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The Western world now holds its grand fin de
siecle party, an exuberant celebration of material accumulation
and unfettered passion. Unrest in Kosovo or sanitary airstrikes
against Muslims somewhere barely intrude on the bacchanalia;
indeed, they might best be understood as part of the
entertainment.
Everywhere in the European Community and
Anglo-America, real attention focuses on the consumption of food
(alternately rich and fat-free), frequent sex, and raucous fun.
Relatively few are pestered these days by children. Fertile
young adults rely on mechanical devices and chemical agents to
thwart the designs of nature. In places as culturally different
as Spain, Italy, Denmark, and Germany, the sexual
experimentation starts early, but hardly anyone brings forth a
child. Total Fertility Rates(TFR) in these lands (which must
reach an average of 2.1 children per woman if they are just to
replace the current generation) hover near 1.2. Projected
forward two generations, nearly 60 per cent of these nations’
children will be without siblings, cousins, uncles or aunts.
And yet, the government support checks
continue to flow, the cafes and cabarets are
full, and those disparagingly called the
"dark people" are brought in from the south and east
to bus the tables and clean up the morning mess. Only
occasionally do bad thoughts intrude, as the partygoers grumble
over the newcomers’ inexplicable attachments to their
"mates" (an antiquated heterosexist word) and broods
of children.
Here in the United States, fertility is
higher (a TFR of about 1.9), but only as a wasting legacy of the
Federal government’s long running program of paying the
unmarried to have babies. The marital fertility rate—a measure
of births within responsibly constructed homes—has only fallen
since the late 1950’s, a decline that has accelerated again in
the 1990’s. Americans grumble, too, about the "bad
English" and the big families of their busboys, nurses
assistants, and garbage collectors, but—in the memorable words
of Garth from "Wayne’s World"—they "party
on."
For we live in the aftermath of the Sexual
Revolution, "the Great Happening" celebrated in song,
film, and bad poetry. Born in the dark anterooms of rogue minds
such as the Marquis de Sade and Havelock Ellis, this event has
now just about run its course. In America, the revolution broke
out of the soiled urban alleys in the late 1940’s. Borrowing
words from "The Official History of the Sex
Revolution" published by the Playboy Press, it was then
that a band of "depraved and promiscuous" sexual
soldiers , "the Dirty-Minded Americans," opened their
campaign to corrupt "the world’s most decent and powerful
country" and to ravage "the breeding population."
As the Playboy volume, formerly entitled THE RAPE OF THE A*P*E*
(American Puritan Ethic), summarized the struggle:
" Wherever there was a strawberry church
social, they would search and destroy. They would storm every
bastion of decency: besmirch and defile the Enemy on the
beaches, in the homes and in the streets. They would …despoil
the innocent. They would experiment with …new sex kicks. They
would open new sex fronts—science, for example; they would
give smut respectability by dressing it in the dignified cloak
of science. They would shock, and shock again, they would
appall."
The Revolution had three phases. The first
task was to separate sex from marriage, to make fornication
respectable, to unleash eros from the normative restraints
created by several thousand years of Judeo-Christian
civilization. Early victories included Alfred Kinsey’s bogus
reports on male and female sexuality, which both the press and
"the scientific community" swallowed whole. Then came
the Playboy philosopher himself, who transformed prostitution
into a free good and moved pornography from the sordid shop to
the supermarket news rack.
The next step was to separate childbearing
from marriage. Sociologists and lawmakers gave their blessing ,
scuttling the concept of "illegitimacy" in favor of
the morally neutral term, "out-of-wedlock birth." The
Federal government pumped many billions of dollars into welfare
programs to insure that husbandless mothers would suffer no
financial penalty for their lifestyle choice.
The final phase sealed the absolute
separation of "babies" and "children" from
"sex," a victory now being consolidated at century’s
end. Pick any volume off the "Gay and Lesbian Studies"
bookcases down at Barnes & Noble or Borders, and you will
find a complete philosophy of pleasure, one removed from the
encumbrances afflicting "the breeding population."
Here and there in the United States, it is
true, pockets of "breeders" hold out: "Latin
Mass" Catholics; Anabaptist separatists like the Amish;
Hassidic Jews; Mormons in Utah; home schoolers. There are even
signs of a few effective counteroffensives, such as a recent
study in the JOURNAL OF MARRIAGE AND FAMILY reporting a 33 per
cent increase in the proportion of "fundamentalist
Protestant" young women who are virgins at age 18.
Yet the majority of Americans, and the vast
majority of opinion-molders in the academy and the media, are
now in "the depraved and promiscuous " ranks, as
defined by the Playboy history. This accounts for the grave
miscalculations made by the Republicans in the 1998 election.
Bill Clinton is the perfect leader of the Free Sexual World,
which explains his popularity here and in Europe. His appetites
are large and frequently indulged. And the results are socially
normative for the new order: he has many sexual partners but
only one child.
All the same, the Great Party will not last
much longer. There is an iron law in history: the future belongs
to the fertile. Just as the clan-centered, child-rich barbarian
tribes of the Germans swept away the sensuous and sterile
Western Roman Empire, so shall new barbarians arise. Barring
religious renewal among the old stocks on a profound scale, the
fate of the European Community is already written: the heirs to
the Continent will be the "dark people"—the Muslims,
the Asians, the Africans—who have been brought in to clean up
after their "hosts." With fertility levels three to
four times that of their neighbors, and with numbers in France,
Germany, and Great Britain already sufficient for middle-range
political protection, what remains of the splendor and wealth of
Europe will probably be theirs by the mid-21st
Century. In other words, forget the "new politics" of
the Tony Blairs; bet on the Taliban.
In Anglo-America, meanwhile, Asian and
Hispanic populations expand among the native-born hedonists, and
more of the undefiled cross the borders each day. The chief
"defense strategy" mounted by the Clinton regime seems
to be one of accelerated corruption: introduce the newcomers
quickly to the allures of Discount Store Civilization, Hollywood
morals, free contraceptives, and abortion, and perhaps they will
become "just like us" before they bear too many
children.
It is, like most Clinton policy innovations,
cynically clever. But it is unlikely to work for more than a
short while. Moral corruption bears fiscal consequence: a
growing mass of dependents needing succor from a cash-strapped
government. This may be the Man-from-Hope’s real legacy to the
future leaders of the Free Sexual World.
So what should persons with only one sexual
partner and many children do? A few suggestions: Adopt a
"libertarian" political strategy, supporting every
proposed curtailment of the central government. Let a thousand
little communities bloom. Build political alliances with other
"breeding" populations, old stock and new. Seek tax
cuts premised on marriage and family size. Shelter your children
from the majoritarian Culture of Clinton. Create your own
school. Inculturate your young into an ethos of righteous
defiance. And have another child. For remember that iron law:
the future does belong to the fertile.
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