As Russia and Ukraine battle, the ongoing three-year horrific account of Russians pilfering Ukrainian children is finally being reported. Both The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times tell the story of the nearly 20,000 Ukrainian children that were forcibly kidnapped from their homes by Russia’s occupying army.
Wantonly bombing civilian targets while abducting children is a humanitarian crisis that is cultural genocide intent on destroying a national identity. Most likely some children have been trafficked. Many children are placed in institutions or in camps to be re-educated to forsake their Ukrainian heritage. This medieval horror is not just a violation of international law – it is an affront to basic our humanity and another Russian war crime.
When I mentioned this story to a Bulgarian native, he said that Russians kidnapping children is nothing new. This proud American citizen, whose birthday is July 4, related how his grandmother, as a young child, was kidnapped at the end of World War II by occupying Russian troops. His grandmother was the youngest of two children, so the Russians had no problem kidnapping her. After all, she had another child. A huge ruckus ensued, and the Russians relented returning the young girl to her hysterical mother.
Russia has an unsustainable birthrate exacerbated by the increasing mortality rate of Russian males through war and alcoholism. One Russian solution to deal with this is to steal young children from other countries.
Many nations have low birthrates and aging populations. America is not immune to this demographic winter that has been percolating for decades. The numbers tell an portentous tale as American births have dropped an incredible 17% since 2007. Presently, the American birthrate is 1.66 births per woman well below the 2.1 needed for replacement with rates predicted to drop throughout the 21st century. Moreover, the death rate will exceed the birthrate by 2038.
If you want to encounter what an aging population looks like, try church on Sunday. This is no ageist affront but underscores the importance of children in a flourishing society.
The Amish and Muslims do not have this problem.
Addressing America’s declining birth rates Mark Steyn’s: “America Alone: The End of the World as We Know it” details how Islam is having children, while Americans aren’t and many are aborting theirs – more than 65 million since Roe v. Wade in 1973.
It is the secularist ideal of absolute equality that reverberates nonstop throughout a girl’s life that she must have a career and a family to be successful. Such feminist ideology, abetted by contemporary education has induced young women to pursue career, power and wealth over family. These aging women appear more unhappy than preceding generations.
Being “just” a wife and mother isn’t good enough is the greatest of canards. Historically, it is the most important of vocations. Parenthood is a submission to God’s Will. A “Surrender to God,” says Gertrud von le Fort, “is the only absolute power that the creature possesses.”
A dwindling population means an unstable economy and shrinking tax base with less workers contributing to Social Security that imperils future funding. Moreover, with Uncle Sam stuck in a perpetual increased spending cycle, future generations are in fiscal jeopardy.
Children are gifts and not accessories. The economy and government are meant to serve families, not the opposite. Lawmakers should legislate tax advantages for families who provide future Americans that will contribute to the nation’s prosperity.
To increase births, President Trump proposed $5,000 “baby bonuses” for every birth and increasing the child tax credit from $2,000 to $2,500 and awarding a “National Medal of Motherhood” to women who have at least six children. Monetarily incentivizing couples to have children by any means necessary is debauched especially when IVF is a driving point.
A culture in the throes of self-annihilation requires instilling respect for every life and a conscientious reawakening that sacrifice, and suffering have profound meaning.
We obsess over the inflation rate, unemployment rate, and interest rate that will hold little value provided it is not complimented with a more vibrant birthrate.
If you wait until you can afford children, you will never have them. Many in the past didn’t have the means but had families, regardless.
A civilization unwilling to do so will not survive.
The Russians understand this.
Do we?
