Incredible Shrinking Morals

The Incredible Shrinking Morals

By John Taylor; 2006 October 16

My father now subscribes to MacLean’s, Canada's Newsmagazine. The quality and interest of its writing has improved over the past year or two. As a result, I have been reading it regularly. Two articles in particular are worth discussing today. One is "The Incredible Shrinking Dad, An old debate finds a new twist: fathers may not be essential after all," by Lianne George (MacLean’s, Sept. 25, 2006, p. 62) and the second is "The New World Order," by Mark Steyn (Macleans, October 23, 2006, p. 30).

The Shrinking Dad article is a discussion of a documentary film screened at this year's Toronto Film Festival called Shot in the Dark, the story of Mark Grenier's search for his absentee father. This young man was raised by his mother, his father being permanently estranged from her. This of course is increasingly common for as the article notes the number of single parent families (almost always single mothers, not fathers) has gone from ten percent to well over thirty percent of households in the past three decades. In light of Grenier's success in life, the question arises, did he need a father?

In his documentary, Grenier notices his loss of a father growing up and decides to look his up. Eventually he finds this missing but not missed father and befreinds him. In the end he says that he now thinks of him not as a parent but as "just a guy." The writer of the article wonders whether fathers are as necessary as once was thought. Mid-Twentieth Century a male role modeler in the house was thought essential to a boy's growing up sane and well adjusted. Today shrinks are beginning to have doubts about that. Too many boys from these single parent households are growing up just fine thanks without a Dad for such psychological arguments to be taken very seriously anymore.

It seems that parenting manuals of the 17th Century were addressed not to mothers but exclusively to fathers. Raising children was father's responsibility. Today in Western culture child rearing has become a primarily female concern. Men are men, not fathers first. I read that and wonder: perhaps that is so, but what about the slightly longer term? What kind of fathers are these fatherless boys growing up to become? Oh yeah, I forgot, fathers do not matter in the first place, so who cares what kind of fathers they grow up as? Fathers are expendable. Worst comes to worst males can just have fun impregnating females and happily rush back to their sports and video games. Slam dunk, men are happy, mothers have a free hand in raising their children without bothering about those aggressive, abusive males. Everybody wins.

New World Order, our second article, is an antidote to the delusion infused in the first article. It is an excerpt from Mark Steyn's just released book of that title. His thesis is that 9-11 was not an aberration; it was a wake-up call to a future that belongs to Muslims. He has a conservative ax to grind, it is true. He believes that big government is inherently bad because it discourages people from taking responsibility. That may be the case, but the excerpt chosen by McLeans is all about demographics and the rising giant of oppressive, scary Islam. I recommend reading it for yourself, but my perspective here is on how his demographics is all that matters these impacts on fatherhood, as explained away in the Shrinking Father article. The rise to prominence of Muslims in Europe offers the perfect response to the question raised in Shrinking Father: "Who needs fathers?" Answer: any culture that wants to survive needs fathers.

Stayn's thesis is perfectly summed up by a statement he cites at the very end of the excerpt, by a Norwegian Imam, one Mullah Krekar, who speaking for Muslims and addressing the prime movers of the Shrinking Dad society, that is, Europeans, said,

"We are the ones who will change you. Just look at the development within Europe, where the number of Muslims is expanding like mosquitoes. Every Western woman in the EU is producing an average of 1.4 children. Every Muslim woman in the same countries is producing 3.5 children. ... Our way of thinking will prove more powerful than yours."

Steyn sees Europe, enlightened as it is in cooperative social policy, as moribund, ripe for takeover, because it is simply failing to reproduce, almost as much as Japan, which is the extreme case. He uses a beautiful illustration. So few babies are being born in Japan that one toy company decided to keep busy by trying to market dolls to childless seniors. Not having had the experience of raising their own children the company reasoned that they might like to pretend that they have a "grandchild" baby to tell the stories of their lives to. As my daughter Silvie always says, "That is just sad." Yes, "that is just sad" is a catch phrase for tweenies now, but really, that is just sad. All the energy, history and hard won experience of a culture wasted by small families, and now corporations cashing in on the death pangs by selling dolls to oldsters. Call it the shrinking grandpa -- and shrinking grandma too. That is really, really sad.

This is happening in every "developed" (read: corrupt) country. Older, less than vigorous cultures everywhere are literally being smothered out by prolific minorities from poor countries, and in almost every case Steyn implies (but does not out and say) the corrupt ones are white and the up and coming ones are brown and Muslim.

Why is this happening?

Islam, like other traditional monotheistic religions, encourages a patriarchal family. Whatever you may say about patriarchy, it is the most efficient baby producer ever invented. Women specialize as mothers, fathers specialize as producers and supporters, and the number of children brought successfully to adulthood is maximized. Patriarchy has fed cannons and war machines, it has been the engine of imperialist nations and empires for millennia. Patriarchy swells armies like nothing else. This is nothing new.

The fact is that patriarchal (or if you happen to be a Baha'i, patrinomial) sexual morality works, it produces, and other systems fall by the wayside. They may be nice, they may be evil, but it does not matter. They are snuffed out anyway. Patriarchal sexual morality is a set of rules and laws designed to support large, growing families. And as Steyn makes clear, demographics is all that matters in the long run, in the reach of history. It is the sole measure, long term, of a culture or religion's ability to reproduce, thrive, go forth and multiply. This is what wins wars and struggles between peoples, violent or otherwise.

The implication? Demographics is the obvious but forgotten factor in ethics. Your Sodoms and your Gommorrahs may thrive for a decade or two, they may seem enlightened and accepting of the broad diversity of forms of human sexual expression, but they snuff themselves out. They do not, they cannot last. Nothing else matters but demographics. In a time when liberal societies like Canada are switching social supports over to same-sex unions, a form of marriage that is sterile by definition, demographics are the last thing on peoples' minds. Are we mad?

The fact is that there is only one consideration in politics that is legitimate and worthy of serious, continuous consideration, demographics. Conversely, in anything but personal, selfish, short term matters, nothing makes a difference but sexual morality, the set of habits, laws and rules that allow for optimum expansion in numbers of children born to a family. Stasis, two children per couple does not cut it. It spells stasis, falling behind growing, vigorous, vital, and to use the operative word here, virile cultures. Virile means putting men to the yoke, putting them at the head of the family, making them take full responsibility for family planning. A culture that puts men out to pasture playing video games and obsessing on sports is not going to survive, it will cut off half of its human potential. Westerners look at the suppression of women in oppressive Muslim countries, the loss of half the population, but here we lose half too, we waste our men. We sell them off to activities that, whatever their merit, do not contribute to the family, to the continuance of society into the future. Sooner or later a society that does not make use of both men and women will be overwhelmed. It is already happening if we but take the trouble to look.

This morality should be taught in primary school, and earlier, if we want our highest ideals, values and principles to continue into the future. But what interests me is where God fits in. I want to end this with an excerpt from Grotius's On Law of War and Peace, section XLV, a seminal work in the history of political ideas. Here Grotius addresses the crux, the place where the basics of monotheistic belief fit into and vivify patrinomial sexual morality,

"But to take a closer view of the subject, we must observe that true religion, which is the same at all periods of time, rests upon four evident and universally acknowledged truths. The first of which is the being and unity of God, -- the second, that God is not any of the things, that can be seen, but of a nature too sublime to be the object of human conception, or of human sight, -the third is, that with the eye of his providence he regards the events of this world, and regulates them with the most equitable and unerring judgments, -- the fourth is, that he is the creator of all things, except himself.

"And these four truths are unfolded and laid down in an equal number of commandments, the first of which plainly declares the unity of God -- the second forbids any representation, by painting or image, to be made of that being, who is invisible to mortal eye. Tacitus bears testimony to the spiritual nature of the Jewish religion: for he says, that "the Jews have nothing but a mental conception of one God, and they look upon every attempt to represent him under the appearance of human form, as a profanation of his heavenly nature."

"From the third commandment we deduce his knowledge of all human transactions, even of our very thoughts; an omniscience upon which the obligation and sanctity of oaths is founded, for God is a witness even of the secret designs of the heart, so that every solemn oath is an appeal to his justice and his power, for the vindication of truth, and the punishment of falsehood.

"The fourth commandment presents us with an account of the creation of the world, to commemorate which God appointed the Sabbath, commanding it to be observed with a degree of reverence above every other sacred institution. For the violation of any other rites, such as those respecting forbidden meats, was left to the discretionary punishment of the law: but offences against the Sabbath were capital; because, considering the nature and design of its origin, such contempt implied a disbelief, that the world was created by God.

"Now the creation of the world by God affords a tacit proof of his goodness, wisdom, eternity and power: and the effect of this contemplative knowledge is the offering of honour, love, worship and obedience to God. So that Aristotle says that the man who denies that God ought to be honoured, or parents loved should be taught to renounce his error, not by reasoning, but by punishment. And, in another place, he observes that some actions are proper on certain occasions, but reverence for the majesty of God is requisite at all times, and in all places."