The NYT reports:
Breaking a Long Silence on Population Control
By MIREYA NAVARRO
Major American environmental groups have dodged the subject of population control for decades, wary of getting caught up in the bruising politics of reproductive health.
The first part of that sentence is on the money, while the second part is misleading. Back when the Catholic Church was vastly stronger politically, population control was a favorite topic of the media (e.g., Paul Ehrlich appearing on the Johnny Carson Show dozens of times).
I've been thinking about this for awhile, and I've come to the conclusion that population control was a very big deal in the press back when Protestants were worried that Irish Catholics were going to swamp them. As soon as that threat disappeared, Protestants lost interest in the whole question, and we rapidly moved to today's situation where only crimethinkers publicly suggest that maybe some of those 10,000 NGOs in Haiti should provide Depo Provera shots.
For the old time Protestant view, watch this clip from Monthy Python's The Meaning of Life from 1983.
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47 comments:
The clip is from The Meaning of Life (1983) not Life of Brian (no need to publish this!).
I don't know about that Steve.
It seems such a long time ago that American catholics, or any white people for that matter were actually fertile and a force to be reckoned with.
Anyway, I think that protestants were just as fceund in those dim distant days and that blacks in the 50s had mega-fertility rates.
Anyhow, the question never really was about American fertility.Contraception has always been freely and openly available in the USA - and that was about the limit of what any anti-natalist can do in any free society.No as I remember it, the 'population explosion' was always framed with reference to China, India, Latin America etc - it was them who we saw on TV all wretched, fly blown and starving.Only the pious and priggish Americans, back in the day made a show of themselves by 'stopping at two' - like Ehlich himself.Big families in the USA weren't stigmatized in those days - if a Ken Beefman working class man had the - in fact he was sort of admired in his paterfamilias way, catholic or no.A Homer Simpson type, but a Homer with a brain.
I always contend the simpler explanation.White American fertility ws healthy, but historically nothing to write home about, in the 60s and 50s.It fell absolutely off a cliff in the 70s.Thee dates correspond with 'nice' people not banging on about population growth.You see quite simply its the third world that's ahving he children and whites are not.You're not allowed to criticise that or note that in any way.
Why aren't Protestants worried about being swamped by Haitians (etc), though? I think maybe they are, but thinking that is 'racist', so can't be expressed?
Metro-liberals haven't lost interest in pop control. Just observe what happens whenever some white non-liberal brings up "abstinence education." It's a red rag to a bull.
Of course, it's totally upright to be against Bristol Palin reproducing, so they have a ready-made cover story for their reptile-brain feelings about other baby sources.
There was this guy at Heritage, whose name escapes me (it was either Ivo or Tibor something), who talked about the "Secret-Shame Theory of Political Alignment." By this theory, conservatives might be closet sex fiends and liberals are just latent Jay Goulds or Leona Helmsleys (bad examples, but this is the theory). Libertarians have their inner dictator just dying to get out, etc... Yet if you look at early Labour Party in the UK, the Left used to be 100% traditionalist about sex as well.
It's more plausible that The Pill was the biggest boon to progressivism since the Panic of 1893. It effectively cleared their schedules, morality-wise.
As a population control enviro, I have a suspicion you're right, Steve. That, along with running up against the first world/third world double standard, killed it as an issue.
isnt it more practical for liberals and global warming believers to control the population (especially from 3rd world countries) instead of crippling the economy of developed countries with environmental overregulations?
Michael Palin's Papal response ro birth control.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUspLVStPbk
"I've been thinking about this for awhile, and I've come to the conclusion that population control was a very big deal in the press back when Protestants were worried that Irish Catholics were going to swamp them. As soon as that threat disappeared"
Not to knock Steve, but more out of curiosity. I always assumed this was just an obvious piece of common knowledge in the reactoshpere, like immigration as population replacement. Is it a shared assumption that the population/birth control movement was anti-Catholic eugenics?
P.S.- Steve are you familiar with E. Michael Jones' "Slaughter of Cities". I think you would enjoy it if you haven't read it.
pop control was an outgrowth of the naturalistic-romantic-hippie back to nature movement that peaked in the early 70s.
I think that the eventual dominance of centralized, corporatized media combined with Capital's greed for cheap labor combined with the establishment of a college educated journalism subculture led to the eventual dominance of pro-immigration memes in the media and in the dominant subculture of journalism
I think the explanation is simpler. In the late 50s the Total Fertility Rate was twice what it is today (4.95 vs. 2.44). This graph of global population growth by annual growth rate correlates rather well with a graph of public concern for population growth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_population_increase_history.svg.
Consider the case of the UK, Steve.
Fertility has been well below replacement level for the indigenous population for at least 40 years now, yet the British population is scheduled to grow at its highest rate for generations from now on.This is, of course, entirely another peoples' fertility that the prudent British must accomodate.
The words 'cuckoos' and 'nests' spring to mind.
Hasn't population control essentially won? Global population may peak too high (9 billion is where it's expected to peak?) but I think the expert consensus is that the limit is non-Malthusian, but some other cultural of social force (thankfully!!!).
The wicked problem is population quality control. I don't think its settled if unregulated, we'll drift in a dysgenic direction or not --but my intuition is that we'd all be better of if most people weren't allowed to have kids, and we might lots of kids out of the sperm and eggs of our select super-able portion of humanity. Of course I doubt much traction for any idea more restrictive than denying reproductive rights for the worst minority fraction of humanity.
I still encounter plenty of people, boomers and Gen Xers, who prattle on about overpopulation as if it were still 1970. Just yesterday, I skimmed through a thread of childless commenters bragging how sensible and responsible they were for not having kids. I used to be as smug, years ago, until I realized the joke was on me and the kind of people I cared for.
Second the recommendation of E. Michael Jones' articles at culturewar.com. As he wrote, it always was about WASP concerns over the rising Catholic and colored populations, but it backfired on themselves and Catholics too.
Ehrlich and all the other doom-sayers WERE vindicated, but vindicated in a way that was generally unforeseen in 1968 - that is massive Mexican and other Latin immigration into the USA.
You see Mexico experienced truly exponential population growth from the mid 20th century onwards and the Mexican inundation of the USA is a direct result.As a result the face of the USA will be changed forever.
I have to second Anonymous above. I remember very well that back in the 80s and 90s, any number of Protestant "religious right" organizations made common cause with RCs in resisting the use of the public schools for sex ed, condom distribution, etc. And for better or worse, the religious right also opposed enviromentalist initiatives perceived as abrogating property rights.
From the evangelical perspective, none of this had much to do with population control or contraception per se. And while it is certainly possible that mainline liberal support for it may have been motivated by anti-Romanism, you would have to go a lot further back that Paul Ehrlich to find any expression of it. Even Monty Python's skit appears set in Edwardian times.
We had a Jesuit priest round for dinner once and I asked him why the Roman Catholic Church made such a fuss about contraception. He replied that ever since the reformation they'd been frightened of being outnumbered.
Forget Monty Python. Visit W3SchoolsHere is how a real physicist approaches the problem. :)
"Ehrlich and all the other doom-sayers WERE vindicated"
Noooot at all.
I think Americans are now just as worried of being swamped by Cathiolic Mexicans as they ever were by Irish.
Back in the day the "environmental" move4ment was very much a mi8nority interest and minority groups don't have to worry about taking the majority with them - indeed they gain credibility by attacking respected institutions successfully. eg all these weird mid west religions that keep picking on poor big Disney as pushing satanism.
Now that ecofascism is dominant it has to avoid taking on the Pope & vice versa.
Has the financial crisis in the Republic of Ireland produced an influx of young Irish Catholic immigrants on the streets of USA? Does this explain the return of population control as a public issue?
Why do you mention Haiti in light of crimethinkers? Comparatively speaking, Jamaica and/or countries in Central America have far higher levels of "crime."
Also, universities/pharma have been conducting all kinds of research on birth control implants, etc....
Haiti effectively sustains the DR economy, both through illegal migration to cut sugarcane for big landowners/companies and for the construction industry...
It's impressive how much social conditioning works, especially on women, leftist and other passively accepting masses.
PC has been optimized to exploit and control the powerful, instinctual and often irrational religious impulse in humans, especially among women, secularized former religious zealots, and the like. These types try to "save" the world by attempting to remake it according to often impossible and patently ludicrous dogma - used as means to vain and selfish ends by elites.
Contrast the visceral disgust and even hatred evoked in such PC fundies by the relatively rare fecund white families like the Palins and Duggers (19 Kids and Counting) with the indifference to the explosive population growth in Ethiopia causing the latest famine. Ethiopia's population grew from 39.5M in 1984 during the We Are the World famine relief effort to 94.5M in 2011 famine) and not a peep from the MSM except for demands for more aid.
Population control was a political initiative something like "hope and change." Different kinds of people could support it for different reasons.
Jews: to prevent reproduction of goyim.
Whites: to prevent reproduction of blacks.
Protestants: to prevent reproduction of Catholics.
Leftists: to attack bourgeois, religious traditional families and culture.
At some point about 1979, leftists figured out that they were not in favor of population control of blacks and immigrants. That is when population control went out of style as a political issue.
A lot of the ZPG rhetoric was listened to mostly by educated people in the first world, whose fertility rate declined below replacement levels. It seems to me that there has been a kind of reaction to that, with more educated people in the first world deciding they want kids and want to encourage kids (and grandkids)!
The problems of Haitians and Sudanese and Bangledeshis and such were never the point for most of the people putting out the rhetoric. (I'm sure some of the people putting out that rhetoric were sincere about it globally, but most of the pundit class is focused on their home society, not the big wide world.)
As I understand it, the most effective society-wide way to reduce fertility in very poor countries is to get the girls into school and get a little bit of wealth into their hands. Though making birth control free for anyone who wants it would probably be a win generally throughout the whole world.
A lot of the ZPG rhetoric was listened to mostly by educated people in the first world, whose fertility rate declined below replacement levels. It seems to me that there has been a kind of reaction to that, with more educated people in the first world deciding they want kids and want to encourage kids (and grandkids)!
The problems of Haitians and Sudanese and Bangledeshis and such were never the point for most of the people putting out the rhetoric. (I'm sure some of the people putting out that rhetoric were sincere about it globally, but most of the pundit class is focused on their home society, not the big wide world.)
As I understand it, the most effective society-wide way to reduce fertility in very poor countries is to get the girls into school and get a little bit of wealth into their hands. Though making birth control free for anyone who wants it would probably be a win generally throughout the whole world.
I can't stop laughing at that picture. Is that woman even fertile? Probably not! And in Portland? Portland is a metro area of about 2 million in a state of about 4 million. The other 2 million people are spread out over the 98,381 square miles of Oregon. Now granted the eastern half of the state is desert and can't easily support any kind of population density, but the western half is empty. It's never been fully settled here, there is so much room. There is arable land sitting fallow from Northern CA all the way up to BC. There is water. Just.... not enough people.
"The first part of that sentence is on the money, while the second part is misleading."
Yep, it's about the money. And it's not about Catholics or Protestants but Jews and their money(and media power bought with money of course).
Judeocentric environmentalism says the white goy animals are a danger to Jewish species, and so non-white animals must be brought to America to diversify the ecology to balance the power of white goy animals. That way, the American environment will be safer for the Jewish species.
So, environmentalism, like much else, has been Judeo-centrized.
I'll also recommend The Slaughter of the Cities by E Michael Jones. It was a real eye-opener for me on these issues.
I think the birth control argument was once one part eugenics and one part womens rights. Nazism made eugenics unacceptable so the womens rights side of the equation became more prominent.
But while eugenics tended to suppress birth rates among the poor, "womens rights" has had the opposite effect, that of suppressing birth rates among the middle and upper classes.
It's worth mentioning that Margret Sanger (nee Higgens) was herself of Irish Catholic background and one of eleven children.
Similarly, imagine how popular immigration control would be if incoming Mexicans were predominantly Cristero wannabes with the mores and devout churchgoing habits of mid-20th century Irish Catholics.
Your point is very well taken. The Catholic author E. Michael Jones has written extensively on the WASP fear of Catholic ethnic political strength, and the actions taken by the Protestant elite in response to it, in his book "The Slaughter of the Cities."
San Diego Chargers QB Philip Rivers, from Alabama, is 29 years old and has six kids already.
Has the financial crisis in the Republic of Ireland produced an influx of young Irish Catholic immigrants on the streets of USA?
There are not enough young Irish Catholics to produce any noticeable influx. The entire population of Ireland is 4.5 million.
"while it is certainly possible that mainline liberal support for it may have been motivated by anti-Romanism, you would have to go a lot further back that Paul Ehrlich to find any expression of it."
Not that much further.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Freedom_and_Catholic_Power
Eugenics (regulation of population quality) looks to me like the policy issue with the most practical potential, and the least political possibility. Even Sloterdijk's Straussian exercise was unveiled and denounced.
"Why aren't Protestants worried about being swamped by Haitians (etc), though? I think maybe they are, but thinking that is 'racist', so can't be expressed?"
It's not exactly fun being a Protestant in a Roman Catholic country - yes, I speak from experience.
I think the difference is that we white Protestants know we can dominate and isolate ourselves from Haitians.
It's a lot harder when it comes to the Papists. (Don't whine; I've been called much worse.) White Catholics can dominate the wider society in a way that Haitians etc., just can't.
Josh re: American Freedom and Catholic Power.
I haven't read the book, and a brief google search has not found the contents. But from Wikipedia, I read that he writes from a secular rather than protestant perspective. Nor do I find any mention of a population control program. But if this is wrong, please let me know.
The NYT article quotes John Pope, chairman of the Sierra Club, as saying that the organization wants to keep a low profile on the population issue. Indeed, there are many reasons for this. For example, a discussion of overpopulation leading inevitably to depletion of natural resources, loss of habitat and increased pollution would occur. And this might cause some to raise the issue of Third World immigration to the US and other developed nations, which causes the immigrants to consume and pollute at First World rather than Third World rates.
In 1996, the Sierra Club changed its position on immigration in exchange for a $100 million donation from David Gelbaum, according to the "LA Times" (report no longer available on line but summarized here: http://www.vdare.com/articles/the-2005-sierra-series-by-brenda-walker-0. A brief quote:
After all, the 1996 switch from common sense to political correctness was an abrupt change from the earlier position that the Club should work to "bring about the stabilization of the population first of the United States and then of the world."
Our suspicions were correct. The LA Times article revealed that shadowy funder Gelbaum donated generously on condition that the Sierra Club not address immigration as an environmental issue.
Said Gelbaum, "I did tell [Sierra Club Executive Director] Carl Pope in 1994 or 1995 that if they ever came out anti-immigration, they would never get a dollar from me."
The story continued:
"Gelbaum, who reads the Spanish-language newspaper La Opinión and is married to a Mexican American, said his views on immigration were shaped long ago by his grandfather, Abraham, a watchmaker who had come to America to escape persecution of Jews in Ukraine before World War I.
" 'I asked, 'Abe, what do you think about all of these Mexicans coming here?' 'Gelbaum said. 'Abe didn't speak English that well. He said, 'I came here. How can I tell them not to come?''
"I cannot support an organization that is anti-immigration. It would dishonor the memory of my grandparents."
Gelbaum's reasoning is patently anti-environmental. It assumes that this country can absorb millions of new foreign residents annually who come with dreams of American level consumption.
....
The NYT ran a series of articles on the Sierra Club's internal disputes on immigration in 2004-5 but curiously overlooked Gelbaum's role. In fact, the only mention of it at all in the NYT was as a side note to this article about Gelbaum's termination of his annual $20 million donation to the ACLU, perhaps as a result of the Bernie Madoff affair.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the UK.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2056265/MigrationWatch-UK-Thousand-hour-sign-e-petition-calling-immigration-debate.html
The Sierra Club refuses to discuss population because their main financial benefactor has made it clear that he will not support them if it leads to an anti-immigrant sentiment.
The other greenie organizations refuse to deal with population growth issue because it is RACIST to insist that those third world people reduce their birthrates down to Western (and East Asian) levels.
The irish still have the most kids in europe and it seems like they do in this country too. (among whites that is)
yeah i don't think that's what happened. lots of euro americans of all religions were beating the "Stop reproducing, the earth can't handle this many people" drum for a long time. then after a while when the birth rate for europeans around the world began to drop like a rock, they stopped talking about that. meanwhile the population of third worlders exploded.
today it is all about criticizing europeans for reproducing while totally ignoring anything any other group is doing. i'd say the basic feeling now is that if some euro american family has more than 3 kids, they're being assholes. any other group is permitted to reproduce at will with no comment.
pretty dangerous situation when you start bringing in various muslims who have kids at the same rate as serious, dedicated catholics. although not that many "catholics" are actually serious about it. and hey, it IS difficult being a highly observant catholic. there's so many rules and regulations. what an inconvenience! most muslims are deadly serious about being muslims, even demanding their employers alter their business practices and regulations to allow the muslims (only the muslims) to take breaks from work every couple hours to pray.
but for most "catholics", they're almost like casual bandwagon sports fans. it's all "Team Catholic! I'm part of a good, major team!" when for whatever reason, religion is important for the next 5 minutes. most of the rest of the time though it's casual sex with birth control and "Yeah I'm too busy for right now for Mass/Confession/Night Prayer/observing any required practice, just gonna surf the internet for porn/play video games instead."
i've dated several mexican women who never attended church a single time in years, observed no religious practices ever, had sex with me a hundred times without having a single child or even a marriage proposal, yet still maintained "I'm Catholic".
LOL. no, you're not. you just wave a terrible towel when the Steelers are in the superbowl. you don't even know the name of one player. many second and third generation mexicans are classic "Team Catholic!" casual catholics IE non-catholics. they break every rule, all day, for years, then thump their chest once in a while "I'm Catholic and I'm going to Heaven!"
out of all the euro americans, mormons have the most kids. and they have somehow mostly avoided getting bashed for this. they're a lot more serious, person for person, about being mormon than catholics are about being catholic.
people like to focus on other peculiar features of mormon society and concentrate on bashing that, and kind of forget to take their free "and you have too many kids, too" shot on them.
personally i think this is because liberals are so gleeful about bashing conservative euro americans for practicing any kind of religion, and so hilariously hypocritical about NEVER bashing the other groups for being even more religious, that mormons just light up their "white conservatives who practice a religion seriously?!" radar like the proverbial christmas tree - which, in some sort of pun, liberals have also set as a high priority target. they literally attack christmas trees, too.
doc,
Paul Blanhard is a pretty good archetype of a kind of secular writer of his day. Per wiki:
"Following graduation from Michigan University in 1914, Blanshard enrolled in Harvard Divinity School. Prior to entry, he joined the Socialist Party, of which he remained a member for 19 years. Blanshard found his studies replete with "verbal evasion" and wryly observed that "This institution was what Mark Twain would have called a theological cemetery". He joined the Boston Socialist Party and sometimes was dispatched to local strikes as a clerical agitator. Under these casual arrangements he met both Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. Blanshard described his early preaching experience as relying more upon Bernard Shaw than the Bible."
"Seated alphabetically for inauguration into Phi Beta Kappa, to Paul's left was Julia Sweet Anderson. A romance and normal courtship was followed by an unusual "Marriage Ceremony for Revolutionists". The eschewing of a Christian ceremony while still at Harvard Divinity School was a portent. The couple humorously described this as "term insurance for our marriage in stead of a straight life policy". The young couple became close friends with both Helen Keller and Margaret Sanger."
1) Eugenics, anti-Catholicism, and secular protestantism went hand in hand. 2) By the1920s and especially later much of the vanguard of Unitarian liberal elite had made the transition to full on agnosticism. However this was not much of a jump from unitarianism. Ethnically these were protestant movements whatever you want to call their theology.
1) Eugenics, anti-Catholicism, and secular protestantism went hand in hand. 2) By the1920s and especially later much of the vanguard of Unitarian liberal elite had made the transition to full on agnosticism. However this was not much of a jump from unitarianism. Ethnically these were protestant movements whatever you want to call their theology.
Josh: Fair enough. But keep in mind:
1) The 1920s, and maybe even 1949, is kind of what I meant when I wrote "a lot further back than Paul Ehrlich." Protestants of that era were indeed suspicious of the Catholic newcomers of their day for reasons good and bad. But little of this hostility remained after WWII among observant Protestants. By the time Paul Ehrlich was writing, anti-Catholicism on demography grounds was strictly the preserve of the secular Left.
2) "Ethnic Protestant" is a very abstract category, if indeed it is a category at all. What you intend here is old-stock American, Northern European, etc., i.e., strictly ethnic categories. Very few Americans a generation or more removed from actual Protestant observance maintain any religious identification, and actual Protestant churches make no appeals to them on an historical or ethnic basis.
3) As a matter of intellectual philogenesis, the progressive movement can be described as having its roots in Protestantism. But I am at pains to point out that they became progressives precisely when they broke away from those roots. Today's progressives bear no affinity with, say, orthodox Presbyterianism or the SBC; indeed, they are mortal enemies.
Simon wrote:
"Why aren't Protestants worried about being swamped by Haitians (etc), though?"
(1) Some are not concerned, because they have been trained to believe in Nonwhite Moral Superiority. (More Haitians equals more vibrancy, e.g. they are fans of the hip rap-stylings of Haitian Wyclef Jean...and most probably have no idea who the original Jon Wycliff is).
(2) Some are not, because it does not affect them living in Seattle or Maine or Iowa.
(3) Some are concerned, but self-censor in public, because they are socially-aware enough to understand that the Social Apparatus demands people act like #1s above.
(4) Some are concerned and express such, and are marginalized or worse.
White-Democrats: #1s and some #2s.
White-Republicans: Many #2s and many #3s. Hardline #3s and #4s are generally disgusted with the Republicans, though.
Steve, I suspect you're bang-on correct.
In the 1950s USA, it was the white Catholics and the blacks who were producing the most babies. (And since Mexican-Americans were at that time a quite small population, I am in fact talking about WHITE Catholics; Irish, German, Italian, Polish, etc.) Quebec in Canada was equally fecund as Mexico was back then.
White Protestants had the lowest rates; although back then, they were still above replacement, they were decidedly lower than Catholics and blacks. This is one reason why respectable old-line Protestant denominations such as the Episcopalians and Methodists became small fractions of the overall population, despite being the majority in many states for much of the USA's history.
After Vatican II took the teeth out of the Catholic Church, though, Catholic birth rates started to fall big-time. Thereafter, it was only non-Christians or non-whites who had high birth rates, and talking about population growth became unfashionable and racist.
Now, even more so. Sure, you see a spate of news about the world population hitting 7 billion and increasing, but as Gwynne Dyer recently pointed out, population growth now is entirely an African problem. Europeans and East Asians are dying off, and Latinos, Muslims, and Indians are stabilizing. But very few people are prepared to turn away from the pictures of starving Somali children and say that even if a large number die off, an equal number will be born in the next year.
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