Being an American citizen used to mean something; now, not so much. We are on the decline, lacking focus and unable to answer the most important question that matters: what is an American?
By 1800, America was largely an established and cohesive nation. We had an almost industrialized process of taking people in and producing fundamentally similar people, thoroughly American, within a generation or two. This process continued for the next 160 years with laws and policies aiming to integrate immigrants into a predominantly Anglo-Saxon, Protestant identity. Laws were enacted to encourage English language learning and cultural conformity.
However, the concept of assimilation saw the winds shift in the mid-20th century. The Civil Rights Movement and changing attitudes toward multiculturalism led to greater acceptance of diverse cultural identities. Assimilation was out, and cultural identity, whatever the heck that was, was deemed more important.
suitable for childbearing. The current birth rate for employed individuals living here is only 1.5 births vs. the 2.1 necessary to sustain the population without immigration.
Couple the above numbers with a significantly declining labor participation rate and the lengthened lives of our citizens, and you can quickly understand how economic calamity is virtually assured unless we birth more traditional American babies to pay the bills.
The labor force participation rate in the U.S. has been declining over the past two decades, peaking at around 67% in the early 2000s. It has since dropped to approximately 62.5% as of March 2025, a drop of 7.2%, and is accelerating as women opt out of childbearing. This is unsustainable is probably one of the unspoken reasons behind the Biden administration’s unchecked immigration. It’s definitely the reason behind Trump floating the idea of a $5,000 per-child baby bonus.
Paying to incentivize women to have babies is an idea that is already a reality in some European countries. But here, just having babies isn’t enough. Immigrant groups are having babies, but they’re not assimilating to American values. Therefore, the question requires us to return to how we promote authentic American citizens to create the next generation of authentic and thoroughly assimilated Americans.
There are four fundamental changes that the government can incentivize or mandate that will accomplish this task in a single generation:
- Close the floodgates of illegal and unqualified immigration. Done!
- English-only in education, dealing with the government, and in the workplace. We have started this, but there is much left to do.
- Eliminate the majority of subsidies that induce people not to join the workforce.
- Encourage reproduction through tax policy, but exclude anyone on the dole from receiving such benefits. One of those benefits should be a low-interest housing loan with downpayment support.
That’s it. Adopt these four policies, and our population imbalance self-corrects. Who could be against this?
Democrats and some women, that’s who! Progressives have a deeply felt belief that marriage and children rob women of their freedom. There’s a lot of truth behind the stereotype of an “Angry Cat Lady,” who is a feminist and has embraced work and cats in lieu of family and children.
Years ago, TV’s Judge Judy correctly told a defendant,
These children are entitled to at least one parent to set a good example. Grownups take care of their children; they don’t just provide them with food, they provide them with a moral compass. They try not to teach them to become brawling animals in parking lots, hitting each other with 2X4s, scratching each other’s eyes out. Human beings don’t do that to each other. You don’t belong at a club at 12 a.m., you belong home, reading them stories from a book!
Progressives and Democrats subscribe to the theory that women have the right to choose everything. They can choose to work, be promiscuous, have abortions right up to the time of delivery, and they can reject having a family, getting married, or submitting to any moral authority. Somewhere along the line, perhaps after WWII, when women took the place of men in factories and offices, or later, when the Pill made it possible to become more like men, we discovered the Devil’s bargain women had engaged in to “Have it all.”
The essential truth of successful living is that sacrifice must override many personal desires. “Having it all” is a prescription for the cultural collapse nibbling away at us today. Importing human beings to make up for women who have stopped procreating is not a solution.
I know many women will disagree with me. Consumerism and women having “their own money” require two incomes today. We must reexamine the choices that made this so. We need a national dialogue that sees our thought and opinion leaders ask fundamental questions, such as whether we are really better off today with our misplaced priorities. I, for one, don’t believe we are.
Author, Businessman, Thinker, and Strategist. Read more about Allan, his background, and his ideas to create a better tomorrow at www.1plus1equals2.com.
Jesus Christ is King
