When Liberals Rule The World
Stats Say The GOP is Dying. But Red-Staters Are Breeding Like Drunken Ferrets. Who Wins?
Here’s the good news: The Republican party is dying. Slow, painful, twitching, secreting war and intolerance and desperation like a fetid gas, snarling and gagging like Jabba the Hutt being choked by the hard chain of progress and hope and relaxed social mores and an upcoming Generation Next that seems to sense that screaming about gays and women’s rights and Muslims and drugs actually doesn’t do much to move the human experiment forward in the slightest.
Is this not delicious? Is this not cause for rejoicing? According to Pew Research, the percentage of young ‘uns age 18 to 25 (a.k.a. Generation Next) who identify with Republicans has been in steady decline since the early ’90s, and now hovers around a meager 35 percent, down from a high of 55 percent in the Reagan-toxic early-90s, and is still dropping, whereas fully 48 percent of 18-to-25-year-olds now lean Democratic … and rising.
Seems Generation Next tend to be more socially liberal and much less worried about the trembling “sanctity” of the failed nuclear family, and are overall less inclined to align with a particular religion. Indeed, it almost makes you want to weep and sigh and go buy a large grass-fed free-range organic hybrid vibrator.
Ah, but there is a flip side. A counterargument. A dark cloud of righteous bleakness and it looms like a giant synthetic cheesecake-scented Glade PlugIn of potential misery.
It is this: According to another set of data, for the past 30 years or so, conservatives — particularly those of the right-wing red-state Christian strain — have been out-breeding liberals by a margin of at least 20 percent, if not far more.
It’s true. The reason? Why, God loves babies, of course. White American babies, most especially. Also: issues of space, religion, sexual orientation and, of course, conscience. Or, you know, lack thereof.
One theory goes like this: Libs are generally more socially conscious and hence tend to actually give a modicum of thought to what it means to pop out a brood of children in this modern overstuffed age. Also, many other liberal bohos are (admittedly) happy selfish suckwads who want all the modern booty for themselves and won’t want to give up the Ducati and the plasma and the biannual trip to Cinque Terre for the sake of a pod of rug rats and 15 grand a year (each) for private kindergarten. Translation: Libs just aren’t procreating like they could/should be.
Conservative Christians, of course, have no such conscience. Among the right-wing God-lovin’ set, there is often little real awareness of planetary health or resource abuse or the notion that birth control is actually a very, very good idea indeed, and therefore it’s completely natural to worship at the altar of minivans and SUVs and megachurches and massive all-American entitlement and have little qualm about popping out six, seven, 19 gloopy tots to populate the world with frat boys and Ford F-150 buyers and food court managers.
I always assumed it might actually be a good thing that conservatives breed so mindlessly, because all those unhappy neocon kids, all those repressed misled tots grow up and eventually begin to (well, sometimes) think for themselves and ultimately do what any good kid does: rebel against their parents’ silly dogma and become a bit more open-minded and hopeful, right?
Not exactly. Apparently, according to the research, four out of five kids actually stick with the political affiliation of their parents, generation after generation, with religious conservatives far more unlikely than their liberal brethren to allow their kids to develop the capacity for independent thought (given how it’s so, you know, dangerous to America). Also, one word: homeschooling. I’m just sayin’.
So then, the big question: How can these two major demographics exist at the same time? How can we be enjoying the slow death of the GOP along with an impressive surge in young Democrats, and yet simultaneously be undergoing this quiet toxic swelling in ranks of the army of conservative autobots? The logic breaks down all over.
It seems impossible. Either we are we headed toward a new dawn full of smart social liberalism, perhaps leading to concomitant ideas of peace and tolerance and a newly evolved American identity, or there is another massive group lurking in the shadows, entirely overlooked by Pew Research, a seething army of religious conservatives who are working like a spiritual STD to force us backward once again, much the way the Bush regime brutally reversed decades of social, environmental, fiscal and international progress and made war and isolationism and megachurch evangelicals the lords of the playground for a shocklingly painful blip of time.
Hell, maybe it’s both. Maybe what we’re getting with these two sets of data is simply a glimpse of the next two major phases of the culture, the next two major swings of the sociopolitical pendulum, in sequence.
In other words, maybe we are indeed headed into a delightful progressive liberal phase, one with the potential to radically, even permanently change the way we view gender and identity and family and even America’s role in the world.
But then the sad recoil. The clench, the terror, the loud screeching from all those red-state kids who are being taught right now to despise change and fear alternative views and see anything that’s not wrapped in the flag or the Bible or a McDonald’s wrapper as evil and dangerous and worthy of derision/elimination.
Or maybe there’s another possibility. Perhaps it’s something even more wild and delicious and improbable, and we are all, liberal and conservative alike, evolving more toward social progressiveness merely by default, not through social engineering or political maneuvering or reactionary Christian dread but merely as a nearly unconscious by-product of the times. In other words, maybe everyone is trending more progressive and open merely by existing on this planet today, almost despite ourselves.
I know. Completely idiotic. I must be totally drunk.
Option 3 is, of course, the most likely: Both sets of data are full of flaw and misinterpretation and wishful thinking. Neither is completely correct and by the way statistics are for dreamers and acidheads and pollsters and should be thrown over the shoulder, like salt, right before you go back for another Xanax and a beer.
And hence we are, as ever, simply a mad intoxicated mishmash of reactions and beliefs and ideologies, a God-obsessed sex-crazed drug-lovin’ sociopolitical train wreck of a country that doesn’t really know its ass from a hole in the ground or its God from a burp in the sky.
Personally, I’m going with the new liberal dawn thing. Hell, it doesn’t hurt to dream, right?
Mark Morford’s Notes & Errata column appears every Wednesday and Friday on SFGate and in the Datebook section of the San Francisco Chronicle. Thoughts for the author? E-mail him.
© 2007 Hearst Communications Inc.
The neocon rational: You liberals want to invoke the name of God when human rights are in question. The civil rights movement was full of clergy. You have nothing to complain about when we need God’s help in a war or in punishing evildoers.
This analysis is all BS. Mainstream Americans are easily manipulated due to poor education and political ignorance. One “Kuwait invasion” and two thirds of your “liberals” are cheering on the war machine.
With industrial pollution being as prevalent and malevolent as it is, those having large families are more likely to have damaged children. And while some parents may rationalize such outcomes as God’s will, many more will become inquizative and connect the dots. Why else is Bush attempting to shutter the EPA libraries.
After his last diatribe, I emailed Morford and suggested he read Our Stolen Future. It would seem he has yet to do this and inform himself about crucial aspects central to the subjects he’s writing about.
Mark, We are talking about larger families but shrinking gene pools, since the godly tend to beget amongst themselves, while liberals tend to be more generous in the spreading of seed, as we all know. Hopefully, the pool will shrink sufficiently for a mass drowning.
But doesn’t the social consciousness determine the political mood? And doesn’t the economics drive the social consciousness (e.g. the feminist movement arose after women were freed from housework and most jobs no longer required a great deal of muscle)? And doesn’t the technological development drive the economics (there would have been no industrialization without new technologies)? And doesn’t the science education drive the technological development? And doesn’t the political mood drive the science education (e.g. the huge investment in science education in the US was done to compete with the Soviet Union)? So the political mood led to the science education which led to the technological development which led to the economic development which led to the social consciousness which led to the political mood.
So it all makes one big, quite unpredictable circle of unbounded complexity. So we can all speculate endlessly, to our heart’s delight, and argue that what we believe benefits us personally will also benefit the whole of society, with no one able to convince us otherwise. Therein lies the problem.
Despite my being a liberal-progressive from the Midwest, I didn’t care for this article in the least. Morford’s stereotypes about the Midwest were nearly vile enough to make me side with those Midwesterners who we might both otherwise agree are crazy, Jesus-sucking Republo-wargasmic-freaks. Honestly, those imaginary masses are not a signature feature of the Midwest in which I grew up. There are freaks, yes, but there are freaks everywhere …even in San Francisco! As to why Midwesterners breed more, the simple fact is a family more affordable in the Midwest …and cost/stability is the bottom line with all of the young married couples I know. A lot of people in places Like San Francisco (my current home) want to have kids but can’t afford it. The Midwest is also more safe. Places like Lincoln or Sioux Falls or Des Moines are like giant nurseries, tailored for families.
Man, don’t give me that social consciousness crap. If you’re that smug, do away with yourself and do the whole world a favor. But there’s also that other important factor Morford skims: not all children of religious-fascist freaks (or even Republicans) turn out to be such creatures themselves. In my experience on the ground, the contrary seems far more true (whether we’re talking hard-right or hard-left): younger people are growing up in a different world than their parents did. In any case, talking of Midwestern children as “autobots” is as offensive as it is stupid. This is the kind of poor writing that makes me wonder about the standards of Common Dreams. Fair and Balanced?
You forget about immigration. If I remember correctly the last census showed that the U.S. actually has a negative birth rate. The increase in population comes from immigration. This is also creating a large demographic shift as most of these new arrivals are “non-white”. First and even second generation immigrants tend to be more conservative but by the third generation that begins to shift markedly as this group has no knowledge of economic and political oppression in the “old country”, but is fully cognizant of the failings of corporate feudalism and consumerism in America.
Just my 2 cents.
Stilba: my brother once observed that possibly a good strategy for fostering abhorence of religion is to subject your children to persistent religious indoctrination. It certainly worked in my family; children of devout Catholics, none of us adhere to that faith. Not out of apathy, but from careful and diverse considerations.
You think Common Dreams is fair and balanced? We must not be getting the same webpage. If it were balanced it wouldn’t be my home page. There are some ideas and beliefs that no longer deserve the time it takes to explain them because they have been discredited so many times, what is the point? You won’t find those ideas maintained here.
Morford does not claim to be “fair and balanced.” In fact I bet he just about revels in being one of the “shock-jocks” of free-thought. Was Molly Ivens fair and balanced?
Became an instant fan of Mark Morford with “Is your fetus Republican”?
He’s a particular kind of writer with a style all his own, and yes, he draws with heavy lines with flights of squiggles, but nothing personal there; he’s just making his points loud and clear, and there’s a lot of truth in them.
It is the variation of topics, and of both viewpoints and writing style that keeps me coming back to this “best” site on my favorites’ list. Rarely am I disappointed with commondreams.org.
I was born and raised in The Big Apple, spanning three boroughs in living, school, employment, and grew into a flaming liberal eventually, even though my parents were dyed-in-the-wool Republicans, except for a first-term vote for FDR.
I ended up living in a conservative rural area on a homestead. Still here … three-and-a-half decades now. Went through some tar and feathers in the beginning which was scarey, but the walk-out (the area’s first) for me by students from Jr. and Sr. High because I wasn’t going to be rehired [not because I wasn’t a good teacher]
also scared the bejeesuz out of the parents and other locals. [”Well, I never …”
To a few, always I would/will be a pariah. But for most others and for me, mutual understanding and mutual appreciation developed. I’ve never been part of the social scene or church life of the area much, by choice. Tried a few things, but too rigid in thinking or events not-to-my taste or style.
But over-all, most are very good, decent, honest, hard-working people, very community and family oriented, and there are a lot of acts of kindness and generosity and thoughtfulness.
For a long time now, coming off my hermitage hill, I can have a four-hour, cracker-barrel-style, social time on a Friday night just going to the super market. Familiar faces, good folks who are part of my life as I am to theirs, and oh, boy, can we talk up a storm on a whole range of things. And happily, there have been a lot of changes over the years in terms of openness or broader points of view. The world changes, and so do we all eventually. One of Morford’s points.
I think of the delightful and wise Rogers and Hammerstein song from “The King and I” … “Getting to know you/getting to know all about you/getting to like you/getting to know you like me …
It’s really what it’s all about. Too bad the greedheads and vicious fools who run the world do run the world.
Let’s bend our efforts to changing that state of affairs, non-violently and without anger.
Actually I’m working on a way for all of us to do that, like water going around the rocks and gradually wearing them away. Stay tuned.
Frankly, I am a TRUE conservative… not one of the fascist religious zealots who have been claiming the conservative mantel for the past decade or so.
The difference between TRUE conservatives and those neo-con Limbaugh fans who demonize liberals is quite simple… REAL conservgatives believe in CONSERVING. SMALLER government, BROADER alliances with our traditional friends, less government infringment on our rights, and we place more value on diplomacy and less on wasting our military forces on corporate greed projects.
What we NEED to do to counter the rabbit-like breeding of the feeble-minded religious fascists is spend the next couple of decades showing them what harm their movement did to the image of, economy of and young military families of America at the turn of the century.
Maybe we can educate them into being sane and reasonable people instead of blind followers of the George W. Bushes, Ann Coulters and Pat Robertsons of the future.
I really don’t think breeding counts for much. You’ve never seen a real, down-home orgy like what happens when Mormon college kids get off the leash. Likewise I’ve seen thirty Unitarian college kids spend a whole weekend naked and NOBODY got any due to good manners.
Wait, I think that proves that authors premise.
Well, there was an article in this mornings paper about how mothers who eat hormon-laden beef during pregnancy may reduce their fetal sons eventual sperm count. Fewer Republicans that way.
I think the real defeat of the GOP is coming from the insistence of Christian parents that their kids listen to “Christian Rock and Christian Rap.” If that doesn’t turn you into a crunchy, world-music listening, multi-culteral liberal nothing will.
Large families are the result of the parents having no entertainment except sex.
The conservatives are certainly not lining up at the draft and the liberals will not.
So, it looks like a big problem for the military supporters.
On one level–that of satirical farce–the article works. After all the sorry and miserable (but vitally necessary and important)news we are exposed to on this blog it is a relief to have a chance to lighten up once in a while. Of course progressive or neocon is not a matter of genetics, but rather of conditioning and training and how one responds to what they experience in life. As Foghorn Leghorn would say, “It’s a joke son, now don’t y’all be so serious all the time!”
Provoice you are so right! However, the Republicans have taken over true conservatives and turned them into a mess of mistakes and they now conserve nothing. They are more a threat then the terrorists to our way of life and they take our freedoms one at a time, the sheep follow over that cliff and never bother to look at what they have done. Organized religion is a scourge on society!
thank you mr. morford, this article provided me the best laugh i’ve had in a while. the way you make yourself seem so smug and superior is nothing short of brilliant. the way your passionate calls for open-mindedness and tolerance contrast with your razor sharp insults based on stereotypes of your opposition - pure comedic gold. but the most hilarious part is the way you seem so convinced that all of the problems in the world would magically vanish if your side were in power. your portrayal of childish convictions to idealistic principles was so spot-on i could hardly stop laughing enough to reply to your article. as far as comedians go, you, sir, are a genius.