Are you planning on having children? Liberals who answer No, thanks\ to this question may want to reconsider their family plan, according to Phillip Longman. The author of ""The Empty Cradle: How Falling Birthrates Threaten World Prosperity and What to Do About It"" recently postulated in USA Today and Foreign Policy magazine that the trend of progressive secularists to have fewer children compared to religious conservatives will greatly skew the general political mind-set in the country.
As Longman points out, it is no surprise that Utah has the highest fertility rate in the nation.Two-thirds of the state belongs to the very strict, fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. On the contrary, the gay union-embracing state of Vermont has the lowest fertility rate.
Think about it: Very religious conservatives are less likely to have sex before marriage and less likely to use birth control than non-religious liberals. After waiting so long for the wedding night to copulate, it is hardly a wonder why conservatives in this country seem to be multiplying faster than bacteria in a petri dish.
It makes perfect sense; think of the families you know with more than three children. Chances are the majority of breeders with four-plus offspring are right-leaning. The ultra-liberal, bra-burning feminists surely did not pop out all the children of our generation. It is not their legacy that will get passed down through blood and nurturing, but the legacy of the reproducing neo-conservative religious fundamentalists.
The partisan divide in the desire to bear children is rather apparent on this campus. Take for instance, a conservative friend of mine. The girl cannot wait to become a devoted mom to a passel of children. To her, bearing forth a life force from her loins with the possibility of the being turning on her years later seems appealing. To me, it has always sounded more like the plot of a sci-fi thriller.
I always figured that liberal intellectuals with one child or none at all were smarter than mass-reproducing couples on the opposite side of the political spectrum.
Having fewer children was appealing not only for economic reasons alone; parents of an only child are able to go about their personal life without having to worry about how it would affect their six kids. However, it is safe to say that these same couples never considered how not having six kids would affect the nation's political future.
This has me wondering if the political right might be right for once, or at least strategically better in this respect. Imagine how even more swiftly Supreme Court nominations will be confirmed in the future if there are no liberals around to craft obligatory dissenting arguments.
By reproducing in larger numbers than liberals, conservatives have solved the problem of controversy. One hundred years from now, will bipartisanship be extinct? Or will conservatives turn on each other, the far rights calling themselves Republican and pseudo-lefts reorganizing into the Party Formerly Known as Democratic?
We can only postulate the ramifications for the U.S. political landscape as one nation under one view. But before the future generation's conservatives begin planning their victory parade, they must realize that political debates become dull and pointless when the only person to argue with is oneself.
Meanwhile, the impending doom of leftist extinction is frightening enough to inspire even this left-leaning, reproductive-phobic lady to procreate. Like stereotypical, nagging Jewish mothers have been reminding their children for centuries, we liberals must find nice, like-minded individuals of the opposite sex, settle down and make babies—the fate of our kind and the fate of our nation depends on it.
Kelly Schlicht is a sophomore majoring in journalism. Her column appears every Monday in The Daily Cardinal. Send responses to opinion@dailycardinal.com.
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