January 18, 2013

American Bastards

Should unwed mothers be disincentivized or thanked? Are they instinctively keeping the species going during a time of what may be transformation or may be decline/collapse? Are they minxes or heroines? (Finally got around to posting this thought now that Instapundit did so.)

Maybe the distinctions on which the above paragraph is based no longer apply completely.

The very fact that the title of this post is jarring says something, though I'm not sure what. The Democrats' Julia shtick says something more clearcut: they want to make hay by abetting a trend which is in all likelihood bad for the country. The danger is that we may have a class of voters who are not just indifferent to, but invested in, the country's decline (the stupidity of Romney's 47% remark notwithstanding).

I'm pretty sure that asking whether men or women are to blame is a false dichotomy.

Addendum 20130602 Apparently China is hard on single parents. The linked piece is by a British former single parent who whines about how hard it was without once considering whether it was a good idea; she ignores or is unaware of Helen Smith's trope that if you subsidize something, you get more of it. Made a bad decision? Blame society!

(Is there a positive correlation between readily available welfare and single motherhood? There is an anecdotal one (destruction of the black family, etc), but I wonder about the rigor.)

Nothing in this Addendum is intended to erase my concerns about false dichotomy.

No comments: