| Topic: |
Science > Abortion |
| User: |
"Sound of Trumpet" |
| Date: |
10 Mar 2006 08:16:26 PM |
| Object: |
The Selfishness Of Liberal Anti-Child Propaganda |
http://www.chicagoboyz.net/archives/003981.html
The Selfishness of Anti-Child Propaganda
TM Lutas
Shannon Love's recent effort on the cultural struggle between the
pro-life ethic and those who belittle "breeders" seems to have gone far
afield in comments.
I haven't seen anybody actively angry with those who are biologically
incapable of having children, yet several comments seem to accuse
Shannon of doing exactly that when he says that childless couples are
selfish. But it's absurd to think that there's only one type of
childlessness. A little charity in reading would reduce the temperature
of the conversation quite a bit. Instead of looking toward the
personal, it might be much better to examine the problem through the
lens of infrastructure.
Societies undertake tremendous expenditures in water, sewer,
electricity, lighting, and transport in the expectation that a certain
number of people are going to be around to use these systems for the
long haul. If you wrong-size sewer lines and a town's population
shrinks below the effective minimum, you have to redo the entire sewer
system's piping or effectively lose public sanitation as there's just
not enough flow to keep things moving. The massive water tunnels of New
York City were not built to last over a century without maintenance in
order to satisfy the needs of the generation that built and paid for
them.
Put simply, all that existing infrastructure represents the accumulated
sacrifices of the generations that have come before us. It's a sort of
group project, a shared social contract that should not be thrown away,
willy nilly based on a temporary fashion. In short, it's the physical,
enduring manifestation of our society.
Now there are other, softer, multi-generational institutions that are a
bit more controversial. Social Security and other old-age pension
schemes are largely inter-generational capital transfers that depend on
having a certain birthrate to maintain sustainability. Were we all
living in libertarian paradise, these sorts of political programs would
not exist. Wake me up when we get to libertopia. In the real world,
inter-generational transfer schemes are likely to be with us for a long
time. They're too reliable a way to assemble durable electoral
coalitions for them to not be used again and again by ambitious
politicians.
Now there have always been people who could not or would not
participate in the creation of the next generation. The sterile, the
ill, those who were incapable of the work of parenting, those called to
specialty functions incompatible with child rearing generally
contributed what they could to the raising and protecting of other
people's children and aided to the limits of their abilities society in
its fight to progress and not regress across the generations.
Historically rarer was the happy to be childless who purposefully
avoided being the helpful uncle, the adoptive mother, the spinster
schoolteacher who educated the whole village or some other like role
that may have been personally childless. Such people had historically
been looked down on as wastrels, hedonists only looking toward their
own pleasures. It's a pretty recent phenomenon that such purposeful
wallflowers in the multi-generational struggle to maintain and improve
society hit a critical mass sufficient to create their own society with
its own mores and prejudices, mores and prejudices that are actively
hostile to the great project of keeping society alive into the next
generation.
I have to say that I'm not at all fond of this new ideal, this
dismissal of "breeders" as social inferiors who don't appreciate the
finer things in life and who supposedly whine for "subsidies" for
children. The truth is that some economic goods have not been
successfully monetized and payment for them remains collective and
nonmonetary. The foresight to create physical infrastructure that you
don't personally have to pay to recreate each generation comes out of a
multi-generational ethic that is incompatible with what I call
wallflowers and Shannon called free riders. The benefits of that ethic
are taking advantage of the artifacts of our forefathers. The cost is
to repeat the process in our own generation. This is enforced via
social pressure for the most part though the tax man and the law code
do have their roles.
The wallflowers take the benefits of the multi-generational ethic
without complaint and whine about the cost of continuing the project
into the next generation, propagandizing and agitating for the project
to end with their generation being the great winner, all gain with no
pain. It's selfish and ultimately destructive for our society to adopt
that course but the wallflowers don't care.
[ed note: Shannon's a guy. I think I used to know that. I'm very sorry,
gender corrected where appropriate]
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| User: "The Black Wibble" |
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| Title: Re: The Selfishness Of Liberal Anti-Child Propaganda |
11 Mar 2006 04:38:00 AM |
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"Sound of Trumpet" <soundoftrumpet@mail2world.com> wrote in message
news:1142043386.806768.238780@i39g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
http://www.chicagoboyz.net/archives/003981.html
[...]
Now there are other, softer, multi-generational institutions that are a
bit more controversial. Social Security and other old-age pension
schemes are largely inter-generational capital transfers that depend on
having a certain birthrate to maintain sustainability. Were we all
living in libertarian paradise, these sorts of political programs would
not exist. Wake me up when we get to libertopia. In the real world,
inter-generational transfer schemes are likely to be with us for a long
time. They're too reliable a way to assemble durable electoral
coalitions for them to not be used again and again by ambitious
politicians.
Now there have always been people who could not or would not
participate in the creation of the next generation. The sterile, the
ill, those who were incapable of the work of parenting, those called to
specialty functions incompatible with child rearing generally
contributed what they could to the raising and protecting of other
people's children and aided to the limits of their abilities society in
its fight to progress and not regress across the generations.
Look; if Catholicism were a part of our genetic makeup, we'd all be born
God's servants and Society's chattel. The fact is there is nothing
intrinsic about any one of us, individually or grouped together as a
society, that entitles us to make servants or chattel out of people.
Ignore religious doctrine and politicians, and work towards our own
happiness in life. If you live in a capitalistic society you'll find that
nearly the entirety of the physical wealth you own ( and wealth of
knowledge, too) was produced or discovered by people doing the same.
Tony.
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| User: "elizabeth" |
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| Title: Re: The Selfishness Of Liberal Anti-Child Propaganda |
10 Mar 2006 08:24:58 PM |
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How could anyone be so insane as to not realize there is no shortage of
children?
Sounds like this is one of those MEN who insist that it's woman's
highest role to breed . . .so they won't compete with him for jobs.
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: The Selfishness Of Liberal Anti-Child Propaganda |
11 Mar 2006 09:54:00 AM |
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elizabeth wrote:
How could anyone be so insane as to not realize there is no shortage of
children?
Sounds like this is one of those MEN who insist that it's woman's
highest role to breed . . .so they won't compete with him for jobs.
Sounds to me as though his point is not that - nor is his point about
sewers, as others in this thread said. (Though it WAS a tempting
conclusion.) His point is that 90% or more of both CF and childless
people throughout history have supposedly devoted themselves to the
public welfare and other people's children instead of, say, lucrative
jobs in the shallow entertainment business - until the age of the Pill.
Somehow, I doubt it.
But I'd still like to see more discussion of just how much more
wasteful hedonism society CAN take, since it's hardly only the CF who
are guilty of that - and it's hardly only they who manage to find jobs
that cater to the public's demand for hedonism. How many well-known
Hollywood folks are CF, after all? Percentage-wise, that is.
Lenona.
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| User: "Mark K. Bilbo" |
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| Title: Re: The Selfishness Of Liberal Anti-Child Propaganda |
10 Mar 2006 08:27:27 PM |
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In <1142043386.806768.238780@i39g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>, "Sound of
Trumpet" <soundoftrumpet@mail2world.com> wrote:
The Selfishness of Anti-Child Propaganda
Do you ever get permission to reproduce copyrighted material in full or
are you just an immoral law breaker?
--
Mark K. Bilbo
--------------------------------------------------
I just love this...
"For those of us who grew up in Louisiana,
'The Wizard of Oz' was like a documentary.
Dorothy left Kansas and simply went to Mardi Gras."
http://makeashorterlink.com/?W2EA439BC
Um... didn't foresee what exactly?
http://makeashorterlink.com/?B5CA129BC
"Everything New Orleans"
http://www.nola.com
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| User: "The Rocket Scientist" |
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| Title: Re: The Selfishness Of Liberal Anti-Child Propaganda |
11 Mar 2006 06:48:56 PM |
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More proof that people living in psychiatric group homes should not be
allowed unsupervised access to a PC.
Sound of Trumpet wrote:
<a lot of breederific babble>
--
Ad Astra!
Bill Sullivan
========================================
In Franklin's tower the four winds sleep
Like four lean hounds the lighthouse keep
Wildflower seed on the sand and wind
May the four winds blow you home again.
Robert Hunter
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| User: "John Baker" |
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| Title: Re: The Selfishness Of Liberal Anti-Child Propaganda |
11 Mar 2006 04:26:56 AM |
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On 10 Mar 2006 18:16:26 -0800, "Sound of Trumpet"
<soundoftrumpet@mail2world.com> wrote:
http://www.chicagoboyz.net/archives/003981.html
The Selfishness of Anti-Child Propaganda
Don't you ever get tired of being an idiot?
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| User: "Scott Erb" |
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| Title: Re: The Selfishness Of Liberal Anti-Child Propaganda |
11 Mar 2006 08:59:42 PM |
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Sound of Trumpet wrote:
http://www.chicagoboyz.net/archives/003981.html
The Selfishness of Anti-Child Propaganda
TM Lutas
Shannon Love's recent effort on the cultural struggle between the
pro-life ethic and those who belittle "breeders" seems to have gone far
afield in comments.
Most liberals I know (including myself) have children and love them
dearly. Why do you feel compelled to insert "liberal" into the subject
header? Are you overcome by a kind of neanderthal "them vs. us"
mentality where you assume anything you disagree with must be
"liberal"?
Personally, I waited until I was in my forties to have kids (which,
except for back pain when I spin and lift them too much, I think was a
good idea), but I can say that life increased in quality for me with
children; I discovered a depth of love I had not known I had inside of
me. That said, I totally respect those who don't have children, and
find any kind of attempt to politicize such a choice either way to be
silly.
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| User: "Marten Kemp" |
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| Title: Re: The Selfishness Of Liberal Anti-Child Propaganda |
12 Mar 2006 02:16:04 PM |
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Scott Erb wrote:
Sound of Trumpet wrote:
http://www.chicagoboyz.net/archives/003981.html
The Selfishness of Anti-Child Propaganda
TM Lutas
Shannon Love's recent effort on the cultural struggle between the
pro-life ethic and those who belittle "breeders" seems to have gone
far afield in comments.
Most liberals I know (including myself) have children and love them
dearly.
{deletia}
Personally, I waited until I was in my forties to have kids
{deletia}
That said, I totally respect those who don't have children,
{deletia}
No, you don't. You have more than zero children,
therefore alt.support.childfree isn't for you.
I deleted ascf from the list of crosspost headers
so that the ascf inhabitants won't be bothered,
but blather at any other groups as you see fit.
--
-- Marten Kemp
(Fix name and ISP to reply)
-=-=-
.... I'm still pondering whether i should pre-emptively register "I can't
believe it's not Jesus" as a name for a low-calorie communion wafer,
so i get in there before the church. --Tanuki
(from http://home.xnet.com/~raven/Sysadmin/ASR.Quotes.html)
* TagZilla 0.059 * http://tagzilla.mozdev.org
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: The Selfishness Of Liberal Anti-Child Propaganda |
11 Mar 2006 11:04:23 AM |
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What I don't get is, neither TM Lutas nor Shannon Love seems willing to
focus on the fact that children should not be born to adults who have
never liked/wanted children, whether they give them up for adoption or
not. A pretty big factor to ignore!
Lenona.
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| User: "LillyDipper" |
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| Title: Re: The Selfishness Of Liberal Anti-Child Propaganda |
11 Mar 2006 07:49:34 AM |
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Wow. So my whole reason for being boils down to plumbing. I guess
I'll stop worrying about Einstein and Planck, 'cause this person's
shown me the light, or the outhouse, I'm not quite sure.
*LD, wondering if there's a cup of coffee in the universe strong enough
to help her with this logic.*
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