Reagan made some mistakes. One was withdrawal of troops from Beirut when the marine baracks was bombed. Perhaps he never should have put them there to begin with, but he gave the impression that we could be turned by such attacks. The impression stuck.
As to immigration, it may well be that the birth rate in the United States would not be above the replacement rate were it not for illegal immigration. I haven’t seen any hard statistics; however, I can tell you that when Social Security started out, there were 17 people paying in for every person receiving. Now it’s only 3 or 4 to 1.
That’s a problem.
Someone once made a film documentary called Demographic Winter. The jist is that post-industrial liberal societies do not reproduce at a rate that can sustain their social welfare networks. When the ratio of older persons to younger persons gets high enough, it has a debilitating effect on the economy and quality of life.
We will see if the producers of Demographic Winter were right . . . Oops – – of course – – we’re seeing it today in Europe.
The documentary is a bit ominous. It seems that demographers and social scientists can see the problem developing – – some say it may be too late to solve it – – but the cultural choices we would have to make to fix it are unthinkable to most people across the political spectrum.
So, I don’t have a problem with legal or illegal immigration – – except to the extent that some percentage of the immigrants commit violent crimes or smuggle drugs.
Legalize them and tax them. It’s not like we’re producing that many babies.
]]>Communism did not severely wound everything. “Healthy tissue” in the survivors were family life and education. Education was definitely valued more than professional sports. However, the healthy parts started to rapidly decompose under the influence of the “free” world, after the fall of Communism.
]]>For a sampling of articles and commentaries highlighting the many disturbing similarities, see:
Totalitarian Democrats
http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/blog/category/totalitarian-democrats/