[quote]Powerpuff wrote:
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
[quote]Sloth wrote:
[quote]countingbeans wrote:
The sooner it burns, the sooner our kids can start putting the pieces back together.
Why fight it anymore?
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One thing to wonder at is where all the young tax paying workers are going to come from? And, how are they going to put the pieces back together when they’re massively outvoted by a rather childless, family-less, dependent mass of seniors?
A shrinking population is a good thing at this point. Of course, the easiest way to do this would be to simply enforce the law and deport any and all illegal aliens, certainly the ones who are then arrested for other crimes once they are here.
But that’s never going to happen. The article that puff linked explains things better than I could.
Regardless, if we want to maintain a high standard of living, if we want to reduce the printing of money and the economic rollercoaster that accompanies the injection effect, if we want to live more sustainably, if we want to reduce carbon emissions, if we want to preserve the planet that God has given us, if we want to reshape our economy into something more sound and efficient, then at some point we have to reduce the amount of people in this country, plain and simple.
The idea that having a lot of children and all that is simply a leftover from the early days of Christianity, in which it was important to simply increase the Christian population for practical purposes. Today, it isn’t a belief that would lead to anything other than more and more people fighting for a shrinking pool of resources, possessions, money, etc.[/quote]
Look at the low birth rates in Western Europe. France for example, with it’s history of colonization and now immigration from Muslim countries like Algeria. The French aren’t having enough children to replace themselves, and the France of the near future will be unrecognizable. They’ll soon be replaced by these immigrant populations who are having children at higher rates.
Talk about a profound shift in culture, world view, everything. Of course, the history of the world is all about societies who rise and fall, or are supplanted by those who conquer - or in this case just show up and have more children.
I hate to see the US follow in that pattern, where so many educated Americans are choosing not to have kids. If we have a society that’s less dependent on the state for social programs, then things get a little less dire. Or as you hinted at - A society with some respect for basic rule of law.
In a country like Finland they are VERY guarded about who can immigrate. If you want to immigrate, you have to learn Finnish. That would eliminate a lot of us right there. 
They have a small, homogenous population, and lots of social programs that can function pretty well in those circumstances. Great education, healthcare, so forth. High degree of State control, but you could make an argument for it.
Here, we’re so diverse and so big, and we have NO handle on immigration at all. Yet we are headed toward more social programs. Anybody can look at the economics of that and see disaster. You’d think.
I guess where I disagree with you is this. If Americans take this Malthusian view that by not having any kids it will help the situation, I think they’re wrong. Besides, the days of really large families are pretty much over anyway. Most of us are thinking 0-3 kids. I agree that unchecked illegal immigration will break us, but I still want to see most young people getting married and having families of their own, not thinking that they are doing their country, and the planet a favor by not allowing the next generation to be born.
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I certainly am not arguing that people stop having children altogether, and I most certainly do not think that having less children is the totality of the solution.
The first thing that would have to happen is to simply enforce the law regarding illegal immigration, for all of the reasons both I and your article have stated. Secondly, there should be a complete overhaul of the legal immigration system. Well, not a complete overhaul, but simply an emphasis on allowing highly-skilled workers into the country. They should get first, second, and third priority.
Beyond that, a renewal of intellectualism in this country would (hopefully) lead to an increase in the value that people place on education. And not a monetary value in which your college degree is measured in terms of earning potential. Like I’ve said before, college really isn’t a place to produce workers but THINKERS, with the hopes that thinkers make better contributions to the economy.
Once all that has happened, I don’t envision any sort of cultural hegemony that we should be wary of. The fact is that people will always want to flock to America. We are a beacon of freedom and hope, whereas the places most people flee from are far from it. The day people stop trying to come here is the day we are no longer a bastion of liberty. Despite the general tone of this thread, we are still that.
I also don’t envision the sorts of problems that France currently has because, well…we aren’t France. Our social history is FAR different from theirs, and I don’t necessarily think they are as capable of handling such an influx as the U.S. is. We have a long history of doing so, they do not. At any rate, a good way to prepare against such a possibility is to renew the way we teach our own history, and more importantly, the ideals that influenced the intellectual development of this nation. John Locke, Machiavelli, Cicero, Madison, Hume, and Polybius should all be FAR more well-known in this country than, say, Che Guevara or Rousseau or Marx.
Cicero liked to refer to things as a return to first principles. I support such a thing. Everything else will take care of itself if this happens first.
