Letters to the Editor
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Return of the Patriarchy
Well, first of all, I wasn't aware that the patriachy had been missing. That aside, this seems like a silly and disengenuous argument. To begin with, kids surely don't always adopt their parents' politics. My conservative dad's record is one conservative kid to two pinkos.
But I also have to wonder about who in the red states are having a lot of kids. It's my understanding that conservative leaders tend to be from the ranks of the white, privileged and educated. Isn't that a group that tends to have fewer kids overall, regardless of their political views?
Plus, living in a red state doesn't make a person "red." I'm sure we've all seen those more-detailed maps that show just how purple most states really are.
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Arguing with the Logic
This is going to sound elitist, but since when do members of the educated, wealthy class with small families have to worry about losing power to prolific reproducers? I'd say that history shows quite the opposite of what this man is arguing. Educated, wealthy people tend to hold power and enjoy higher standards of living, and feminism and low birthrates are related to these.
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Men won't rule in the future because of technology
The economic importance of physical strength and a willingness to fight has been permanently reduced. That doesn't mean there won't be rule by an authoritarian prudish dogmatic hierarchical fundamentalist system, it just means that women will have a more or less equal role in ruling it. Excatly like the Republican party, the pro-life movement and the christian right now.
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Acorns and Trees
Having been born into a conservative, traditional family in Boise, Idaho I am a perfect example of the fallacy of this logic. The milieu in which I was raised should have been perfect to mould me into a dutifully reproducing right-winger, except that my mother told me to "always do what you know is right". She, of course, said the same thing to my brothers who define "right" based on a legalistic and linear view of morality; a complicated calculus of competing "rights". I, on the other hand, defined "right" in terms of relationship and the weblike nature of human interaction. [see Carol Gilligan's work on moral consciousness and its development in males and females] My morality rests on identification with and consciousness of the others with whom I interact. You know, the golden rule.
I have to think that regardless of birth or upbringing a certain percentage of potential conservatives will develop as I did. Okay, I have to hope. Here's to finding other acorns who fall away from the tree!
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Exhaustion with inevitability
I, for one, am utterly exhausted with the arguments from the Right about the inevitability of the Right-- that we're all destined to be patriarchal assholes, with submissive wives and walnut pews.
It would bear to notice that a real liberal education teaches a pragmatic, problem-solving approach to societal problems, based on the fundamental principles of the Enlightenment. No matter how hard the Man tries to breed, he runs up against, in his own offspring, the power of the ideas of freedom, equality, and fairness.
For those on the Left that want to believe this fatalistic nonsense, I pity you. There are enough real problems to both worry and do something about than waste time listening to the mawkish comments of those believing that they are the Chosen People. To my fellow liberals, I'd like to remind them that the current class of Chosen People will be only the latest to end up in the dustbin of history.
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Yawn
I am curious to know how he supports this conclusion, but I can't say it's got me worried just yet. There are many reasons why people have large families, but conservative "values" have little to do with it. Cultures where enormous families are the "norm" are, almost without exception, located in regions of extreme poverty and high infant mortality. As educational and economic opportunities rise, people opt for smaller families. Voting Republican has nothing whatsoever to do with it.
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Don't rule the argument out
I read somewhere that a very large block of young (18-21) voters in the last elections were those who were homeschooled or sent to private Christian schools, and who are from conservative Christian families. With the rise of homeschooling, there has been an increased isolation for many of these children. They only associate with other Christian homeschoolers. (I live in a blue state, but even here you have to sign a pledge to be in that network.) If the kids go to college, it is often to another Christian institution. There's even a new college outside of DC that is training young Christian conservatives for politics--the New Yorker wrote a piece about it in the last 6-8 months. So, while there may be many here who are different from their parents in political convictions, I'm not sure that these children, who are rarely, if at all, exposed to the full spectrum of political thought, will turn liberal later on.
Then there are the Mormons. I am not an expert, but they do have large families (even the ones in my Blue state) and vote Republican. Both fundamentalist Christians and Mormons are patriotic, believe in voting, etc.
My guess is there are a lot more liberal childless couples, than conservative Christian childless couples. I spend a bit of time in Seattle and there are very few kids to be seen on my friend's block, which is a nice neighborhood. Bet that same block in a red state would have a few more kids.
I'm not saying the author is absolutely right, but I wouldn't laugh her argument off.
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even us secularists are descended from neanderthals, but our genes persist
What is the Darwinian argument for the persistence of secular, liberal genes? The same argument as the one for the persistence of "gay genes" and even (if you understand the necessary cellular biology) Tay-Sachs and Sickle Cell Anemia: those genes ultimately help society. Though we are all of us descended from boneheaded reactionaries (I can trace my lineage to the famous 17th Century witch burner, Gov. Bradford of Mass.), liberal, subversive, creative, secular, and unreproductive genes persist because they strengthen society. Without hair dressers, inventors, artists, rock musicians, "terrorists," scoundrels, pot smokers, and crazy scientists, we'd still be banging each other on the heads with clubs. We'd still be "voting" (as much as cave men can be said to do so) for Bush-equivalents (of which there would be many), but there would be no fertility drugs and antibiotics to keep our litters of squalling would-be red staters alive.