There is no conservative elite. Conservatives control nothing.

There is a Republican elite who do control the Republican Party, most state GOP parties, the US House and the Republican half of K Street. Among this Republican Establishment are a good number of politicians, lobbyists and pundits who view themselves as "conservative."

But there is no conservative elite.

"Bemoaning this is worse than wrong — it’s irrelevant". Um, no. It's very relevant, as many parts of Europe are discovering as they replace the children they never had with more fecund ethnic groups who not only aren't bothering to assimiliate, but are steadily forcing their 'backward' notions - like stifling criticism of Islam, honor killings, and clothing women in head-to-toe drapeware - on what was once the dominant population.

Also, as those who are breeding start looking at the places where population numbers are dropping, what's to stop them from, well, moving there? Countries like Greece, Italy, and Japan are all in demographic death-spirals; do we really think that an exploding poverty-stricken population in Africa will look at all the empty real estate around them and not consider heading to greener pastures? Those ignorant of history have no knowledge of the massive population movements that broke the Roman Empire, or saw the Golden Horde sweep across Asia leaving such devastation in its wake that some places, centuries later, have yet to truly recover. These movements - and the upheaval they bring with them - happened regularly in recorded history for those who care to look. We'd be kidding ourselves to think it couldn't happen again, or that somehow the West would be exempt from its effects.

The solution to the problem you pose is not to artificially and in opposition to common sense encourage increased fertility in the indigenous population. If Italians or Greeks or North Americns choose to stabilize or to decrease their overall population through voluntary means it is simply because they choose a less crowded future and the ability to assure a good quality of life for their own children.
The solution to the problem you pose, which requires only the political will to do it, is to secure national borders, stop illegal immigration with interior enforcement and meaningful penalties on scoff-law employers, to eliminate government welfare for non-citizens and to radically reduce all forms of legal immigration.

Mark K. wrote, "But for most everyone else, it will be messier and more unpleasant."

Not if they move here and vote Democrat.

Kudos on the rest of the post. The human species is self-regulating its population as is quite natural. Of course, in the rest of nature, scarcity of resources yields declining population. In the case of humans, abundance and safety have had the same effect. But I'd much rather live in an age where my kids are extremely likely to live to retirement than have twelve kids only to watch ten of them die by age 14. It's stunning to go back and read about people in the 18th century (including many of America's founding fathers) who lost child after child after child.

We're not going broke because of declining population. We're going broke because we spend way too much money on things we don't honestly need paid for by people who work less and less. I'll bet worker productivity gains more than make up for declining population. The issue is unemployment, and the meager employment of so many others. Virtually every fiscal problem we have today would be largely ameliorated by 4% economic growth and 5% unemployment. It is in this sense that "indolence and hedonism" are destroying the country. Millions of kids can graduate college with Sociology or French Lit majors or any number of non-scientific/medical/engineering skills. That is the indolence and hedonism of which the original authors should have concerned themselves.

Yes, of course, and I did not mean to suggest otherwise. But there were many reasons for having large families besides infant/child mortality. Help on the farm, people to help you in old age, it frankly cost less to reaise them, etc. and the lack of readily available methods of birth control all contributed to it. Just as vastly improved medicine has decreased the incentive to procreate in large numbers.

I wouldn't say I'm sanguine about US birth rates. But there is more to the story of a 2.1 birth rate than simply hedonism and indolence. And we are squandering the people we already have by teaching them they don't have to work hard or do difficult things because they can vote for somebody to "give" them comfort at someone else's expense. This has the added unintended consequence of slowing growth and creating an environment of fewer jobs.

If we want the birth rate to increase, there has to be a growth in the need for more people. ie more jobs and less dependence on government.

"It’s a step in mankind’s social evolution . . . part of the unfolding of God’s design for humanity."

Wow. This paragraph is the epitome of progressivism. Its hard to imagine a less conservative piece. Scary stuff, NRO!

>> We're not going broke because of declining population. We're going broke because we spend way too much money on things we don't honestly need paid for by people who work less and less.

Can't have a thing to do with our attitude toward the next generation(s)...

I'm allergic to children.

They give me Tourrette's.

The failure of Western governments has nothing to do with a low birth rate. You could say that it is a cause for the alarm in countries that are seeing large scale immigration of non-Western cultures (Europe), as has been discussed at length by Mark Steyn. But Western democracies are jumping off the financial cliff due to corruption and socialism - nothing else.

This article embraces wishful thinking. The author assumes that because a trend is widespread it must therefore be good and inevitable. One symptom of a dying culture is an inability to identify real problems or to be able to distinguish between good and evil.