Dear Colleague:
The Irish held out against foreign oppressors for 700 years. But will she
be there at the end of the next 100?
Steven W. Mosher
President
PRI Weekly Briefing
7 December 2006
Vol. 8, No. 48
Irish Exceptionalism At an End?
By Joseph A. D'Agostino
Last month, I went on a short speaking tour of the Republic of Ireland
(not the northern bit), the first time I had been to that country. I
spent a week there giving speeches at three Irish universities and
visiting some of the sights of an island about the size of the state of
Maine. I went expecting friendly people, a still slightly traditional
culture, and beautiful countryside, and my expectations were exceeded.
Ireland is perhaps 20 years behind the times, and given the nature of our
times, that is a very good thing.
Although there has been a wave of immigration into Ireland in the last few
years, the country's populace is still largely whole and somewhat
cohesive. The shared culture, history, religious background, language,
and race has perhaps created a warmer, more trusting nation, with tighter
community bonds, when combined with the relative lack of avant garde
influences. The Catholic attitude of relationships first, with family and
community ranked ahead of money-making or social climbing, is still
relatively strong.
Sadly, progressive attitudes are fast transforming Irish life with their
emphases on equality and career over family and community, not to mention
faith. Of course, these progressive attitudes have their advantages.
Ireland's GDP has almost doubled in the past ten years, and the nation of
4.1 million people is now considered one of the richest on a per capita
basis in the European Union. Curiously, EU subsidies and foreign
investment poured into historically Catholic Ireland right after she
legalized contraception and divorce in the 1990s. It has become common
for Irishwomen to travel to Britain for abortions, which are still illegal
in their homeland. Ireland sold her soul, and now she is receiving her
thirty pieces of silver.
So with greater personal freedom and much greater wealth, the Irish must
be becoming happier, right? Let's see. The experts agree that Ireland's
suicide rate has soared, even after adjusting for the former tendency of
Irishmen to call suicides "accidents" because of the stigma of suicide.
In fact, the No. 1 killer of young men in Ireland today is suicide. Is
that a sign of a happy society? Drug abuse is up, alcohol abuse is up
(which is saying a lot for Ireland), violent crime is rising, the divorce
rate has reached 25%, the illegitimacy rate has reached 31%, the abortion
rate is over 10%, the birthrate has dropped below replacement level--are
these signs of a vigorous society headed toward greater happiness and
fulfillment, or a society headed down the tubes fast?
When the indicators of social decay and unhappiness are all pointing in
the wrong direction, and people aren't having enough kids to keep their
society going, it's perfectly obvious that the society in question is
going down to destruction even if GDP growth is up. Obviously, a low
birthrate alone is enough to destroy any society. The days of large Irish
Catholic families are over, and young people are literally killing
themselves off at ever-higher rates. "Twenty years ago an Irish family
physician might have seen one patient every three years who would have
died by suicide," says the charity The Ireland Funds. "Now, it is
increasingly common for doctors to have two to three patients a year take
their own lives."
As St. Francis of Assisi said, if your possessions do not make you happy,
what good are they?
And why has Irish GDP growth been so high recently? The main reason is
self-destructive: Female labor force participation in Ireland has
skyrocketed. The ideal of woman as wife and mother, creating a beautiful
home that serves as refuge and social center, nurturing the next
generation instead of leaving it to be raised by strangers, has given way
to the woman-as-man model of feminism. With married women now working
outside the home, of course per capita GDP growth has soared. What have
plummeted are people's well-being and the birthrate.
So Ireland's economic growth won't last. Once female labor force
participation is maxed out, GDP growth will slow. And then comes slow
death. For a time, Ireland will be rich, as Britain, France, Germany, and
Italy are. With few children to support, a greater proportion of the
population is economically productive and can keep that production for
itself. Yet when all those working-age people retire and there are
relatively few young people to take their place, what then?
Ireland's fertility rate was 3.5 children per woman in 1975, according to
the United Nations Population Division. Now it is 1.9, below the
replacement rate of 2.1, and headed further down. So today, 11% of the
Irish population is 65 or over. By 2050, it will be 26%. Those 80 or
over will go from 2.6% today to 7.6% in 2050. At the same time, those
between 15 and 24 will fall from 15% to 9.7% in 2050. This is what
environmentalists call unsustainable. And Ireland, since the anti-family
social revolution came later there than elsewhere in the West, is much
better off than Britain and most of the Continent.
My largely student audiences, even their pro-life members, seemed
particularly offended when I called feminism "the most socially
destructive movement in modern times." I spoke at the National University
of Ireland in Maynooth (near Dublin), Galway, and Cork, and this may have
been the most controversial argument. Yet the statement is irrefutable.
Every single society in the world that has adopted feminism is dying out.
They all have below-replacement birthrates, with no exceptions from
Ireland to Italy, Sweden to Japan, Spain to the United States (ours is
perhaps the least feminist of the feminist nations and hosts many fecund
immigrants, yet our birthrate is 2.0). It goes to basic primal truths:
When most women in a society no longer view themselves primarily as
mothers to provide the next generation, that society dies. Female
careerism kills. All the feminist bloviation in the world can't get
around this biological fact.
When something increases crime, it is socially destructive. When
something encourages able-bodied people to go on welfare, it is socially
destructive. Child abuse is socially destructive. Yet what could be more
socially destructive than something that literally eliminates that
society? That is what feminism is doing to all of Western Civilization.
I pointed out to the young women listening to me that the future of the
world is not feminist. Traditional, religious, father-headed families are
the ones having the kids, on average, I noted. Since a much large
percentage of Muslim families than Christian or Jewish ones are devout and
patriarchal, the world becomes more Islamic with every passing moment,
especially since Islam is growing rapidly by conversions as well. And the
Muslim world is becoming more radical with every passing moment, too.
Secularized people have the lowest birthrates. Thirty-five years ago, the
Western world had 30% of the Earth's population and the Muslim world had
15%. Today, each has about 20%. Can you guess what the figures will be
in 20 years?
Barren feminist societies shall not inherit the Earth, due to the simple
fact that they are not producing heirs.
The Irish government has no intention of altering its current destructive,
EU-mandated course. This supposedly pro-life government has even greatly
increased Ireland's contribution to the United Nations Population Fund
(UNFPA), which works to kill off via population control the black, brown,
and yellow peoples of the world as the white peoples kill themselves off
voluntarily. UNFPA also subsidizes Communist China's long-running
official forced abortion and sterilization campaign, yet the Irish
government's contribution to UNFPA has risen from 762,000 euro in 2000 to
3 million euro last year.
I enjoyed my time in Ireland greatly. I love the people, the countryside,
and the ruins. I am sad to see a Catholic nation that survived centuries
of English Protestant oppression head voluntarily down the path of
suicide. The day St. Patrick lit the Christian paschal fire atop the Hill
of Slane as a challenge to the pagan Celtic establishment seems as far in
the past spiritually as it is chronologically. I pray she will return to
her roots before it's too late.
Joseph A. D'Agostino is Vice President for Communications at the
Population Research Institute.
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