We should all agree that the earth is round, up is up and Denmark has the best Scandinavian football team. Everything else should be up for debate. If I find an apparent nearly uniform agreement on any other subject, I see nothing commendable, but simply a democracy in trouble. (Who would think Saddam’s 100% documents a healthy democracy?)
Them darn foreigners huh? Of course, as always, the first rule should be: look to yourself.
It was you who brought in the Nazis. And the only interesting thing about Nazis (as well as other political motivated violence – both of which you seem to have a great deal more of in Sweden than the rest of Scandinavia) is what drives them to such extremities. Some of course are just born stupid, however it is my opinion that a certain segment of them is driven there by frustration at not being heard or given opportunity to voice otherwise more respectable views, or indeed by being demonized as Nazis for opinions which are not in themselves Nazi. Which ties in nicely with your last paragraph.
I see you have broadened your categories a bit stone. Very good of you to consider that not everybody you disagree with must necessarily be Nazis, that they could also be merely racist or isolationist or just plain old idiots. Such a remarkable open mind is of course the ideal place to start a debate from.
What does that mean, isn’t that a truism?
What some places in the world is facing is not merely a decrease but a precipitous fall – a thing I find highly disturbing far beyond the trouble with financing a pensioner boom, yet you seem to brush it away as a simple matter of personal choice. And of course, on the bottom line it is just personal choice, no one is advocating forcing women to have more children, however noting is ever done in isolation. Perhaps we should contemplate whether we have created a society which is, if not directly hostile to, then at least has precious little time for children, put little value on them and many expenses (that by all fairness perhaps should be carried by society as a whole). Or that, for many, unduly influenced by expectations, demands and values fostered by society, it’s not a matter of choice, or only a very unhappy choice. Or indeed that many may find that while they now have the option to do a whole lot of other stuff, the option for family and children seem strangely closed or beyond reach (I know a few of these last ones).
By this I take it you think fewer people will make us richer. This however I find a very debatable point. Wealth in modern world is not based on natural resources, but on knowledge and manufacturing. More natural resources per capita will not makes us discernable richer, fewer people (and mental resources) will make us significant poorer.
This is not an important point for me, I introduced it only as a flimsy side note. But I was just going with the “educated women gets fewer children” thing, and I made the, wrong perhaps but not indefensible, assumption that educated women tends to be more feministic than the general populace. Anyway it is a sad, but inescapable fact that social inheritance is very hard to break free from – uneducated mothers would tend to raise uneducated children. This is not necessarily a problem since fathers seem have children on the opposite formulae; the higher the education the more children. Moreover, what better role model for a daughter than her mother, except that the mother is more likely than not to be uneducated. As for the staying home and baking cookies; I’ve noticed this choice has lately been more widely accepted by feminists – this has far from always been the case.
