Russia fancies itself a superpower. After losing all of its imperial satellites after the collapse of the USSR, its government still holds on to some romantic notion of Russian importance in the world. Just ask the Georgians.
However, there is just one really big problem. You can't be a superpower without people. You need people to man your economy, hold your cities, spread your culture and form your armies. China has, for now, 1.3 billion people. The US has some 300 million people. Russia, with a territory at least twice as large as the US, has 148 million.
Now, 148 million is a big number. Only, its kinda puny when you look at all the territory this people will have to defend. Add that to the fact that its not a very healthy 148 million. Its a population that is not only small for its territorial size, it is also a population that is declining due to high mortality rates and extremely low fertility rates. This is no way for a superpower to be.
There are many culprits here, but one cannot help but point to one very large elephant taking a dump in the middle of the living room. Russia has the largest number of abortions in the world. According to Wikipedia (I'd link to the source article, but its in Cyrillic):
In 2001, 1,320,000 children were born in Russia, while 1,800,000 abortions were performed. In 2005, 1,600,000 abortions were registered in Russia.
More people are being killed in the womb than were being born. It is a most glaring example of an entire culture slowly and painfully committing seppuku. They are addressing the problem now, with limited efforts. But, one Russian city, Novorossiysk, decided that, for a week, it was going to go all out and ban abortion altogether.
A Russian city located in the southern part of the nation near the Black Sea is starting a campaign called a "Week Without Abortions." The idea is to temporarily prohibit abortions in the city and encourage couples to have children in an effort to combat the growing underpopulation problem.
To me, this sounds like a good idea. Only, it does not go far enough. Why not just ban the abomination entirely? What will you do after a week? Go back to staring your obsolescence in the face?
If only the entire country saw the sense behind the act.
For every child that a family has after the first, the Russian government pays parents the equivalent of $9,200. There's even a "National Day of Conception." None of it seems to be working.
Of course. $9,200 will not cover insurance, education and various other miscellaneous expenses. Any such incentive program must be accompanied by extremely substantial tax breaks, school vouchers, workplace concessions and a whole plethora of reforms just to make raising a kid viable for everybody not rolling in cash. Second, no carrot ought to come without a stick. Ban abortions. Even a monster like Stalin saw the sense in it. Do not frame abortion as "choice", that wonderfully Orwellian lie that the West has been using to rationalize a genocide. The "choice" to wantonly kill must not exist, for far too many men and women would choose to destroy themselves and others to fulfill their own base desires. (Check out Captain Ahab...)
Finally, the cultural problem must be addressed. The legal solutions are all so much bandage. One must strike at the heart of the cancer. What in Russian culture has bred so much hopelessness that women go against their natural maternal instincts and kill their own children? Some of these women have had over 20 abortions over the course of a lifetime. What turns mothers into the destroyers of their own children? And, where the hell are the men?
I suspect that at the heart of it all, Solzhenitsyn's diagnosis is correct. These people have forgotten God. That is probably the single deadliest blow emanating from the legacy of Communism. Communism robs people of God. Communism robs people of hope.
It must also be noted that abortion is widely used in Russia and other former Soviet bloc countries as a means of birth control.
It is a very small step from contraception and birth control to abortion, no matter the lies forwarded by Rep. Lagman's best apologists. And if that ass has his way, we will be making the same deal with the devil the Russians made.
Only, we won't even get to afford pretensions to superpower.
No comments:
Post a Comment