{"id":149310,"date":"2025-08-29T13:56:39","date_gmt":"2025-08-29T18:56:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldtribune.com\/?p=149201"},"modified":"2025-09-11T14:37:03","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T14:37:03","slug":"post-christian-advanced-civilization-is-dying-off-east-and-west","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldtribune.com\/2025\/post-christian-advanced-civilization-is-dying-off-east-and-west\/","title":{"rendered":"Post-Christian advanced civilization is dying off, East and West"},"content":{"rendered":"

Special to WorldTribune.com<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Stephen<\/p>\n

By<\/em><\/span> <\/em> Stephen Moore<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, August 29, 2025<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Let’s start with a very simple truism: You can’t have prosperity without people.<\/p>\n

Human beings are the most valuable resource, because it is human ingenuity that creates, captures and cultivates all other resources.<\/p>\n

We as human beings are the custodians and protectors of the planet, not the destroyers of the planet (as the radical environmentalists would have you believe). The richer and more technologically advanced we become, the more likely we are to avert a catastrophic event like a giant meteor crashing into the planet and destroying all life.<\/p>\n

\"\"
‘God blessed them and said to them, \u201cBe fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.’<\/em> \u2014 Genesis 1:28<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Which brings us to a potentially ruinous trend: Many countries are literally running out of people.<\/p>\n

In Europe births have fallen below deaths \u2014 which is a terrifying glimpse into the future of a new dark age of the Western world.<\/p>\n

Unless birth rates start rising \u2014 and quickly \u2014 Europeans are becoming extinct.<\/p>\n

Negative population growth is a sure killer of prosperity \u2014 and human flourishing. It’s also contrary to Christianity and most other religions, which instruct us to “be fruitful and multiply.”<\/p>\n

It’s not just Europe. Japan and Korea will cut their populations in half over the next 80 years if they don’t start moving away from one-child-per-couple rates of propagating.<\/p>\n

Why are rich countries depopulating the planet?<\/p>\n

For 60 years, people like Paul Ehrlich (“The Population Bomb”) and governments around the world \u2014 including our own \u2014 warned that we all had a moral obligation to save the planet by having fewer babies.<\/p>\n

There were periods of forced abortions, forced sterilizations, forced birth control and, in advanced nations like the U.S., a cultural sneering at families with four or more kids.<\/p>\n

That mendacious propaganda campaign worked all too well \u2014 and look what it has wrought.<\/p>\n

There are other explanations. As we have gotten richer \u2014 and especially as women’s earnings have risen \u2014 the “cost” of having a child in terms of lost income has risen. I’m NOT suggesting that women should be paid less!<\/p>\n

People are marrying both at lower rates and later in life, so the median year for a woman to have a child keeps rising \u2014 leaving fewer fertility years left for multiple children.<\/p>\n

Religiosity has declined somewhat in our more secular me-first society. That’s sad because childless couples tend to be less happy. And why have kids if you don’t believe there is a divine reason we were put on this planet?<\/p>\n

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For 60 years, people like Paul Ehrlich (“The Population Bomb”) and governments around the world \u2014 including our own \u2014 warned that we all had a moral obligation to save the planet by having fewer babies. <\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n

The solutions to this problem aren’t obvious. Pronatalist government policies \u2014 like paying people to have kids and offering free child care \u2014 have had spotty levels of success.<\/p>\n

The U.S. has delayed the crisis happening in Europe and much of Asia through immigration of young workers. Not only do immigrants increase the population, but they tend to have more kids than native-born Americans.<\/p>\n

But even with immigration, we in America have an obvious aging problem.<\/p>\n

Let’s start with one simple step: celebrating as a society the virtues and self-sacrifice of motherhood. Our schools and our teachers and our clergy and our political leaders need to keep pushing the message that the greatest contribution men and women can give to saving our species is to have more kids \u2014 as soon as possible.<\/p>\n

Stephen Moore is a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a former senior economic advisor to President Donald Trump. His latest book is: “Govzilla: How the Relentless Growth of Government Is Devouring Our Economy.”<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Special to WorldTribune.com By Stephen Moore, August 29, 2025 Let’s start with a very simple truism: You can’t have prosperity without people. Human beings are the most valuable resource, because it is human ingenuity that creates, captures and cultivates all other resources. We as human beings are the custodians and protectors of the planet, not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":149618,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54,55,50,92,27,69,5],"tags":[580,581],"class_list":["post-149310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columnists","category-commentary","category-life","category-stephen-moore","category-u-s-culture","category-u-s-economy","category-world-tribune","tag-east-and-west","tag-post-christian-advanced-civilization-is-dying-off","last_archivepost"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldtribune.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldtribune.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldtribune.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldtribune.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldtribune.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149310"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/worldtribune.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149310\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":149620,"href":"https:\/\/worldtribune.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149310\/revisions\/149620"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldtribune.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldtribune.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldtribune.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldtribune.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}