The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

‘Overpopulated’? With Liberals, Perhaps

Posted on | October 27, 2014 | 76 Comments

It is never enough for a liberal to argue the point at issue, and generally, liberals never actually “argue” at all: They just lie, and when you catch them lying, they then accuse you of hate. “Never mind facts or logic — you’re a Nazi!” That’s a liberal “argument.”

Because they don’t care about logic or truth, and because they are arguing for bad policies that produce bad results, it is always necessary for liberals to distract from the most important fact in every argument, i.e., the disastrous wrongness of liberalism.

So when liberals are not using one distraction tactic (“Republicans are Nazis”) they are always using some other tactic of sophistry. For example, “Look How Smart I Am” is a distraction tactic intended to change the subject by inspiring awe at the liberal’s intelligence and erudition. However, this is never disputed by liberalism’s critics.

“Yes, Professor, we grant that you are both intelligent and highly educated. We acknowledge that you are fluent in the English language and resourceful in debate. The problem is that your intelligence, your education and your rhetorical skills — all of which we do not doubt — are being employed on behalf of policies that are destroying our country and ruining the world. You are not stupid, but you are still wrong, and America is going to hell in a handbasket because smart people like you spend so much time arguing in favor of bad policies and wrong ideas.”

At some point, we begin to consider the possibility that smart people who are so consistently wrong are not merely wrong, but evil.

However, the point I wish to make is that we inevitably reach that moment in an argument where the conservative has plainly demonstrated what he had intended to demonstrate, and where the only thing the liberal can do to “win” is to flaunt his imagined intellectual superiority. The purpose of such an ostentatious gesture is to salvage the prestige of liberalism, to convince the reader that, despite all the evidence adduced in support of a conservative argument, it’s still smarter to be liberal. “Look How Smart I Am!”

So, the subject was lesbian sorority girls and the correlation between that phenomenon and other facts, including the “humane values” of the “inclusive community” ballyhooed by a small liberal arts college in the 21st century. This was a formerly Christian college, and it was simple to deduce that (a) the abandonment of Christianity by the college was implicated in (b) the acceptance of lesbianism as a desirable lifestyle for students whose parents paid more than $30,000 a year in tuition to have their daughters permanently lesbianized.

Nothing particularly controversial in this, except for the fact that colleges nowadays try to conceal this reality behind a lot of feel-good rhetoric about “diversity,” blah blah blah, because they don’t want parents and alumni to figure out what is actually happening.

“What? You’re telling me that my alma mater has jettisoned the belief system to which I subscribe? They’ve hired a bunch of perverts and Marxists to brainwash kids into supporting a political agenda that involves homosexuality and socialism? And you expect me not only to pay to send my kids to this school but also make a generous contribution to the alumni fund to help you implement this program? Hell, no!”

The gap between public perception and campus reality must be maintained at all costs, you see. If ever parents and taxpayers caught on to what the administration and faculty are doing, the Higher Education Bubble would collapse like Lehman Brothers in 2008.

My item “Postmodern Education, Postmodern Love” was just a demonstration of the hidden truth of 21st-century higher education, and I think it was an adequate demonstration. Yet there showed up in the comments of that post a pseudonymous troll, using the moniker “Weedlord BonerHitler” and posting from the IP address 68.53.107.147, and he began to flaunt his erudition thus:

Here is a radically simple summation of the convoluted mess that conservatives find when it comes to women like these:
Now that people do not feel societal pressure to marry a member of the opposite sex (and stay married forever,) and now that people have new ways to experiment sexually, and now that they can raise children with any partner they wish (or no partner,) they really do want to “marry their best friend.” Marriage is becoming more about companionship and happiness, and less of a socially-enforced contract that people feel pressured to adopt and maintain for reasons apart from their own happiness. . . .

Blah blah blah. You’ve heard one pseudo-libertarian rationalization of perverse decadence, you’ve heard ’em all. But then we arrive at Weedlord BonerHitler’s neo-Malthusian conclusion:

“The earth is overpopulated as it is.
Seven billion people is plenty if you ask Weedlord.”

Really? You want us to believe that the choice facing us is between Lesbian Nation and Soylent Green? But never mind that: The earth is not “overpopulated.” This can be demonstrated easily.

England

Land area: 50,346 square miles
Population: 53,012,456
Population density: 1,054 per square mile

Texas

Land area: 268,581 square miles
Population: 26,448,193
Population density: 98.1 per square mile

Argentina

Land area: 1,073,518 square miles
Population: 42,669,500
Population density: 37.3 per square mile

The population density figures in the Wikipedia entries need to be adjusted by a few fractions, but we’ll use these rough numbers just for comparison, to make the following points:

1. Argentina would have to add more than 60 million people (reaching a total population of 106 million) in order to be as densely populated as Texas.
2. Texas is far from the most densely populated state in the U.S., ranking 26th in population density.
3. Texas would have to increase its population more than ten-fold — to about 275 million — in order to be as densely populated as England.
4. Argentina, which is nearly four times larger than Texas in land area, would need a population of nearly 1.2 billion — that’s billion, with a “b” — in order to be as densely populated as England.
5. The per capita income figures of England ($50,566), Texas ($19,617) and Argentina ($9,640) confirm a basic historical truth, i.e., that higher population density is associated with greater wealth.

Human beings are an economic resource. Manpower is also brain power. Ceteris parabus, more people means more wealth, more wealth means more education, and more education has an exponential effect on the wealth-creating power of a population. Capital investment (large reserves of accumulated value) combined with an educated work force is an amazing engine of wealth creation.

This is why big cities attract smart people who create wealth, which in turn explains why poor people move to big cities, seeking access to the wealth the smart rich people have created there.

What liberal economists bemoan as the “income gap” in big cities like San Francisco is mainly a function of (a) mobility and (b) welfare. Mobility enables people to go where the money is.

Welfare tends to act as a “glue” holding people in poverty by discouraging workforce participation and encouraging poor people to stay places where there are not good employment opportunites. Other than that, the “income gap” is just basic arithmetic. In big cities where wealth is generated and accumulated, (a) the rich will get richer and (b) the poor from other places will move there, hoping to get rich and to derive other socioeconomic benefits of proximity to wealth. If you’re poor, you’re better off being poor in a relatively rich place, like Seattle. Being poor in a poor place, like Somali, is much worse. If liberals understood the implications of this in terms of public policy, they wouldn’t be liberals (advocates of an expanding bureaucratic redistributionist system that punishes efficiency and rewards sloth), they’d be conservatives or maybe libertarians. But I digress . . .

The paranoid Chicken Little fears of anthropogenic global warming are merely the latest sky-is-falling theory by which doomsayers have tried to frighten Americans into not having babies. It’s fairly obvious that someone (maybe our foreign enemies, maybe the Democrat Party or perhaps Satan himself) really hates America and wants to kill our babies, so that we destroy our nation and evil can then rule the entire world unopposed. But the two most common liberal ideas about demographics — that (a) the earth is overpopulated and (b) overpopulation causes poverty — are both provably false.

“OK, you’ve convinced me,” says the skeptic. “But what about the billions of poor people in the world? How can we help them?”

Answer: HAVE MORE BABIES!

I explained this in reply to “Weedhead BonerHitler” :

“Total fertility rate” (TFR) is a demographic measurement describing the average number of lifetime births per woman that can be expected, based on current birth rates. Here are the Top 10 nations ranked by TFR:

1. Niger 6.89
2. Mali 6.16
3. Burundi 6.14
4. Somalia 6.08
5. Uganda 5.97
6. Burkina Faso 5.93
7. Zambia 5.76
8. Malawi 5.66
9. Afghanistan 5.43
10. Angola 5.43

All of these nations are desperately poor. The per-capita income of these nations:

Niger $800
Mali $1,100
Burundi $600
Somalia $600
Uganda $1,500
Burkina Faso $1,500
Zambia $1,800
Malawi $900
Afghanistan $1,100
Angola $6,300

As a mental exercise, imagine one average citizen from each of these countries, assembled together and placing on a table their per capita share of GDP.
The total amount on the table — the combined annual income of these 10 people — is $16,200.
Now, the total fertility rate (TFR) in the United States is 2.01 and the annual per capita income is $52,800. So, the average American’s annual income (every man, woman and child) is more than three times greater than the combined annual income of these 10 residents of these nations with the highest fertility rates in the world.
THE WORLD IS BECOMING POORER AS A RESULT OF THIS PHENOMENON.
The question before us is not whether 7 billion is “plenty,” nor is the question whether desperately poor people in foreign countries are having too many babies. The question is, “WHO WILL POPULATE THE FUTURE?”
How many children will we — the fortunate people with educations, running water, electricity and laptops, etc. — contribute to the future? Do we want the population of the future to be more prosperous, more educated, more democratic, more free? Because if that is what we want — to increase the share of human happiness in the world — the best way to do it is for educated, affluent, freedom-loving people to have lots of babies. Or, at least, more babies than we’re having right now.
In 1957, the U.S. total fertility rate hit its postwar Baby Boom peak at 3.74. That is to say that in 1957 (two years before I was born), the average American woman was more likely to be a mother of four children than to be a mother of “only” three. So we know, as a historical fact, that middle-class prosperity and relatively high birth rates are not incompatible. This was true quite recently, in my own lifetime, and could be true again.
However, the “overpopulation” hype of the 1960s (e.g., Paul Ehrlich) convinced many educated Americans that there was an urgent need to reduce birth rates, so smart people stopped having so many babies. Meanwhile, stupid Americans (who don’t read books or newspapers, anyway) continued having babies and (more importantly, in the big picture) poor people in distant foreign countries paid no attention at all to this “overpopulation” hype.
The result? An anti-natalist culture took hold in the West, particularly among the most affluent and highly educated segments of the population (the people who are the targeted consumers of the elite intelligentsia’s output), and so the population of the present (today is yesterday’s future) is LESS educated and LESS affluent because of this differential pressure (lower fertility for the affluent, relatively higher fertility for the poor).
This is not to say that there are no other factors influencing social, economic and demographic trends. It is to say that the false “overpopulation” myth has an overall negative impact on society. If you don’t understand this, you could read What to Expect When No One’s Expecting by Jonathan Last or America Alone by Mark Steyn.
How much can we (the affluent and educated citizens of democratic industrial nations) do to improve the lives of the poor, either here in our own nations or in distant impoverished places like Mali and Burundi? I’m not sure. What I am sure of is that the more or us there are, the more we will be able to help. Why do I say this? It’s not just a matter of math, although it is obvious that 400 million Americans can offer 25% more manpower to the world than can 300 million Americans. It is also the fact that, generally, small families are both a result of selfishness and a breeding ground for selfish attitudes among children.
Parental love is sacrificial love, and the deliberate avoidance of parental responsibility is evidence of a selfish personality. Quod erat demonstrandum. Conversely and ironically, low birth rates are also a reflection of pessimism: “The world is an awful place. There is no hope for the future. I will be unable to provide for a child. I had better not have any kids.”
Selfish pessimism or generous optimism: Which attitude do you suppose is more beneficial to the world?
Me? I’ve got six children. You, Mr. Weedlord? I hope you practice in your own life the anti-natalist Death Cult beliefs you advocate, because obviously there are too many selfish anti-social assholes like you in the world already.

Like I say, when liberals continue being liberals even after confronted with the facts that refute the premises of their arguments — when they can see that liberalism is a ginormous lie based upon errors and falsehoods — the question is whether they are just wrong, or whether they are actually evil. When a liberal tries to flaunt his imagined intellectual superiority at me, this does not improve my opinion of him, you see. If you have proved yourself smart enough to understand the truth, and the truth is that your policies are destroying America and thus dooming the Last Best Hope on Earth, then you are not stupidly wrong. You are intelligently evil, in which case . . .

Fuck you, you hateful perverted satanic monsters.

 

Category: Gays, Sex

Comments

76 Responses to “‘Overpopulated’? With Liberals, Perhaps”

  1. Adobe_Walls
    October 27th, 2014 @ 7:01 pm

    The reason I’m so fond of the term Radical-Liberal is it’s the whetstone Nixon’s hatchet man Spiro used to keep his hatchet sharp. The terms Radical-Liberal and tax and spend liberal made the word liberal toxic to the American people, which is why even now many Social Democrats prefer the term Progressive which of course has it’s own toxic history.
    I think that identifying these days as conservative is pointless as there is so little left to conserve. I think of myself as a restorationist. But I almost never use that term in conversation or when I comment because almost no one understands it.

  2. K-Bob
    October 27th, 2014 @ 7:26 pm

    Restorationist.

    Bit awkward, but I like that. Easier to say than Jeffersonian Liberal, for sure.

    I’ve been clear to folks I’m not a Conservative. I’m definitely more interested in Restoration. Basically, push the left off the hill entirely.

    Then we can get on with the more serious mayhem of arguing Liberty versus republicanism. (moo ha ha)

  3. Adobe_Walls
    October 27th, 2014 @ 7:54 pm

    Off the hill, I had more in mind the planet or at least this hemisphere.

  4. Steve Skubinna
    October 27th, 2014 @ 7:57 pm

    P.J. O’Rourke once characterized progressive environmentalism as “Just enough of me, way too many of you.” He also made the same point you do regarding population density by comparing Bangladesh and Hayward, CA, both areas of nearly identical density,

    And if anyone says “But there are lots of economic and social differences between Bangladesh and Hayward,” the correct response is “Bingo. So population density by itself is meaningless.”

  5. Steve Skubinna
    October 27th, 2014 @ 7:59 pm

    Feelings trump logic, facts, and truth. And that is why you will never win a debate with a prog – despite the complete and total failure of their ideology everywhere it’s been tried, it still makes them feel good to expound it.

    And thus they win where it’s important. Smugness points.

  6. Steve Skubinna
    October 27th, 2014 @ 8:02 pm

    Not so. The progs themselves are superior to the other meat puppets. Hence their insistence on running the whole show.

  7. Daniel Freeman
    October 27th, 2014 @ 8:25 pm

    Someone could make an “oiko tilth” that provides a voluntary certification of human relationships for natural homemaking — what used to be called marriage — like how Oregon Tilth certifies organic agricultural products. You could only have one at a time, and would have to show fault on the part of the other to get recertified with anyone else.

  8. Fail Burton
    October 27th, 2014 @ 8:26 pm

    The anti-gamergaters who want to reinstitute the Ozzie and Harriet-era Comics Code Authority.

  9. K-Bob
    October 27th, 2014 @ 8:29 pm

    And there’s this map:

    http://mentalfloss.com/sites/default/files/styles/insert_main_wide_image/public/mapsbynik-nobody-lives-here_0.png

  10. Hanzo
    October 27th, 2014 @ 8:33 pm

    True. It brings to mind the adage:”Never argue with an idiot, as they will drag you down into the gutter, where they reside. They’re used to being in the gutter, and they will win every time”.

  11. Lane
    October 27th, 2014 @ 8:46 pm

    Birth control, and abortion in and of themselves aren’t the problem, but coupled with a completely demoralized generation of men and women, it is.

  12. Nan
    October 27th, 2014 @ 8:56 pm

    Except that if you believe, as I do, tthatsex is supposed to be reserved for married couples, who are to be open tto new life, and that life begins at conception, both birth control and abortion are problems.

    I do agree that the lack of morality is a problem, as is the insistence that both abortion and birth control are somehow related to health care. WWhile I realize that bibirth ccontrol is sometimes used to treat health problems, that’s a tiny percentage of use.

  13. K-Bob
    October 27th, 2014 @ 9:02 pm

    Yikes! Sounds all Birkenstock-y. (NTTAWWT)

  14. Adobe_Walls
    October 27th, 2014 @ 9:02 pm

    They could do a lot with that but it certainly won’t be Ozzie and Harriet.

  15. Adobe_Walls
    October 27th, 2014 @ 9:14 pm

    Well ”oiko tilth” certainly produced an interesting variety of responses when I googled it.
    Though I very much doubt that “Air and water and soil are the currencies of the future.” Sounds like they’ve got a full plate now.

  16. Daniel Freeman
    October 27th, 2014 @ 10:09 pm

    If we’re going to make a new kind of marriage certification that’s more like the old kind, I figured a combination of words that means something like “home” + “suitability for planting seed” (IYKWIMAITYD) would be a good place to start…

  17. Weedlord BonerHitler
    October 27th, 2014 @ 11:07 pm

    I’ve insulted nobody. I know nothing of your marriage, and hope it is a happy one. It is just as you said — marriage and child-rearing require self-sacrifice, giving up certain wants in exchange for others. Why you suddenly feel this is an insult is beyond me.

    I’ve read your blog for about two years before commenting, and I am frankly shocked at the level of bitterness and anger displayed here. Since I am no troll, at this point, I shall simply refrain from commenting further, and will go back to simply reading. I have neither the energy nor the time for some extended flame war, and the fact that you’re bellowing my IP address indicates an unwarranted level of anger and immaturity on your part. You don’t want me here? Fine, I’m willing to be the bigger man. You won’t hear any more from me.

    My last word is this: This is America. In America, you are free to have as many kids as you want. Others are free to have more kids, fewer kids, no kids, or to be as gay or straight as they want. Barring a total takeover by ISIS or some other Islamic power, this will continue, whether you approve of it or not.

    America is freedom.

    Good day, sir.

    Weedlord out!

  18. Weedlord BonerHitler
    October 27th, 2014 @ 11:08 pm

    PS: It’s “white Knight,” not “white night.”

  19. Lane
    October 28th, 2014 @ 12:01 am

    No, I absolutely do not believe sex is only for married couples, for reproduction alone(which should be self evident), or that life begins at conception. I’ve never been married, and have no intention of ever being married or having children. Does that mean I’m supposed to deprive myself of sex? Nope!

  20. Nan
    October 28th, 2014 @ 12:11 am

    I was merely explaining that I believe abortion and birth control are both inherent ly wrong. Birth control separated sex from procreation, which is part of the depravity of our times. I never said that sex is for procreation alone. It brings unity to husband and wife but doesn’t always result in New life. It is a scientific fact that once an egg is fertilized, life begins. To say otherwise is to defy reality.

    I’m sorry to hear that you have such a negative outlook on God’s plan and will pray for your conversion.

  21. Nan
    October 28th, 2014 @ 12:15 am

    Oh yes there is. Birkenstocks are from the devil.

  22. Nan
    October 28th, 2014 @ 12:17 am

    My college professor who was not a hippie Described them as “let’s be different, just like everyone else.”

  23. Zohydro
    October 28th, 2014 @ 12:23 am

    I used to wear Birkenstock clogs for work… Seriously!

  24. MNHawk
    October 28th, 2014 @ 10:14 am

    The assumption that your typical school of government graduate is smart, would not be a good one on your part.

    Does one really think that someone would be majoring in Poli Sci, if they could handle math and science?

  25. Steve Skubinna
    October 28th, 2014 @ 6:50 pm

    These are basically the guys who majored in Student Government and Model UN. And you know how squared away those people were.

  26. MNHawk
    October 28th, 2014 @ 7:49 pm

    But despite the fact that they flunked math, and anything else that led to gainful employment, they’re smart. Just ask them.