Monday Miscellany, 4/17/23

Monday Miscellany, 4/17/23 April 17, 2023

India passes China, the progressives’ fact-twisting, and the lives saved by overturning Roe v. Wade.

India Passes China as World’s Most Populous Nation

China has had the world’s largest population for two centuries, but now India is moving into the number one spot.   According to the Wall Street Journal (behind a paywall), either by the end of the year, this month, or maybe already, India will have 1.429 billion people, compared to China’s 1.426 billion.  (The U.S. comes in at a distant third with 340 million.  The population of the whole world is 7.9 billion.)

But thanks in part to China’s former one-child policy, with its forced abortions, that nation’s population will soon drop rapidly.  By 2100, experts think India’s population will be twice the size of China’s.

India is a developing nation, with problems ranging from poverty to Hindu nationalism, which sometimes persecutes religious minorities, including Christians.  But it is also an English-speaking democracy with a dynamic economy and lots of smart, talented citizens.  As China has prospered, the price of its labor has climbed, to an average of $15,000.  That’s five times what it is in India.  Such cheap labor will draw even more  manufacturing away from American shores.  Then again, the vast consumer market that is opening up once Indians gain prosperity will buy lots of American products.

According to the article, a rising India taking the role of a declining China would “shift the world’s center of gravity.”  This would probably be in America’s interests.

Tennessee’s Anti-Democratic Mob.

We’ve been hearing that the Republicans who dominate the Tennessee House of Representatives expelled two Democratic members for disagreeing with them about gun control.  Charles C. W. Cooke says this is a lie and tells the rest of the story:

The two Democrats who were expelled in Tennessee were not expelled for choosing to “defy Republican-endorsed policies.” They do that every day as legislators and private citizens, as is their right. They were expelled because they broke the rules of the legislature and they ground all legislative business to a halt. . . .

The expelled lawmakers were kicked out because they led a mob onto the floor of the House, disrupted regular order, and, in one case, shouted at their colleagues through a bullhorn. Those are the facts. One can think that their punishment was too harsh. One can think, as I do, that their punishment was appropriate. But one cannot wave away what happened by pretending that it was a mere “protest” of the sort one might expect to see in the streets of Nashville. . . .

For the last two years, Americans have been told — correctly — that storming into legislative chambers and interrupting their work is “undemocratic” per se, and that, if we do not want to see more of it, it must be punished wherever it happens. For the record, I agree — and have agreed — very strongly with this proposition. And yet, the moment — the very moment — that a couple of lawmakers whom the media likes chose to invite a mob into a legislative chamber and to deliberately interrupt its work, the moral poles were reversed and it was those who objected who were deemed to be “undemocratic.”

Overturning Roe v. Wade Has Saved Over 5,000 Lives Per Month.

Prolifers won a huge victory with the overturn of Roe v. Wade.  And yet it has seemed to many to have been a Pyrrhic victory, energizing pro-abortion activists and making abortion seem more popular than ever.  But do not be deceived by the media and by progressive rhetoric.  Overturning Roe v. Wade has resulted in an average of 5,377  fewer abortions every month.

That amounts to a 6% drop overall.   Before the ruling, an average of 82,270 abortions per month were committed.  Afterwards, the number was a still-much-too-high 77,073.  But that’s progress.  In the 13 states that have banned abortion, the drop is 96%.  “Babies are being saved,” said Tessa Longbons, research associate with the Charlotte Lozier Institute.  “Women are being protected from the harms of abortion.”

Progressives are reporting this drop in the number of abortions as just terrible news.

 

"Let's just say I am not sanguine."

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