restoring our biblical and constitutional foundations
Culture of Death: The Roman Precedent
The alien who lives among you will rise above you higher and higher, but you will sink lower and lower You who were as numerous as the stars in the sky will be left but few in number, because you did not obey the LORD your God (Deuteronomy 28:43, 62).
Trolling the Web recently, I came across an article by Larry Eastland arguing that abortion is literally killing the Democratic Party. According to Eastlands back-of-the-napkin calculations, Democrats have lost 5,848,000 more voters than the Republicans as a result of legalized abortion given that: a) children tend to absorb the values of their parents; b) children tend to have the same political views as their family; and c) Democrats are more likely to slaughter their children in utero than Republicans.
Aside from the general squeamishness of liberals to deal with any matter that touches on race, Eastlands analysis helps to explain Democrat support for mass immigration. After all, if you are going to kill off your voters in the womb, political expediency demands that you replace them with a new voting bloc. Hence, the Dems want to import voters, and it should come as no surprise that the onset of the sexual revolution coincided with the demolition of U. S. immigration restrictions.
The combination of massive immigration from the Third World, one of the less benign consequences of imperialism, and the birth dearth among peoples of European descent is leading to what Pat Buchanan has called the Death of the West. The nations of the West have turned from their Christian heritage to worship at the twin altars of multiculturalism and economism, the myth that man is merely an economic animal, and that free markets in and of themselves will produce peace, prosperity and happiness.
An emerging New World Order is being birthed by an elite that, according to Christopher Lasch, is international rather than regional, national, or local. The perverted ideologies propagated by that elite are turning a once free people into serfs in a global empire, overseen by international bureaucrats and bankers, and entertained and fattened by the unholy trinity of McDonalds, Microsoft, and Wal-Mart.
How did this come about? The short answer is that Christianity has lost its grip on our people. Feminism has liberated women from the narrow and constricting roles of wife and mother. Meanwhile, the siren song of the marketplace drowns out Gods command to be fruitful and multiply. According to Buchanan, in 1950, 88- of women with children under six stayed in the home. Today, 64- of American women with children under six are in the labor force.
With their new status in the work world, fewer women marry. In 1970, just 36- of women ages twenty to twenty-four were unmarried. By 1995, 68- were in the never married category. Women are not just waiting longer to have children, but are conceiving fewer of them as well.
The Psalmist says that without a vision, the people die. Christianity provides adherents with a framework that encourages them to consider others and engenders a concern for the future. If history is the outworking of Gods sovereign prerogatives in time and space, then Christians will be future-oriented rather than present-oriented. As Christianity has lost influence, that future-looking perspective has been replaced by an idolatrous consumerism and overweening selfishness.
Since the mid-1960s, cohabitation has risen dramatically, while marriage and fertility rates have dropped precipitously. With women having children at a rate below the replacement level, policy-makers and business interests have found another source of cheap labor and tax dollarsimmigrants. The flood of newcomers has reshaped our institutions, politics, and culture in ways unimaginable to our parents.
Santayana said, Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. Unfortunately, thanks to public education, many of us never learned anything to forget. Read what Will Durant has to say about the fall of Rome, and see if it sounds familiar. Durant says that biological factors were fundamental to Romes collapse. He then goes on to say this:
A serous decline of population appears in the West after Hadrian. It has been questioned, but the mass importation of barbarians into the Empire leaves little room for doubt A law of Septimius Severus speaks of a penuria hominuma shortage of men. In Greece, the depopulation had been going on for centuries. In Alexandria, which had boasted of its numbers, Bishop Dinysius calculated that the population had in his time been halved. He mourned to see the human race diminishing and constantly wasting away. Only the barbarians and the Orientals were increasing, outside the Empire and within.
Durant adds say that infanticide flourished and that sexual excesses may have reduced human fertility while the avoidance or deferment of marriage had a like effect. Durant then says:
The population of Italy had long since been mingled with Oriental strains physically inferior, though perhaps mentally superior, to the Roman type. The rapidly breeding Germans could not understand the classic culture, did not accept it, did not transmit it; the rapidly breeding Orientals were mostly of a mind to destroy that culture; the Romans, possessing it, sacrificed it to the comforts of sterility. Rome was conquered not by barbarian invasion from without, but by barbarian multipliation within.
With the Roman precedent so clearly in front of us, will we have the wisdom to turn back from the folly of imperialism, to be a republic and not an empire? Will we restore our Biblical and Constitutional foundations?
Our Christian ancestors living in the ruinous culture of ancient Rome did not sucumb to the culture of death that enveloped their pagan neighbors, and we ought to follow their example. Durant writes that, Abortion and infanticide which were decimating pagan society, were forbidden to Christians as the equivalents to murder; in many instances Christians rescued exposed infants, baptized them, and brought them up with the aid of the community fund.
Today, it is the post-Christian West that is commiting suicide. As Christians, what can we do to reverse the trend, to win the war and reclaim the culture for Christ? Simply, we can have children and teach them to love God, and obey His Word (Deut. 6:4-9).
August 9, 2004
Darrell Dow writes from Jeffersonville, Indiana where he works as a statistician. A misanthropic Paleoconservative, Darrell is the husband of Kathy, and the father of Joshua and Andrew. To see pictures of the boys and get a small glimpse into the Dow house, visit the family website. Darrell also maintains a website and a new blog. Darrell can be contacted here.