Patrick Poppel – Centre for Geostrategic studies, Belgrade
Patrick J. Buchanan, political advisor to president Nixon, political pundit, and Republican presidential candidate wrote a book 23 years ago called “The Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country and Civilization”. Back then many took his bleak predictions to be fantasies or exaggerations.
Among other things he predicted that Italy might turn into a sort of historic Disneyland, full of pretty buildings but empty when it comes to its native population. Meanwhile today small southern Italian towns are giving away houses for free, so these picturesque towns are not dying out entirely.
Japan is selling more adult diapers for the elderly than baby diapers and the southern US is overrun by Mexicans looking for a better life or in some instances for a life of crime. “The new hedonism seems unable to give people a reason to go on living. Its earliest fruits appear to be poisonous. Will this new "liberating" culture that our young have so enthusiastically embraced prove the deadliest carcinogen of them all? And if the West is in the grip of a "culture of death," as the pope contends and the statistics seem to show, is Western civilization about to follow Lenin's empire to the same inglorious end?” writes Buchanan, and also “What was right and true yesterday is wrong and false today. What was immoral and shameful — promiscuity, abortion, euthanasia, suicide — has become progressive and praiseworthy. Nietzsche called it the transvaluation of all values; the old virtues become sins, and the old sins become virtues.”
Buchanan makes a clear connection between ethics and morals and the willingness to reproduce. Many claim that income and poverty are the domineering factors but the opposite seems to be true. The more kids westerners could afford, the less they actually have. Also conservatives back then and now seem more consumed with the economy than with morality.
“The hearts of many on the Right are in cutting marginal tax rates and eliminating the capital gains tax. Good causes to be sure. But what doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his country? Is whether the GDP rises at 2 or 3 or 4 percent as important as whether or not Western civilization endures and we remain one nation under God and one people? With the collapsing birthrate, open borders, and the triumph of an anti-Western multiculturalism, that is what is at issue today - the survival of America as a nation, separate and unique, and of Western civilization itself - and too many conservatives have gone AWOL in the last great fight of our lives.”
Buchanan was the sort of conservative pundit many might not find to their liking but his predictions have been tragically accurate. The west is dying and has been doing so for a long time, especially after the widespread availability of birth control measures. One could argue that some BRICS nations have undergone a similar development but overlook the fact that Europe and the US have not gone through the same great expansion of populations previously as India and China have.
Russia's birthrate remains steady at over 1,5 (2020) while the whole of Europe is around 1,45, South Africa is at 2,4 median and India over 2 at a very high population already. Also if you remove Muslim immigrants from the statistical data, the EU birthrate is even lower. Same in the US where immigrants prop up the birthrate. Even at lower birthrates BRICS isn't running out of people any time soon, with a higher percentage of people willing to work for the common good of their countries instead of immigrating into a social welfare system.
The west also seems dominated by a feeling of guilt, where it seems unworthy or illogical to save your own civilization. “Destroy the record of a people’s past, leave it in ignorance of who its ancestors were and what they did, and one can fill the empty vessels of their souls with a new history, as in 1984. Dishonor or disgrace a nation’s heroes, and you can demoralize its people.” -writes Buchanan so poignantly in his aforementioned book.
The fall from grace in the so called West seems to continue at full speed. If you look at the recent opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics this becomes painfully obvious. Most of the people featured on stage were portrayed either unwilling or biologically unable to reproduce, the new heroes of the west are barren. This culture of death will, in the near future affect every aspect of western development, from military, healthcare, social programs to education and economy.
Indian economist and philosopher Amartya Sen, who wrote extensively on the connection between ethics and economy stated very eloquently “Economics, as it has emerged, can be made more productive by paying greater and more explicit attention to the ethical considerations that shape human behavior and judgment.“ He argued for a greater role for ethical and moral considerations to be included in economical theory and prediction.
The moral decline of the west needs to be included in predictive models if we want them to be accurate. A morality which has to be taught and which shall be born out of freedom and not out of force. When it comes to birthrates Sen argues that when women become more educated, birthrates will decline eventually, without any extreme measures being necessary, just because they focus more on school and university as shown in the example of India.
The recent development in the west though, with birthrates dropping to near suicidal numbers, is above and beyond anything that is sustainable in the future. If BRICS can keep its people on an ethical track, willing to increase their economies and welfare of their people, this could prove a great advantage in the future. From ethics to economy, so to speak.
