Do Not Have Sex with This Man

[cbayer]

http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/sexandgender/6660/do_not_have_sex_with_this_man/

Throwing out the commandments behind Ross Douthat's depopulation column


"Today's babies are tomorrow's taxpayers..."

December 4, 2012
By SARAH SENTILLES
Sarah Sentilles is the author of A Church of Her Own: What Happens When a Woman Takes the Pulpit (Harcourt, 2008) and Breaking Up with God (HarperOne, 2011).

Ross Douthat wants you to have more babies. And he wants you to be married when you have those babies. And not just any babies. He wants you to have American babies—though, if you’re an immigrant, he’ll take your babies, too, because that’s really the only reason to allow immigrants (who he thinks have been slacking off in the bedroom recently) to be here.

And he wants you to hurry up and have those American babies, because if you don’t, we’ll run out of workers, and if we run out of workers the United States will get “knocked off its global perch.” Because that’s what’s at stake, ladies and gentlemen—American domination.

So, my (heterosexual) compatriots, take off your clothes, take off your condoms, take out your IUDs and diaphragms, stop swallowing your birth control pills, have your vasectomies reversed, quit it with the rhythm method, and do the hard, hot, steamy work your country needs you to do: reproduce. And then do it again. It’s your civic duty.

Douthat is sounding his make-more-babies alarm in response to last week’s Pew Research Center report that U.S. birth rates hit the lowest ever recorded in 2011, with just 63 births per 1000 women of childbearing age (compared to 71 per 1000 in 1990). Americans used to be good at populating the planet, Douthat laments. “Our famous religiosity, our vast interior and wide-open spaces (and the four-bedroom detached houses they make possible), and our willingness to welcome immigrants” gave us a “demographic edge,” he writes (though Douthat’s own Republican party had a lot to say in the last year about exactly what kind of welcome immigrants should be given—that is, none).

more at link, including clearer tie in with religion.

[Xithras]

1. Hmm, who do I believe? Ross Douthat or Albert Einstein?

Douthat believes that we need more people to maintain our domination. Einstein, however, made the opposite point. While touring the United States at one point in the 1920's, Einstein was writing letters back to a German newspaper documenting his travels. In one of those letters he stated that one of the primary differences between Germany and America was the population. Germany was teeming with people, which made labor cheap and plentiful. America, on the other hand, was a very empty place in the 1920's (and comparatively, America still IS an empty place compared to Germany today). Einstein observed that it was our LACK of population that made America a special place. The lack of labor competition increased the value of that labor to the marketplace and consequently increased wages, making the average American wealthier than his average German counterpart.

More importantly however, the lack of cheap and readily available labor was a driving force behind American ingenuity. We invented tractors because we couldn't call up a small army of dirt cheap farmhands whenever we needed our fields tilled. We drove industrialization because there weren't enough skilled people to manufacture goods by hand. We took the notion of rail transport and built it into a full fledged continental industry, because we didn't have the workforce to build a proper road network the way the Romans and so many European nations had (and later, we designed machines to build those roads too). Einstein observed that invention was often driven by necessity, and the LACK of a readily available labor force was a large factor behind American innovation, and one of the primary differences between America and Europe.

But Ross Douthat thinks we need more babies. Surely he's smarter than Einstein.

[Moonwalk]

2. Why not just outsource?

He belongs to the Republican party. Isn't that their usual way of dealing with not having enough workers (or rather, having enough workers but not wanting to pay them for their work?) Given the freedom Repukes have given corporations to outsource, American workers are becoming pointless anyway; so why make more of something that's obsolete? And it's not as if Republicans want more babies born so America can have more voters. More voters mean more democrats and they don't seem interested in having that either

[Adsos Letter]

3. OK

Don't gotta' tell me twice.





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