The Democrats' Darwin Award
For without cause they hid their net for me;
without cause they dug a pit for my life.
Let ruin come upon them unawares!
And let the net which they hid ensnare them;
let them fall therein to ruin!1
There's an interesting article in the July-August Atlantic Monthly by James Fallows in the form of a letter to a Presidential candidate in 2016. It's sort of a retrospective of the economic blunders that Fallows believes our country to have been making.
I'm a physicist, not an economist, so I can't comment on the economic future he describes (other than to say that sources I trust say we do have serious problems that neither major party is addressing), but I would like to comment on one conceit of his piece: that the President elected in 2008 will be a Democrat.2
[I]n 2008 [the Democrats] were unexpectedly saved by the death of Fidel Castro. This drained some of the pro-Republican passion of South Florida's Cuban immigrants, and the disastrous governmental bungling of the "Cuba Libre" influx that followed gave the Democrats their first win in Florida since 1996—along with the election. But that Democratic administration could turn out to have been America's last. The Electoral College map drawn up after the 2010 census removed votes from all the familiar blue states except California, giving the Republicans a bigger head start from the Sunbelt states and the South.
It's worth commenting on this possibility in light of the recent controversy over Darwinism and Intelligent Design.
I'll pass over the loyalty of Cuban-Americans to the Republican Party (especially after the Elian Gonzales debacle), as a voting block's ardor can easily effect its turnout, if not swing the proportions of its vote.
What I want to focus on is the trend in the electoral college distribution. Notice that Bush could have won in 2004 exactly the same states he won in 2000, and carried the election away handily instead of just squeaking by. The growth of red only increases with time, as The National Ledger quotes Robert Novak:
A projection by Polidata, a Republican-oriented political mapping and redistricting firm, shows population trends will make Republican-dominated "Red" states more influential in winning presidential elections and determining control of Congress after the 2010 census.
The new study forecasts that "Red" states will pick up a net six electoral votes, with Florida and Texas gaining three each. The "Blue" states carried by John Kerry, according to Polidata, will lose a net six electoral votes, led by New York's loss of two.
Under this distribution of electoral votes, George W. Bush could have been elected last November without carrying Ohio.
The reason is that the "red states" grew in population and thus electoral votes, while the "blue states" lost electoral votes. Steve Sailer explains this trend by saying that people with large families move to places that have more space and cheaper real estate. But he misses a deeper question: why do people who have large families vote conservative in the first place?
A principle I call Super-Natural Selection explains the correlation. People who love life and see it has a value beyond itself (and oneself) want to pass it on and so tend to have larger families. People who are see little beyond their own individual lives (like most Boomers) tend to have fewer children. Proliferation of artificial contraception greatly strengthens this trend, and establishes Super-Natural Selection's dominance over other factors like wealth.
It is very sad that the Democrats have become so obsessed with abortion and "sexual liberation." Such policies hurt society as a whole by degrading the (traditional) family, which is the only institution that produces fully formed, mature adults ready to take their parents' places in society.
But beyond the societal harm, the Democrats are promoting the demographic suicide of their own base.
Well deserving of a Darwin Award, don't you think?
But the meek shall possess the land,
and delight themselves in abundant prosperity.3
Notes
1. Psalm 35:7-8.
2. Presumably, Fallows has chosen this detail to better engage the Atlantic's audience of educated and relatively moderate liberals, so one can't take it too seriously as what he truly believes will happen.
3. Psalm 37:11; cf. Mt 5:4.
James Fallows, "Countdown to a Meltdown," The Atlantic Monthly (July/August 2005), 51-64.
C.K. Rairden, "Electoral College Analysis: America Gets Redder," The National Ledger (February 26, 2005).
Steve Sailer, "Baby Gap: How birthrates explain the national red/blue elecoral divide," The American Conservative (December 20, 2004), 7-10.
Personal note: This coming week I'll be celebrating a friend's graduation and helping him move, so my posts will be limited. I have a couple weighty ones waiting in the wings and hopefully I'll get a chance to finish them off and make them available.
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