"You can't legislate self sacrifice."
No. However, you can legislate a powerful public education system that not only has an intensive curriculum but one that instills individual and community values, including self-sufficiency, responsibility, hard work, generosity, and the raising of families.
"...how do the governments that implement such programs avoid paying Muslims who need no incentives to have children."
Governments would have to serve their indigenous majorities rather than minorities, special interests, human rights lawyers, socialists, communists, and anarchists. Such exclusive programmes would be undemocratic and illiberal, however, they would be necessary in order to maintain national integrity. Opponents who rioted would have to be dealt with severely.
"Part of the reason that we have become so rich is due to having fewer children and women joining the workforce."
Incorrect. Expanding populations generate economic expansion. Instead of raising children who pay for their education through part-time menial work, we allow in foreigners to do that work while we pay our children's way. Of course, the United States government also could do a great deal more to alleviate this burden without reaching European funding levels.
"The economic standards that we have come to believe are necessary in order to raise children are insane. Is the inability to afford a college education a good reason not to bring your offspring into the world? Because we don't have children anymore the government has also had to step in and provide old age welfare--something families used to do for each other."
The social safety net is still a must for those elderly who have no other support. Otherwise I fully agree with you. Children should be assisted by their parents if possible, but otherwise they need to work, or excel academically, or borrow to pay for their education - and rightly so. However, it is the parents that have instilled in Western children the dislike for hard work, budgeting, responsibility and sacrifice to achieve one's goals, be they a family or a new car.
"As an attorney and now a stay at home mother who homeschools her children..."
You know that you cannot qualify that statement for me, so such personal details are hearsay and irrelevant.
"I can shape the future unlike any man can."
Actually, nature is far more influential in human psychological development than the nurture of one's parents.

No politically correct government program will replenish the West. You can't legislate self sacrifice. Further, how do the governments that implement such programs avoid paying Muslims who need no incentives to have children.

None of the four causes of low fertility levels which you set forth below can be separated from the use of contraception in the West. Widespread use of contraception transformed the West. As you yourself stated: "increased per capita income has consistently correlated with declining birthrates". Part of the reason that we have become so rich is due to having fewer children and women joining the workforce.

The economic standards that we have come to believe are necessary in order to raise children are insane. Is the inability to afford a college education a good reason not to bring your offspring into the world? Because we don't have children anymore the government has also had to step in and provide old age welfare--something families used to do for each other.

Without a doubt the so called "liberation" of women resulted from contraception. And I quite resent your statement that women are "relegated" to domestic duties and child rearing. As an attorney and now a stay at home mother who homeschools her children-- I am now liberated from the drudgery of work and possess more power now than I did when I was working. I can shape the future unlike any man can.

Finally from your analysis it sounds like you would like to do without children born of couples married too young, or children who may be resented by their parents. What about those whose parents can't afford to send them to college or children who are handicapped. We love to play God and prefer our own will to His. But look at where this has brought us--to the point where we are legislating and paying people to have babies to avoid the obliteration of peoples.

When I say, "Mice are ok not islamic ones!"  I am sure you will agree!  Becasue the latter breed more rapidly and become like

• pests
• vermins
• parasites
• virus

spreading ever more quickly than you can ever imagine!  Consider birthrate of islamic savages of India - they were merley 9% after amputation into fertile pakki and bangi lands ...now they are 15% withing 'free'  India!!  Do you know where the maximal riots and destruction and looting took place for Saddam's hanging?  You guessed it!  India!!! That is true for

1. BUSH VISIT
2. DANISH CARTOONS
3. JERRY FALWELL'S REMARKS
4. KASHMIR RELICS beginning from...
5. MOPLAH POGROM for CALIPHATE OF IRAQ in 1920'S

Wo deserves more sympathy and donor conference for re-building? The criminal muslims in the lands of afghans, pakkis..or India?!!! Answer is simple and straightforward: INDIA of course !!! 

Trinitypower, you mistakenly assumed that I was criticizing the Church, which my question may have implied in a historical sense.  I am of the opinion that the churchs representatives in Europe have made bad representatives and continue to do so.  I doubt that the church will have the power to entreat people to consider their message in a more thoughtful way unless the church addresses these historical and present anomolies in an open way.
 
I am not Catholic and don't fully agree with all positions of the church, but I would like to see it become more successful in addressing valid criticisms.  Just as many people who are athiests understand the importance that religion remain the mainstay of our cultures, I wish to see that religionists are effectively agressive against the secularists stealing our culture and peoples freedoms.
 
Not addressing past mistakes plays into the hands of the secularists and makes people choose the leftist message.  Doctrine should be an issue within the church and expressing it publically as an only way to salvation invites division among all who support validity of religion in general as the cornerstone of our culture.  Protestants should follow the advice as well.  Unity in public will gain more for Catholics and Protestants than creating division by promoting doctrinal message.

The "looming demographic crisis" is threefold, consisting of: (a) replacement to below-replacement fertility levels, (b) increasing immigration, and (c) the above-replacement fertility levels of new immigrants.
 
The causes of the first facet are manifold:

1. Increased income and wealth, such that children are not needed as much to provide or augment old-age welfare
2. Increased cost of providing for one's children, especially advanced education
3. Increased hours spent working, corresponding with decreasing leisure time, especially time needed to engage in relationships
4. The liberation of women from relegation to domestic duties and child-rearing (although they unquestionably excel and tend to dominate those areas)

 
Abortion and contraception are merely means to prevent pregnancies before a woman or couple is prepared emotionally or financially to support a family. The world is full of children whose parents resented them and couples who married too young. Certainly, baby bonuses have demonstrated their ability to transform dismal fertility rates into replacement and above-replacement levels, so the decision to have or not have children is majorily decided by socio-economic factors; increased per capita income has consistently correlated with declining birthrates.

"Two Babylons" by Alexander Hisslop is a good book, free on Internet, for all those interested in religions.I wish catholics read the bible too. 

Kapitein Andre--

Do you deny a looming demographics crisis in the West?
Do you deny the fertility rates in Europe are dismal?
And Kapitein Andre --Do you really believe that the dismal fertility rates are due to miscarriages?

It seems that the West needs to relearn what nature (God) intended when people have sex--children are conceived. The "Pill" is a poison to the West because it has brought about a form of cultural suicide--the vast majority would rather live selfishly for today rather than have a child. The "Pill" does in fact act in two ways, one of which is to prevent a conceived child from implanting in his mother's womb.

The use of contraception and abortion are a mortal sins. When a soul is in mortal sin--it is without grace. A human being without grace has a darkened mind and a weakened will. One effect of a lack of grace would be to render more respect to mice than to human beings and to ignore the looming problems facing one's culture.

True freedom and liberation flows from following the laws of God who is the author of nature and creation. "...[W]hat looks like "liberation" turns into its opposite and shows its diabolical visage...all this has already been described with precision in the first pages of the Bible. The core of the temptation for man and of his fall is contained in programmatic statement: 'You will be like God'. "Like God" ...means free of the laws of the Creator, free of the laws of nature herself, absolute lord of one's own destiny. Man continually desires only one thing: to be his own creator and his own master. But what awaits us at the end of this road is certainly not paradise." Card. Joseph Ratzinger, The Ratzinger Report.

As to the criticism of the Catholic Church from Flander's Field--the Catholic Church is indeed full of sinners--

"When the world goes wrong, it proves rather that the Church is right. The Church is justified, not because her children do not sin, but because they do." G.K. Chesterton --The Everlasting Man

How exactly, do contraceptives poison the body? How do they kill children? What about miscarriages, which far outnumber abortions?

I wonder, Trinitypower, whether the church may not have responsibilty for it's loss of Europe?  Whether true or not, I think many perceive that alignments of the church with vested interests in society as well as strictness to which people were subjected by some representatives of the church, has aided the secularists and leftists in creating a secular void in the society. 
 
Additionally, many of the representatives of the church today show more interest in aligning with secular, leftist and shariaist pronouncements than they do the doctrine of the church.  Are those an isolated few who can remove themselves from the stance of the church, or are they only fanciful media reports?  How will the church ever send clear messages if the messengers deliver inconsistent missives or act in ways so much in contrast?

It is the darkening of the Western mind due to its rejection of its Catholic heritage that has blinded the West to the very real problem that confronts us.

We won't poison mice but we are eager to poison our bodies with contraceptives and wipe out our future children.

REAL CLEAR RELIGION

Theu care about mice and will be eaten by rats! LOL

There is absolutely no correlation between the current or increasing conversion of German nationals to Islam, and the increasing share of the German population that Muslims comprise. The statistically insignificant number of ethnic Germans who convert to Islam are doing so to live a regimented life, individuate themselves, appear to be tolerant or open-minded, or any of the above. They do not have the historical roots or blood ties to the religion that many immigrants to Germany do. Therefore, these people can be 'turned' away from Islam as quickly as they turned to it, so long as the new game in town offers them purpose and uniqueness.
 
The Islamization of Germany is being driven purely by immigration, and by the declining number of ethnic Germans. Secondly, there are only 3.3 million Muslims in Germany, so I don't see Islam becoming the majority faith any time soon, short of full-blown conquest and colonisation...

"Yet I strongly doubt that muslims would content themselves to peaceful means if halal meat were to be forbidden."
 
Agreed Bucco.  Bathtubs seem to be the favorite slaughterplace.  At best I can vote next year for the first time here.  I would have voted for either Gert Wilders or Rita Verdonk.  Don't really give a shit about mice personally despite being a vegetarian. BTW Albert Hein (curse those bastards what I would give for even a crappy WalMart here) backed down within 2 weeks on the halaal meat. The outrage was pretty much total. I have no doubt they would have been bankrupted.

I used to think that Nero fiddling while Rome burned was just a story.

@Amsterdamsky
Yes, it's to hope that they seriously take up the fight against halal/kosher butchering. There shouldn't be any legal grounds on which animals can be set to a painful death to please religious feelings. If a religion doesn't bother about that, we shouldn't bother about religious sensitivities neither.
Besides mice the animal party seems to have a stance against halal meat.
http://www.partijvoordedieren.nl/content/view/101//news/view/477
You can translate it with http://de.babelfish.yahoo.com/. I just wonder how much they'll insist. Obviously nonmuslim Dutch content themselves to write protest letters against the undeclared sale of halal meat. Yet I strongly doubt that muslims would content themselves to peaceful means if halal meat were to be forbidden.
While the question of mice surely puts no politician's life in the line of fire, the question of halal might very well do so. After all, the muslim track record of "peaceful" protests once someone dares not to cater to their religious feelings speaks for itself.

"German Muslims may constitute a majority in the country by 2046."
There again, they may not.

"“EU policies suffer to an alarming degree from a lack of democracy and a de facto suspension of the separation of powers”
Ah, at last the penny's dropped.

Cool!  I hope they ban kosher and halaal butcheries and meat next!  Actually, they got what I think was quite a few protest votes that would have gone to Rita Verdonk if she hadn't been backstabbed for VVD party leadership and replaced by someone so tedious and milk toast I can't even remember his name.  People that win party competitions rarely have any real appeal to voters I think.

And while the Dutch worry about their mice... the British worry about their cats. As Melanie Phillips notes in this entry in her diary made late last year.