Conservative Donnybrook

The Lakota Indian Tribe in South Dakota has announced that they are no longer citizens of the United States.

I wonder if they’ve fully thought this out. Think about it. The land they claim is in the middle of South Dakota (I’ve been there - South Dakota, not the Lakota Reservation -  and they’re welcome to it as far as I’m concerned), but they will be entirely surrounded by the United States. What happens if the U.S. accepts their withdrawal from the 33 treaties they’ve entered into and then simply denies citizens of Lakota Nation (or whatever they wind up calling themselves) visas to visit the United States? If individuals wanted to emigrate three blocks to the United States, would they then be required to get in line with the rest of the immigrant hordes?

I cannot think that they truly wish to secede. Rather, this is an attempt at making a political statement - and, perhaps, even a valid one. The risk, of course, is the United States takes them at face value and treats them like another nation.

Yesterday, a report was released on the fertility rate in the United States and for the first time since 1972, Americans are reproducing as fast as they are dying. This is significant news for a country that relies so heavily on socialistic programs and income redistribution schemes for the benefit of the elderly, indigent and lazy.

The story had a few interesting items that I will share.

First, the REALLY good news is that “[r]ed states tend to have both more religious people and higher fertility rates.” I take that to mean that if we just keep doing what we’re doing here in fly-over country for the next 18 years or so, we may be able to take back both houses of Congress and the presidency.

Second, “[s]ome of the increase is explained by immigration. Hispanics have the highest fertility rate — about 2.9 — followed by blacks (2.1), Asians (1.9) and whites (1.86). But Hispanics do not represent enough of the population to fully explain the trend, and the fertility rate of U.S. whites is still higher than that of other developed countries.” This is interesting because it reveals that the complexion of America will be slowly changing over time. If these rates continue, even if the borders are completely shut down, America will become more Hispanic, the proportion of black Americans will remain more or less the same (the replacement rate is 2.1), and America will become less white and Asian. Politically, and after all, this is a political blog, what that means is that whoever captures the Hispanic vote will have captured a rising proportion of the population and, presumably, an ever greater proportion of the vote.

Finally, I love the fact that the life-haters are alarmed by this news:

But not everyone sees that as encouraging, given that the United States remains a leading consumer of increasingly scarce natural resources.

“The world is now consuming resources faster than the Earth can sustain over the longer term,” said Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute. “Forests are shrinking. Fisheries are collapsing. Water tables are falling. Large parts of the world’s grasslands are deteriorating. The U.S. is already disproportionately responsible for that because of our very high consumption levels.”

It would seem that the folks over at the Earth Policy Institute see human life on this planet as some sort of dire threat. Seems to me that the gradual extinction of human beings itself is a threat, but maybe I’m being dramatic.