The Van Andel Graduate School of Government hosted Austrian Member of the National Council, Dr. Gudrun Kugler, to speak to the graduate students, as well as the James Madison Fellows. Around twenty attended to hear Dr. Kugler discuss pressing issues in the European Union, such as immigration and demographic shifts, and pro-life issues, including abortion and euthanasia, and what Americans and Europeans can do to reverse some alarming trends.
Kugler opened by speaking of her messages for American conservatives at this moment in time:
First, Kugler said that Americans and Europeans share a common heritage and a common future. Europe is like a pond with a thick ice cap which takes time to melt, for common sense to reassert itself. America is ahead in terms of having the intellectual and political entrepreneurs to offer a rhetoric for that common sense.
Second, she continued, it is not enough for American conservatives to work only with the European “far-right” parties. They are not perfect, they cannot win alone, and they are not Christian. While JD Vance’s effort at the Munich Conference was a step in the right direction, Kugler went on, it may have backfired. The real conservatives in the center-right parties are a crucial balance for alliances, both among European right parties and across the Atlantic. In the meantime, to build the alliances, Americans need to read and study and understand the ideas.
On demographic change, Kugler said that it is a meta-theme of all politics in this time, the way that climate change is for the left. What this stems from is understanding that the Great Evils of the 20th century were three: Nazism, Communism, and the Sexual Revolution.
In the United States, the birth rate per woman is at 1.6, but it is in danger of dropping to 1, Kugler remarked. The trend has been going on since 2008 in the U.S. (which she attributes more to smartphones than to the financial crisis). In Europe, the big drop to ~mid 1s occurred in the 1970s, so the trend has had a lot longer to set in. The effect is attributable less to smaller families among those who have children than to simple childlessness. But only 1/3 is voluntary; 2/3rds of childless women say they would like to have children if circumstances were different. In the Catholic countries of Southern Europe, the trend is most pronounced. In the East, emigration to the West exacerbates the trend.
These trends are now global, not even confined to rich countries; rates of childbirth are falling in Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa as well.
What is a society without children? Kugler asked. She mentioned Arsène Dumont, who spoke of a “self-harming narcissism” already at the end of the 19th century. Jonathan Sacks, former Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, also describes the link between suicide and childlessness.
At the policy level, to respond, Kugler said, Paul Moreland has identified a trilemma: a country can have two of 3 options: 1) low birthrate, 2) low immigration, and 3) economic growth, but it cannot have all three. Japan has opted to sacrifice economic growth, Spain and Ireland have opened the door to massive immigration in an effort to keep growing.
The birthrate decline has to be reversed, Kugler affirmed, but in the meantime we must work to mitigate the consequences of population contraction. The welfare state is already under strain in many parts of Europe, and rural infrastructure is fraying, trying to attract people to leave in the villages. Addressing these problems requires thinking beyond the electoral cycle (as in Kugler's report which addresses a 50-year period). Adaptation and mitigation does require family policy, but also productivity increases, which she says is where AI could come in handy. Family policy itself cannot just mean spending but also public praise and recognition of parents, positive depictions of parenthood in culture and media, and teaching couples to understand fertility windows.
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