Our elites constantly remind us of the dangers of overpopulation and the need for ever more birth control and abortion. Some of them have openly admitted wanting to suddenly and drastically lower the human population to a fraction of its current level. And it is true that most people (as well as the ecosystem) would be better off with a lower population — there would be less pollution, less traffic, and less strain on resources. But the fact is that no drastic measures are needed, for over most of the world, especially in the First World nations, fertility has declined markedly, and there is a real danger of an accelerating decline leading eventually to virtual extinction.

Here in the U.S. the birth rates declined by 2013 to an all-time low of 62.5 births annually for every 1,000 women aged 15-44. In developed countries in general, each woman must bear 2.1 children (an average) to prevent a decline, and the U.S. is just under that. Our rapid growth in population during the last few decades has been entirely due to immigration and the high birth rate (often encouraged by welfare payments) of immigrant women. But now the birth rates for Hispanic and Black Americans are falling even faster than the White rate. Birth rates are a little higher in Utah and in some of the southwestern and southern states. Certainly, the “sexual revolution” is partly responsible for this, encouraging sex without marriage or procreation. Radical feminism, birth control, abortion, and the encouragement of sexual perversion have played a role, and with the scarcity of jobs and the decline in real wages, many people simply cannot afford to raise children.

All of Western Europe, Russia, China (where they continue to limit women to two children, above the one formerly permitted, yet still below the replacement rate), Japan, Australia, and Canada are below replacement rate. Japan and China permit little immigration, so Japan’s population is beginning to decline and China’s will do so very soon. Even most of Latin America is just at or below replacement rate (globally, it is 2.33 births for each woman, and 3.4 in impoverished countries with a high death rate). Even Mexico is barely increasing, and birth rates there are continuing to decline. Populations in Germany, Lithuania, and the Ukraine are already declining. Only in a very few places, mostly in such African countries as Somalia, are populations continuing to rise fairly rapidly.

France, with limited success, has encouraged larger families with lower taxes for parents, child care, shorter working hours for women, and letting career women take more time off to care for children.

One readily obvious answer to the problem is more immigration, but that (as we are learning now in the U.S. and in Western Europe) can cause even greater problems, with young immigrants refusing to assimilate, breeding rapidly, and replacing the host population. Left unchecked, this process will literally destroy Western Civilization, perhaps much sooner that we expect. In the eighteenth century, Frederick the Great of Prussia invited in large numbers of Huguenots, French Protestants who were brutally persecuted by French Catholics. These French people soon learned the language, assimilated completely, and became good Germans. After WWII, with so many young men killed in the war, Germany faced a labor shortage and brought in Southern Europeans from countries like Italy and Spain; these people, too, assimilated. Limited immigration from cultures similar to that of the host country can be very effective. But then Germany began importing Muslims from Turkey, and now faces an unopposed invasion, arguable a betrayal by the German elites.

It might be imagined that a birth rate a little below replacement rate would lower a population gradually to a sustainable level, and then, due to the larger families of some of the people (like Mormons and White Southerners in the U.S.), it would stabilize. The problem is that as the overall population ages, the proportion of women of child-bearing age declines, and the population begins to fall faster and faster and age more and more, until there are too few left to care for the elderly or to defend the nation against rapidly breeding outsiders. Even this is not necessarily a complete disaster, as automation means fewer and fewer workers are needed, so, up to a point, such a decline would make it easier for young people to get jobs. It is impossible to predict how all of this will play out.

If the United States followed a sane immigration policy, we might have stabilized our population at, perhaps, 200 million or so. We could allow only a limited number of carefully screened immigrants, young, healthy, and educated or skilled at various professions, require that they be reasonably proficient in English, and keep criminals, Muslims, and communists out. But leftist politicians wanted voters and corporate CEOs wanted cheap labor, and the current occupant of the Rainbow House seems, quite literally, hell-bent on destroying what remains of our former Republic. If current trends are allowed to continue, the elites will, in fact, destroy all of Western Civilization and bring about religious and race wars that will “thin the herd,” which has been their goal all along.