A broken clock is correct in telling time twice each day. Sometimes Leftists are also correct once in a blue moon. Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal, SolarCity, and the Tesla Motors, had this to say about the real population problem: “The world’s population is accelerating towards collapse, but few seem to notice or care.” Musk was “replying to a New Scientist article titled, ‘The world in 2076: The population bomb has imploded.’” (CNBC)

Actually, conservatives have been warning about a population implosion for some time, as Ben Wattenberg pointed out in his 1987 book, The Birth Dearth: What Happens When People in Free Countries Don’t Have Enough Babies? It’s great that so-called Progressives are catching up.

The August 12, 2013, TIME magazine issue titled “The Childfree Life” might explain why Democrats are pushing so hard for immigration reform. They are looking down the demographic road and are seeing a big voting sink hole. Leftists support abortion, limited family size, same-sex sexuality, transgenderism, and the claim that children will lead to an ecological catastrophe. Rarely do these groups produce enough children to replace themselves let alone the existing population. There are a few transgender men (who are biologically women) who have children. You can’t build a long-term voting base with people who are confused about their sexual identity and kill off their future by aborting their unborn children or contracepting them out of existence.

Like Wattenberg, economist Robert J. Samuelson gets it right: “By not having children, people are voting against the future — their countries’ and perhaps their own.”

Lauren Sandler’s TIME story “The Childfree Life,” asked, “Does having it all mean not having children?”

From 2007 to 2011, the most recent year for which there’s data, the fertility rate declined 9%. A 2010 Pew Research report showed that childlessness has risen across all racial and ethnic groups, adding up to about 1 in 5 American women who end their childbearing years maternity-free, compared with 1 in 10 in the 1970s.

Europe is also experiencing a similar “birth dearth” related to the devaluing of marriage and the family, two factors in the maintenance of stable societies. Europe’s fertility rates have fallen below replacement levels. This does not bode well for socialist economies that need a large population to fund a retiring population used to government subsidies.

Muslim birth rates could supplant Europeans. The most popular name in England is Muhammad. Islamists are not integrating into European society. It’s becoming a demographic waiting game.

Here are the estimated 2005 TFRs [Total Fertility Rate] for some major countries Germany, 1.4; Greece, 1.3; Italy, 1.3; Japan, 1.4; Spain, 1.3; and Russia, 1.3. Low fertility rates don’t instantly lead to population declines. They can be offset by immigration, longer life expectancies and greater numbers of young mothers. But ultimately low fertility rates suggest falling populations.

It’s not much better today. In fact, it may be worse.

All of this could be good news for conservatives who still value marriage and are having lots of children. We just had our ninth grandchild. My business partner has seven children and just welcomed his first grandchild into the world. There are numerous pregnant members of our church. You get the picture, and at least one liberal has noticed:

“[F]or the past 30 years or so, conservatives — particularly those of the right-wing red-state Christian strain — have been out-breeding liberals by a margin of at least 20 percent, if not far more…. Translation: Libs just aren’t procreating like they could/should be.”1

Amnesty and open borders will give Democrats what they desperately need to keep their sinking party afloat — a political future because theirs is dying. Will it be enough? What is of more concern is the moral implosion of the Republican Party that has abandoned its ideals and the will to fight for what it used to believe.

1. Mark Morford, “When Liberals Rule the World: Stats say the GOP is dying. But red-staters are breeding like drunken ferrets. Who wins?,” SF Gate (March 28, 2007). [↩]