Positively Powerful

Russian President Vladimir Putin, declared a holiday this past week (Sept 12, 2007) so that Russians could stay at home and create babies. That date was picked so that if the holiday was successful there would be scores of babies born on “Russia Day”, which is June 12, 2008. The Russian population has been on the decline and this seemed to me an amusing way to turn the tide. As I mused about this I remembered an article “It’s the Demography, Stupid” written by Mark Steyn, a writer with a great sense of humor and an unreal fear of the unknown. What struck my mind was the suggestion that Christians and especially, western (in style) European Nations, needed to start to produce more Christians, because, Muslim people were out producing “us” and “they” will eventually win the war due to “our” attrition.

As I played back all of the rhetoric I’ve heard over the last six years about why there is a war in Iraq, an actual country, and a war on terror, in countries to be determined, it all started to make sense or non-sense, either term with it’s own consequences. To me, terms like “They hate us and want to destroy our way of life” can be translated to mean that their babies are going to beat our babies because there are more of them. Or, that “history will prove that we were right”, means we will have more babies then them and that these babies will agree with us.

Imagine if they were all our babies

What I find both comical and sad in this line of thinking is that someone really believes that they know what lies ahead. If anything, this line of thinking insures that these future babies, ours and theirs, have no future of their own and like our generation will be consumed with revenging the sins of the past and overlooking the sins of the present. Maybe we can add another line to John Lennon’s lyrics, “Imagine they were all our babies.” I know it’s been said before, but just imagine.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!