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Demography is destiny

The West's Unilateral Non-Proliferation Treaty
by Marian Kester Coombs
The Washington Times, June 1, 2003

erhaps the most far-out conspiracy theory to race across the Internet was that Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) virus had been intentionally released to reduce the world's population by up to two thirds. Other such scare scenarios have implicated West Nile virus, anthrax, smallpox and now avian influenza.

To the conspiratorial mind, which "totalizes too quickly" according to Jean-Paul Sartre, the potential mortality rate of such plagues plus the desirability of population control must equal a covert plan to kill most of us off.

Now, from the point of view of some hypothetical global elite, controlling human numbers is undeniably desirable. Nor can it be denied that in their more candid moments, would-be global managers have indeed issued blueprints for a steady-state planet where the gap between rich and poor is barely there, life's necessities are denied no one, and man lives in profitable harmony with earth's natural resources, all under the benevolent thumb of They Who Know Best.

But the world is not run by these benevolents at present; it is run in jagged blocs both great and small that roughly correspond to the diverse peoples of the earth. And to one another, most peoples of the earth say only, "Control our population growth? You first. The world's resources, particularly land and water, may be scarce and growing scarcer, but it is we, our people, who shall carve up the last hectare and drain the last drop!"

That is to say, the greatest obstacle to checking the human overpopulation is interracial rivalry. It is perceived as suicidal to unilaterally reduce population, just as it is perceived as insane to either give up whatever Weapons of Mass Destruction one possesses or to not pursue their acquisition (albeit clandestinely) in the first place. The races of man thus are locked in a demographic race to the finish, which may well prove the finish of all.

For demography often proves to be destiny. When the Lakota chief asks Lt. Dunbar in "Dances with Wolves" how numerous the whites are, and whether they will even stop coming into his land, Dunbar replies something like, "They are as many as the stars in the sky. They will keep coming."

And so they did, and they called it Manifest Destiny. Possession is nine-tenths of the law. Europeans simply overran the landmass from sea to shining sea, then called in the cavalry to support their piecemeal digestion of the continent.

Many peoples today are completely open about their agenda to prevail through sheer numbers. Among these are Mexican indios pouring across America's borders, displaced Palestinians seething in their refugee camps, Israeli "settlers" whose orthodox faith ordains large families, Muslims not only Arab but Asian and North African in France and England and Germany, both Hindus and Muslims in disputed border regions like Kashmir, Polynesians on Fiji, Han Chinese in Tibet.

In light of all this, the heartless murder of women and children can no longer be mistaken for inadvertent "collateral" damage. Women and children are in fact the primary target when the problem is viewed as "too many" of one's enemy. War becomes genocide instead of operations between armed combatants.

Also explicable in the light of demographic war is why Western feminism holds such peculiar horror for demographically aggressive societies: They look at the West, see demographic collapse, and note the role of "Women's Lib." Anything that might discourage young women from having lots of children and thus advancing ethnic proliferation must be violently rejected.

Mexico is a particularly fascinating example of "demopolitics" in action. Its ruling classes -- mostly of European stock like Vicente Fox -- are sitting pretty save for one small problem: They have no idea how to build a prosperous modern country. (Don't smirk -- most of our politicians have little knack for it either.) Their solution is a brilliant one: Export the excess (unskilled, dependent) population to El Norte, where they will either be taken care of, or educated and trained at Norteno expense until such time as they are numerous and powerful enough to re-annex themselves to Mexico.

That scenario brings us to the major exception to this global demographic crescendo: The West has placed itself hors de combat. Western population growth is no longer weaponized; it has gone negative.

(Other exceptions: Africa, where a stupendous birthrate is constantly being thwarted by lack of sanitation, famine, war, disease and other setbacks. China, which, as it plays a one-sided game of Go with the U.S. worldwide, can afford to give itself the breathing room of population stabilization as part of its long-long-long-term strategy to become the next global hegemon. And Japan, lapsed into a population coma and confined to its island prison, which is what happens when your bid for Lebensraum is checked by force of arms.)

In America the Mormon church once used polygamy to grow itself faster, and still blissfully believes the more Mormons the better. But the fertility rate of American Catholics is far lower than it was before the 1960s; it is now as flat as that of Episcopalians. And in Europe those most Catholic of countries, Spain and Italy, now feature the feeblest birthrates of all.

Most of the reasons for Western demographic disarmament are excellent and noble ones. Lower infant and child mortality has led, as it should, to lower birthrates. Economic opportunity has given women -- and men too -- more choices, more freedom, which apparently translates into fewer children.

Concern for the environment has led caring parents to "stop at two" -- or one, or none. Medical technology, of course, has made reproduction optional rather than the "nuptial trigger" it served as for so long.

Unfortunately, the rest of the world experiences the West's attempt to stabilize its societies as a welcome vacuum into which they are desperately eager to pour. In a willfully overcrowded world, where billions are increasingly mobile and aware of how "the rich" live, taking a population breather is like trying to maintain the proper car lengths between vehicles on a congested highway.

All mankind agrees in principle that there is no dearth or wrong or horror on the face of the globe that can be relieved by the addition of more people. Only the West has made the deliberately self-sacrificial gesture of diminishing itself for the good of the planetary whole. And for this, its peoples may well perish from the earth.