"the immigrants, they love babies, love families, love family life, have many many children, and soon they will be taking over"

She says it like it's a bad thing.

If the Catholic Church was governed by men instead of a bunch of limp-wrists, they'd preach against birth control and encourage births every single Sunday. I've been a Catholic for four years, never heard a sermon mention, even in passing, that birth control is a mortal sin, which it is. Orthodox Catholicism is the only thing that will save the American Catholic Church.

Thus it becomes easier to see that the cultural movement to sunder the erotic from the reproductive has been the Devil's work all along, but of course we knew that.

If they instituted mandatory Norplant for people on welfare, much of the surfeit of births by Third Worlders infesting the First World would disappear.

OJ, if you read the article, it is the Catholic faithful who aren't having babies. Don't be blaming the secularists for that.

Bart:

And with them the First World.

Robert:

Yes, they need to eschew secularism for a return to their faith.

No, that is their faith. There is no rule of secularism that states that men and women must not procreate. They can't leave secularism because they aren't "in" secluarism. These are the faithful, and they aren't having children, and they don't see anything wrong with that. So why is faith such a good thing?

The State is more powerful than any church--they are members of entirely secularized societies and need to withdraw in order to re-establish the faith.

What a massive copout! How is the state preventing them from having children? Your Christianity seems to be a hothouse flower, that can only thrive under ideal conditions. The state will always exist, there is no place to withdraw to. If Christianity cannot withstand the state, then it is pretty useless, no?

Robert:

Yes, that's an excellent analogy, a hothouse flower. The point of Statism is to atomize society sufficiently that the individual is so isolated they're completely dependent on the State.

Presumably Cardinal O'Brien could be pushing to convert the immigrant communities, or is that unacceptable in this day and age?

OJ,

IMHO, if we could reduce the population of the entire world by a significant percentage, it would have far more beneficial than detrimental effect. An America with only 150 million people rather than 300 million where that 150 million was selected by a mixture of genetic and environmental factors would be a far better one than the current edition. The same certainly would go for an India or China of about 300 million.

Bart:

Of course you think so--you're secular and anti-human. We notice you haven't volunteered to go first in being "reduced" though.

OJ,

Given my income and my educational attainments, it would not be rational for me to do so. It is the least adapted who should be compelled or encouraged through financial emoluments not to breed.

Why shouldn't we sterilize the mentally defective or the violent felons among us? Why shouldn't we sterilize people with genetic diseases? Why shouldn't we bar people on the public dole from reproducing so long as they are on the public dole? In a world of scarce resources, these people are unnecessary.

Of course, it's never rational for me to be reduced, but always makes sense for you to be.

OJ,

The criteria I am using are rational ones, based upon simple cost-benefit analysis. If you have a specific criticism, please make it but otherwise please leave the tedious posturing and platitudes for someone who cares.

Yes, you're using your own reason and what you choose to call a cost and what a benefit. We'd each do the same and decide we were the ones who should live and others die. Rationality is a pretense. By the way, you're more than welcome to go away and never come back if you find me tedious. I find your views evil.

Bart, there is no rational reason for any of us to be allowed to live. There is nothing rational about life, it just is. Just be happy you're alive.

As for the cost/benefit analysis of who of us produces a profit and who a loss, it begs the question: who is footing the bill? Whose resources are at stake? Do you own stock in the Universe?

Not sure if Jeff Guinn is around, but I think Bart is a perfect refutation of his claim that ad hominem attacks are necessarily proof of a losing argument.

Brian:

Right you are. Although this is but an extension (granted, a huge one) of OJ's assertion that certain groups should not be allowed to vote.

Apparently political neutering is OK, but the physical kind not.

Robert:

You make some excellent points. It just so happens the Detroit Free Press ran a review this morning on a book (no, I can't remember the title) regarding the impending demographic slump.

Secularism has not the first thing to do with it--the phenomena of reduced female fertility crosses all religions and has but one common component: the transition from rural to post-industrial economy.

Perhaps my irony meter is over-sensitive, but for a bunch of men with a lifelong commitment to avoid procreation to start whining about others not having enough babies seems surpassing odd.

People in advanced societies shouldn't have
to reproduce much more than replacement level in
order to keep the hordes out.