Right-wing Fallacies Regarding Population and Social Ethics

https://breakpoint.org/the-fallacy-of-controlling-population/

This was but one of many BreakPoint episodes touching on the issue of population control. At times it almost seems as if they (and many on the Right) have an obsession about this issue. It's ironic given the fact that it seems clear to everyone else that they really would rather not see some segments of the population reproduce but rather are frustrated because the kind of people they want to have big families - are choosing not to do so.

And why is this? I can't decide if they really don't understand or are deliberately resorting to smoke and mirrors in order to shift the blame.

As usual the debate is clouded by right-wing distortions of the issues at hand. First, there is no real crisis if the population decreases. Or rather, let's put it this way - the crises are solely economic and the associated threats are primarily directed at the wealthy and the wealthiest nations. The language of nations disappearing and the like is sensationalist fear-mongering. At some point dropping birthrates will plateau - all the more as the economics involved begin to change. The Japanese and Italians are not going to disappear. It's absurd and the people using this kind of sensationalist fear-mongering need to be called out.

History reveals that when this happened before (say in connection to The Black Death), the economics proved disastrous for the wealthy ruling classes. In the years following the plague, the poor never had it so good as they were able to demand higher wages and experienced not only freedom in movement but some actual social mobility. In fact this frustration over heavy-handed attempts to tamp down their wealth and freedom led to revolts - such as the Peasant's Revolt in 1381.

Typical of the Right, Stonestreet uses bad policy decisions by countries like China and Vietnam to discredit any argument that suggests the world might benefit by a decrease in population.

Likewise there have been some bad predictions by futurists. Well do I remember being a right-wing zealot in high school and quoting these people and their false and often sensationalist predictions to discredit them. I also remember in giving a speech in college mocking environmental predictions and reminding everyone of earlier Global Cooling models. Some forecasts were false and some still are. But other predictions have proven true or even short-sighted in terms of marking the scope and sweep of the change.

Living and travelling over the course of subsequent years has given me a little broader perspective on these environmental issues - and this ties in with questions of population. I realized long ago that many of the arguments made by the Right about vast empty spaces and an 'underpopulated' world are completely bogus and even dangerously misleading. There's far more to the equation than simply acreage. I've grown used to the fact that the likes of E Calvin Beisner will periodically make the rounds repeating the same juvenile and completely misleading arguments about population. They call overpopulation a myth. Well, unfortunately unless Christ returns, their children and grandchildren are going to have to deal with the consequences and the dystopia that's likely to emerge from it. Don't be fooled by these people, the policies they advocate are not motivated by Scripture or wisdom, but by Wall Street and its interests. All too often these worldview teachers are corrupt con-men - and I mean that literally.

An overpopulated society turns into a society of slaves and supplicants scrambling to meet basic needs and fighting over limited, diminishing, resources controlled by cartels. It leads to a concentration of wealth. And in a Capitalist paradigm, it's the mega-corporations calling the shots. We're already living in the early stages of this. Just wait, it's going to get a lot worse.

But what struck me here was not the misdirection and misinformation typical of Stonestreet and other Christian right commentators. This time I was struck in particular by something he said...

'Affluent and educated women in the West have long been told to not want children because they will interfere with their freedom, careers, lifestyle choices, and personal happiness.'

Stonestreet repudiates this and suggests that people should value children and family and then like a good Evangelical he quotes some statistics about how people will fare better and be happier - as if that's a Christian argument.

He also made a point (and does every chance he can) to take a few shots at communism (which he doesn't understand) by using China and Vietnam as the foils or villains in this matter. Never mind the fact that both states abandoned communism a generation ago.

Here's the irony.... Capitalism is an economic system but it includes and relies upon a system of ethics. Now whether it actually comes through on these points and actually represents these values is another question. But at least in terms of its narratives, the system is tied to social freedom. It puts great emphasis and value on career and status and what that career can do for you in terms of acquiring your dream home, 'providing' for your family, and retirement. It contains a materialist eschatology promising 'the good life'. These things are constantly hammered into everyone living in Western culture and unless you consciously reject these values, it's inevitable that at least some of the message will break through.

Capitalism is all about lifestyle choices - this is wed to the question of freedom and career. Capitalism also relies on a utilitarian framework of ethics and so if there's a demand for over the top SUV's, granite counter-tops, four bathrooms, and incomes that require jobs that keep you tethered to a Smartphone twenty-four hours a day - then it can't be wrong. This is what people want - the price they're willing to pay. The market has spoken. We've seen the disastrous consequences of this in the larger pop culture. We can have a chicken-egg discussion about which side of things is driving the innovation and change. The answer is simple - it's both. The software designers and music/television producers push the moral envelope but the people want it and demonstrate their freedom and lifestyle choices by spending their money on these consumer products (such as social media, television, movies, and tech gadgets) - or the advertising platforms connected to them.

All the world's systems and false religions promise personal happiness - however that is defined. They offer the good life - maximized bliss and fulfilment in financial security and status connected to material acquisition. Capitalism is no exception and we've seen how its promises are empty, self-defeating, and ultimately destructive.

And so while Stonestreet can lament the state of Western values regarding children and the family - the culprit (aside from people simply being lost) is the very system he so eagerly promotes. Evangelicals have been doing this with vigour ever since they cut their Faustian bargain with the GOP in the aftermath of World War II. Since then they have been nothing less than McCarthyite regarding communism and the promotion of capitalism.

And along the way as the market pushed for a two-income family, the Evangelical movement offered tepid resistance for about twenty years. Then they caved in and embraced feminism by re-framing it and moving the goalposts. Capitalism drove this, and the Evangelical movement felt compelled to embrace an ideology that has also driven the anti-child and anti-family sentiment that Stonestreet laments. They try and pretend this is the 'bad' feminism as opposed to the 'good' they stand for. But this is ridiculous as what they stand for today was excoriated as 'liberal' and evil back in the 1970's and 1980's - and rightly so.

If the hypocrite (and feminist) Phyllis Schlafly were to emerge today, it's certain she would not receive a great deal of support. She was somewhat controversial then but today her views would be completely outside of the Evangelical mainstream. This same mainstream has also bought into a variety of feminism's re-defined womanhood. They reject the butchy androgyny that's en vogue among the secular set. Instead they've embraced a kind of slut-power feminism on full display with the Trump clan, along with the likes of Boebert, Mace, and all the Barbie-dolls on the FOX channel. This is not conservative nor Biblical feminity which is domestic, submissive, and shamefaced. These brash, assertive, and aggressively sexualised women may be Right-wing in their promotion of personal liberty, market capitalism, and nationalism - but they're not conservative. If they are, then the term has no meaning. Regardless, they represent a rejection of New Testament femininity.

Some escape Stonestreet's condemnation by being business mini-skirt working moms - and for the few whose marriages hold and whose children remain in the faith (whatever that happens to mean at present), there are so many more who fail. The model doesn't work and if it seems to, it's because they are masking the compromises and cancers it contains.

Stonestreet has a dilemma. If he truly wants to promote traditional and conservative family values he will alienate large segments of the Evangelical sphere. And thus, such advocacy would be self-defeating as his whole project relies on standing and connections to wealth and the corridors of power. Big poor families (which is the result of New Testament obedience) is not something he's interested in. It has no social or political utility.

And so he too compromises (fatally by my estimation) even while he pretends he does not. It's very convenient to beat up on straw men like Vietnam and yet when he turns to the West, it's far more complicated and his arguments are self-defeating.

And so in the end, Stonestreet's commentary is revealed to be just another example of his misdirecting tactics. He wants to score some points and so he manipulates the issue, ignores what's inconvenient, and cobbles together an incoherent appeal. He slaps the worldview label on it and calls it Christian, and his audience doesn't know any better. What they think to be brilliant and insightful is revealed to be little more than pablum at best and rank incoherence and self-defeating distortion at worst.