Text 22084, 87 rader
Skriven 2006-08-22 19:19:13 av Sean Dennis (1:18/200)
Ärende: Another good reason not to be a liberal
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Hello, All.

I read this and chuckled.  If this keeps going on, there won't be any liberals
left...

From:
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110008831

The Fertility Gap
Liberal politics will prove fruitless as long as liberals refuse to multiply.

BY ARTHUR C. BROOKS
Tuesday, August 22, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

The midterm election looms, and once again efforts begin afresh to increase
voter participation. It has become standard wisdom in American politics that
voter turnout is synonymous with good citizenship, justifying just about any
scheme to get people to the polls. Arizona is even considering a voter lottery,
in which all voters are automatically registered for a $1 million giveaway.
Polling places and liquor stores in Arizona will now have something in common.

On the political left, raising the youth vote is one of the most common goals.
This implicitly plays to the tired old axiom that a person under 30 who is not
a liberal has no heart (whereas one who is still a liberal after 30 has no
head). The trouble is, while most "get out the vote" campaigns targeting young
people are proxies for the Democratic Party, these efforts haven't apparently
done much to win elections for the Democrats. The explanation we often hear
from the left is that the new young Democrats are more than counterbalanced by
voters scared up by the Republicans on "cultural issues" like abortion, gun
rights and gay marriage.

But the data on young Americans tell a different story. 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%. 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. Over the past 30 years this gap has not been below
20%--explaining, to a large extent, the current ineffectiveness of liberal
youth voter campaigns today.

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.

The fertility gap doesn't budge when we correct for factors like age, income,
education, sex, race--or even religion. Indeed, if a conservative and a liberal
are identical in all these ways, the liberal will still be 19 percentage points
more likely to be childless than the conservative. Some believe the gap
reflects an authentic cultural difference between left and right in America
today. As one liberal columnist in a major paper graphically put it, "Maybe the
scales are tipping to the neoconservative, homogenous right in our culture
simply because they tend not to give much of a damn for the ramifications of
wanton breeding and environmental destruction and pious sanctimony, whereas
those on the left actually seem to give a whit for the health of the planet and
the dire effects of overpopulation." It would appear liberals have been quite
successful controlling overpopulation--in the Democratic Party.

Of course, politics depends on a lot more than underlying ideology. People vote
for politicians, not parties. Lots of people are neither liberal nor
conservative, but rather vote on the basis of personalities and specific
issues. But all things considered, if the Democrats continue to appeal to
liberals and the Republicans to conservatives, getting out the youth vote may
be increasingly an exercise in futility for the American left.

Democratic politicians may have no more babies left to kiss.

Mr. Brooks, a professor at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Public
Affairs, is the author of "Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About
Compassionate Conservatism," forthcoming from Basic Books.

Later,
Sean

// Visit my blog: http://kd5col.blogspot.com

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