We Should Live - Ben Bateman

The Duggar family of Little Rock, Arakansas just gave birth to its 17th child.  Mom is hoping for more.

It’s a quirky family, financially well-off, very Christian, kids are all home-schooled.  All the children’s names start with the letter ‘J’.  By itself, it’s just a human-interest story for a slow news day.

The interesting part is the liberal reaction.  The San Francisco Post has a long comments page on this story, and skimming through it reminded me of just how small and vicious most liberals are.  In the first ten comments, you can find 1) the Duggars being called ridiculous, immoral, selfish, and destructive, 2) a prediction that some of the children will grow up to be serial killers, 3) the mother is called a “human bakery” and mocked for her haircut, 4) a prediction that the children are doomed to a lifetime of agony, poverty, disease, unhappiness, and failure, and 5) a statement that the Duggars “should have been sterilized long ago.”  In later pages you can find some conservatives mocking the “pro-choice” liberals for their hypocrisy in opposing choices that lead to live babies.  And the best are some honest principled liberals who say that they don’t like it, but it’s a free country.
Adam Graham has a roundup of similar reactions from liberal bloggers.

Kos diarist TerranceDC quotes the story, and then goes on to contemplate the well-established fertility gap between left and right, religious and atheist.  It’s not very profound, but it’s really cute to see a liberal struggle with the idea that procreation could be really, really important:

[T]he article started a little wheel turning in my brain that only turned faster when I read a comparison of “red state” and “blue state” marriage and birth trends. The statistics on teenage motherhood in the “red states” reminded me of something I’d read or heard of a while back; namely, the suggestions that folks in the “red states” have more kids, and how there may be ideological reasons, and political consequences.

Once I remembered that, I considered how the Duggans vote, and how they’ll probably raise their children to vote. Then I considered the recent suggestion that, to some extent, political ideology may be genetic.
. . .
As a gay, adoptive parent, of course I didnt’ contribute to my son’s genetic make-up. About all I can hope to do is influence him through environment and upbringing. Still, we’re planning on stopping at two kids. These folks will still have us beat by at least 14 kids — and potential voters — and that’s only assuming that they don’t have any more kids. All the indications are that they will continue reproducing until the Mrs. is no longer physically able to do so.
. . .
Adding all of that up, something occurred to me as a gay man. If our progressive friends don’t start breeding at least at a modestly higher rate, we may be rather screwed in a generation or two. I mean, there’s some stuff we can do ourselves — particularly lesbian moms, who can contribute to their kid’s genes and have the necessary equipment for incubation and deliver (whereas gay men have to borrow a womb).

Maybe we should start a sort of “adopt a breeder” program, in which some of us “adopt” liberal heterosexuals and sort of assume the role of general matchmakers and “breeding cheerleaders.” After all, the more our gay-friendly friends reproduce, the more likely there will be more gay-friendly voters in the future.

Basically, maybe gay people need to start promoting heterosexual sex (and maybe even heterosexual marriage) among progressive, gay-friendlly heteros.
. . .
And by the way I’m only half kidding.

I’m wondering how that conversation plays out: “You hetero liberals need to get busy making babies for the sake of liberalism.  Of course, I won’t be making any babies, because that’s just icky.  But you should make babies, so that my ideology can survive.”

Liberals love to talk about how intelligent, rational and fact-based they are, unlike those stupid, irrational, and superstitious religious conservatives.  But the libs can’t seem to grasp the idea that you need two babies per woman to avoid population contraction, or that a country in population decline will also see its influence and economy decline.  They refuse to see that the future belong mostly to the people who create its inhabitants.

And they’re even less interested in approaching the question from the other side: How do the libs plan to survive?  I think it’s obvious that they don’t, but they don’t see it that way.  The future beyond their own lives seems to be something that they don’t like to think about.  You can see it in the comments to TerranceDC’s post: Some of them hope that the birth rate statistics are wrong.  Some hope that there isn’t really a correlation between parents’ and children’s ideology.  But none of them can go beyond denying the premises.  None besides the diarist dare ask: What if the premises are true?  What if those knuckle-dragging fundies are out-breeding us?  The question represents death, and it’s much too terrifying to look at directly.

It’s much like the Iraq War: The real question is how America deals with a world in which Europe is crumbling and Islam is growing.  And all the answers to that question are ugly.  We’re going to do a lot of fighting in the next half-century.  We’re going to kill a lot of fanatic Muslims, and they’re going to kill a lot of Americans.  There’s no way around it.

But the libs can’t look at such a scary question.  So they pick over minutia: We should flee Iraq and invade Pakistan.  Or Darfur.  Or leave Afghanistan and redeploy to Virginia.  We should go back to negotiations and look for ways to show the world how harmless we are, because that’s a great way to ensure peace.

These smug “fact-based” libs can’t face some very simple truths: If you want to live, then you’ve got to work at it.  You’ve got to be willing to suffer.  If you want people in the future to think as you think, then you need to make some babies and raise them well.  It’s difficult, frustrating, and expensive, but it’s the only way.  And if your country wants to still be standing a century hence, then it must be willing to assert its interests and fight its enemies.  It’s ugly, bloody, and expensive, but it’s the only way.