Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Memo to Liberals: Breed Faster

Mark Morford, columnist for SFGate.com, is encouraging liberals to hurry up and make some babies, damnit! Apparently the census shows that conservatives are oubreeding liberals 20 to 40 percent, and (Morford doesn't cite his source on this one) 4 out of 5 offspring adhere to their parents political beliefs.
I am open to more practical solutions. Pouring massive amounts of birth control into the water supply in Kentucky and Utah and Colorado? Free condom-application demonstrations by porn stars with every fill-up of your Chevy pickup in Idaho? A global-warming luxury tax on all new Republican babies especially if conceived while listening to Kenny Chesney or Carrie Underwood? Works for me.

I object to a couple of his statements (not the least of which being the Kenny Chesney dis. I think his tractor is damn sexy.), but it's a pretty funny piece nontheless. And, yes, a little scary.

2 comments:

figleaf said...

Hi Amanda,

For the record, though, I think Matthew Yglesias pointed out a year or so ago that whereas conservatives are indeed having more children (on average) that Blue Staters, a sizable majority of those children consistently get the hell out of Dodge, or Cheyenne, or Pegosa Springs, and head for... urban areas. And become liberals. A pattern that's generations old.

Judging from the stories of neighbors and friends over the years in several major metro areas, a sizable majority of city dwellers complain their parents are more conservative than they are.

Unlike me I'm pretty sure he provided demographic data to back up his point. But the "conservatives will out-breed us" is a pretty old story that keeps coming back up like its cousin the "furriners will outbreed white people and force us to eat pizza and salsa and phad thai (oh wait!)"

That's not to say we shouldn't have children anyway -- I think they're a lot of fun when they're planned and wanted. I just don't think we need to do it to juice our demographics. Conservatives have been more than generous that way generations.

Take care,

figleaf

Amanda Holloway said...

Thanks for the comment, Figleaf!

I'm pretty sure Morford was just joking -- at least, that's how I took it. Thanks for the background info though!