Some forty years ago, in his groundbreaking study, Twilight of Authority, sociologist Robert Nisbet observed a disturbing trend in American culture. As respect for authority had declined among the population, he wrote, members of that population became increasingly willing to accept and actually applaud an increasingly powerful, albeit less legitimate, government The notion of true … Read more
Many should be aware of the massacres and massive human rights violations visited upon the Catholic Church during the French Revolution, especially in the Vendée, but there is another more recent period in French history in which the Church was violently oppressed that has received far less attention. Historian Jean Sévillia’s Quand les catholiques étaient … Read more
In 1930, Margaret Sanger’s Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau allied with the Urban League to bring birth control services to the women of Harlem. By 1939, Sanger had raised thousands of dollars to support an expansion of the initiative she named “The Negro Project.” Targeted toward reducing an African-American population described in Sanger’s June, 1932 … Read more
Another day, another doomsday prediction. Having said that, the Mayan end-of-the-world thing in 2012 seems to have gone quiet. Almost like people realized that all that 2012-bruhaha was rubbish (the movie and the predictions). But this doomsday scenario is less about that guy from Hi-Fidelity and CGI and more about overpopulation. According to the UK’s … Read more
Another mainstream newspaper from the UK, this time the Telegraph, has put the problem of an ageing, declining population into the spotlight. A couple of weeks ago the New York Times and the Guardian did the same thing, so hopefully we will see more and more of this type of story in the MSM. This is good … Read more
In the New York Times recently, there was a story about Nigeria’s ongoing population explosion and the terrible consequences that are flowing from it. According to the headlines, Nigeria is being “tested” by its rapid population growth and it is seen as a “preview of an overcrowded planet”. This population explosion will see Nigeria grow to 300 … Read more
After being hit hard by the GFC and the bursting of a massive property bubble, you would think that the Irish would be pessimistic about the future. But if population trends are anything to go by, the latest census figures for the Irish republic show that the Irish are still extremely confident about the future … Read more
The American working class isn’t clinging bitterly to guns and religion; it is letting go of everything that once distinguished it. That’s what American sociologist and recent wave-maker Charles Murray says in Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, along with his essay “The New American Divide.” Despite the considerable evidence Murray offers to … Read more
One of the problems of a growing global population that needs to be solved is how do we feed all those extra mouths? We’ve looked at UN reports on this issue. We’ve also looked at counterviews that actually there is enough food for us all at the moment and the lack of food for many … Read more
Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi is fighting for the mandate in Obamacare designed to force all health care plans to provide free (that is without a co-pay) contraception, morning after pills, and sterilization. She insists that this is a battle for women’s health. Those who see this as a question of religious freedom have largely let the … Read more
A new report was released on Monday by the UN’s high level panel on global sustainability. Unsurprising its conclusion is that the world’s current economic , environmental and demographic trajectory is wildly unsustainable. According to the UN estimates, as reported by Reuters: As the world’s population looks set to grow to nearly 9 billion by … Read more
There are many worthy pilgrimage sites all over the world, but none can boast of anything approaching the Church of Ethiopia’s singular claim to fame: the Ark of the Covenant. Ethiopian Christians maintain that the Ark, the portable shrine holding the stone tablets of the original Ten Commandments that were written atop Mount Sinai by … Read more
The following essay was commissioned as part of this week’s symposium on “the bourgeois spirit.” See also Dawson’s Catholicism and the Bourgeois Mind, and Gerard Russello’s account of Dawson’s contribution. Tell me this. Would you rather that your neighbor had a Serta brand iComfort mattress with Cool Action Memory Foam nicely elevated above a … Read more
Alien Nation: Common Sense About America’s Immigration Disaster Peter Brimelow, Random House, 327 pages, $16.74 Reading Alien Nation, I could not help but notice the kind of folks that author Peter Brimelow has attracted to his anti-immigrant cause: old-guard WASPs, population controllers, hard-core-environmentalists, and nativists of all stripes. These are, to put it mildly, … Read more
When he ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1992, Paul Tsongas repeatedly made it clear: He loathed President George H.W. Bush’s flip-flopping on abortion and his inattentiveness to what Tsongas perceived as the urgent need for global population control. And he won Mitt Romney’s vote in the 1992 Massachusetts presidential primary. “This land, … Read more
What if the whole purpose of the Constitution was to limit the government? What if Congress’ enumerated powers in the Constitution no longer limited Congress, but were actually used as justification to extend Congress’ authority over every realm of human life? What if the president, meant to be an equal to Congress, has become … Read more
Presenting his fiscal plan in USA Today last week, Mitt Romney said he wants to “eliminate every government program that is not absolutely essential.” That sounds good until you realize that Romney’s goal of cutting $500 billion from projected federal outlays in 2016 would, at best, leave the budget about 8 percent higher than it … Read more
You’d never know it by listening to the GOP presidential hopefuls, but the Republican Party is launching a major effort to woo Hispanic voters in next year’s election. The reason is simple: demographics. Unless the GOP wins a larger percentage of Hispanic votes in key states next year than it did in 2008, the White … Read more
The United States is a country that has been peopled largely by vast surges of migration — from the British Isles in the 18th century, from Ireland and Germany in the 19th century, from Eastern and Southern Europe in the early 20th century, and from Latin America and Asia in the last three decades. Going … Read more
Is there any nation as contrary in its demographics as Russia? While the world’s population police obsess about the ongoing “explosion” of the human species, Russia is on a depopulation slide and in danger of imploding. Again, while the world’s conscience is stirred by Asia’s 163 million missing females, Russia has a gender deficit … Read more