Is the right outbreeding the left?

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This piece was written by Ellen Goodman and was published in the 9/19/04 Boston Globe. I thought it was pretty interesting.

Chandos get to work

JUST THINK of all the time we wasted worrying about the culture gap, the religious gap, the class gap, and even the gender gap. Now we are told that the political future will rest in the fertility gap.

This is the latest bulletin from the demography-is-destiny crowd. The fate of red and blue America will come down to who is filling those pink and blue nurseries.

These tidings were brought to us recently by Phillip Longman, who worried in The Washington Post that liberals aren't having enough little liberals: "Conservative, religiously minded Americans are putting far more of their genes into the future than their liberal, secular counterparts."

I never knew there was a conservative gene. If so, can it be tweaked? Is that another reason to support stem cell research?

Longman went on to say, "When secular-minded Americans decide to have few, if any, children, they unwittingly give a strong evolutionary advantage to the other side of the culture divide." Imagine giving an evolutionary advantage to folks who don't believe in evolution.

Longman is the author of "The Empty Cradle," a book warning that the empty cradle won't be able to support a full rocking chair. But he isn't the only one saying that the right is out-breeding the left.

James Pinkerton agreed archly in a recent Newsday column that "the left has birth-controlled, aborted, and maybe also gay-libbed itself into a smaller role in American society." Last winter, The Wall Street Journal's James Taranto explained the "Roe effect": "It's almost a truism that women who have abortions are more prochoice . . . so that if liberal women are having abortions, the next generation will be more conservative." Apparently good liberal women should give up their right to choose in order to protect it.

We now have a number of, um, fertile male minds from left, right, and center -- talk about your strange wombmates -- agreeing that the political future belongs to the fecund female.

This idea hinges on some numbers from 2000. High fertility states such as Utah went red. Low fertility states such as Massachusetts went blue. As Longman figured it, women in Gore states were having 12 percent fewer babies than women in Bush states. Presumably that doesn't include Florida, where the hanging chads were post-menopausal.

I confess to a certain weakness for statistics. I love to correlate things like, say, sushi eating and support for the Global Warming Treaty. (I made that up.) One of my all-time favorites was Pete du Pont's post-2000 correlation between porn-watchers and Gore voters. And what to make of the fact that Bush won in most states with the highest percentage of teenage mothers?

But I'm wary of numbers that may be, in the statisticians' terms "true, true, but unrelated." We live in a world that's been through tremendous technological and social change. The average woman in the world had 4.48 children in 1970 and has 2.69 now. Anyone who thinks that a low birth rate produces a conservative takeover hasn't been to Italy lately.

I am even far more dubious of the claim that political labels are handed down through the DNA or even around the dinner table. In our own swiftly changing country, parents who dutifully plant one ideological seed get some pretty different sprouts. Yet only Pinkerton suggested that persuasion could be a match for procreation.

There's a long history of Americans worrying about right and wrong wombs.

A century ago, there was a nativist panic over the fact that the first generation of college-educated women weren't reproducing while immigrants were. Theodore Roosevelt was so worried that he put a line in his State of the Union address accusing them of "willful sterility -- the one sin for which the penalty is national death, race suicide." And that man was a progressive.

But as immigrants went up the economic ladder, their fertility rates dropped. Meanwhile, those college-educated women found other ways of spreading the word and leaving a legacy. Anyone who thinks the first generation of feminists lost the evolutionary struggle hasn't been watching the Title IX soccer players.

Are we supposed to worry about right and left wombs? I hear a rather odd echo in all this. Remember when liberals were told to be "Clean for Gene"? (If so, you are beyond your reproducing years anyway.) Are women now supposed to be Fertile for John?

In the last presidential election nearly 9 million women in those fertile years between 18 and 25 didn't vote. Let's not worry about getting them to the maternity wards. Let's just get them to the polling booths.

Ellen Goodman's e-mail address is ellengoodman@globe.com.

© Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.

 

TGS - All I can add to this is that both of my parents are VERY conservative, and are card carrying Republicans. I guess I was just fortunate to inherite the "recessive gene."

 

Why do you think I want to have a dozen kids? I can't seem to outreason anyone here, so I guess I'll have to outbreed 'em!

In all seriousness, these statistics ignore that illegitimacy rates continue to climb. These people -- moms, kids, and deadbeat dads -- fall overwhelmingly into socioeconomic categories that vote overwhelmingly Democratic. So the left shouldn't stress about being outbred. What the left really needs to worry about is being outmarried!

 

The one group that is really outbreeding all others are as GM touched upon the poor. The poorer and more issues and problems you have the more kids you seem to get.

 

Death Rabbit!!! You're engaged, right? Go out there and win one for the Gipper!

Or failing that, track down Grey Magistrate, and, um, "take care of things" before he starts to breed.

 

That's all fine then isn't it? Because in a democracy, the mjaority rules. So if a certain sector of the population becomes more numerous then they should have a bigger say. If that means that YOU become the minority then that is tough cheese for you. That is the price you pay for freedom, liberty, and a democratic system. If you don't like it, you have to find somewhere else to live. It's only fair.

 

As for "outbreeding", taking the broadest perspective I would observe that even as the West's percentage of the global population has declined precipitiously over the past two centuries, its slice of global power continues to grow.

Similarly with the growth of whatever demagogue-vulnerable group you worry about -- the "poor" (however defined), criminals, illegitimate kids, crazy cultists, etc. In theory these groups have dangerous anti-democratic leanings. In practice they don't vote strategically or in large enough numbers, so their power is diluted by smaller groups with a greater stake in preserving the system.

Quick trivia question: Which American subgroup has the highest birth rate? Answer: the Amish (about 8 kids per woman). It's not as if the Amish are going to take over any time soon! Next trivia question: Which global state has the lowest birthrate? Answer: the Vatican. It's not as if the Vatican is going to lose power any time, either!

Which is to say: the West, and particularly the Western Left, could indeed use more kids. But they seem to be doing just fine without 'em.

 

Ahm, no. Where the heck are you getting ideas like that, I really wonder. That share of "global power" is continusly declining. That is, if you mean money. The rest of the world is way richer compared to the true west, that's Europe, than 100 or 200 years before. Japan. South-Korea. China. Brasil. India. Mexico. Indonesia. All compared way richer than before. There are exception of course. One of the former richest countries of the world, Argentina.

Too the actual topic. Bah, I was afraid it would be something about Catholics outbreeding Protestants. And old theme. I thought this strange dude Huntington seemingly has just made a reprint of the WASP's primal fear.

As for political leaning printed into genes..... no, I don't think so. Lord, what happened to free will. And the influence of parents on political views of children. That's interesting. I'm inclined to think it's a lot less than parents like to think it is. But christmas and the like wouldn't be that nice quarrel festivities they are, if it weren't so.

 

In Arabia, yes. For the past 1000 years.
In California, no. For the past 100 years.

 

Well, yes. But that does not mean that it is no longer the minority's country, or even government for that matter. That is where the beauty of such documents as the Declaration and the Constitution take over. The majority has the say so, but only within the guidlines of these documents. For instance, The Bill of Rights still protects the rights of all individuals regardless of who has the power.

Many of us have debated in the past about which kind of government more closely describes our different systems. And I know you are aware of all this anyway. But it gets scary when certain government leaders begin to ignore, or even worse, dismantle the power of these documents in order to secure absolute power for themselves or their party. I won't mention any names...