Individual Liberty — Individual Responsibility 

Windows Live Writer - Beta 3

Windows Live Writer, the tool I use to post to this website has been updated again. It's now in Beta 3. According to Microsoft this is the last beta before the final release of the program.

The most recently added features include inserting video into posts and XHTML markup. I don't need the XHTML markup features (yet) but the video inserts are really easy. You can add a YouTube video to a post by simply copying the URL to the clipboard and pasting it into the post editor, in the WYSIWIG mode.

That's a lot nicer than having to switch to HTML mode to edit the HTML directly. One thing that I think would be handy though is the ability to upload video to your blog in the same way you upload images.

The cool thing is, you can write and add your own plugins for Windows Live Writer. That's a feature that's been around for a while. I may just have to write my own plugin to upload video to my site and manage the embed.

Not breeding ourselves into extinction

Over the weekend, I heard a couple of different talk show hosts comment on the idea that the Caucasian race is failing to breed and will soon be a minority in Europe. I don't know if that's true or not, but it certainly seems plausible…

I don't want to get into issues of race here. I don't think that the Caucasian race is facing extinction anytime soon. I don't really think it matters that populations are shifting toward what will once have been minority races. I am concerned that western civilization seems to be "not breeding" itself into extinction.

This has nothing to do with race and everything to do with privilege. Allow me to knock down a few straw men for a moment.

One of the many drumbeats we hear from the left has to do with the idea that there are "just too many people" for the earth's "fragile" ecology to sustain. That idea seems ludicrous to me on its face.

If we are to accept the scientific theories regarding evolution and geology, the earth has been around for about 5,000,000,000 years, and life has been around on the earth for well over 4,300,000,000 years. Humans on the other hand have been around for little more than 3,000,000 years, and that's being very generous with the numbers. Civilization has only been around for perhaps 8,000 years.

Suddenly people are in danger of destroying the earth's ecology because of our sheer numbers? Of course there's a lot more to the "too many people" argument than that.

Our massive population is blamed for quite a few of our worlds "problems". One of the latest arguments is that our appetite for meat is causing climate change because of all of the methane belched out by our livestock. Again this is a population based argument. If it weren't for all of those cows and pigs that we raise to consume there would be less methane to trap infrared radiation and heat in our atmosphere. We've either got to cut down on our meat consumption or cut down our population to reduce it.

I suppose it makes sense that because people eat cattle that there would be more of them around. After all, we breed them and raise them for that purpose, and we wouldn't if we didn't eat them.

Except of course there have been cattle of some sort around for longer than there have been people. Those vast herds in Africa that migrate every year and get filmed for the Discovery channel aren't there for human consumption. The great plains in the United States were once covered with bison. Sure people ate them, but their numbers were vast. They were belching methane even when we weren't eating them.

If our appetite for meat were decreased, perhaps there'd be fewer cattle to produce methane. I'm sure though that something else would take their place. Livestock isn't the only means by which our excessive population is forcing climate change on the poor beleaguered earth though. We're burning down the forests and burning fossil fuels.

We've been told that the earth just can't sustain the food needs of our massive human population. We're eventually going to run out of the resources required to feed and shelter us all.

One of those precious resources is land. There's just not enough farmland to raise the crops required to feed us all. So the South American rainforests are being cut down by people trying to get enough land for their crops. Never mind that farmland is being sold off in "developed" nations to "greedy" developers wanting to "exploit" it to turn a profit. Oh wait, that's (profit) another evil isn't it?

And shelter... our need for shelter requires resources that are scarce too, like timber. So we have to cut down the forests to build our homes. Naturally forest land is in decline.

Except that it isn't. There's more forest land in the U.S. than there was when the U.S. became a nation. We're responsible for that. Sure, if you go where people are you won't see it. You'll also see large areas where trees have been clear-cut in the Pacific Northwest. You can also go to campgrounds and similar areas and see that lots of forest land has been cleared. But there's still more forest land than there used to be, and more trees in the U.S. now than at any time in its history.

So I don't buy the idea that our population is destroying the planet. Yet that argument seems like a great one to lay a guilt trip on us all. There's just too many people, so do your part to save the earth. Don't breed.

Population is just one of the many reasons for not breeding. It's unfair to the rest of the world that our population consumes so many resources. We MUST reduce our population so that we can reduce our resource consumption and be more fair to the rest of the world.

More hooey.

Another reason not to breed is convenience. Who wants the hassle of raising kids? Who wants to have to devote so much time to children when it takes away from our careers? Who wants to have to devote so much time to raising children when we could be living la vida loca?

We don't have the time to raise children. That's why we put them in day-care centers, so the problem can be someone else's while we go about earning a living. We've got to work two jobs to maintain our lifestyles. There's no time for kids if we're doing that.

Besides, children are expensive. You have to feed them. You have to clothe them. You have to shelter them. You have to clean up after them. All of that costs big bucks, big bucks that could have gone to that new High Definition Television or to finance that big boat or our trip to the Caribbean.

Kids are an inconvenience and a drag on our lifestyle, so let's not have them. Lets let our genetic line die out so we can have a bit more fun.

Speaking of fun, pregnancy is just another sexually transmitted disease. That clump of foreign tissues causes all sorts of hormonal imbalances, mood swings and the like. Isn't it better to just have it excised? It's not a life after all, so let's get rid of it. It's so inconvenient to be forced to have a child just because you wanted to enjoy yourself and your partner for a little while. Sex shouldn't have consequences after all.

So we abort millions of babies every year.

Mental distress is another reason not to have children. In fact, to spare their children mental distress, some parents are willing to sterilize their children. After all, the natural cycles that allow childbearing are embarrassing, sometimes painful, and certainly inconvenient. Let's give our children a hysterectomy so they never have to worry about the mental anguish that accompanies menstruation.

Perversion of another kind prevents a lot of us from breeding. There's a sure-fire way to never have children of your own… never have sex with a person of the opposite sex. I'm not talking about celibacy here. I'm talking about homosexuality.

Leaving aside arguments about the morality of homosexuality, it still doesn't make much sense to me. Many homosexuals argue that they are born that way. That doesn't make very good evolutionary sense.

Evolution happens because life forms reproduce. If a life form doesn't reproduce and pass on its genes then those genes and the characteristics the code for will eventually die out. When a life form does reproduce then the genes passed on survive for another generation.

An individual that is genetically homosexual is unlikely to breed with an individual of the opposite sex. That means fewer genetically homosexual children in the next generation. Eventually, the genetic traits that lead to homosexuality won't be passed on. Evolution would seem to be a mechanism that would eventually eliminate homosexuality.

That it doesn't seems to be a strong argument that homosexual behavior isn't the result of a genetic predisposition. Lately though another argument has been raised. Apparently it's society and religion's fault.

The argument goes something like this… By marginalizing homosexual behavior and shunning those that engage in it society preserves the genes that code for the trait. Homosexuals are forced by society to marry and breed with people of the opposite sex, since to do otherwise could result in death by stoning (in some religious traditions) or ostracism. This forced breeding eliminates the natural selection disadvantage of homosexual genes allowing them to persist from generation to generation.

Oh well. Wether it's a genetic predisposition or not isn't really the point is it? The point is that in today's "liberated" society, homosexuality is increasingly "normalized". Laws are on the books now that make it a hate crime to discriminate based on sexual orientation.

The courts in some places have even mandated the tearing down of traditional definitions of marriage to allow homosexuals to marry each other. This eventually will lead to fewer homosexual people breeding, which will reduce the genetic population.

Sure, homosexual couples can have children. They can adopt. They just don't have their own children, except in the case of lesbian women that are artificially inseminated. The point though is another large segment of the population of western civilization isn't breeding.

Yet another reason we are failing to breed is fear. Apparently fear of the world's troubles is a disincentive to some to have children. Rather than having children and unjustly forcing them to live in a dangerous world, people are simply opting out.

That's hardly a survival trait.

"Children are an heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is his reward. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them"

Psalm 127:3-5

There are still people in the world today that understand this. In places where education and material possessions are hard to come by, people are reproducing in large numbers all of the time. In these places it seems, children are the hope of the future. We see it in the inner cities. We see it in "third world" nations.

Meanwhile, anecdotal evidence seems to suggest that "intelligent" and "educated" people from "successful" cultures like western civilization are simply not breeding. Whether the cause is guilt, convenience, or a lifestyle choice, they aren't reproducing. Without reproducing, their populations simply can't sustain themselves.

It seems to me that western civilization is "not breeding" itself into extinction. To modern, liberal westerners, children are a curse and not a blessing.

Our quivers are empty.

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