Progressives & Liberals, You Have Only Two Choices for Your Future: Islamic State, or Israeli-Style Communes

Robin Hanson’s articles about fertility have earned a lot of attention, including from Professor Glenn Reynold’s Instapundit blog. His points overall are great, but he misses one critical factor: war.

Overall, Robin Hanson points out that the only human communities producing enough children to sustain a population indefinitely into the future are a few (not all) ultra-religious sects like the Amish and orthodox Jews.* This observation suggests that the future inevitably will be populated only by orthodox Jews and the Amish.

Hanson has failed, however, to account for war. The Amish, famously, are pacifists.*

The Amish have not proven that their communities can withstand surrounding societies that are aggressive.

Their church has not proven that it can survive in a hostile environment. They left 19th century Germanic statelets in order to avoid the military draft, and because of general persecution. But in the 19th century, that persecution did not reach the levels it had reached in centuries past.

The culture of humanity’s future will be one that can survive a hostile environment. The Amish flourish in America, but America is not hostile to their culture.

The last Amish community in Europe died out in 1937 when it merged with a local Mennonite community. (The Mennonites are a less strict version of the…