* “Republicans and Democrats tend to live in different types of families. Two-thirds of Republicans (67%) are married, and 57% are married with children. Among Democrats, only 45% are married (38% are married with children). Democrats (9%) are twice as likely as Republicans (4%) to be living with a partner without being married. Among independents, 52% are married and 48% are unmarried.”
“As for rising childlessness, 29% of Americans say this trend is bad for society, 11% say it is good and the majority—55%—say it makes little difference. There is little difference in attitudes by gender, but there’s a distinctive pattern by age. This trend is the only one tested about which the youngest adults are more concerned than older ones: 37% of 18- to 29-year-olds say it is bad for society that more women do not have children, which is nine or 10 percentage points higher than older age groups.
By race and ethnic group, the increase in women without children is of more concern to blacks (39%) and Hispanics (42%) than to whites (25%); whites are more likely to say it does not make much difference.
Childlessness has risen rapidly in recent decades. In 1980, 10% of women ages 40 to 44 had no biological children. In 2008, that share had risen to 18%. Childlessness has risen among all racial and ethnic groups, but white women are the most likely not to have had their own biological children.” (Pew)
* One obvious caveat is that what it means to be a Democrat or Republican changes, sometimes very dramatically. If there should be a fundamental realignment of American politics under Trump, for instance, assuming he doesn’t self-destruct, the Republican Party of tomorrow might contain a lot people who currently identify as Democrats and Independents, particularly among immigrant and minority groups. And to judge by the unhappiness of the so-called Republican establishment, it might lose a few people also; or perhaps a completely new party will arise, in reality if not in name, to replace the Democratic Party over a period of decades, which will finally overthrow the New Republican ascendency.
What we do know for sure is that the future belongs to the fertile and that the religious are more fertile than the the non-religious. So the future of religion — or, rather, of religions — in America might be the real story.
* Quebeckers went from the world’s highest to the lowest fertility in a single generation. Look at Céline Dion, one of 14, but barely squeezing out two for her gerontological beau. And I see the same process in my wife’s family– her 100%-French Canadian grandmother was one of fifteen or sixteen, then had three (albeit with a long period of infertility before the first and widowhood before the second). And the next two generations are contracting further– except for us!
Same with politics. When the Democrats turned on Southerners, their most loyal supporters, Southerners turned on them. The Goldwater map looks a lot like the FDR one just 20 years before.
However, one thing that will never change is the propensity of poor, non-white immigrants to vote for the more statist party.
* Liberalism is a memetic virus that induces sterility, so to survive it’s infecting the children of more conservative people. To do that it needs control of education and entertainment.
Liberals are like the ottoman turks, turning the children of their enemies into their soldiers, the janissary.
* Currently neither party really emphasizes the importance of Americans, and whites in particular, having as many children as possible. Democrats think women should slave for corporations and having children is just submitting to the mysterious ways of the evil Illuminati-Patriarchy. Republicans are hostile to any state help for parents — which ends up hurting whites more since poor blacks and Hispanics get this help anyway. But with the rise of Trump and beside him a vibrant alt-right / nationalist tendency, things may change. This is fueled of course greatly in reaction to the BLM and campus-crazies movement where even well-educated liberal whites are starting to get a visceral feel for what being a white minority in an America of Color is going to feel like.
And so as the alt-right develops ideologically, it will be important to present an inclusive theory of (white) fecundity that for example celebrates the power of female reproduction and can appeal to the urban, localist, Bernie Sanders-voting white people.
Just is is happening in France, where many people who formerly identified with the left are supporting the Front National, the rise of Trump is starting to radically blur these ideological distinctions. It’s anecdotal for sure, but I am hearing more and more people from the left shifting to the Trump camp. I’m also hearing people from the left on Facebook talking about how they are defriending an increasing number of people for coming out loud and proud for Trump.
* I keep coming [across] articles from outlets like Salon with titles like: “how to argue with with your racist uncle who supports Trump at Thanksgiving”. The implied thinking with all these kind of articles is that they are the majority whites and the whites that support Republicans are a small fringe (i.e. that racist uncle), how do they reconcile the fact that whites that vote Democrat are an ever shrinking number ?
More importantly, do they not realize that the days of having family members with opposing political viewpoints are being rapidly replaced where politics is driven by race, which means people with opposing political viewpoints will increasingly not meet at Thanksgiving at all. Despite all their “right side of history” talk, its like they are permanently stuck in 1960, will they ever come to realize that it is they are will be the fringe family member?
* To the extent that genetics is unrelated to politics, much of the rest correlates with the milieu in which one is raised – the politics of your town, your peers, etc. That may favor conservatives even more than the genetic component, as birthrates tend to be much higher in conservative towns, even for Democrats.
Here’s a quote from a USA Today article from about 9 years ago: “House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, a Catholic mother of five from San Francisco, has fewer children in her district than any other member of Congress: 87,727. [The execrable, unlamented, now former] Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah, a Mormon father of eight, represents the most children: 278,398…Republican House members overwhelmingly come from districts that have high percentages of married people and lots of children, according to a USA TODAY analysis of 2005 Census Bureau data released last month. GOP Congress members represent 39.2 million children younger than 18, about 7 million more than Democrats. Republicans average 7,000 more children per district.”
The only things that have changed since that article was published in 2006 are that Hispanic birthrates crashed, and life in big lefty towns like San Francisco and New York got even more expensive and less child-friendly.
I grew up in a conservative town, and I know plenty of people who, as adults, turned into liberals. Generally, though, a person’s politics as an adult tend to mirror some blend of his parents plus those of his peers. If both genetics and environment are pushing whites in the conservative direction, the next generation of whites is going to be even more conservative than genetics alone would suggest. Toss in the increasingly batshit crazy elements of the Left, mostly related to race and “gender” (Black Lives Matter, Caitlyn Jenner), and the news gets even better.
The racial animosity constantly stirred up by the Left is going to cause whites to unify politically nationwide more than ever, just as they have in the South.
* He’s just rediscovering what I covered in a long series:
Expectations and reality: a window into the liberal-conservative baby gap
The fertility differential is pretty small across political orientation. The additive heritability is at least 0.6 (and perhaps quite a bit higher), but the low selective differential means that there is a very small genotypic change across generations.
It’d take well over a century for us to notice a difference – and that’s assuming trends remain constant.
See also:
difference has trebled in the last four decades to the point that white Republicans are now far more likely to identify as conservative than white Democrats are.
Political orientation is probably more heritable than partisan affiliation. I’d guess the gap will appear wider on the liberal-moderate-conservative spectrum than on the Democrat-independent-Republican one.
Two variables that are stronger predictors of fertility than political orientation or party affiliation are educational attainment (inversely correlated, especially for women) and religiosity (positively correlated–to the extent that high IQ people who attend religious services regularly outbreed the irreligious at every level of intelligence, social class, race/ethnicity, etc.
Parenthetically, educational attainment looks to be the driving force, not intelligence. Fertility by wordsum score varies little once educational attainment is controlled for, but educational attainment is a strong predictor even after wordsum score is controlled for–put more clearly, educational attainment is 5x as strong a predictor of fertility as IQ is.
The strong inverse relationship between education and fertility shows up strongly on the international level as well.
* The Janissary effect would screech to a halt tomorrow if parents would pull their kids out of the public schools and teach them at home. But there’s a cost: approximately $500 per year for a decent online curriculum. Khan academy is free by the way.
Problem: parents don’t want to take responsibility for their children’s education and upbringing so they farm it out to the public (government) schools and hope for the best. Make that other guy – one’s neighbors – pay for it!
Result: kids are brought-up in the ways and beliefs of those who decide on the public school curriculum. The deciding takes place far upstream of teachers, parents, PTAs and textbook publishers by the way.
A lot of parents don’t like the direction in which this country’s been headed for awhile now. So what do they do in response? Tithe their children to the State for 12 years. Then pony-up $25k or more per year to send Becky and Johnnie off to State U where they play hook-up/friends-with-benefits for 4 or 5 years. The conditioning of the prior 12 years really sets (hardens) during this time.
And the process has been repeated for decades.
Yet people keep looking/hoping for a different result.
* The country is split into two groups, the predators and the preyed upon.
The former consists of a coalition of three separate interest segments:
i. The one percenters who massively benefit from either legislation or interpretation of regulation in filling their pockets.
ii. The direct employees of the State, and the burgeoning army of contractors paid exclusively by the State.
iii. The overt Welfare recipients with an ever expanding buffet of benefits.
The latter group, the preyed upon, consist of the ever diminishing productive middle and working class who are largely unaware of the war being waged against them.
My local rag (an organ of the Murdoch crime family) had a little piece last week about the new 3 year contract for the local county prison guards. I went back to the two previous two contracts and discovered that by 2018 they will have had 33% increases over nine years. Between 2008 and 2013 (the latest years I could find data for) median household income in the county decreased by 13%.
At some point some rogue politician will start fighting this battle.
* The liberal-conservative dynamic in America, as played out in the white electorate, rides alongside the racial split between the parties. If I recall Sean Trende’s analysis at RealClearPolitics, Democrats have been losing 1 percentage point of the white electorate every 4 year election cycle since the 60s. The margins on what it means to be a white liberal are moving ever inward.
As the Democrats become the Party of Color dedicated to expropriating white wealth and reallocating the spoils to their client groups, there is less and less appeal for whites. This is going to lead to the marginalization of white liberals in that “white interests” are going to drive more policy than “liberal” or “conservative” interests and that “white” and “conservative” are going to overlap much more in the future.
A white liberal in a nice neighborhood, with his kid going to a nice school, is going to get upset about section 8 housing being built right next door to his house because his neighborhood is too white and the Feds targeted the neighborhood for diversity enhancement. He won’t find satisfaction within the Democratic Party, he’ll have to make common cause with the Republicans.
When that liberal’s voice gets added to the Republican coalition it will be drowned out by the larger conservative and moderate factions. That white liberal won’t have a party that he can migrate to which will give voice to his ideological AND racial interest.
We’re at the stage now where top Democrats are already worried about their inability to be competitive with whites and it’s only going to get worse for them as we move forward.
My point is that we shouldn’t be looking simply at the fertility and conversion factors. A white liberal whose voice is neutralized by being withdrawn from the Democratic coalition is also a win for conservatives.
* My prediction is that the republican party will begin to reassess some of its beliefs and move more to the left economically in order to accommodate increasing numbers of independent and center-left white democrats who will come into the party as a result of Democratic anti-white race baiting. On racial issues, it could become more polarizing, dragging the center-left and independent whites along with it. To some degree, we already see that. Jeb Bush was under the impression that he could run and win using his brother’s 2000 campaign strategy: tax cuts for the rich and compassionate conservatism. Nope. Polls indicate the GOP base is largely against free trade and tax cuts for the wealthy don’t seem to be doing it anymore….add that to the implicitly race-based immigration policies pushed by Trump and that could be your future republican party.
