Half Sigma

Why are liberals unmarried and without children?

Liberals are less likely to be married or have children. This is, without a doubt, a real phenomenon. The 2005 Pew study (blogged about previously) shows that only 27% of Liberals are in the category “parent, child living at home,” while the rate for all respondents was 37%. Similarly, 44% of Liberals are married while 54% of the entire sample is married.

Furthermore, Steve Sailer has done some great analysis showing that a state’s white fertility rate is highly correlated with Bush’s share of the vote in that state in the 2004 election.

But no one has a good explanation for why this phenomenon is happening. I have five suggestions, and I don’t know which might be correct:

(1) Because liberals are so disagreeable and/or ugly, people don’t want to have sex with them or marry them.

(2) Because liberals have no qualms about pre-marital sex, they have their sexual urges fully satisfied without getting married. If a liberal woman accidentally gets pregnant, she has no problem with getting an abortion. But square conservative Christian types feel guilty about pre-marital sex so they get married. (This is sort of the opposite of the previous explanation. I don’t like this explanation because it vastly oversimplifies the connection between Christianity and people’s political views.)

(3) Something about being liberal is correlated with not wanting to be married or have children. (I think this has some merit and bears further investigation.)

(4) Liberals do want to have children, but because they live in blue states where the cost of living is so high, they can’t afford to have any. (I find this reasoning to be an example of incorrect analysis of cause and effect. Liberal policies cause the cost of living to be high [I previously explained why], not the other way around. However this explanation seems to be part of the basis for Steve Sailer’s most recent column.)

(5) Liberals do get married and have children with the same frequency as everyone else, but what happens is that after they have children their politics change. Perhaps this is because they are responding to a strong biological urge to give their own children more resources and advantages. So they become greedy and self-interested and stop being concerned about the plight of the less fortunate, and they change their voting behavior and political attitudes accordingly.

No federalism from either party

David Boaz asks “If conservatives don't want federalism any more, will liberals pick up the banner?”

No, liberals won’t pick up the banner. The goal of liberals is the equalization of society through government action. Their mission requires a powerful central government.

More on the Pew 2005 Political Typology

Yesterday I wrote about the Pew 2005 Political Typology. Let’s look at what some other bloggers have said.

Mick Stockinger writes:

Most importantly, while Republican types tend to form a continuum in their values systems, conservative Democrats have virtually nothing in common with Liberals. While their voting patterns are definitely Democrat, they are philosophically Republican and trending that way in their voting patterns as well.

Mick sees the same thing I wrote about yesterday. That there is a core ideology of the left which comprise what the Pew study calls Liberals, but there is no such core ideology on of right.

Mick, however, has an unwarranted optimism that non-Liberal Democrats will shift Republican. Because most Democratic politicians are opportunists and not married to hardcore leftist ideology, they will change their platforms with the political winds. Since the time of Abraham Lincoln, the two parties have maintained an approximately even balance in the electorate. I don’t see how that’s going to change anytime soon.

The Unabrewer has a thoughtful comment about libertarians:

I don’t even think the test is designed to catch the small percentage of libertarians, since most Americans still want/expect the government (read: other people) to take care of their needs.

I have to agree with the Unabrewer. The goal of the survey was to identify eight typology groups making up approximately even segments of the electorate. Libertarians are probably only 2% of the electorate and therefore not numerous enough to have their own group.

I also agree that Americans have been trained not to believe in libertarianism, which explains why they are so rare.

Pattrick Ruffini has a lot of analysis at his blog, and promises to write more in the future. Let me comment on one point he makes:

The Pew study highlights a few areas where one key group stands athwart history, yelling stop! The Liberals are weird for their distinctively anti-war position and a fanatical insistence on purging all religion from the public square.

I don’t think it’s weird at all; the two concepts are strongly related. Liberals don’t like it when people associate in groups that think their group is better than other groups. Liberals dislike war because it causes nationalism which is the idea that one’s nation is better than other nations. And of course nearly all religions promote the idea that the religion is superior to other religions and its members will receive some Divine reward for their belief.

Both religion and nationalism are in opposition to the core liberal belief of equality of outcomes.

The Pew Research 2005 Political Typology

It’s not just a big research study on American voters, but there’s also a cool online survery you can take to determine your Typology Group.

The survey says I’m a Disaffected. Huh? Me not an Enterpriser? “Disaffecteds have little interest in keeping up with news about politics and government....” Me not interested in news? What’s this blog about then?

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If you have a lot of free time on your hands, the full report is interesting reading. But I wouldn’t say that it defines the whole Truth of political science. It’s just interesting.

For example, one tidbit I found interesting is that although 41% of both Liberals and Enterprisers have family incomes of $75,000+ (the two most affluent typologies), 53% of Enterprisers “trade stocks or bonds in the market,” while this is true for only 38% of liberals. Liberals hate free enterprise so much that many won’t trade stocks.

Another interesting tidbit is that Liberals are the least likely to have children living with them of any Typology Group. And Liberals are the most likely, of any other group, to be in the category of “never married.” What does having children and being married have to do with being against the war in Iraq? On the surface nothing, yet there’s a connection. (I recommend Steve Sailer’s baby gap articles.)

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The results of the survey support a belief of mine that there is a basic linear left/right distribution of political thinking. I don’t agree with those who try to place people into quadrants or into even more complicated geometric shapes.

But while the left is defined by a core philosophy (called Liberals in the Typology), there is no core philosophy of the right. The right is just everyone who’s not left. Strongly religious people and libertarians both have beliefs which strongly conflict with the core leftist philosophy, yet otherwise these two groups don’t have much in common. This conflict between non-leftist philosophies has become a major problem for the Republican party.

Isn’t the Democratic party divided also? Yes, the Democratic party is divided, but not over its basic leftist philosophy. The hardcore leftists (or Liberals) by themselves aren’t numerous enough to win elections, so they have made alliances with special interests. The special interests may fight with each other, but there’s never any doubt over what the core leftist philosophy is.

Also, not all of the politicians in either party subscribe to any core beliefs. Many (most?) are just opportunists who seek power. In fact, few hardcore leftists actually win any elections because they turn off too many voters with their extremism.

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Hat tip to Michelle Malkin for spotting this survey. There is some more analysis at Daly Thoughts.

Democrats and populism

This is a sad indictment of the Democratic party, coming from Matthew Yglesias who is a Democrat (but more rational than most Democrats):

I just don't think a really populist candidate could win a Democratic primary.

Now my understanding of populism is appealing to the regular voter, not the top 10% nor the bottom 10%, but the people in the middle. (A dictionary says that a populist is “a member of a political party claiming to represent the common people.”)

So here is an admission from a Democrat that my view of his party is the same as his: a party that represents not the average American but rather liberal college professors, liberal people from the top 10% (like Hollywood types), and a mishmash of minorities and special interests.

This is a pretty poor alternative to Republicans. It’s too bad the Democrats aren’t populists.

The George W. Bush shooting target

Brain Terminal has a photo of a George W. Bush shooting target. Someone has been posting these things in New York City (but I didn’t have the displeasure of seeing any when I was there at the end of March).

Evan Maloney assumes that liberals have been posting these shooting targets. But the violent overthrow of the government is usually associated with right wing militias. Maybe right wing militias have been posting these things?

But then how many right wing militia members live in New York City? Possibly none. And we know that liberals hate George W. Bush very much. Does this represent hypocrisy on the part of the liberal(s) who posted the shooting target, on account of the fact that liberals usually claim to be in favor of peace?

No, because when liberals advocate peace, what they really mean is that the United States should not go to war because the United States is such a bad country that we have no moral authority to fire even a single weapon against morally superior countries such as Iraq (before we invaded it).

Big government Republicans

An article by Laurence Vance at Mises.org points out that Republicans have been expanding the welfare state. This is true. The Republicans may have, once upon a time, supported small government and free markets, but that’s not the case any longer.

In a recent report from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, chief actuary Richard Foster predicts that the federal government will soon be paying for half the cost of all health care in the United States.

The healthcare system in the United States has for many years been more like socialized medicine than a free market, an issue I’ve written about previously. For example, read my post about how to lower the cost of drugs.