(Picture courtesy of Bethany Mandel and Common Sense)
Where else on mainstream media other than on Bari Weiss’ Common Sense would one find a post like this. I may be jumping the gun including Weiss’ Substack creation in the deeply problematic category that is MSM, but if it is not there already, helping clean that particular swamp, it soon will be. What is coming through to us on Common Sense and on her Honestly podcast is going to play a big part in helping the world to return to sanity and , well, common sense.
I was in a somewhat dark mood this morning when I opened my email. At the top of a too-packed inbox was the link to this beautiful – but not untinged with some sadness – personal post from a young mother, Bethany Mandel. Its intriguing headline drove me straight into it, ‘I Never Wanted Kids. Number Six Is Due In a Few Months’. If it were a novel we would be reading it as an allegory about hope, resilience and redemption – and the grace of God. But is is not a novel, it is about real flesh and blood humanity and the truth that the meaning of life is there, in life, for all to see.
The conclusing paragraphs (following) of Bethany’s post put her story in a universal context. Read the entire post to feel the wisdom and the joy which pulses through every line.
Our friends and family have stopped asking us if we’re done. To be fair, we said we were after numbers four and five. Our kids are already petitioning for a lucky number seven. Around the country and around the world, people are having fewer children, if they’re having any at all. The result of this population catastrophe is a hot topic among sociologists and experts.
The anti-natalists run a wicked good PR game. Even among mothers, the “wine mom” content is what rules social media: with kids portrayed as tiny dictators and mothers feeling the need to booze or hide in bathrooms in order to make it on a day-to-day, hour-to-hour basis. There are any number of arguments to be made against procreation, like that babies accelerate us to an environmental doomsday by using up our finite resources now and filling our landfills with diapers that take centuries to break down. But those arguing for protecting the Earth by not making babies are just existing on Earth, not living in it.
I’m not trying to single handedly repopulate the Earth over here. Having kids, especially lots of them, is now counter-cultural; it’s so far outside the norm that I’m used to random strangers commenting every time we’re all out in public. But it’s the most fulfilling expression of hope and belief in the future. I like to think that, by making not just one or two babies, but by bringing into the world a whole brood, we are doing our part to inject more vitality into it.
Read this entire life affirming Common Sense post here.
Nearly two hundred years ago, in the aftermath of what came to be known as the Peterloo massacre, Britain’s close shave with murderous revolution and mayhem, these lines of poetry were penned by Percy Bysshe Shelley.
I met Murder on the way –
He had a mask like Castlereagh –
Very smooth he looked, yet grim;
Seven blood-hounds followed him.
On the 16th of August 1819 the huge open area around what’s now St. Peter’s Square, Manchester, played host to an outrage against over 60,000 peaceful pro-democracy and anti-poverty protesters. An estimated 18 people, including a woman and a child, died from saber cuts and trampling. Over 700 men, women and children received extremely serious injuries.
The Massacre occurred during a period of immense political tension and mass protests. Fewer than 2% of the population had the vote, and hunger was rife with the disastrous corn laws making bread unaffordable. The elites of the time had their own views of how the world should be and ordinary people could and should have no say in the matter.
Move on another 150 years or so and another elite forces its will on a people.
On Jan. 22, 1973, the Supreme Court of the United States, by a 7-2 majority, discovered a sweeping constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy and struck down abortion laws across the country. Within five years, the number of abortions in America annually climbed above a million, where it would remain for 20 years.
To be pro-life, to regard abortion as obviously a form of murder and all those millions of dead unborn as its nameless victims, is to believe that the Roe v. Wade decision was a moment of deep moral rupture in the history of the republic.
These are the words of New York Times columnist, Ross Douthat, written in another context but in any context a valid description and judgement on what America has done to itself.
We are a long way from 1819 now, but we hope that our response to murder is no less one of outrage than it was for Shelley.
Now, not satisfied with perpetrating a “deep moral rupture in the history of the republic”, the forces of “progressive individualism” in America and its Western Allies – predominantly Great Britain and the European Union, with their captive bureaucracy at the United Nations, want to spread this contagion into the Third World. Their first big target is the continent of Africa. A modern Shelley might now write;
I met Murder on the way –
He had a mask like UNFPA –
Very smooth he looked, yet grim;
Seven blood-hounds followed him.
A few years ago a conference took place in Abuja, the capital of Nigeria. This one conference attracted 11 very wealthy, and mostly western sponsors — the UK Department for International Development, United States Agency for International Development, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, UNFPA – United Nations Population Fund, among them.
Any one of them could have single-handedly sponsored a conference in any part of the world. Why did 11 of these giants gather for one little conference in Nigeria. This conference was not convened out of great necessity and it was not conceived in Nigeria. Rather it was convened at the behest of what many now see as the forces of cultural imperialism. It was conceived in the hearts of powerful western social engineers who are the same people who are promoting abortion around the world.
Alongside these sponsors were also about 25 powerful organizations listed as the “corporate partners/planning committee” of the conference. These included major organizations well known in Europe and America for their single-minded radical pro-abortion and anti-life stance. These included International Planned Parenthood Federation, Marie Stopes International and Ipas – an international non-profit organization with a “mission to reduce maternal deaths and injuries due to unsafe abortion and to increase women’s ability to exercise their sexual and reproductive rights.”
Yes, all of them gathered in Abuja to nudge and prod Nigeria toward “family planning.”
American billionaire, Melinda Gates, and other Western philanthropists are now pouring astronomical amounts of money into projects that, at their roots, will drastically reduce the fertility in Africa. Abortion legislative proposals have been introduced throughout Africa, and stringent population control measures are being strongly proposed around the continent under the influence of these powerful Western agencies.
In response to all this, when the Gates Foundation moved from its initial mission of targeting malaria, Nigerian-born Obianuju Ekeocha wrote an open letter to Melinda Gates opposing this initiative. Her argument was that the underlying attitude towards human sexuality and life inherent in these programmes will “undoubtedly start to erode and poison the moral sexual ethics that have been woven into our societal DNA by our faith”.
Obianuju Ekeocha is a 32-year-old Nigerian woman who for the past six years has been living and working as a biomedical scientist in Canterbury, England. Most of her family and many friends still live in Nigeria.
Ekeocha has set up an organization, Culture of Life Africa, which is now one of the front-line defences for the continent in the face of this new colonisation, this 21st century version of the old 19th century imperialist “scramble for Africa”.
Speaking at a conference in Dublin, Ireland, earlier this week, she said she was inspired to write an open letter to Melinda Gates after learning of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s move to inject $4.6 billion worth of contraceptive drugs and devices into her homeland.
The moment these huge amounts of contraceptive drugs and devices are injected into the roots of our society, she said, they will undoubtedly start to erode and poison the moral sexual ethics that have been woven into our societal DNA by our faith. Even at a glance, anyone can see that the unlimited and easy availability of contraceptives in Africa will surely increase infidelity and sexual promiscuity as sex is presented by this multi-billion dollar project as a casual pleasure sport that can indeed come with no strings – or babies – attached. Think of the exponential spread of HIV and other STDs as men and women with abundant access to contraceptives take up multiple, concurrent sex partners.
And of course there are bound to be inconsistencies and failures in the use of these drugs and devices, so health complications could result; one of which is unintended abortion. Add also other health risks such as cancer, blood clots, etc. Where Europe and America have their well-oiled health care system, Ekeocha points out, “a woman in Africa with a contraception-induced blood clot does not have access to emergency response, an ambulance or a paramedic. No, she dies.”
“I see this $4.6 billion buying us misery. I see it buying us unfaithful husbands. I see it buying us streets devoid of the innocent chatter of children. I see it buying us disease and untimely death. I see it buying us a retirement without the tender loving care of our children.”
What Africa does need, she continued in her letter, suggesting that The Gates Foundation could provide for these, are:
– Good healthcare systems (especially prenatal, neonatal and paediatric care).
– Food programs for young children.
– Good higher education opportunities
– Chastity programs
– Support for micro-business opportunities for women
– Fortify already established NGOs that are aimed at protecting women from sex-trafficking, prostitution, forced marriage, child labour, domestic violence, sex crimes, etc.
Addressing Melinda she says, $4.6 billion dollars can indeed be your legacy to Africa and other poor parts of the world. But let it be a legacy that leads life, love and laughter into the world in need.
“The worst part is that no one in Africa (meaning the average African woman or man) knows that Melinda is about to bequeath us her ‘legacy’ which can and most probably will stifle love and life in our continent,” she said.
With reference to that aforementioned Abuja conference Ekeocha says “Family Planning” is a term that is (or should be) self-explanatory. It should mean the planning of one’s family. ”It should be a term that by default points to married couples who have a family to plan. It should be family-centred and it should connote self-mastery and self-discipline (for every good plan should undergirded by discipline).
“Family planning should be a good, healthy, pure and beautiful concept. Couples, guided by the spirit of openness to love and life, can plan their family together while understanding that any life conceived by their union is a gift of enormous value. Family planning should be natural and healthy for both husband and wife. It should not be destructive or detrimental to the health of mind and body, as many if not most of the artificial contraception available is.”
She warns that if Nigeria and other African nations do not wake up now, “we will surely fall off a cultural cliff and suffer the destruction of marriage and family life.
“We may be poor but we have our dignity. So let us not fail or fall for what the 21st century cultural imperialists have surreptitiously labelled “family planning” or falsely imagined to be the most ‘unmet need’ of Africa.
Ekeocha speaking to the United Nations and appealing for respect for Africa’s nations and their people.
There is a very interesting post in MercatorNet’s Demography is Destiny blog again today. It focuses on a generally uncritical review in The Guardian of a new book by that famous doomsayer from the Sixties, Paul Ehrlich.
Ehrlich was described by many as alarmist in the 1970s but was taken seriously by at least as many more. He now says most of his predictions have proved correct…‘Most of the predictions [in Population Bomb] have proved correct’ The Guardian reports.
Really? The Daily Telegraph calls that particular bluff in its look at some of his predictions. There, on April 26,Tom Chivers gives us a taste of their accuracy:
“1) “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate,” he said. He predicted four billion deaths, including 65 million Americans.
What actually happened: Since Ehrlich wrote, the population has more than doubled to seven billion – but the amount of food per head has gone up by more than 25 per cent. Of course there are famines, but the death rate has gone down. I don’t think a significant number of Americans have starved.
2) “The train of events leading to the dissolution of India as a viable nation is already in motion.” India was doomed, and should be left to die in a “triage” system that would concentrate resources on those places that can be saved.
What actually happened: The Green Revolution, a series of technological and agrarian advances led by a man called Norman Borlaug, transformed our ability to produce food. These techniques were introduced to India by one Prof Monkombu Swaminathan. “They [Ehrlich, and Paul and William Paddock, authors of Famine: 1975!] said Indians, and others, were like sheep going to the slaughterhouse. They’ll all die,” Swaminathan told Gardner in an interview. But thanks to Borlaug, Swaminathan, and human ingenuity, India is now one of the few countries with a booming economy, and is a net exporter, rather than recipient, of food aid. But if Ehrlich’s and the Paddocks’ advice had been followed, there could have been tens of millions of deaths, says Swaminathan.
3) “By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people … If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.”
What actually happened: I’m not hungry. I just ate. Are you hungry? Were you hungry in 2000, especially? Does England exist?”
What is wrong with us? How do these people get away with it?
Garvan Hill 