Also, I should have clarified that when I said “affluence”, I meant something more like the “pursuit of affluence”. In other words, having children in the richer countries is not perceived as adding to someone’s standard of living like it used to (“I have 10 cows and six sons. I am rich!”), so people are saving money by having fewer children.

When it costs $250K to raise a child to 18, many folks would rather save it for retirement for a better life or an earlier start. I agree that it’s not good long term.

To really fix the problem, we need to: (a) disabuse people of the notion that it costs $250K MORE to raise a child. It doesn’t. And (b) change our “culture” so that rather than using money as our “scorecard”, we get back to using relationships and family as the measure of affluence.

I don’t, frankly, know how to do that, but would like to figure it out.

Well then, Sanity, the White House is spelling it wrong.

Anyway, your point is a good one, that “Northern European PEOPLE are dying out.” However, attributing it to wealth is, perhaps, valid on a larger scale, but not on a smaller. If you read the article on Japan that I cited, it blames the poor economy for the lower birth rate. (I will undertake to compare the U.S. birth rates to economic growth — something for a later post.) At the same time, you are correct that poorer nations have higher birth rates.

We have seen a tremendous change in our economy over the last generation. (This is also mentioned in the Japan article.) Far more women are working, and thereby chosing, through birth control and abortion, not to have as many children. These options are not so readily available and affordable in poorer nations.

I have been to Tokyo. (東京へ行きました。) Yes, they do speak English. Our economic dominance over the last century has helped to spread the language, and other parts of our culture, around the globe. The Roman Empire spread that culture throughout the known world 2000 years ago. I suppose that is some comfort.

“If you don’t want Western Europeans to die out, have more kids.”

I have five. We are getting a little old to have more. Even if I had many children (a Palestinian friend down the street has 17), I am but one man. Many people must change their thinking about having chilren before the pattern will be reversed.

Jack, it was a good try, and I even agree with you up to a certain point. But (as usual) you’re confused (and so, wrong). The issue isn’t the definition of “Western”, but focusing on the word “culture”.

Northern European PEOPLE are dying out. Those that can trace a majority of ancestry back to Northern Europe (within a few generations) appears to be trending downward. Japanese people are also heading in the same direction. The primary reason seems to be that affluence (for people in rich countries) is inversely proportional to the number of children, so people are having fewer children, but protecting each child far more than in the past (bike helmets, mandated vaccinations, etc.).

However, affluence in poorer countries seems to be proportional to the number of children (working the field, etc.) so they have more of them.

As far as culture, though, you’re off base. The rest of the world would shake their head and say “don’t you see that U.S. culture has invaded the world over the last 60 years?” Do you know of any commercial airports that don’t use English? Certainly cultural styles from across the world are melding everywhere, and so from that standpoint ALL cultures are dying and forming a new, more homogeneous culture across many countries.

If you don’t want Western Europeans to die out, have more kids. If you don’t want U.S. culture to die out, export more Coke, work hard, commit to freedom (yay SCOTUS!), keep writing books and blogs.

What kind of work do you do that brings you together with black and white (brown also, I suppose) Hispanics?

An inquiring mind wants to know.

There IS a correlation between the health of a civilization/culture and its population. (How’s that Celtic culture doing?) However, culture is not tied to race. Yo-Yo Ma, born in France to Chinese parents, is a cultural icon. Condoleezza (two E’s) Rice and David Duke are individuals, too, and can choose to adopt any culture they wish. Exceptions are just that, exceptions. Exceptions to a group do not define the group.

Hispanics can be of any race, so there cannot be a racial component to the issue. I have worked with White Hispanics, and I have worked with Black Hispanics. “Hispanic” is an ethnicity, which is defined as “a group sharing a common and distinctive culture, religion, language, or the like.” Their being a distinct ethnicity is defined by their having a distinct culture.

But that has nothing to do with your original post. Your original post said that Western Civilization is dying and your evidence for this contention was that the birth rate of white people is declining.

So what would make me “happy” would be if you admitted that “western civilization” does not consist solely of white people, that there is no correlation between the health of western civilization and the birth rate of one particular race, that David Duke is not more “western” than Condolezza Rice and that your original post was even more dunderheaded than your usual tripe.

Do you not agree that, whatever we decide to call it, it differs from Hispanic Culture?

On what do you base the absurd notion that other races do not “value” Western Culture? Do you honestly believe that “in general” non-white Americans do not “value” Western culture?

Hispanic culture is derived from Spanish culture, which is certainly Western, and most Latinos are Roman Catholic, which is certainly western. What makes North American culture, which is also derived from Europe and also contains influences of non-Western culture (for example, jazz) more western than Latin-American culture?

Jack writes: “I think we can agree that by both of these definitions, there is a Hispanic Culture in America, and that that culture is different from that derived from northern Europe.”

So you’re saying that only Northern European culture is considered Western? So Italian and Spanish and Greek culture is not “western.” Oops, in your original post you said western civilization was born in Greece and Rome. So what are you saying? I don’t think you have any idea.

This is a generalization, of course. Specific individuals of any race may adopt any culture.

Western Culture _is_ fluid, and so cannot be defined so much by what it is, but by what it is not. The Hispanic Culture is certainly different from that of non-Hispanic whites, or we would not have “Hispanic Culture” classes in schools.

Words are imperfect, as am I. That I am unable to articluate to your satisfaction what constitutes “Western Culture” makes it no less real.

The definition of “culture” includes “the sum total of ways of living built up by a group of human beings and transmitted from one generation to another” and “the quality in a person or society that arises from a concern for what is regarded as excellent in arts, letters, manners, scholarly pursuits, etc.”

I think we can agree that by both of these definitions, there is a Hispanic Culture in America, and that that culture is different from that derived from northern Europe.

Our culture contains many ‘Roman’ components. Are we Roman? No, but Roman cuture was early Western Culture, and the Greeks in a true sense where the founding Western Culture with some other minor players. Our culture is Western, and a lineal descendant of Roman and Greek cultures. Yes, we also have Germanic and Judeo themes as well, but these enriched the founding culture without overwhelming it. Today the American black sub-culture is in the main western as well, for it is in the main American.

Obama has far more cultural affinity with YOU than he has with his own African Muslim grandmother. He may consider you to be ‘a typical white person’ and love his grandma, but he and you share more in common culturally than he and his African relatives.