Because more people buy into the idea of impending overpopulation, our world is now faced with an even worse and more real problem: declining population.
Declining population is a big problem, both for the people of today and their descendants. Don Feder and Fr. Rob Jack discuss.
Please note that transcripts are auto-generated and may contain errors.
Father Rob Jack: With us now is Don Feder, and he is a coalitions director for the Ruth Institute, which is a nonprofit group helping to face and overcome the sexual revolution, which has had such terrible effects on our society and culture and world. Don, thanks for being with us today.
Don Feder: Well, thanks for giving me an opportunity to address your audience, Father.
Fr. Jack: Well, I’ll tell you what I see. You’re going to be starting a new project this fall. What’s this all about?
Don: It’s it’s a demographic project. In other words, it’s about declining fertility, which I think is fast becoming the worldwide crisis. We’ve been involved with the issue for the last three or four years. We have a on our website, we have a demographic winter, as we call a demographic winter resource center. We had sessions this at our last three national conventions, but we’re now expanding the project, if you will.
Fr. Jack: Well, that’s important, because, as you mentioned, one of the things it’s offer, what I’m seeing now and a lot of a lot of news reports is that not only is there a declining population, there is another problem. And that is that they they’re they’re positing the theory that some of these, what do you call vaccinations that were given for actually creating fertility problems, which is a whole other can of worms. That slowly and surely is starting to rear its ugly head in the media.
Don Feder: Well, I wouldn’t I wouldn’t want to comment on that, Father, because I simply don’t know enough about it. Yeah.
Fr. Jack: I understand. But this is like I said, it’s just interesting. The mainstream media is starting to pick that up.
Don Feder: Well, I guess one of the things that I find interesting is that you have Bill Gates, who is a huge population control person. You know, he definitely once wants to see the world’s population drop drastically. And he’s also very involved in producing these vaccines now. I don’t know if there is a connection. Frankly,
Fr. Jack: I Don’t know either. All I know is that now, as I said, very strangely enough, there are reports coming. They may be true. They may be false. You know what the media can do, but they’re beginning to find fertility effects with this. And, you know, you have your people on both sides. The extremes they are talking about there is by this group or whoever this group is a depopulation movement.
All I know is that the world can hold much more people than it has. And the question is, is it part of a medical plan or is it just human beings choosing not to have children?
Don Feder: Well, you know, yeah, that’s and that’s the key question, Father. No one. No one knows how many people the world can maintain. Overpopulation is a myth, and there’s absolutely no way to define it. We’re told, by the way, that everyone in the world could fit into Texas.
Fr. Jack: Yes, sir.
Don Feder: Comfortably! Not stacking them. And then. But, you know, comfortably. It’s you know. But this since Thomas Malthus tells us we’ve had this overpopulation hysteria.
Fr. Jack: And then 1968, what was it called? “The Population Bomb?”
Don Feder: “The population Bomb,” byr Paul Ehrlich. Ehrlich was what’s called a neo Malthusian. He took Malthus and updated him. And, you know, it’s fascinating. Back in the late 1960s, Erlich said that sometime in the early seventies, there would be worldwide famine. Now, you may have missed their father. In fact, I missed it, too, because it didn’t happen. But, you know, no one no one holds the Malthusians to account for these.
What it’s like it’s like climate change. No one holds them to account for the wild predictions they’ve made that haven’t come true.
Fr. Jack: One of the things I can’t figure out, Don, is just the fact that people buy into this. I mean, we we’ve seen growing up in history in America and other countries, large families were seen as a as a blessing from God and to have children, especially. And if you’re in a farm family, it became both a gift and a necessity.
Someone’s got to help go with the farm. And they just saw it as a fruit of marriage. And, you know, you read stories of mortality rates in some countries that many couples have had many, many children. But because of whatever case, they weren’t able to to live very long. And so they kept having more children. But it’s clear there is kind of a movement of sometimes government aid from this country going to other countries with the stipulation that they that they use sterilization and birth control as a way, I mean, that’s part of what they’re they’re pushing on some of these third world countries.
Don Feder: Very much so, Father. You know what happened in India back in the 1960s? It happened throughout Latin America. Yeah, there is there is this population control agenda and the people behind it will use almost everything to advance their cause, including tying aid to it. You know, Indira Gandhi was then the prime minister of India in the sixties after the disastrous war up there with Pakistan. She came here and she wanted food aid and the Johnson administration said, “Well, you know, the only way we’re going to help you is if you get a hand your population.”
And of course, that led to all kinds of horrors like forced sterilization in China. Of course, that led to forced abortions. But, yeah, it’s it’s it’s been out there for some time. By the way, Father, interesting trivia fact that I encountered recently. Do you know what group in the American population has the highest fertility?
Fr. Jack: You mean medically or just in terms of producing children? Right now?
Don Feder: In terms of producing children the highest?
Fr. Jack: I would say it would be the Hispanic community.
Don Feder: No, it’s the Amish.
Fr. Jack: Oh, okay. Well, that for to that would make sense.
Don Feder: Yeah, it would for two reasons, Father. First, of course, they shun mechanized farm equipment. They need people to work the land, as we did 150 years ago. And they haven’t lost the biblical ethic. Like so many religious people, like Hassidic Jews, like traditional Catholics, like some evangelicals, they believe that children are a blessing from God.
Fr. Jack: And and again, that, to me, it seems, is a self-evident truth. The number of couples in this family who are unable to have children because of some biological issue, they want to have children. And, of course, because there are so many abortions at that, it limits the way for adoptions to happen. But the key point there that you point out and even even the small, the multimillionaire or billionaire Elon Musk says, you know, and if he says that, you think they would listen, but they’re mad at him right now that we we are in entering a demographic winner and we need to start having increase in our population.
Don Feder: He’s been very clear about it and he is, as far as I know, the only person in the billionaire club who says these things, which which makes it all the more startling, if you will. Yeah. I mean, he’s you said, “The problem isn’t that there are too many people in the world. It’s that there are too few,” he said.
And this is a paraphrase, Father, he said, “In the future, civilization could collapse if people don’t have more children. And of course, he is absolutely right.”
Fr. Jack: But Don, could you stay with us over the break and we’ll continue our discussion right after this.
Don Feder: I would be delighted to, Father.
Fr. Jack: Don Feder is the coalition’s coalitions director for the Ruth Institute, which is a nonprofit institute looking towards overcoming the difficulties of the sexual revolution. Don, thanks for staying with us.
Don Feder: Well, thank you, Father.
Fr. Jack: Now, as you said, this Democratic graphic winter project that you’re going to begin in the fall. What kind of things are going to be and entail? This is going to be a lot of data gathering, a lot of interviews, a lot of surveys. What is this going to entail?
Don Feder: Well, I think I think the the research has been done, Father. I mean, you can always use more research, I suppose, but the project is going to be more activist. We want to get as many people as possible, especially people in the pro-family, pro-life movement involved with this issue, because everything that we care about is in one way or another, tied to declining fertility.
Fr. Jack: Now, again, when you when we saw the declining fertility, Don, one thing I’d like to clarify this is fertility that’s not declining because of biologic or medical or genetic reasons. This is because largely people are choosing not to have children.
Fr. Jack: That’s correct, Father. Yes, it is. You know, worldwide fertility, that’s the number of children the average woman will have in her lifetime dropped almost in half in the last 60 years. In 1950, again worldwide, it was 4.7 children for the average woman. Last year it was 2.4. So very close to replacement. Replacement is 2.1. And as you point out, Father, it’s not because of any biological reason.
It’s because people are choosing to get married later, not to marry. But more specifically, choosing not to have children.
Fr. Jack: And you would you believe most of this is because of the propaganda that they hear, that we’re just too crowded and the world is just too imperfect and all we were doing it. Why bring a child into this miserable world, huh?
Don Feder: Yeah. Well, I don’t know if you remember, Father, but there was a science fiction film called Soylent Green. Came out in the early 1970s, and the world was so crowded that people were literally sleeping on the stairs of apartment buildings and because they couldn’t find enough food for them, they had turned to cannibalism. Once a week, the government distributed crackers that the people eat.
And of course, unbeknownst to them, these crackers were made from the remains of the deceased. And at the end of the movie, Charlton Heston, who is the star, is running through the streets shouting Soylent Green is people. This is a kind of this is the kind of crud that people have been sold for more than 50 years since the population bombs.
Fr. Jack: And I guess, Don, when I when I listen to this and I think about it, one of the issues it has for me is why does it benefit a group to have less people? You would think in a in a in a culture that’s based on consuming things and on growing things. Because one of the things we’re facing in our country is a terrible problem with what’s called Social Security, because very soon there’s going to be more people on that than there are people paying into it.
And so why do people see such a plus in depopulating the earth? I would think it would be the opposite.
Don Feder: Well, it’s it’s ideology, Father. They’ve been sold a bill of goods. I mean, it’s like communism. Communism has never worked. It can’t work. You could say the same about socialism, but people believe it anyway. And, you know, the same is true with what’s called overpopulation. You know, most most people just you know, they they’re they’re told that there are X million people in America today.
And 20 years ago there were there were X million people. The population is going up. So we’re very shortly going to run out of land, out of resources, out of food. Of course, the opposite is true. But people just don’t think about it that deeply. I think a lot of wealthy people would like to preserve pristine wilderness so they can enjoy it.
You know, they don’t they don’t want their the landscape from their vacation home cluttered up with a lot of people.
Father Jack: Well, it is rather interesting as I watch on the news and I listen to these pundits, oftentimes the ones who are most adamantly pro-abortion themselves are having children and having children right now, but they’re saying everyone should have a right. You know, I’m adamant on the fact that you should have the right to destroy your child. It is a type of classism.
I think it’s a type of of economic classism that they they want to get rid of undesirables. I mean, this is eugenics, again, writ large.
Don Feder: Which which to which takes us back to Margaret Sanger, father.
Father Jack: Yes, it does. And so the areas that are the most populous, I mean, when you think oftentimes I’ll show you pictures of places like Hong Kong in Asia or certain places along the coast, you know, like in New York City, where you have more people there than you do in some small countries. And yeah, okay. Well, those are people that are focused in one area, but that doesn’t mean the world is starving.
It just means people have gone there for a certain reason and they might have they could be given a reason to go someplace else, which would be just as good.
Don Feder: Well, the impetus for the population boom was Paul Ehrlich visiting Calcutta. Okay. Back in the mid 1960s, he went there and he said, of course, people living in the streets, this is terrible. And he took Calcutta and hypothesized it to the entire world. He said very shortly the whole world is going to be like Calcutta, which of course is absurd, but there has never been a good case for overpopulation.
Father Jack: I mean, just taking a picture of the earth from a satellite and seeing areas of concentration, there’s a huge part of this world which is very livable that nobody is living in. And, you know, it is rather ironic, Don, that this is the case. What’s your hope? I mean, your hope is to really begin to activate or bring some activists into this to encourage people to have more children and to see that the children are, again, a blessing and not a burden.
Don Feder: Yes, yes, absolutely, Father. We have to reach people, especially the young, and explain to them that the future of the world, the future of humanity, depends on them. The most important thing they can do in their lifetime, if they’re able, is to have children.
Father Jack: And we would think there’s a normal thing, Don, but we’re not living in normal times. We’ve been speaking with Don Feder of the Ruth Institute about the new demographic winter project launching this fall. Don, where can people find out more about the Ruth Institute?
Well, they can go to our website. It’s ruthinstitute.org And when they go there, if they scroll down the page, they’ll see a number of resource centers. One is a demographic for winter resource center. If they click on that, it will take them take them to this big demographic lunar resource center. And there is a wealth of of data there.
There are studies, research, reports, speeches, interviews, you name it.
Father Jack: Well, thank you so much, Don. We’ll put that up on our show, Notes of Sacred Heart Radio.com. Thanks for being with us today, Don. I hope you have a great weekend.
Don Feder: Thank you for that. I hope you do, too.
About the Ruth Institute
The Ruth Institute is a global non-profit organization, leading an international interfaith coalition to defend the family and build a civilization of love.
Jennifer Roback Morse has a Ph.D. in economics and has taught at Yale and George Mason University. She is the author of The Sexual State and Love and Economics – It Takes a Family to Raise a Village.
To get more information or schedule an interview with Dr. Morse, contact media@ruthinstitute.org.
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