Lots of folks seem concerned about declining birth rates in the civilized world, and well they should be. If we don't resume forming ourselves into families, our cultures will disappear. Simple as that. Many bold but ineffective solutions are being hoisted into view this week, but none of them are likely to reverse the downward trend because none of them even mentions the obvious cause of the declining birth rate in the welfare state nations.
The root cause of our declining birth rate (and incidentally, also the cause of our national moral decline) is Social Security. Not how that federal program is run, or its solvency, but rather the very existence of Social Security itself is what is causing birth rates to decline.
The logic behind this claim is simple. Before the age of Social Security (big government funded old age pensions being the product of Kaiser Wilhelm's socialist mind in the 1880's, or was it Bismark?) the normal person saw the family, and especially the children, as our old age insurance. That is why we wanted to have a lot of children, and why we put so much effort into strengthening their moral character. Our future well being was dependent on both their healthy strength and their good morals.
With the advent of Social Security, all of that changed. By making big government, and not the next generation, the central pillar of old age planning, Social Security diminished the vested interest people had in the well being, morality, and even existence of their children. While the deeper cultural effects took a few decades to get strong purchase (the Generation Gap of the 60's), the existence of Social Security in their personal future changed, or allowed the change to happen in, the way that original generation with Social Security in their future envisioned the long arc of their lives. They would have immediately sensed that the only relationship that they had to maintain for their entire lives to ensure a decent life is the relationship with that same federal government. The family, and the communities families formed, became no longer the only, or maybe even the primary, provider of last resort: The provider of last resort being the institution which must and will respond to our vital needs. Since the establishment of Social Security in 1935, being the provider of last resort has increasingly become the role of the federal government and less and less the role of natural families. Or the communities families compose..
Since its beginning, Social Security has behaved like a kind of corrosive poison, acting on the family at the molecular level, tending to separate each individual from every other individual. It doesn't force the separation, but it allows it. It is like a string. You can't push something with a string, but if the string that is holding things together is cut, then it allows that separation. By cutting the materialistic, self interested bonds of family, (as cynical as that sounds) the bonds that really hold families together, Social Security has allowed the natural forces of selfishness to drive the component familial members apart. Especially in the lower and middle classes where materialistic needs seem better served by government.
What's more, Social Security is also, obviously, the untouchable third rail of American politics so much so it is going to be well nigh impossible to terminate. The great resistance this will raise is, in itself, evidence of why we simply must terminate it. The great hysterical passion aroused by the idea of ending Social Security is due to so many people feeling that they are dependent on it to live. In fact, we as a society should start by admitting that we are totally addicted to it and we will behave like addicts if our dope supply is imperiled. Then we must realize that it is our addiction to the federal tit that is eroding our will to procreate. It is killing us as a people. Then we must, for that vital reason, snap ourselves out of this spell and terminate Social Security.
As a Boomer, now in my early 70's, I am still adamant, as I always have been, that when we move away from Social Security, we do it in phases, taking care for those who are already on it. But those changes can be accomplished compassionately without keeping the federal government in charge of our lives.
To sum all this up, we must end Social Security because it is an addictive, corrosive social poison which is surreptitiously draining us of our will to live.
It is not clear if we came to this happy pass by shear happenstance or if someone had this scenario in mind from the beginning, but that does not matter. Yes, we have been rendered, via socialism in general and Social Security in particular, into a people ripe to fall to totalitarian tyranny. Maybe it is a plot, maybe not, but honestly, that does not matter and it is not the point.
The only thing that matters, the only point to be made about Social Security is that we must acknowledge it is the single reason for declining global birth rates. With that acknowledgment we must also realize that the only way to reverse this civilizational death spiral is to end Social Security.
Should be easy. It's just a matter of life and death.
No comments:
Post a Comment