Humanitarians: Please, Spare the Humans

I am not a big fan of conspiracy theories. They tend to be a dime a dozen, and are usually without merit. I do not think there is a monolithic cabal of conspirators plotting to take over planet earth. However, it is certainly the case that there are plenty of people out there who are hatching sinister schemes on a regular basis. And when you put a bunch of these folks together in the same room you can certainly end up with some really big trouble indeed.

Of course many of these people might have the best of intentions. They might have the good of humanity in mind. But history shows that those who have been the most callous toward individual human beings – or indeed, whole classes of people – are often those who go on about the good of humanity. So caution is always in order here.

The truth is, there exist plenty of humanity-hating humanitarians. I have documented many examples of this over the years. And new examples are not hard to come by. Consider a recent gathering of some very influential people. They were – as I warned about – put together in the same room, and came up with some rather ominous-sounding ideas.

It seems that some of the leading billionaires in America met for a private powwow in Manhattan earlier this month. Here is how the Times describes the meeting: “The philanthropists who attended a summit convened on the initiative of Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder, discussed joining forces to overcome political and religious obstacles to change. Described as the Good Club by one insider it included David Rockefeller Jr, the patriarch of America’s wealthiest dynasty, Warren Buffett and George Soros, the financiers, Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, and the media moguls Ted Turner and Oprah Winfrey.”

Evidently the chief issue they focused on, following the lead of Bill Gates, was “overpopulation”.  The article ends this way: “Another guest said there was ‘nothing as crude as a vote’ but a consensus emerged that they would back a strategy in which population growth would be tackled as a potentially disastrous environmental, social and industrial threat. ‘This is something so nightmarish that everyone in this group agreed it needs big-brain answers,’ said the guest. ‘They need to be independent of government agencies, which are unable to head off the disaster we all see looming.’ Why all the secrecy? ‘They wanted to speak rich to rich without worrying anything they said would end up in the newspapers, painting them as an alternative world government,’ he said.”

Indeed. Whether or not they are acting as an alternative government, my attention was sharply focused when I read about “overcoming religious obstacles”. In case you need translation on that, it usually means that our elites are quite happy to ride roughshod over the concerns of religious folk everywhere, especially Christians, if they dare to stand in the way as the elites seek to create a brave new world.

I am not the only one to have alarm bells going off. John-Henry Westen also had some concerns about this gathering of big cheeses. He notes how Gates has long been on the overpopulation bandwagon “Gates’ enthusiasm for population control comes as no surprise since he has himself admitted to being strongly influenced by the views of Thomas Malthus, the fear-mongering overpopulation guru of the late 18th century.  He has also admitted that his father headed a local Planned Parenthood while he was growing up.”

But is overpopulation really the problem? “In sharp contrast to the ideas of the billionaires, a recent film containing the views of some prominent demographers has sounded the alarm on underpopulation rather than overpopulation.  Promoting the film ‘Demographic Winter’ at a recent event, celebrated columnist Don Feder said that the demographic problem of worldwide declining birthrates ‘could result in the greatest crisis humanity will confront in this century" as "all over the world, children are disappearing.’

“Feder noted, ‘In 30 years, worldwide, birth rates have fallen by more than 50%. In 1979, the average woman on this planet had 6 children. Today, the average is 2.9 children, and falling.’  He explained the situation noting, ‘demographers tell us that with a birthrate of 1.3, everything else being equal, a nation will lose half of its population every 45 years’."

Many experts have noted that the global birth dearth is the real problem which we should be focusing on. But even assuming, for the sake of argument, that these wealthy elites are right, how will they achieve their drastic population cuts?

We already know – based on where their previous billions have gone – that it will not be pretty. It will involve abortions, sterilisations, and mega-tons of contraceptives being dumped all over the third world. Indeed, these wealthy white elites will especially target the developing world.

However, as population expert Steven Mosher asks, “What happens when governments, often in response to pressure from abroad, attempt to directly regulate the fertility of their people? Both humans rights and primary health care, it turns out, tend to suffer setbacks. Urging governments to interfere in the intimate decisions of couples concerning childbearing does not encourage limited government and the rule of law, but their opposite, an intrusive bureaucracy and human rights abuses. Nor does concentrating scarce health care resources on fertility reduction programs lead to improvements in the general state of health of a population.”

As he argues in his important book, Population Control: Real Costs, Illusory Benefits (Transaction, 2008), “For over half century, the population controllers have perpetrated a gigantic, costly and inhumane fraud upon the human race, defrauding the people of the developing world of their progeny and the people of the developed world of their pocketbooks.”

Of course our fat cat elites will suffer nothing from such programs. It will be the poor and voiceless who will most suffer. But never mind; after all, it is for the good of humanity you know.