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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 2024

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It beat's not existing at all. Which is where Ukraine's demographics are heading after sending most of their men off to die in trenches and their women are finding new lives abroad. But I guess Zelensky can pat himself on the back, king of the ashes, when the TFR of native Ukrainians is 0.21 ten years after his "victory".

While I share some of your concerns around TFR, it isn't the sole measure of worth of a nation. Somalia has a TFR of 6.3, mid-19th century Ireland had a TFR of 4 while illiterate peasants slaved on increasingly small plots of land and starved. Continuity is important, but so is the right to self-determination. If the Ukrainians had rolled over and collapsed, I expect there would have been a lot of finger wagging and recriminations but we wouldn't be having this conversation. If they choose to fight and are willing to die for their country, if they choose to risk their country being reduced to rubble and their TFR being reduced to some arbitrarily low number you pulled out of your ass, I don't think it's your place to lecture them.

Or when their political future is now determined by the flood of migrants which repopulates the region, as opposed to their coethnics in Moscow.

Somehow I suspect Ukrainian affection for their 'coethnics' in Moscow is experiencing a bit of a dip at the moment.

But sure, "Ukraine" would still be an independent nation, even if no Ukrainians are left in it. Not sure why a Ukrainian today should fight for that future though, being cut out of it completely.

Again, that's not really your or my determination to make, is it? I'm not supporting pressuring them into fighting a war, I'm strongly against NATO troops ever fighting in Ukraine, but revitalizing our defense manufacturing infrastructure while arming Ukrainians to fight for independence strikes me as the best action we could take at the moment.