The West's Baby Bust: In God We Don't Trust

I’m a big fan of Alex Berenson’s work vis-à-vis Covid, marijuana, and tech-government suppression of free speech (see Berenson v. Biden), but when it comes to his search for answers to America’s “baby bust,” he, like many others, fails to focus on the problem’s root cause.  It’s as if he were dealing with vaccines for the Wuhan virus without considering its gain-of-function lab origin. 

One fact that Berenson overlooks is that U.S. birth rates are following the same negative trend that’s been apparent for decades in Europe.  When Mark Steyn wrote America Alone in 2006, the birth rate among Western women in that continent was a catastrophic 1.4 per woman of childbearing age.  Meanwhile, Muslim immigrants were reproducing at a robust 3.5 rate, a demographic fact that led the now Hillary-dispatched ruler of Libya to predict that Europe would become a Muslim continent in a few decades.  The U.S. birth rate among whites at that time was 1.85 and 2.1 overall.  Today, America’s overall birth rate has declined to 1.78.  Population replacement value is 2.1.  

In short, the “baby bust” is nothing new in the United States and Europe.  So the cause of that phenomenon shouldn’t be reduced to a new-fangled linguistic construct like the “snowplow” parents Berenson ponders — parents who clear obstacles “before their kids even have to face them.”  One could also plausibly blame the Pill, various socio-economic factors, or the climate-change hysteria that’s prompted some women to forswear childbearing altogether.  But beyond these symptoms of cultural distress lies a tectonic shift that’s been taking place for well over a century, a change that Friedrich Nietzsche noticed and happily facilitated in the late 19th century.

Folks without any philosophical knowledge are often aware of Nietzsche’s statement “God is dead.”  What they don’t know is that this observation refers to the West’s cultural belief in God and was linked to his assertion that the absence of this foundation would result in a era of nihilism that could be overcome only by extraordinary persons (Übermenschen) strong enough to accept the meaninglessness of life and to create their own values essentially ex nihilo.  The human debris produced by rulers who fancied themselves architects of such “transformational” projects littered the 20th century: Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Mussolini, Pol Pot, to say nothing of the now-forgotten Progressive eugenicists.   

In this century, various efforts to “save the planet” via climate activism or zero population growth have filled the Clintons’ “politics of meaning” vacuum, though for most folks without the means or desire to dominate mankind or reshape society, simple hedonism has been enough to occupy their time until old age and unsuccessful sport teams show that sex and emotional transference are no longer able to keep ennui at bay.  What isn’t a priority for these secular moderns is having children to carry on some transcendent purpose.  In 2018, The Guardian noted that a majority of 16- to 29-year-olds in twelve European countries did not follow any religion — 91% in the Czech Republic.  Put succinctly, modern secularism, especially a secularism that eschews any deeply felt patriotism, has little use for children — certainly more children than the one (legitimate) clone produced by the Clintons.  A large number of Americans are also doubtless reflected in Kat Timpf’s childless, self-absorbed, attention-seeking persona — a media “personality” whose contempt for her parents’ religion is obvious.

Given the belief that “All We Are Is Dust in the Wind,” it’s no wonder abortion has become a sacrament and political trump card for the Democrat party.  When children become items placed on a monetary or hedonistic cost-benefit scale within a largely materialistic framework, the “rational” argument for even a single time-consuming, diaper-soiling critter is hard to make.  Only the vestiges of maternal and paternal instincts remain, and these have been disparaged for decades by activists who see a fetus (not a baby) as an invasive mass akin to a tumor.  Moreover, if allowed to escape the womb, this foreign object will detract from a mother’s ability to achieve income equality with non-burdened competitors within her professional cohort.

It’s been said that when persons no longer believe in God, they don’t believe in nothing; they’ll believe in anything.  With respect to our “baby bust” question, the saying suggests that the many secondary causes of the West’s birth dearth are vacuum-filling offshoots of the one large thing that’s been overlooked.  Nietzsche’s solution to the “death of God” nihilism he predicted has proven more than disastrous, and surrogate faiths like environmentalism generally exhibit a negative view of the human species.  Consequently, a reversal of the West’s baby-draining nihilism seems inextricably linked to the reassertion of a transcendent purpose that rejects both a grab-the-gusto materialism as well as spiritually vacuous surrogates whose “gods” are generally reducible to a lust for power. 

Put otherwise, the reproductive decline in the U.S. isn’t likely to change until most of its citizens take seriously the motto on our coins: “In God We Trust.”    

GUTFELD! OR GUTTER-FILLED!

Note: This essay is based on Gutfeld's late-night (11 p.m. Eastern, 8 p.m. Pacific) program. The first program tonight (July 17) an hour earlier had some bleeped out foul language and a number of not so obscure references to Gutfeld's supposed sexual depravity ("blowing" Bubbles or Buble") but certainly not as many as the "late-night" program. Still, the "libertarian" unconcern about "illegal" cocaine was made clear and the same spiritually and morally vacuous Gutfeld was on display during a show that clearly lost its comic edge after the first half hour.

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Can we speak honestly about the moral black hole known as Greg Gutfeld—an abysmal vortex that draws everyone around him into a perverse world of cultural depravity. Yes, he’s more politically astute than media’s leftist Cretins, but if politics are “downstream of culture,” what kind of political environment is being created in the witches brew of Gutfeld’s pre-pubescent potty humor? It’s certainly not a culture that exhibits any attachment to, much less reverence toward, the great achievements of Western literature, art, civic life, and morality.

Seldom does Gutfeld manage to complete a late-night monologue that omits his obsession with scatology, and never does he focus sustained attention on the essential roles that intact families and religious faith play in creating a virtuous culture. Assuming his humor bears some relationship to the truth, Gutfeld also exhibits little affection for children and offers scant appreciation for male-female households whose primary focus is raising their offspring to be moral adults. Instead, when proffering remedies for our political (not cultural) rot, his default position echoes the leftist cliché about education. Yes, he adds an important school choice proviso but is totally blind to the fact that schooling alone, even if academically sound, will have little impact on cultural degradation absent a widespread moral awakening—a revolution that spawns massive institutional changes and millions more intact families. If Gutfeld’s show ever emphasizes the role played by overwhelmingly religious families in shaping children’s lives, it’s up to conservative guests like Mercedes Schlapp who, like other true conservatives, must feel the need to take a long shower after being dunked in Gutfeld’s verbal cesspool.

Ironically, Gutfeld’s expletive-filled program airs at 8 p.m. on the West Coast, the former “family hour.” [Now airing at 7 p.m. on the West Coast.] That irony becomes thicker when Gutfeld passionately and regularly advocates for the legalization of drugs—a position that coincides with his comic persona as an aficionado of most forms of chemical intoxication and sexual deviancy. Unfortunately such references may no longer be over the heads of South Park tweeners who tune in looking for some early-evening SNL humor. Given his attachment to music emitted by bands with nihilist leanings (as well as that compulsive snicker) it’s not a stretch to think Gutfeld assuages his psychological demons by resorting to other than over-the-counter remedies.

On this issue Gutfeld has a reliable echo in the person of Kat Timpf, a self-proclaimed libertarian whose on-air superficiality doubtless has Ayn Rand spinning in her grave. Kat’s a “no rules” gal whose “live and let die” philosophy opposes laws both against and for sexualizing young kids in school. In real life, of course, that means allowing radicals who set the agenda for public education to continue pushing “instruction” on six-year-olds that would have been deemed child abuse twenty years ago. Timpf is even unwilling to oppose drag queen shows for young kids. Instead, she comments with great passion about her friendships with practitioners of that “profession.” The same inane preference for dogma over reality applies whenever Timpf opines about illegal immigration. The “real” problem, she asserts, is the welfare system, not immigration—as if there were some possibility that the former will magically disappear before the country’s schools, hospitals, and social services are overwhelmed with a hundred million foreigners possessing little education or proficiency in English as well as a clear preference for the political party that’s eager to encourage illegal border crossings and to provide “migrants” whatever “entitlements” are needed to keep that party in power.

If those considerations aren’t sufficiently damning, consider Timpf’s self-congratulatory insouciance over “bump and grind” high school entertainments. After all, she observes, kids nowadays already have access that activity and worse—just as she herself did at high school. Never crossing Timpf’s mind is the thought that using her own experience as a normative rule will have the disastrous effect of producing a significant number of self-absorbed, morally clueless adults who are unable to envision or cherish a society in which individuals care deeply about their neighbors and exhibit gratitude for the sacrifices and accomplishments of folks who came before them. Anyone who thinks those words are unduly harsh should ponder Timpf’s comment that she would only want to have a child if it were ugly, since it would then not detract attention from herself.  It’s difficult to imagine a more revolting expression of narcissism.     

I also find it hard to understand how Timpf became a writer or blogger for National Review, but it’s clear she has no affection for religion and only offers back of the hand “raised Catholic” slights that would have made William F. Buckley bolt up straight in his chair. It’s revealing that Timpf once complained bitterly about how cold she was in the studio while wearing, as is her wont, attire suitable for a Caribbean beach. On another occasion Timpf scoffed at the name Rand Paul (as if he were a Libertarian) and affirmed her political allegiance to the Senator’s eccentric dad, former Congressman Ron Paul. To sum up, Timpf has to be squeezed to say anything remotely akin to a moral imperative but is quick to denounce, with passion, “losers” who object to bikini-clad baristas or guests who don’t share her affection for Beatles music. Her fantasy society consists of human monads free to engage in depravities that never impact anyone else—a society devoid of ruthless folks bent on wielding absolute power for whom an assemblage of feckless party-goers who only wish to be left alone pose no political obstacle whatsoever.  

It isn’t particularly surprising that late 20^th century America has produced individuals of the Gutfeld-Timpf stripe, personalities who put on display for an audience’s amusement lives enmeshed in emotional turbulence, stimulants, and various degrees of intellectual virtuosity that appear devoid of serious attachment to the West’s literary and moral traditions—persons who also have little contact with folks in “fly-over” country who love God, family, football, and the flag. It is, however, depressing that FOX seems willing to subject its guests and audience to Gutfeld’s morally debilitating influence—a pox that even infects more serious news programs like The Five.  

Sam Donaldson once defended sensationalized news coverage with the rationalization that apart from its ambulance-chasing exaggerations and frivolities no one would watch. It always occurred to me that news hidden beneath so much toxic “frosting” was hardly worth watching. The same analysis applies to the noxious effluvia that accompany the occasional political insights on Gutfeld’s show. Bottom line:  if politics is “downstream” from the culture exhibited on that program, those politics won’t be compatible with a Constitutional system that, as John Adams observed, “was made only for a moral and religious people” and is “wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”  

Richard Kirk is a freelance writer living in Southern California whose book Moral Illiteracy: "Who's to Say?"  is also available on Kindle    

FOX NEWS POST-TUCKER

So FOX News has decided to replace Tucker Carlson with Bill O’Reilly’s one-time man-on-the-street interviewer, Jesse Watters--someone whose gravitas rating hovers in the same abysmal neighborhood as the network’s late-night darling, Greg Gutfeld.

What attracted folks like me to Tucker’s program was his unpredictability, his willingness to let guests talk, his repeated calls to spend time with family and loved ones, and his apparent devotion to a moral vision rooted in religious tradition---all of which informed his tagline opposition to “lying, pomposity, smugness, and group think.”  The “group think” moniker wasn’t limited to the multitude of Woke idiocies but also extended to third-rail GOP topics, most conspicuously to opinions about the war in Ukraine.  Republicans like Lindsay Graham who are welcomed on Hannity’s program frequently found themselves targets of Carlson’s anti-neocon, open border criticism. 

A Mediaite analysis of primetime ratings showed FOX News lost a million viewers after Tucker’s firing, viewership going from an average of 2.6 million in the four weeks prior to Carlson’s departure to a 1.6 million average in the four subsequent weeks.  The hemorrhage in Tucker’s 8 p.m. Eastern time slot was even more dramatic, falling from 3.27 million to 1.49 million viewers—an outflow that continues to this day.

I doubt the network’s brass expect to recover Tucker’s audience with Watters at the helm, a broadcaster whose comic persona and intellectual shallowness (He wasn’t sure Hawaii was the 50^th state.) detract significantly from the impact of his largely accurate but analogy-saturated critiques of leftist policies.  Indeed, one might argue that the Paul Ryan contingent on the network’s board have a death wish for FOX News as a Trump-friendly conservative voice.  What else can explain Greg Gutfeld’s ubiquitous presence as a regular host on The Five plus his own late-night show (soon to be at 10 p.m. Eastern and 7 p.m. on the West Coast). Gutfeld and his assortment of handpicked outcasts do provide unique perspectives, but perspectives largely communicated through the host’s obsession with foul language, sexual deviancy, and scatology--all conjoined with an insult-spewing persona that makes Don Rickles look like Pat Boone.   

Granted, Gutfeld excels at monologues that skewer Woke idiocies, but unlike Tucker, one senses a yawning spiritual void at the heart of his tirades, a void not filled by the intoxicants he touts with conspicuous fervor.  In a recent Wall Street Journal piece about the “irreverent” “King of Late Night” Gutfeld mused about taking over Carlson’s prime time slot.  Apparently replacing Tucker with a crude libertine who displays no discernible connection to faith, family, or activities cherished by ordinary Americans proved a bridge too far for network suits in prime time--but not at 10 p.m. (or 7 in the West).

Certainly there’s no way Gutfeld’s most regular panel member, Kat Timpf, could have taken Tucker’s place, though for some reason FOX has allowed this intellectually vapid, morally-challenged libertarian increasing time as a commentator whose appearances culminated in a panel chair on Bret Baier’s program.  Two on-point examples: Timpf ignores human, legal, financial, and social service disasters caused by an open border and instead regurgitates the unrealistic libertarian dogma that an open border would be fine were no welfare benefits available.  Similarly, she decries Governor DeSantis’s efforts to protect young school children from wildly inappropriate books with explicit sexual messages because such governmental action amounts to, in her mind, right-wing censorship.  Of course Timpf ignores the fact that absent such intervention one leaves in place governing school boards and curricula that facilitate the corruption of minors.  The months-long promotion of Timpf’s gossipy, self-referential book (You Can’t Joke About That) paired with the network’s limiting promotional appearances for Judge Jeanine Pirro’s substantive volume (Crimes Against America: The Left’s Takedown of Our Republic) provides more evidence that folks at FOX are working to eviscerate a once-conservative news outlet.

The assortment of temporary hosts that filled Tucker’s time slot over the last few weeks were generally competent but only Will Cain provided the kind of perspective and passionate delivery that rightly makes leftist heads explode, and only Joey Jones communicated the heartfelt compassion that Carlson also exuded.  If one could graft those two hosts together FOX might have something that comes close to the Carlson standard, but then the globalist suits at the network would have to fire that broadcasting centaur as an unacceptable threat to the D.C. Swamp.

 Richard Kirk is a freelance writer living in Southern California whose book Moral Illiteracy: "Who's to Say?"  is also available on Kindle  

Tolerance versus "Acceptance" -- Explaining the Decline in Support for Tolerance as a Value

 Recently, a Wall Street Journal poll confirmed what most sentient Americans already knew — that patriotism, religion, and even having a family are now much less valued than even in the recent past.  Patriotism was "very important to only 38% of today's respondents compared to 70% in 1998.  Religion was down to 39% from 62%, and the importance of raising children cratered from 59% to a demographically dangerous 30%.  One statistic, however, likely caught most folks by surprise — the significant slide in the number of Americans who thought tolerance was "very important," which slipped from 80 to 58%.

The obvious cultural attacks on patriotism, religion, and "the nuclear family" can take the lion's share of "credit" for dismal numbers in those categories, but what's the explanation for the pronounced decline in support for tolerance, a once highly touted "liberal" virtue that scored higher than any other category in 1998?  I think I know the answer.

Around the turn of the century, I was in a prep school teachers' meeting where a young economics teacher observed that "tolerance is such a negative word."  He suggested as a substitute the warm and fuzzy term "acceptance."  As usual, the logical consequences of this linguistic swap were never discussed.  After all, one can't "accept" ideas and actions that are fundamentally incompatible.  One can "tolerate" the beliefs of Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, and atheists, but one can't logically "accept" all four.  What my touchy-feely colleague really wanted, without saying or perhaps even knowing it, was for everyone to "accept" his largely secular, politically correct beliefs, which included the contemporary gay agenda.  

What then becomes of beliefs and actions that he and his like-minded colleagues reject?  Are they to be "tolerated"?  Apparently not.  By putting "acceptance" in the place of tolerance, beliefs and practices incompatible with "accepted" beliefs are set in a "not to be tolerated" category.  For the past several decades, one need only peruse Hollywood entertainment to see this formula working in practice as ridicule is heaped on patriots (often caricatured as idiots or neo-fascists), religious believers (parodied as rural morons or violent anti-abortion activists), and traditional families (where cringe-worthy Married with Children family life images compete with childless, carefree Seinfeld characters and the heroic detective Olivia Benson on Law and Order: SVU).  More recently, this implicit fictional deprecation has become explicit in real life, as "un-woke" cultural opponents are blithely labeled fascists, racists, white supremacists, homo- and trans-phobes, or, in the case of African-American conservatives like Larry Elder, "the black face of white supremacy."    

Put succinctly, the crowd that only a few decades ago passionately touted the virtue of tolerance now demands acceptance of their du jour victim groups and beliefs — ideas like the following: men can get pregnant and menstruate; separate-sex bathrooms are "heteronormative"; America is institutionally racist; children are mature enough to change their sex, and dissenting parents should be circumvented or even (currently under consideration in California) deprived of their parental rights.  

It turns out that "tolerance" was only a stopgap virtue until such time as enough power was gained to impose their utopian, totalitarian vision upon dissenters — under penalty of law and pain of ostracism.  Nowadays, Berkeley, the so-called home of the "free speech movement," alongside almost all universities, regularly harasses and prevent conservatives or non-conforming independents from speaking.  At Stanford's law school, a DIE associate dean sided with hecklers and lectured a distinguished jurist whose views didn't mirror her intolerant leftist creed.  And swimming champion Riley Gaines was recently assaulted by "trans activists" who weren't about to allow an actual female athlete to say that men who identify as women shouldn't compete in female sports. 

By ditching tolerance for "acceptance," intolerance toward what one does not accept and those who espouse such beliefs becomes acceptable — and widely practiced.  Consequently, bashing and silencing the "enemy" is legitimized, and rational discourse is made unnecessary.  Non-conforming views become "hate speech" and even "violence" that's worthy of violent suppression. 

In short, by substituting "acceptance" for "tolerance," it becomes necessary to be intolerant of persons who don't kowtow to beliefs that must be "accepted."  So much for tolerance. 

GUTFELD! OR GUTTER-FILLED!

Now that the midterms are over, can we speak honestly about the moral black hole named Greg Gutfeld—an abysmal vortex that sucks everyone around him into a perverse world of cultural depravity.  Yes, he’s more politically astute than media’s leftist Cretins, but if politics are “downstream from culture,” what kind of political environment is being created in the witches brew of Gutfeld’s pre-pubescent potty humor?  It’s certainly not a milieu that exhibits any attachment to, much less reverence toward, the great achievements of Western literature, art, civic life, and morality.

Seldom does Gutfeld manage to complete a late-night monologue that omits his obsession with scatology, and never does he focus sustained attention on the essential roles that intact families and religious faith play in creating a virtuous culture.  Assuming his humor bears some relationship to the truth, Gutfeld has no affection for children and offers scant appreciation for male-female households whose primary focus is raising their offspring to be moral adults.  Instead, when proffering remedies for our political (not cultural) rot, his default position echoes the leftist cliché about education.  Yes, he adds an important school choice proviso but is totally blind to the fact that schooling alone, even if academically sound, will have little impact on cultural degradation absent a widespread moral awakening—a revolution that spawns massive institutional changes and millions more intact families. If Gutfeld’s show ever emphasizes the role played by overwhelmingly religious families in shaping children’s lives, it’s up to conservative guests like Mercedes Schlapp who, like other true conservatives, must crave a long shower after being dunked in Gutfeld’s verbal cesspool.

Ironically, Gutfeld’s expletive-filled program airs at 8 p.m. on the West Coast, the former “family hour.”  That irony becomes thicker when Gutfeld passionately and regularly advocates for the legalization of drugs—a position that coincides with his comic persona as an aficionado of most forms of chemical intoxication and sexual deviancy.  Given his attachment to music emitted by bands with nihilist leanings (cf. Power Trip) as well as that compulsive snicker, it’s rather clear that Gutfeld assuages his obvious psychological demons by resorting to other than over-the-counter remedies.

On this issue Gutfeld has a reliable echo in the person of Kat Timpf, a self-proclaimed libertarian whose on-air superficiality doubtless has Ayn Rand spinning in her grave.  Kat’s a “no rules” gal whose “live and let die” philosophy opposes laws both against and for sexualizing young kids in school.  In real life, of course, that means allowing radicals who set the agenda for public education to continue pushing “instruction” on six-year-olds that would have been deemed child abuse twenty years ago. Timpf is even unwilling to oppose drag queen shows for young kids.  Instead, she comments with passion about her friendships with practitioners of that “profession.”  The same inane preference for dogma over reality applies whenever Timpf opines about illegal immigration.  The “real” problem, she asserts, is the welfare system, not immigration—as if there were some possibility that the former will magically disappear before the country’s schools, hospitals, and social services are overwhelmed with a hundred million foreigners possessing little education, no proficiency in English, and a clear preference for the political party that encourages illegal border crossings and provides “migrants” whatever “entitlements” are needed to ensure their ballot-box loyalty.  

If those considerations aren’t sufficiently damning, consider Timpf’s self-congratulatory insouciance over “bump and grind” high school entertainments.  After all, she observes, kids nowadays already have access to that activity and much worse online—just as she herself did in high school.  Never crossing Timpf’s mind is the thought that using her own experience as a normative rule will have the effect of producing multitudes of self-absorbed, morally clueless adults incapable of cherishing a society in which individuals care about their neighbors and exhibit gratitude for the accomplishments of folks who came before them.  Anyone who thinks those words are unduly harsh should ponder Timpf’s comment that she would only want to have a child if it were ugly, since it would then not detract attention from herself.  It’s difficult to imagine a more staggering expression of narcissism.     

I also find it hard to understand how Timpf became a writer or blogger for National Review, but it’s clear she has no affection for religion and only offers back of the hand “raised Catholic” slights that would have made William F. Buckley bolt up straight in his chair.  It’s revealing that Timpf once complained bitterly about how cold she was in the studio while wearing, as is her wont, attire suitable for a Caribbean beach.  On another occasion Timpf scoffed at the name Rand Paul (as if he were a Libertarian) and affirmed her political allegiance to the Senator’s eccentric dad, former Congressman Ron Paul.  To sum up, Timpf has to be squeezed to say anything remotely akin to a moral imperative but is quick to denounce, with passion, “losers” who object to bikini-clad baristas.  Her fantasy society consists of human monads free to engage in depravities that never impact anyone else—a society miraculously devoid of ruthless folks bent on wielding absolute power for whom an assemblage of  party-goers who only wish to be left alone pose no obstacle whatsoever.  

It isn’t particularly surprising that late 20^th century America has produced individuals of the Gutfeld-Timpf stripe, personalities who display for an audience’s amusement lives enmeshed in emotional turbulence, stimulants, and various degrees of intellectual virtuosity devoid of serious attachment to the West’s literary and moral traditions—persons who also have little contact with folks in “fly-over” country who love God, family, football, and the flag.  It is, however, depressing that FOX seems willing to subject its guests and audience to Gutfeld’s morally debilitating influence—a pox that even infects more serious news programs like The Five.  

Sam Donaldson once defended sensationalized news coverage with the rationalization that apart from its ambulance-chasing exaggerations and frivolities no one would watch.  It always occurred to me that news hidden beneath so much toxic “frosting” was hardly worth watching.  The same analysis applies to the noxious effluvia that accompany the occasional political insights on Gutfeld’s show. Bottom line:  if politics is “downstream” from the culture exhibited on that program, those politics won’t be compatible with a Constitutional system that, as John Adams observed, “was made only for a moral and religious people” and is “wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”  

"Pushing the Envelope" Toward What?

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