Ever wonder why millions upon millions of people flee to the United States for a better life? Every year? Have you thought about why the line of human misery worldwide grows by 77 million annually? What might cause a person to uproot from his or her home country for a perilous journey toward the United States? Or Europe? Or Australia? Or Canada?
Short answer: poverty, hopelessness, sheer human wretchedness!
Have you heard of the "Human Misery Index"- It details countries where human misery supersedes human well being. It accelerates all over the planet.
Is there a misery index in the United States? Would 28 million people living on food stamps and over 1.5 million homeless merit such a name tag? How about millions of home foreclosures? What about 14 million unemployed?
But I digress! Let's talk about why people starve to death by the millions. I am willing to bet most adult Americans tune into "Feed the Children"- Public Broadcasting channels from church groups that show horrific pictures of African children starving to death or children from India dying from lack of food and water. They implore you to send money to feed the children.
Have you ever wondered what happens when they feed the children? Take a guess! Those children become adults and birth more children with no ability to sustain them and little to no birth control to manage the misery that could be prevented. Thus, if you remember back in the 60s, we sent food to countries like Bangladesh. As a college student, I gave up one meal a week to "-feed the children" in Bangladesh. I didn't ponder the results of that act. Result: women who birthed eight children watched them all live instead of six of them dying. Later, all those children birthed another eight children or more, which resulted in Bangladesh growing from less than 100 million to more than 144 million. Unfortunately, that terrific number of people lives in a landmass less than the size of Iowa! More electrifying, that country expects to double to 290 million by mid century.
China and India grow by an added eight to ten million annually. Mexico grows by 1.5 million each year. Africa, currently at 767 million expects to double to 1.4 million by mid century.
To give you a little idea of where we're headed and what we face, China currently adds 25,000 automobiles to its highways every seven days. That country adds two coal-burning electrical plants per month. While you watch the world powers line up to siphon off the last of world oil supplies as well as food riots in the Middle East--do you think anyone addresses the root causes of our 21st century dilemma?
As the world rages toward an added three billion humans on the planet in 40 years, the United States rages right along with them. Why? We grow as the third fastest country in the world, not by our own hand, but by the hand of legal and illegal immigration. Where, pray-tell, and when, pray-tell, do we expect this international dilemma to stop?
Jolting answer: it will not!
Why? Culture and religion! All great religions promote unending and limitless birth rates. The Catholic Church, no matter how much humans suffer, promulgates endless birth rates. That holds true for Buddhism, Islam and the rest of them.
So, what's the big deal? Too many people, that's the big deal!
For the past eight years, high priest Mensa leader George Bush, with his myopic lack of wisdom, withheld $39.7 million annually worldwide authorized by Congress for Family Planning. Since 2002, Bush withheld a total of $235 million for family planning and reproductive health care programs for 154 countries on the planet. Congress engaged logic stalled by absurd presidential thinking.
House Rep. Carolyn Maloney said, "The Bush administration remains in a retrograde rut blinded by political extremism."-
Bush balks because he thinks Family Planning means abortion. It does not! It means birth control. It means educating women and giving them reproductive options to choose viable-sized families they can feed and sustain. It might mean living and thriving within the carrying capacity of their countries.
Wouldn't Bangladesh be much better off with Family Planning resulting in only 20 million people in a landmass the size of Iowa instead of 144 on their way to 290 million? Wouldn't the world human family be better off not seeing a total of 18 million human beings starving to death annually with the senseless reality that 10 million of those children fail to reach 12 years of age? (Source: World Health Organization)
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