church, and on being told he had an hour to live, said: "Then I can hear the last number of 'Pickwick,'" and died hearing it. —Illustrated London News, 11 January, 1913

20 December

Meanwhile, it remains true that I shall eat a great deal of turkey this Christmas; and it is not in the least true (as the vegetarians say) that I shall do it because I do not realise what I am doing, or because I do what I know is wrong, or that I do it with shame or doubt or a fundamental unrest of conscience. In one sense I know quite well what I am doing; in another sense I know quite well that I know not what I do. Scrooge and the Cratchits and I are, as I have said, all in one boat; the turkey and I are, to say the most of it, ships that pass in the night, and greet each other in passing. I wish him well; but it is really practically impossible to discover whether I treat him well. I can avoid, and I do avoid with horror, all special and artificial tormenting of him, sticking pins in him for fun or sticking knives in him for scientific investigation. But whether by feeding him slowly and killing him quickly for the needs of my brethren, I have improved in his own solemn eyes his own strange and separate destiny, whether I have made him in the sight of God a slave or a martyr, or one whom the gods love and who die young—that is far more removed from my possibilities of knowledge than the most abstruse intricacies of mysticism or theology. A turkey is more occult and awful than all the angels and archangels. In so far as God has partly revealed to us an angelic world, he has partly told us what an angel means. But God has never told us what a turkey means. And if you go and stare at a live turkey for an hour or two, you will find by the end of it that the enigma has rather increased than diminished. —All Things Considered

Baby Steps in the Right Direction

China steps back from one child policy

China is taking the first step towards ending its one-child policy with the authorities in Shanghai encouraging thousands of couples to have a second baby.

For the first time in 30 years, officials in the country’s economic capital have urged eligible parents to plan for a second child. The move was prompted by the growing demographic imbalance in the city and fears that the younger generation will not be able to support the ageing population. [emphasis added]

Did you catch that, overpopulation fear mongers?

Interestingly, this article was posted on July 25, the same date in 1968 that Pope Paul VI, of happy memory, issued the astonishingly prescient Humanae Vitae.

Trotting out the Tired Old Overpopulation Myth

The more things change...

...the more they stay the same.

Quoth Qoheleth: "There is nothing new under the sun." —Ecclesiastes 1:9


HT: JivinJ

This Is Interesting

Pill inventor slams ... pill

Key graphs:

Eighty five year old Carl Djerassi the Austrian chemist who helped invent the contraceptive pill now says that his co-creation has led to a "demographic catastrophe."

In an article published by the Vatican this week, the head of the world's Catholic doctors broadened the attack on the pill, claiming it had also brought "devastating ecological effects" by releasing into the environment "tonnes of hormones" that had impaired male fertility, The Taiwan Times says.

The assault began with a personal commentary in the Austrian newspaper Der Standard by Carl Djerassi. The Austrian chemist was one of three whose formulation of the synthetic progestogen Norethisterone marked a key step toward the earliest oral contraceptive pill.

Djerassi outlined the "horror scenario" that occurred because of the population imbalance, for which his invention was partly to blame. He said that in most of Europe there was now "no connection at all between sexuality and reproduction." He said: "This divide in Catholic Austria, a country which has on average 1.4 children per family, is now complete."

He described families who had decided against reproduction as "wanting to enjoy their schnitzels while leaving the rest of the world to get on with it." ...

[Dr Jose Maria Simon Castellvi] also pointed to the "devastating ecological effects of the tons of hormones discarded into the environment each year. We have sufficient data to state that one of the causes of masculine infertility in the West is the environmental contamination caused by the products of the 'pill'." Castellvi noted as well that the International Agency for Research on Cancer reported in 2005 that the pill has carcinogenic effects.

It seems we have here yet another instance of Shea's Two Phases of History.

Phase One, you may recall, is:

What could it hurt?

Phase Two is:

How could we have known?

Du Bist Deutschland

On my last post, one Santiago Chiva posted the following comment, at the end of which was a link to an uber-cool video:

On the topic of abortion, even many people who defend the possibility of legal abortions, they say they are not pro-abortion, but they don’t want to punish women who are in this difficult situation. In Germany a curious thing has happened. Something that reflects that legal abortion affects adversely to the country. And also that the change is possible: you can promote a culture of life with the support of the citizens, when really there is a real wish of avoid abortions. Since the liberalization of abortion in this country, the number of abortions is officially four million. For that reason, among others, children are seen as an unintended effect of having sex. Many people thought it was necessary to promote greater social acceptance of children in an aging society. And civil society acted, without waiting for action by the State to promote births. They joined several media organizations in a campaign. Interestingly, after the campaign, the birth rate has risen in Germany. The video is exciting. Look here:

Humanae Vitae at 40

I was going to try to say something new and insightful about Humanae Vitae, the 40th anniversary of which we commemorate today. But I'm not feeling poignant just now.

Instead, I'll take the lazy way out and link to this post, also on HV, which I wrote two years ago today.

Considering how much Paul VI has been pilloried for HV, it's interesting to note that he issued it on July 25, the feast of St. James—the first Apostle to be martyred.

I'd also encourage the reading of a smashingly good (and yea, insightful) essay in the current issue of First Things titled, "The Vindication of Humanae Vitae". Said essay is most notable for demonstrating that some of the clearest confirmations of Paul VI's predictions HV have come from secular circles.

Check thou it out.

Margaret Sanger, Mike Wallace, and Birth Control (and Philip Morris)

Check out this eye-opening interview of Planned Parenthood founder (and Barack Obama's heroine) Margaret Sanger conducted by Mike Wallace in 1957.

Here's an excerpt:

WALLACE: What are your religious beliefs, Mrs. Sanger? Do you believe in God in the sense of a Divine Being -- who rewards or punishes people after death?

SANGER: Well, I have a different attitude about--the divine--I feel that we have divinity within us, and the more we express the good part of our lives, the more the divine within us expresses itself.I suppose I would call myself an Episcopalian by religion and there's a--many other, if you travel around the world you get quite a bit of the feeling of all--all religions--have so much alike in the divine part of our own being. And I suppose you just couldn't just put that into a book or you couldn't put it to a phrase or a sentence.

WALLACE: Do you believe in sin -- When I say believe I don't mean believe in committing sin do you believe there is such a thing as a sin?

SANGER: I think the greatest sin in the world is bringing children into the world--that have disease from their parents, that have no chance in the world to be a human being practically. Delinquents, prisoners, all sorts of things just marked when they're born. That to me is the greatest sin -- that people can -- can commit..

WALLACE: But sin in the ordinary sense that we regard it -- do you believe or do you not believe.

SANGER: What-what would they be?

WALLACE: Do you believe infidelity is a sin?

SANGER: Well, I'm not going to specify what I think is a sin. I stated what I think is the worst sin.

WALLACE: Yes, but then you asked me to say what--and I said what and ah--you refuse to answer me?

SANGER: I don't know about infidelity, that has many personalities to it--and what a person's own belief is--you can't, I couldn't generalize on any of those things as being sins.

WALLACE: Murder is a sin...

SANGER: Well, I naturally think murder, whether it's a sin or not, is a terrible act.

Watch it here. Read the full transcript here.

[HT: Mark Shea via Dawn Eden via Kathy Schmugge]

Two Valuable Insights

I thought it worthwhile to highlight two closely related insights I came across yesterday on two blogs I read regularly.

The first is from The Dutchman at FestungArnulfinger:

I was recently at the wedding of a friend. He’s a lawyer and his wife is also a professional, they are young, healthy, intelligent, good looking, honest, hard-working, decent people. Just exactly the sort of people you expect to be good parents. Yet they have no desire for children. I put this down to their being secular, since I know of no genuinely pious people who desire marriage without children, and I take it as one of the most powerful condemnations of godlessness that in a secular society it is the very best elements of the population who fail to reproduce.

The second is from Mark Shea at Catholic and Enjoying It:

We have a remarkably cartoonish notion of evil in our culture. As though those who do evil get up in the morning thinking, "How can I do Evil with a capital E today?" Almost nobody gets that evil is invariably the pursuit of a good end by disordered means and that, therefore, every evil doer in the world can say with some sort of plausibility (to himself if to nobody else) "I meant well".

Are There Too Many Brown People?

Um, no.

That's why it's nice to know that in response to agitprop like this article, which I wrote about this last week, and this article, which I didn't, there are eminently sensible rejoinders like this:

Ask the average informed first world citizen what he or she knows about the Philippines and they are likely to tell you that it is a poor, overpopulated, Catholic country, and that the “Catholic” part explains all the rest. A recent article in the Washington Post is typical of the media coverage that feeds this view: “Birthrates Help Keep Filipinos in Poverty,” ran the heading. “Contraceptives, Rejected by Government, Are Unaffordable for Many in Majority-Catholic Nation,” the subheading explained. Enough said.

The Post’s pitch faithfully reflects the view of the global family planning industry, which has long viewed the Philippines as “that Asian upstart” for resisting a national population control program. In the past thirty years official aid agencies and non-government groups led by International Planned Parenthood have poured resources into influencing the Philippines government to enact such a program.

Whence comes this resistance? How has it benefited the Philippines?

Certainly the majority Catholic culture explains a lot. Even when other parts of the Catholic world fell in with the birth control mentality, the Philippine clergy were stalwart in their defence of the principles set out in Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae 40 years ago. Asian family values have also played their part.

Now, media messages to the contrary, they stand vindicated. As much of the world confronts a demographic meltdown caused by very low birth rates and ageing populations, the Philippines is in a strong demographic position to build its own social and economic wellbeing -- as well as continue contributing to the workforce of the developed world. That is my ultimate argument in this article.

Read the whole thing.

[HT: Sunnyday at This Is Not a Job for Superheroes]

The Reinvention of Paul Ehrlich

This email found appeared in my inbox yesterday with the subject line:

40 Years Later – is Paul Ehrlich’s ‘Population Bomb’ Finally Exploding?

Um, no.

But I digress. Here's the email itself:

From: Severn Williams [mailto:sev@sevwilliams.com]
Sent: Wednesday, May 14, 2008 11:35 AM
To: editor@prolifeaction.org
Subject: 40 Years Later – is Paul Ehrlich’s ‘Population Bomb’ Finally Exploding?




May 14, 2008 - Contact: Severn Williams - 510-336-9566


Dear Eric,

He wrote the book that helped launch the modern environmental movement. He is one of the most accomplished - and controversial - scientists of his generation. He has counseled governments, appeared in television shows ranging from documentaries to The Tonight Show, and won a Macarthur Genius Award.

Now, exactly 40 years since the publication of The Population Bomb ignited debate and action around the globe, author and scientist Paul R. Ehrlich is back with a new book, The Dominant Animal: Human Evolution and the Environment.

A quick glance at today's headlines tells the story: world food prices at record levels, increasing conflict over scarce resources, the immediate threat of global climate change, the spread of toxic chemicals into drinking water and food, and more. In short, it looks an awful lot as though the "Population Bomb" Paul Ehrlich warned us of in 1968 is now exploding.

In The Dominant Animal, Paul joins with his wife, Anne H. Ehrlich, a prize-winning scientist herself, to examine this growing crisis - from its roots in human evolution to the failure of modern government to respond. It is a powerful examination of how the humans today are creating the world of humans of tomorrow-and what it will take for our civilization to survive.

The Ehrlichs bring us to the startling realization that our domination of Earth has, in part, prompted a period of rapid change the scope of which the planet has not seen since an asteroid hit the earth 65 million years ago.



Paul Ehrlich is known for his provocative and interesting interviews and his cogent explanations of scientific knowledge. The 40-year anniversary of The Population Bomb and the publication of The Dominant Animal in June provides a great opportunity for an in-depth look at Paul Ehrlich's original warning to the planet in 1968, his legacy, and his continuing work to understand and explain the crisis facing our civilization.

Paul and Anne are available for extensive interviews, profiles, or brief commentary in relation to reporting on broader stories.

Copies of the book can be requested by contacting Severn Williams at 510-336-9566 or sev@sevwilliams.com.



Sincerely,


Severn Williams, Island Press

Paul (Worst. Prognosticator. Ever.) Ehrlich is to demography what the Jehovah's Witnesses are to eschatology.

(To their credit, though, at least the JW's have taken the hint and now no longer attempt to set dates for their apocalyptic predictions.)

Night of the Living Overpopulation Myth

Yesterday marked the 39th anniversary of the first airing of one of the most famous stupid Star Trek episodes ever — The Mark of Gideon.

From Wikipedia:

On stardate 5423.4, the starship Enterprise arrives at the planet Gideon to begin diplomatic relations and invite the inhabitants to join the Federation. Gideon is reported to be a virtual paradise where the people live incredibly long lives in a nearly germ-free environment.

Upon arrival however, the Gideon representative, Ambassador Hodin, refuses to allow anyone to beam down to the planet except for Captain Kirk, who he gives specific coordinates to transport to. Kirk agrees to beam down and finds himself sent from one transporter room, directly to another, identical transporter room. It looks as if he is still aboard the Enterprise; however, after looking around, he finds to his surprise, the ship is completely devoid of any crew.

Back on the "normal" Enterprise, Mr. Spock is later informed that the Captain never arrived on the planet, however Ambassador Hodin refuses to allow a search team to investigate. Spock contacts Admiral Fitzgerald of Starfleet to report Kirk's disappearance and request further instruction, however Starfleet is bogged down by bureaucratic red tape between the planet Gideon and the Department of Planetary Treaties. Fitzgerald orders Spock to "stand by" for the time being.

Spock knew the coordinates were to send Kirk directly to the Gideon council chamber, so Spock asks to beam a member of the Gideon council up to the Enterprise to test the transporter. Hodin agrees and sends a member of his staff up to the ship and then back down to the planet. The transporter appears to be working normally.

Meanwhile, Kirk wanders the deserted Enterprise and then notices a strange bruise on his arm. He eventually runs into a beautiful young woman named Odona, who is apparently from Gideon. She too, has no idea how she got to the empty Enterprise, recalling only that she was in an overcrowded auditorium and struggling to breathe. For the moment, she is just relieved to have freedom of movement.



Kirk learns from Odona that Gideon is severely overpopulated, with crowds of people everywhere and no privacy. To her, the privilege of being alone, even for a moment, is a dream come true. Kirk thinks Odona's beauty is a dream come true, and the two share a passionate kiss. Neither notice the strange ghostly image of a dozen faces appearing on the bridge monitor behind them.

As Kirk and Odona leave the bridge, Kirk hears a strange sound outside the ship. He goes to a viewport and catches a glimpse of a crowd of people dressed in tight fitting body suits. The scene quickly fades to a view of normal space and he realizes something is very wrong. Kirk confronts Odona about what is going on, but she denies knowing what is happening. She then quickly falls ill, fainting to the floor.

Kirk carries her to sickbay where he encounters Ambassador Hodin. Hodin explains that Kirk is part of a secret experiment. Odona is his daughter, and Kirk has just infected her with Vegan choreomeningitis, a potentially lethal virus that Kirk carries in his blood but has an immunity to. Hodin's plan is to infect his people with the virus in an attempt to "control" the overpopulation problem caused by the people's long lifespans in a germ-free environment.

Kirk is angered that he has been an unwitting pawn, a Mark, in their hideous plan, and questions why the Gideons haven't tried sterilization or birth control regulations. Hodin explains that the Gideon people have regenerative abilities that have foiled sterilization attempts, and that their people hold love and the ability to create life sacred.

Kirk is also horrified to learn that he must remain behind to supply the virus as needed, however Kirk believes that Odona can fulfill that role now that she has been infected. Hodin explains that Odona must die from the virus so that she will become a "role-model" for the youth of the world, who will step forward and give up their lives for the benefit of the population. [emphasis mine]

I was reminded of propaganda like this recently at work when we got an e-mail from a fellow who told us, among other things:

You must realize that all organized religions, in order to keep the flock believing, must develop answers to those that would challenge their beliefs for the flock to use in defense of the organization's dogma. But, the organization's argument always ends in one way or another that, "you must have faith". Therein lies each organization's dilemma, and their weakest point. Unless the flock convinces themselves that this defense mechanism (and the dogma) is true, the organization loses members...and $.

But back to abortion for a minute. Unless the population of humans on this planet is curtailed and reduced to about 1850 to 1900 levels and kept there, we'll destroy this finite marble floating around the universe.

I pointed out to this chap the irony in making snarky comments about "dogmas" whilst simultaneously subscribing to dogmas that one doesn't even realize are dogmas.

Alas, he didn't see my point.

Ah well. I tried.

Related

Square Zero: Babies Are Eating the Planet!

Posts from Generations for Life:

• The Myth That Just Won't Die



• 300 Million and Counting



• Talking about Overpopulation