This is not one of those "stop sinning or God will destroy us" cries. Rather (with me wearing both my 'economist' and 'poverty-expert' hats) it outlines the downward national path resulting from long-term disobedience to certain of God's commands. Actually, no supernatural judgement at all is needed to hurry along the process of decline. We can manage to keep rushing it along all by ourselves, with no need for additional pushing whatsoever from God, thank you very much.
The gist of the argument is: that some of our sins will destroy the nation, in easily foreseeable ways. That is, unless we turn away from those particular sins. That we shall need God's supernatural help to achieve such difficult turns. That such help cannot come without our becoming good disciples. That discipleship is not possible without the new birth, followed by the resulting indwelling of God's Holy Spirit. And that being born anew, by enough people and soon enough to turn the tide of decline, calls for an awful lot of good, effective evangelism. Very soon.
That's it. The chain of reasoning is a little long - around 6 steps - but pretty simple.
OK. But - what downward national path? You hadn't noticed? Well, the one easily shown by good, clear statistics plus innumerable scholarly studies over the last couple of decades. That one. The one which can be previewed by viewing Europe today, since they have "progressed" down a similar path further than we have. (But Europe can wait until my next post.)
The period 1960-2005 could be described as our "National Time of Trouble." Other periods could also be so described. But this one is of that most dangerous kind that could lead to prolonged national suicide. Only once before, when we faced the slavery issue, were we also in a situation where we had to change ourselves or continue on a path that could lead to national self-destruction. We changed, but with a cost of half a million deaths. Changing ourselves this time, fortunately, should not be costly in terms of deaths. But it is, and will continue to be, costly to many of us.
Where are we headed? Toward a steep, continuing loss of national income and wealth. Such losses would weaken our military, and our ability to defend against attackers and invaders, such as the aggressively expansionist Islamofacists already pushing for a new Caliphate, already talking of territory now belonging to Europe and others.
Toward a greatly destabilized world, if the U.S. loses its prosperity-based military ability to police the world's worst-case threats. There is no conceivable replacement for the U.S. protective role in the world. Absent a strong U.S., situations would deteriorate rapidly world-wide, greatly affecting economies, globalization, the defense of nations, and everything else.
Why would we have such a loss of national income and wealth? Succinctly, because we have had too few births for the last 30 years. What difference does that make? Again, a good look at Europe would help explain.
First, we can no longer avoid the fact that all retirement plans - including Social Security as well as other pension plans - will fail unless the oncoming generation is at least as big as the retiring one. That is, the retiring generation must at least have replaced itself if it hopes to have retirement income. If not, there will be too few workers per retiree to support the retirees.
The size of that replacement generation is an immovable limit on the size incomes retired people can have. The bigger the replacement generation, the more retirement income is possible; the smaller, the less is possible.
When the replacement generation is smaller than the retiring generation, as it is now (though less so than in Europe), all kinds of problems and instability can be expected. The replacement generation will carry an incredible tax burden to support the oldsters. They well might rebell. What would happen to the retired generation then? Perhaps more important, what would it do to the replacement generation to come to that point? When they might have to choose between supporting the oldsters or their own youngsters? What would such choices mean to them? Or do to them? And to civilization itself?
But the problem of supporting dependent oldsters is only a facet of the main problem: a shrinking population. This is about much more than Social Security or "What to do about Granny." A steadily shrinking population also means too few workers even to support "everything as it is now." Even to continue our current prosperity or eventually, anything close to it. That can only spell decline, for the nation and individuals. Historically, no nation can long survive a continuous decline in population.
Now to look at the causes of future national decline. First, why did we have too few births? In one word, abortion.[1] The number aborted in the U.S. over the past 30 years would be around 40 million, almost the exact number needed to provide population growth at an at-least replacement level. (The U.S. population grew almost entirely through immigration during this time, with a national birth rate below the replacement rate.)
Next, why so many abortions? in two words, the "Sexual Revolution." Starting in the 1960s, the push toward "free sex" or sex outside of marriage, changed age-old practices. The sudden, enormous increase in unmarried sex caused a huge increase in illegitimate births, which soared from just 5% in 1960 to 33% in 2000. Unmarried sex was also the proximate cause of most abortions, since the great majority of abortions have been to unmarried women.
So it is beyond obvious that the Sexual Revolution is the proximate cause of our very dangerous future national decline. More immediately, it is also the cause of our present national decline. What present national decline?
Just this. The Sexual Revolution has also caused an epidemic of fatherless children. And why does that even matter? Because we now know - a little late - that fatherlessness is the major predictor of most poverty, since most of the poor are unmarried mothers and their children. Fatherlessness is also the major predictor of most violent crime, since 70% of the most violent young offenders are fatherless.[2] This helps explain the more than 300% explosion in crime rates since 1960.
The Sexual Revolution is also responsible for soaring divorce rates and the almost-matching teen suicide rates. Also for the well-documented child pathologies of every kind which are suffered by fatherless children, at rates several times higher than those of children from two-parent families. For the growing replacement of marriage by cohabitation. And on and on.
What could alter such national sexual habits which have run for over 40 years? Especially in an area as powerful and contentious as sex? Only Christ. God did not bring us to this brink. We took care of that ourselves. But only God, through Christ, can help people make the enormously difficult changes needed to bring us back. Such changes cannot be dictated or legislated. They can come only person by person.
These kinds of profound behaviorial changes, on a nation-wide scale, can come only through conversion, followed by a life-long struggle to be obedient to God's commands - what we call discipleship.
We are used to thinking of evangelism as needed for the eternal salvation of souls. We must also recognize an additional powerful motive for evangelism. It is the only thing possible that can also save nations and civilizations in decline. It alone can avoid a resurgence of barbarism and darkness, on this earth and in our lifetimes. And it alone can bring this nation through its present "time of troubles." Nothing else - not even the highest of high tech and human genius - can possibly do it.
As never before, we need to evangelize. And to make haste.
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[1] Beware the misleading term "fertility rates" when viewing statistics on population growth or decline. They have nothing to do with fertility. They do not measure fertility (the number of conceptions per unit of population), but only the number of births. For example, babies conceived but aborted would not be counted at all. Conception rates (fertility) are not what is being measured.
[2] Fatherlessness (or absent or rejecting fathers, as well as over-binding mothers) is also a factor found in the lives of most male homosexuals (though most psychologists stopped talking about such things years ago.)
See Hatterer, Lawrence J., M.D., Changing Homosexuality in the Male: Treatment for Men Troubled by Homosexuality, 1970, McGraw-Hill, p. 61.
Also, Masters and Johnson, Sex and Human Loving, 1982, Little, Brown & Co., pp. 351-352.
Also, Vitz, Paul C., Professor Emeritus of Psychology, NY University, "Family Decline: The Findings of Social Science, Part I," under "The Importance of Fathers," in Defending the Family: A Sourcebook, 1-23, Steubenville, OH: The Catholic Social Science Press, 1998, also at http://catholiceducation.org/articles/marriage/mf0002.html.
