Somehow I don't think we need to worry about the exportability of the US Religious Right to Europe. Indeed, it would be hard to imagine anything more unlikely.

I'm a secular humanist who wants to have lots of babies. Now if I can just find a willing partner...

Socialist secular France affords much greater benefits per child to families that chose to have more children. It's a blatant incentive.

...that the area with the one of, if not THE highest, birth rates--sub-Saharan Africa--is also the area where Christianity is growing by leaps and bounds.

If this were truly about religion, on a global scale, we aren't exactly running out of Christians...

from people who know nothing about Europe. In fact, my guess is that as soon as they learned the source of that advice, most Euros dismissed it out of hand. To them we are (at large) a society of willfully ignorant, militaristic, religiously medieval bumpkins who gleefully spend billions on fighter planes but not a dime on a health system designed to benefit all. They like us--to a point--but they have no use for political or moral advice from this side of the Atlantic.

I will say one thing in particular about your thesis regarding discrimination against immigrants in Europe: most wouldn't care what an immigrant thinks about their social promotions, or who feels left out. Their cradle-to-grave system, arguably the most generous in the world, comes at a steep price. Immigrants move to the EU to take advantage of that, and once their children are born there they are automatically citizens with all the rights and privileges. That means, of course, full disability, welfare dole, national health, paid maternity leave (guaranteed), old age pension, steeply discounted/free university, etc. etc. Given all that, a person could emigrate from Africa or Asia and potentially live a much higher standard than before, do little work, and contribute nothing back to society, becoming a drain. I don't think I'd call them out for deciding who is eligible to receive free money.

After all, every immigrant chose to live there; as an Italian friend of mine put it, there hasn't been an African or Asian forced to live in Rome against their will since the Coliseum featured matinee lion shows.

The usual "reproduce like hell" Quiverfull style nonsense that misses three points:

1) Sheer number of population is not necessarily power, as many people throughout history of "oppressed majorities" can tell you.

2) You gotta feed all those mouths. There is a limit to "reproductive validity" of higher numbers==good.

3) If people think Europeans aren't paying attention to democraphic issues, THEY haven't been paying attention. I've heard about that for years.

Why does anyone think we need to out reproduce the a certain group in order to "win" some alleged culture war? If we are talking about culture, and ideas, it seems a better use of time to NOT have kids and spend your efforts converting their kids to your way of thinking. There is a great subversive pleasure in turning kids against their parents.... I figure having two kids doesn't even guarantee that they end up as two adults who share my views. I am going to go off and find the intolerant and teach them to be tolerant. That will drive their parents crazy.

Why bother having more than a kid or two when the need for a large family simply isn't there? Europe is prosperous. Few families rely on large pools of offspring to work the family farm and replace the odd child or two who dies from disease or violence.

As usual, the Right is wrong. Instead of trying to drag Europeans back to the Dark Ages, we all ought to be doing all we can to drag repressive cultures into the modern age. Women's rights, gay rights, environmentalism, science, reason...the opposite of all that religious crap.

The best thing would be for everyone to just stop reproducing. If you want a kid, adopt one; there's plenty of orphans out there. Better yet, adopt a cat or dog.

Qoute: "I mean, we must be... increasingly on the alert to prevent them from taking over other mineshaft space, in order to breed more prodigiously than we do, thus, knocking us out in superior numbers when we emerge! Mr. President, we must not allow... a mine shaft gap!"

I can't help finding funny how relevant that little passage seems to this article. Nothing in the paranoid style of American politics ever really changes, does it? How sad that we're still having this conversation.

Trust conservatives to go for the "stick"-- rolling back women's rights -- rather than the "carrot" -- policies that make it easier for women to combine work and family.

It's a really big, heavy, nail-spiked stick too.

Calling for everyone to forgo kids will result in no humans in a generation. That seems excessive to me.

And yep, this call to outbreed any particular group is bigoted, no matter who makes the call.

when contemplatiing current politics and culture

We all need to assess what we are trying to see at the end of all of our activities before we inevitably expire. All of the history that led to the environment where women and other previous under powered cohorts are allowed to express themselves came as an outgrowth of Western Christianity. Embrace other religions or random secular matrices at your peril for they have no past historical record of providing women or other minorities with life let alone allowed to voice their opinions. Stop dismissing those processes that have historically allowed the West to dominate, Christian thought being a big part of that, by allowing all elements of society to give the best part of their abilities.

The WEST needs its women and all of its people to value having children more than SUVs and big screen TVs. The WEST needs to value children more than anything else for biology teaches nothing else and we should not presume to know better.

The Battle of Tours (October 10, 732),[3] also called the Battle of Poitiers and in Arabic: معركة بلاط الشهداء ‎ (ma‘arakat Balâṭ ash-Shuhadâ’) The battle of the Court of Martyrs[4], was fought between the cities of Poitiers and Tours, near the village of Moussais-la-Bataille (modern Vouneuil-sur-Vienne) about 20km north of Poitiers. The location of the battle was close to the border between the Frankish realm and then-independent Aquitaine. The battle pitted Frankish and Burgundian[5][6] forces under Austrasian Mayor of the Palace Charles Martel against an army of the Umayyad Caliphate led by ‘Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi, Governor-general of al-Andalus. The Franks were victorious, ‘Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi was killed, and Martel subsequently extended his authority in the south. Ninth-century chroniclers, who interpreted the outcome of the battle as divine judgment in his favour, gave Charles the nickname Martellus ("The Hammer"), possibly recalling Judas Maccabeus ("The Hammerer") of the Maccabean revolt.[7][8] Details of the battle, including its exact location and the exact number of combatants, cannot be determined from accounts that have survived; although the Frankish troops won the battle without cavalry.[9]