Marriage Is For Bringing Forth Children, Not Buying TVs

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – “From today’s Pile of Prep you’ll find this at The Imaginative Conservative website yesterday, Joseph Pearce, who is the author of one of the latest and best books, a biography of Alexander Solzhenitsyn.  It’s on my reading list.  It’s all too often forgotten in these heady days of socially-engineered change that children are always the bottom-line. Their absence leads to an aging population in the short-term, with all the associated problems that this causes, and will lead in the longer-term, which in hindsight will seem like no time at all, to the complete collapse of our so-called civilized society.”  Check out today’s transcript for the rest…

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  From today’s Pile of Prep you’ll find this at The Imaginative Conservative website yesterday, Joseph Pearce, who is the author of one of the latest and best books, a biography of Alexander Solzhenitsyn.  It’s on my reading list.  I haven’t gotten it yet to read it but I will.  Pearce writes this, “The Silence of the Lambs.”

[reading]

In the historical and often hysterical debate surrounding the legal definition of marriage, there is one crucial class of people whose voice has not been heard and whose fate and future will be affected profoundly by the radical changes being proposed and initiated.

It seems that the whole marriage debate has been concerned with the rights, real and alleged, of adults and has failed to address our responsibility, as adults, to the millions of children who will be impacted by the changes to the law, now and in the future.

Paul Amato of Penn State University is unequivocal in his summary of the negative impact of the breakdown of the traditional family on the healthy development of children:

“Research clearly demonstrates that children growing up with two continuously married parents are less likely than other children to experience a wide range of cognitive, emotional, and social problems, not only during childhood, but also in adulthood.  [private FP-Monthly|FP-Yearly|FP-Yearly-WLK|FP-Yearly-So76]

Although it is not possible to demonstrate that family structure is the cause of these differences, studies that have used a variety of sophisticated statistical methods, including controls for genetic factors, suggest that this is the case. This distinction is even stronger if we focus on children growing up with two happily married biological parents.”

Throughout the entirety of human history, the essential building block of society has been the family. Indeed, until very recently, the very purpose of marriage was inextricably connected to the family. Men and women got married with the expectation of having children. [Mike: Fat chance trying that today, Mr. Pearce.] The future of the married couple, and the future of the wider community of which they were a part, was dependent on the begetting and raising of children.

[end reading]

Mike:  It’s still kind of dependent on that, if you have time, and if you’ve already gotten the second car, the timeshare somewhere in the Carolinas or an exotic island, the third or fourth 60-inch flat panel television, and all the subscriptions to every electronic digital media download site that is humanly possible to have on one computer.  After you’ve gotten all that, then maybe you can have time for kids, not before, after.  Of course, they have to be factored into your retirement.  [mocking] “Mike, you have to have economic considerations.”  Sure, right, because that’s always been foremost and front and center as to why we bring God’s children into this world.  Pearce continues:

[reading]

It’s all too often forgotten in these heady days of socially-engineered change that children are always the bottom-line. Their absence leads to an aging population in the short-term, with all the associated problems that this causes, and will lead in the longer-term, which in hindsight will seem like no time at all, to the complete collapse of our so-called civilized society.

[end reading]

Mike:  Let me just summarize what Mr. Pearce wrote here and tell you how profound of a statement that is.  A couple things jump off the page.  You know this problem that has been created by our malignancy of a government and our corrupt tyrannical, aristocratic form of monarchy that we suffer so mightily under today?  What’s one of those problems that we hear is so prevalent today?  Healthcare is so expensive, right?  Who is it expensive for, Eric?  For which class of people is healthcare most expensive for?

Eric:  I would assume the lower income.

Mike:  You’re thinking age here.

Eric:  Older people.

Mike:  That’s right, older people.  It is more expensive for the elderly.  Would it be easier or more difficult to offset some of the costs required to care for our aged citizens, geezered citizens, our most prized elderly citizens, would it be easier financially or economically speaking or more difficult if instead of two and a half children per set of grandparents there were seven and a half children per set of grandparents?  Audience, what say you?  [mocking] “Mike, we’re just talking pure numbers.  Come on, that’s ridiculous.”  So let’s absolve ourselves of prior responsibility and absolve ourselves of the ability to politically be able to do anything about this and let’s then absolve ourselves from the ability to physically be able to do something about it.  Again, simple mathematical proposition here.  I’m sure some of you eggheads that are listening out there right now are going, [mocking] “I’m gonna write you a letter.  I can prove in a formula that you’re wrong.  It would be harder with more people.”  Yeah, whatever.  Think of it.  Would it be easier or more difficult to raise or care for our elderly, financially speaking — even just with the amount of time that it takes for a family to do so — with two and a half — which is the 3×5 index card New York Times-approved, government-approved recommended lifetime allowance of children — or seven and a half?  That’s what Pearce has basically written here.

And, because we’re barely reproducing at a rate that can reproduce the society we live in, we are actually in danger of extinction ourselves.  2.1 children per fertile female is what is required with today’s mortality indexes to keep our society at nominal levels, meaning it doesn’t go up and not going to go down.  Anything less than 2.1, then the population is going to decrease.  What does that mean?  That means that we will luxuriate ourselves out of existence, that’s what that means.  This has finally dawned on the Europeans that have been doing this for two generations now and have dwindling, shrinking populations, dwindling and shrinking tax bases, are mired in debt because there are not enough people that are working to repay what was already consumed.  We are going to be in that exact same situation.  The higher the debt gets, the fewer people there are that are able to work because we haven’t created them.  We won’t create them, as a matter of fact.  We refuse.  We’d rather create them and watch Emily go off into a clinic and watch her kill her baby on a videotape.  The fundamental function of civilized society is what?  Children.  That’s our function.  Bring the children into this world, save their souls, make them a path to Heaven, and then hopefully they will repeat the process.  This makes God very happy.  It makes better civilizations, too.  That’s what Pearce has written about here.  It’s a very touching essay, and it’s not very long.

[reading]

This is not to be unnecessarily alarmist. We are already living in a society that has been living beyond its means for many years. The debt-burden which weighs heavily on the global economy demands continuous economic growth. It does not take a genius to work out that a shrinking and aging population cannot sustain sufficient levels of demand to meet the demands of a global economy addicted to exponential growth. A shrinking market must inevitably mean the end of such growth and a possible cataclysmic global meltdown.

In truth, the present marriage debate would not have been possible if we had not already subverted and abandoned the time-honoured and time-tested presumption that marriage existed for the purpose of having children. Marriage has never been an end or thing in itself. It has always been a servant of the family, the means by which the desired end of giving birth to future generations is achieved in the most socially cohesive and healthy way.

[end reading]

Mike:  No, Mr. Pearce, marriage is all about acquiring tax benefits so that the State will lay off of you when it comes time for me to file.  That’s what it’s all about.  That’s what we’ve made it about, right?  Yet try and see what kind of an agreement on this point that you can get in popular, polite society these days.  It’s not a very popular point of view.  I think that we hazard not making any popular point of view at our own peril.  Even if I were just a mathematician, I would be able to go: Uh, this is probably not very smart.  The numbers aren’t in our favor.  As a matter of fact, if you want to read a good book on the subject, I’ll recommend one to you.  It’s in the Red Pill Reading Suggestions at the bottom of any post at MikeChurch.com.  It’s a set of Amazon links, books that I’ve recommended. [/private]

It’s called America Alone written by Mark Steyn back in 2006.  Steyn does the numbers on what I just finished talking about.  He doesn’t get into the ecclesiastical part of it, which I think is also necessary.  The fact that we are so reticent to offend anyone by, [mocking] “We don’t talk about religiosity in public anymore.  It offends people.  All it does it get people in fights.”  That’s because people are arrogant and ignorant.  Arrogance and ignorance of the Almighty is not going to get you very far in the afterlife.  [mocking] “I don’t believe in the afterlife.”  Okay, fine.  Good luck with that and it makes perfect sense as to why you don’t see any problem with not creating the next generation and having willy-nilly abortions and all the other things we talk about here on this show, and having marriage acquired by or meted out by edict of law and not by religious sacrament or religious sacred ceremony by oath and affirmation.  That makes total sense.  Pearce concludes:

[reading]

Make no mistake, children will be the biggest losers in the headlong abandonment of traditional marriage and the traditional family. Like lambs to the slaughter, future generations of children are set to be sacrificed on the altar erected to the god of sexual gratification. They are the voiceless victims, screaming in the vacuum of a loveless society. Whether we know it or not, or whether we acknowledge it or not, we stand condemned by the silence of the lambs.

[end reading]

End Mike Church Show Transcript