By Martin Bosworth
An interesting piece came across my desk the other day that paints a chilling picture of how strong the religious right’s death grip is on American culture and politics…and how that death grip is actually maintained by business interests who want to ensure that the American machine keeps rolling along.
This OnPoint radio interview from Wednesday is on the declining birth rates and population demographic shifts in the West. I was listening to this in a car and was so utterly dumbfounded that I looked for the interview as soon as it was archived on the site. Why? Because the main speaker, Herbert E. Meyer, an ex-CIA spook and hardcore Reaganite, on a nationally listened to radio program, trumpets that Western birth rates are declining because of the entry of women into the workforce, abortion rights a loss of “traditional values,” and the horror that is couples living “affluent middle-class lifestyles”–and he flat-out admits he has no statistical or scientific evidence to back his claims. Listen to the radio interview if you don’t believe me. He “felt” his way to these conclusions, and has publicly castigated Western Europe for not carrying the white man’s banner as well as America:
We believe that church and state should be separate, but that religion should remain at the center of life. We are a Judeo-Christian culture, which means we consider those ten things on a tablet to be commandments, not suggestions. We believe that individuals are more important than groups, that families are more important than governments, that children should be raised by their parents rather than by the State, and that marriage should take place only between a man and a woman.
We do, eh? Luckily, Meyer gives the game away later in the interview–the real concern for the West’s declining birth rate isn’t the abandonment of traditional values, but the loss of a workforce that is needed to sustain the economy and ensure that retirees like him can have something to fall back on if the lucrative speaking circuit doesn’t pan out.This rationale is why immigration has become such a hot topic for the religious right and caused a sundering between economic conservatives and fundiecrats–and again, Meyer indirectly admits it during crosstalk between him and the other guests. American business wants lots of Hispanic families to come here and breed to ensure a steady supply of labor for those shitty retail and gas-pumping jobs and keep buying products, but they can’t actually give them a path to legal immigration without torquing off the hard-right xenophobic base. That’s how you end up with monstrous aberrations like the failed guest worker bill.
The religious evangelical groups attack family planning and women’s control of their sexuality due to fear, shame, self-loathing, and various other emotions borne of external guilt and conformist pressure. What makes this worse is that they’re being puppeted–used to ensure Americans keep on pumping out babies (preferably white, but we’ll take ’em brown if we can, as long as they PRAISE JESUS) to do the jobs others won’t do, and buy the products that need to be bought in order to keep our country from crashing–no matter how much damage that policy does in the long-term.
So remember kids, no matter how expensive housing costs and student loans are, you have a patriotic duty to breed to ensure the continuing supremacy of America. Now go shopping.
Progressive Culture | Scholars & Rogues 
Whatever happened to Zero Population Growth? It should be tied in with Global Warming. This is the same idea the early Christians used in ancient Rome. Outnumber them!
WWJF Who Would Jesus…Impregnate ?
Face it The theology of fundamentalists is so flawed as to be an abomination. WWJB What Would Jesus Buy?
As a former (now emancipated) Mormon, I was taught that it was my “celestial duty” to bring forth souls from Heaven to my good LDS family so that they could increase their influence for good across the earth. We were reminded in doctrine, scripture, and folksy didactic plays (Saturday’s Warrior) to go forth and multiply. Coming from a genetic history of EXTREMELY FERTILE women I was in constant awareness of my ability to pop kids out like a Pez Dispenser. I stopped at three, not having good enough math skills to multiply properly. While I love my 45 nieces and nephews, I consider it irresponsible and downright foolish to willingly create more people than you can possibly provide for or give the emotional support that children need. I’m 7th of 8 in a family that was extremely impoverished and while I don’t resent that poverty, would not impose it on others. The numbers of large families across the US on welfare and Medicaid is staggering.
In addition to the religious dictates that are so common in the LDS church, there seems to be a social and cultural reward to those families (at least in Utah) to squeeze out another and another kid. There’s an old joke that goes, “Why do Mormon women stop having children at 29 ?…. because 30 is just too many.”. Utah has the highest percentage per capita of prescription drug abuse in Ritalyn, Valium, and other mood altering drugs. I suspect that mommys use the ritalyn to supposedly calm the kids, and the valium to face another dull evening with the dishwater grey overworked milk toasty husband. I always suspected it was served in the Sacrament water to make the tedious three hr. meeting block more tolerable. Utah also has one of the highest (and climbing) home foreclosure/bankruptcy rates in the nation.
Mormons claim that their church is growing faster than other Evangelical religions but statistics show that between 50 to 70 percent of newly “converted” end up inactive or leave the church altogether within a year of baptism. The Mormons also will not remove a name from their records until one goes through a lengthy and difficult process of appeals, so in essence, they believe they still own me. They also will not allow a woman to remove her name from a man’s temple marriage ownership unless she marries another LDS man, in the temple and thus transfers property. She can be traded up, but is never a free agent. Cool eh???
I’m not sure what motivates people to have 7, 8, or 16 kids. Some do a great job of raising them, but there’s just as many who end up with a whole litter of messed up dysfunctional families. The same problems that plague non-LDS families are rampant in the devout Mormons, but they are conditioned to never face, never discuss, never admit, never explore the problems. Most LDS women are counselled to put on a happy face, talk about the positive, and smile pretty while they practice the art of Door-Mat-Ology. I know, I’m a graduate!
Plopping out Kids for Christ sounds like a pretty twisted plot. Breeding for a cheap workforce is silly too since most of us can’t get our teenager to take out the trash without the bribe of a computer upgrade. We’re just breeding consumers, so we adults become the enslaved workforce. Most of the financially comfortable people I know only have one or two kids. Money doesn’t buy happiness, but neither does poverty and debt.
Many Asians only have one or two and they can still outbreed us daily. Our world population is over 6 billion people and expected to double in the next 18 or so years. I just read a statistic that for every 60 babies born in America while you read this essay, 284 Chinese citizens will be born. And that’s with a 1 child per family mandate. Even with the extreme poverty and slave labor practices in Asia, they still manage to save money and invest while Americans consume and spend and go into deeper debt every year. We’re supposedly the wealthiest nation in the world but we consume more of the worlds resources than any other population, we spend more, we waste more, and we’re the fattest population in the world. Our cars, homes, and children are obese and getting more bloated and obese every day. It’s time we Americans went on a diet, in our family size, our consumerism, our vehicle and energy consumption, our homes, and our banking practices.
The first glob of corpulent bloated gaseous fatheaded puss we should jettison should be George W. Bush and his greasy henchmen, including that noxious gasbag Rush Limbaugh. For Christ Sake, he makes my Gall Bladder back up with bile and just hearing his name gives me heartburn. This administration and the ignorant lackeys that support them are the boils on the lumpy butt of humanity. Why the Hell haven’t we Impeached them yet?
These BORN AGAINS offspring will be POOR Jesus freaks when they grow up and that is exactly what the ELITE want for them. Come on- should you believe in something that you can;t see or touch!
Insanad….great post, all true. As former Utahns with Mormons deep in our genealogy, you speak the truth. Glad you are free!
No go shopping and Don’t buy… condoms?
Ignorance is not a virtue- The Fascist’s not only appeal to ignorant people, they manipulate, dominate, and control them. Tell the Big Lie and keep repeating it over and over and people will believe it. This is a form of brain-washing. In order for brain wash someone effectively, the technique must be subtle and over a long period of time. The German people only had to tolerate The Big Lie for 12 Years under Adolph Hitler and his Nazi’s. The American people have been subject to the steady drum beat of Lies for over 20 years. Fight it! Know what Fascism is-How to detect it and how to defeat it. Read the 12 Year Reich by Richard Grunberger and compare to the Bush misadministration.
Hey, what’s a little racism among friends?
Check out “Birthing God’s Mighty Warriors.”
It’s fun.
http://juniper.typepad.com/buddhist_jihad/2007/04/talibangelicals.html
With all the pulpit propaganda loose in the land today, few folks seem to realize that, according to Article VI of The Constitution of the United States as originally written before the First Amendment was adopted, religion can never be a qualification for holding public office. Hence, there can be no religious test for public office.
One of the great lies is that the writers of The Constitution were all Bible-believing church-going Jesus-worshiping Christians. They weren’t. The current sales pitch of the religious right is little more than an attempt to brainwash the public so that history can be rewritten.
I am so happy to be a Secular Humanist. All we bring is rationale, good science and better living. These Christ-nazis are not only embarrassing for their ignorance and dogma, you can also add in their extreme xenophobic hatred and tendency for killing . It is this stratum (the lower layers) of America’s society that is causing the misery in our country and spreading it across the world. And it is NOT restricted to American society.
Unfortunately these blind, copulating, destructive Christ-nazis are being bred and spreading all over the world. In addiditon, they are even flocking to America in droves. They are coming from the repressed “eastern-bloc” countries and raising havoc in America with their newfound “freedom of speech and religion”. They are harassing the Gay communities and communities in general with their religious vitriole on Gay domestic partnerships, gay rights, education and even child student bullying legislation here in supposedly liberal California. The Christ-nazis make no bones about repressing. The Slavic community here in Sacramento, reinforced by destructive American Christofascist megachurches and the smaller covens, is strident in their hate, even theri community leaders, so much so to have killed a 26 year-old Hindu man, after first heralding his death in rabid declarations of “sodomite”. “7-11 Worker”,” Animal”, “Hindu” “Faggot” and “Gay”. Jesus’ Love?
So, the Christ-nazi breeding machine is also a killing machine from as far away as the Ukrane, but importing itself into our own American backyard and being fostered by our home-grown variety of Chrisian pestilence. So, it’s not onley “Homegrown” but being “Exported ” around the world.
From the article: “… religious evangelical groups attack family planning and women
Moi, I am so happy and glad to be a Buddhist following the path of Buddhist Jihad (moi-self), wielding the sharp sword of discriminating awareness-wisdom to cut down ignorance at its very root.
And why not, eh?
quote:
“We believe that individuals are more important than groups”
very misguided, mr. american.
it’s clear that this thought has infected your culture.
so, you believe that individual profit is more important than community benefit?
that harming the group is justified by gain for the individual?
???
poor america, why should we care about you?
I stopped having kids at zero. Figured that I would do better with people who were already here than trying to mold any offspring of mine into intelligent eccentrics and religious heretics. With my luck, they’d become talibangelicals with one book in the house.
I shudder at the thought…
One alternative is to follow Russia’s lead and have state sponsored sex camps.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=471324&in_page_id=1770
My math skills are terrible so there may be many flaws in this equation, but bear with the goal here and if necessary, figure it out yourself.
The goal is to see how many of a given sect it will take to impact the coming of Christ as per most Christian scriptures predict. For these purposes I relied on what I knew, or used to think I knew and that was what is taught in the Mormon church, a religion that claims to be THE Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Pretty bold claim, but most Christian sects claim to speak exclusively for Christ so I can’t say Mormons are unique in this. Anyway, I went to Mormon.org and used their search engine and cross references to find my information. I tried a lot of different word combinations and came up with the best they offer but would be willing to be corrected if someone else came up with something more clear.
I looked up words and combinations like “Second Coming of Christ”, which led me to “reconciled in Christ” and a few other references. I also used the Mormon.org statistics for my equations and a recent National Geographic chart for my estimate of total world population statistics.
According to most Christian religions, the second coming of Christ is supposed to come after a variety of predicted happenings, i.e., wars, rumors of war, pestilence, disease, famine, etc.. Those are pretty easy to attatch to the present day since our earth is ripe with all that crap. One thing that seems prevelent in the predictions and especially among the Mormons, is that the words of Christ, or his spirit, teachings, what have you, will be brought or made available to all the peoples of the earth. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll all drop down and worship or convert, but they’ll get an opportunity to sign up if they want to go to heaven. According to Jerry Fallwell and many other “Christians”, those who refuse will go to Hell where they’ll writhe in eternal damnation with the Jews and other filthy heathens. I’m not sure how they interpret the following scriptures to suggest that anyone not accepting their version of Christianity as condemnation to Hell, but hey, I’m not the one suggesting such a thing.
Also according to many Christian religions, The Second Coming of Christ is supposed to happen pretty darn soon, maybe even tonight while you sleep. The “Rapture” could be interpreted in a lot of ways, but most Mormons consider Christ’s actual appearance will be in “This dispensation”. According to Mormon.org, we’re in the LAST dispensation. If that’s the case, then we can at least expect Christ to come to the party in the next 12 years. Here’s the text of what I found,
“The Prophet Joseph Smith was the Lord