WobLog

In today's Wall Street Journal, Arthur C. Brooks, professor at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Public Affairs, writes that conservatives are having significantly more children than liberals:

Simply put, liberals have a big baby problem: They're not having enough of them, they haven't for a long time, and their pool of potential new voters is suffering as a result. According to the 2004 General Social Survey, if you picked 100 unrelated politically liberal adults at random, you would find that they had, between them, 147 children. If you picked 100 conservatives, you would find 208 kids. That's a "fertility gap" of 41%.

Professor Brooks points out that this has political implications:

Given that about 80% of people with an identifiable party preference grow up to vote the same way as their parents, this gap translates into lots more little Republicans than little Democrats to vote in future elections.

There is even good news for those of us living in blues states such as California(*):

Alarmingly for the Democrats, the gap is widening at a bit more than half a percentage point per year, meaning that today's problem is nothing compared to what the future will most likely hold. Consider future presidential elections in a swing state (like Ohio), and assume that the current patterns in fertility continue. A state that was split 50-50 between left and right in 2004 will tilt right by 2012, 54% to 46%. By 2020, it will be certifiably right-wing, 59% to 41%. A state that is currently 55-45 in favor of liberals (like California) will be 54-46 in favor of conservatives by 2020--and all for no other reason than babies.

Lisa and I noticed anecdotal evidence of this baby-gap trend when comparing our former parish (liberal), with its one or two babies per family, with our "little-o" orthodox parish, where families with four or more kids are quite common. It's interesting to see our experience borne out in the national statistics.

(*)Note: California's status as a blue state is solely a function of the voting habits of two populous areas: the Los Angeles basin (specifically, Los Angeles County) and the San Francisco Bay Area. If you look at the results for the 2004 Presidential Election, you'll see that much of California is "Red State," but the populous counties on the coast are "Blue State."

It's the interior counties, however, that have the highest population growth rates. Perhaps California will be "Reagan Country" again some day, after all.

Posted by Don Roberts at 12:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

John Derbyshire recently published a parody of Rudyard Kipling's famous poem, "If" over at National Review Online.

Since it had been awhile, I went back and read Kipling's original:

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream — and not make dreams your master,
If you can think — and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will, which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings — nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And — which is more — you'll be a Man, my son!

― Rudyard Kipling

Posted by Don Roberts at 2:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It looks like the server hosting our home pages and this blog had a problem last night: we lost all the posts and comments after 22 July. I was able to recover the posts from cached copies, but unfortunately I lost all of the comments. Sorry.

Posted by Don Roberts at 10:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A friend of mine directed me to an article, which you might want to read,
about a woman who believes she has been ordained a Catholic priest.

Nothing surprised me in this article, though some things made me sad. It
was pretty much the normal loopy story, but with one twist. In general, I
have noticed that converts to Catholicism become bulwarks of orthodoxy, but
obviously this isn't always the case. I find it odd that a woman would
convert to a religion she obviously didn't really agree with. She wasn't
forced to become Catholic. I also think it's rather arrogant to convert to
a religion you disagree with and then insist that it change to suit you.

My friend asked if Jane Via was automatically excommunicated upon
"ordination." I had assumed the same myself, but recently learned that,
oddly enough, fake ordination isn't an automatic excommunication. However,
if the "ordained" tries to effect any of the Sacraments reserved to the
priesthood -- i.e., pretends to consecrate -- that's an automatic
excommunication. That's at least how it was explained to me.

Via says, "I believe that my ordination is valid. I acknowledge it's illicit
under canon law.” She might believe that, but she believes a lie. Her
"ordination" is both illicit and invalid. In contrast, the ordinations
conferred by Archbishop Lefebvre were illicit, but valid. He had the
ability to ordain those men, but should not have done so. Whoever
"ordained" Via did not have the ability to do so, since the Church has
declared She has no authority to ordain women.

Women's "ordination" is a very American thing to do. American's seem to
think that democracy trumps everything. If enough people believe it, then
anything goes. But no matter how many people believe a lie, it is still a
lie. One hundred percent of the people could support abortion, but it would
still be wrong. It would still be murder. And so it is with women's
"ordination." It doesn't matter how many people think it should be allowed.
The Church, thank God, is not a democracy.

Posted by Lisa Roberts at 10:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)