Dr. Mohler's BlogJuly 2008
An Argument Worth Defending
Those who signed that historic statement of liberty were putting their lives on the line. They knew that Britain would see them as traitors, even as the new nation saw them as patriots. What so many fail to understand now is that the Declaration was an argument that had to be defended. That argument has now been defended over and over again, as each successive generation of Americans has to make the cause of freedom its own. Independence Day is an American institution, and rightly so. Enjoy the fireworks, share a picnic, and fly the flag with pride. Happy Fourth of July. [Click on logo to hear audio.] [Thanks to readers who pointed out that the nation is 232, not 238 years old.] 
Where Are Europe's Babies?
The cover story is by Russell Shorto, who contributes some of the most interesting pieces run in the magazine each year. As he makes clear in this article, the radical decline in birthrates will bring equally radical social challenges. As Shorto explains: In the 1990s, European demographers began noticing a downward trend in population across the Continent and behind it a sharply falling birthrate. Non-number-crunchers largely ignored the information until a 2002 study by Italian, German and Spanish social scientists focused the data and gave policy makers across the European Union something to ponder. The figure of 2.1 is widely considered to be the "replacement rate" -- the average number of births per woman that will maintain a country's current population level. At various times in modern history -- during war or famine -- birthrates have fallen below the replacement rate, to "low" or "very low" levels. But Hans-Peter Kohler, José Antonio Ortega and Francesco Billari -- the authors of the 2002 report -- saw something new in the data. For the first time on record, birthrates in southern and Eastern Europe had dropped below 1.3. For the demographers, this number had a special mathematical portent. At that rate, a country's population would be cut in half in 45 years, creating a falling-off-a-cliff effect from which it would be nearly impossible to recover. Kohler and his colleagues invented an ominous new term for the phenomenon: "lowest-low fertility." This "lowest-low fertility" is disastrous in terms of economic, social, and political life. Europe's increasingly empty playgrounds and primary schools point to the looming reality -- a precipitously falling population. Add to this the fact that the population is also aging -- and fast. More: To many, "lowest low" is hard evidence of imminent disaster of unprecedented proportions. "The ability to plan the decision to have a child is of course a big success for society, and for women in particular," Letizia Mencarini, a professor of demography at the University of Turin, told me. "But if you would read the documents of demographers 20 years ago, you would see that nobody foresaw that the fertility rate would go so low. In the 1960s, the overall fertility rate in Italy was around two children per couple. Now it is about 1.3, and for some towns in Italy it is less than 1. This is considered pathological." This population time bomb will reshape the world map. Global birthrates are falling, but some nations will clearly gain an advantage. As Shorto reports, for example, Spain will have relatively few young adults in just a few years, while India will have multiple millions. India, already emerging as a global powerhouse in technology and services, stands to gain even more. The future favors the young, and Europe's major nations are headed toward graying populations. Strangely, the problem is more acute in the nations of southern Europe than in the north. Throughout the continent, the problems of demographic imbalance will tax resources and public life. What happens when those in retirement draw more than the economy will produce? Some try to argue that these challenges will not spell disaster, but, as the comment by Carl Haub indicates, these arguments now strain credibility. There are countless issues connected to these questions, but in the end, this represents a spiritual problem. Some try to explain the drop in birthrates by pointing to economic factors and the high cost of living. Economic factors play a part, no doubt, but families found ways to sustain themselves with children through far harder times than these. This pattern seems to reflect, at least in part, a sense of cultural and spiritual exhaustion. Has Europe grown weary as a civilization. It would seem hard to deny that this must be linked to the rapid secularization of Europe. At the very least, some in Europe now see babies and children as a hobby rather than a national priority. That path leads to a most depressing conclusion. As Carl Haub so eloquently explains, "You can't have a country where everybody lives in a nursing home."
A Worldview Gone to the Dogs . . . Literally
Leona Helmsley became a presence in the news and the media through her involvement in the management and promotion of the many properties held by her husband, the late Harry B. Helmsley, who built a legendary fortune in New York real estate. Their many holdings included New York's prestigious Helmsley Palace Hotel, for which Leona did her own television advertisements as the "queen" who stood guard over her palace. As it happened, she was later to go to prison for massive income tax evasion. The media coverage of her fall was ruthless and savage, and there appeared to be few tears. To the contrary, reports emerged in the media and in the course of her federal trial that revealed her to be, if anything, more ruthless and savage than the media coverage. As The New York Times explains, she "was best known for her sharp tongue and impatience with humanity." Further, "for many Americans, she later became a symbol of unbridled arrogance and belief in entitlement." Well, she is about to become a symbol of something else -- someone who hated humanity so much that she has instructed that her billions be spent on dogs. Here is how The New York Times explains the issue in today's edition: Her instructions, specified in a two-page "mission statement," are that the entire trust, valued at $5 billion to $8 billion and amounting to virtually all her estate, be used for the care and welfare of dogs, according to two people who have seen the document and who described it on condition of anonymity. It is by no means clear, however, that all the money will go to dogs. Another provision of the mission statement says Mrs. Helmsley's trustees may use their discretion in distributing the money, and some lawyers say the statement may not mean much anyway, given that its directions were not incorporated into Mrs. Helmsley's will or the trust documents. "The statement is an expression of her wishes that is not necessarily legally binding," said William Josephson, a lawyer who was the chief of the Charities Bureau in the New York State attorney general's office from 1999 to 2004. Still, longstanding laws favor adherence to a donor's intent, and the mission statement is the only clear expression of Mrs. Helmsley's charitable intentions. That will make the document difficult for her trustees, as well as the probate court and state charity regulators, to ignore. There is one additional aspect of the story that deserves attention. According to sources who claim to have seen the document and know of its development, the trust was originally designed to "help indigent people" as a first goal, with the welfare of dogs a secondary goal. In 2004 she deleted the first goal. The legal issues are unsettled, but an earlier will, involving a much smaller portion of the estate, was probated with her Maltese "Trouble" receiving a $2 million trust fund (Helmsley had set it at $12 million). The paper reports that news of that trust fund set off death threats against the dog. The canine is now protected at a cost of $100,000 per year. The coverage in The New York Times reflects the judgment that this is a grotesque misuse of funds. Millions of Americans are sure to recoil in revulsion at this woman's wishes -- even considering her priorities warped, weird, and immoral. But why? For the simple reason that we really do know that human beings are not mere animals. This moral judgment is part of creation itself, and it is a powerful moral intuition. We really do know that feeding fellow human beings is more important than feeding dogs, and that care for humans should take precedence over care for animals. The biblical worldview honors animals as creatures in whom the Creator takes pleasure and in whose existence He is glorified. But human beings alone bear the image of God, and can know the Creator. Confusion about this abounds. Radical animal rights activists claim no moral distinction between human beings and other creatures. Spain proposes to give apes and other "hominids" legal rights. Professor Peter Singer of Princeton University argues that some domestic animals such as cows and pigs should be granted moral preference over human infants in some situations. Scientists grounded in a naturalistic worldview are more and more hard pressed to define just what makes humans unique as a species. Leona Helmsley is not alone in her confusion.
But anyone who thinks that a dog is as morally significant as a human being is lacking in moral judgment. If this were not the case, The New York Times would have buried this story in its legal notices. The case of Leona Helmsley -- whatever the eventual outcome of legal battles ahead -- makes this point with absolute clarity. Her worldview had, quite literally, gone to the dogs.
A New Search and Destroy Mission
Similarly, the eugenicists of the twentieth century -- in America as well as in Europe -- divided humanity into the "fit" and the "unfit," and called for more children from the fit, less from the unfit. Now, word comes from London that a physician has used preimplantation genetic testing to allow a woman to become pregnant with a baby that is free of a breast cancer gene. In order to produce this baby, six embryos found to carry the gene were rejected. As The Telegraph [London] explains: Only one other woman is believed to have become pregnant after undergoing the same screening technique, called pre-implantation diagnosis (PGD). Critics claim it is unethical because it means viable embryos are destroyed. There are also fears it could lead to the creation of "designer babies" that are chosen for their looks or intelligence. The British woman said she felt she had to go through the invasive IVF treatment even though she and her husband are fertile in order to try and safeguard her child. The paper went so far as to label the child a "designer baby." This is precisely what many ethicists fear. Viable human embryos were discarded because they were found to carry a genetic marker that involves a risk -- perhaps a significant risk -- of later disease. Where does this stop? Proponents of the technology complain that using phrases like "designer baby" is unfair, since no current technology allows a parent to "order" a child complete with all chosen traits. But that complaint misses the point. The designation of any trait -- even the negative designation -- creates a designer baby. Someone has decided that some trait is unacceptable. In this case it was a gene linked to cancer. What next? We already know that the vast majority of babies diagnosed with Down syndrome are now aborted. How long before there is a preimplantation screen for that syndrome? Couples are now screening embryos for gender. How long before athletic ability or earning potential is linked to a gene? Blond hair? Blue eyes? The Weimar doctors would be proud. The doctors behind this new technology assure us that their only concern is the improvement of human health. So did the Weimar doctors and the eugenicists. Health can be used as an argument for destroying life, it seems. The tragedy is that vast millions of couples would almost surely take advantage of this technology should it become more widely available. The end would justify the means, they would rationalize. The laboratory is now a dangerous place for human embryos. They can be destroyed for stem cell research, frozen pending sale, and rejected after genetic testing. This points to a very sad reality -- there is now a search and destroy mission targeting human embryos considered unworthy and unwanted. Life unworthy of life. Where have we heard that before?
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"You can't have a country where everybody lives in a nursing home." The statement, shockingly obvious as it may be, was offered by Carl Haub of the Population Reference Bureau. He was speaking of Europe's looming demographic disaster. As 
The news out of New York City has to do with Leona Helmsley, a woman whose name (plastered all over Manhattan) became synonymous with the materialistic excesses of the 1980s. Helmsley, who died last August, still manages to make the news -- this time with regard to her instructions concerning the multi-billion dollar trust she left behind. Her instructions: The entire trust is to be spent on dogs. Billions of dollars.
Dogs can give humans so much pleasure. Our home includes a relatively unintelligent but totally charming beagle named Baxter. As a boy, I found that the wagging tail of a dog was irresistible as a sign of friendship. As a rule dogs make few demands, crave human companionship, and love to be happy. What's not to like?
Even before the Nazi Party came to power, the doctors of Weimar Germany began to divide humanity into those who should live and those who should die. They developed the category of "life unworthy of life" in order to designate those whose infirmity, deformity, race, or lifestyle rendered them subhuman in terms of rights.