That looks like the kind of thinking that got Mitt Romney in trouble: the assumption that poorer people are always going to be Democrats and richer people Republicans. A lot of divorced people in the red states are poor Republicans, and a lot of the people in the blue states who never got divorced are well-to-do Democrats.
I can also see that differences in out-of-wedlock marriage rates may be related to contraception and abortion. But if breeding or child rearing strategies are something real, then such practices -- however distasteful -- are part of such strategies. If you are pursuing a strategy of limited breeding and high investment in offspring then that is what you are doing, you aren't "really" pursuing some other strategy that you'd be following in the absence of condoms and birth control pills.
For one thing, a lot of people would be less sexually active if there were no condoms or birth control pills. Also, the town I grew up in has become quite liberal since my parents' day. Yet when I go back there I don't see everybody hanging out at the local bar for random pick-ups. There's a lot that you can say against the yuppies who've crowded out other people, but they aren't promiscuous, they aren't divorced more often than other people are, and they aren't abandoning their families (though enough of their fathers did that in the 1970s).
In the city things are different, but as their counterparts reach their thirties they do start to settle down (and move out to the suburbs). While marriage rates may be lower for this generation than for some others, for those over 30 or so, it's not exactly all sex all the time.
It sounds like you're really invested in the idea that two parts of America are pursing radically different evolutionary strategies, and also that somehow violent struggle for life is somehow the norm, even though most of our lives don't reflect that. I don't think anything or anybody's going to convince you that you may be taking things too far.
“It sounds like you’re really invested in the idea that two parts of America are pursing radically different evolutionary strategies,”
Again, I base my arguments on the data, and not possible anecdotes about who it seems likely is following what strategy. Read the last chart at the neuropolitics link, Go to the GSS site, check Gallup, and tell me where it is most likely those Liberals got those urges, from an evolutionary standpoint. More sex, more partners, shorter relationships, less desire to rear children. It matches r perfectly.
I never understood why we didn’t get an infinite number of ideologies, all pursuing different mixes of agendas. Instead everybody aggregates around two main ones, while a minor strategy of Libertarianism (which might actually be a logical compromise) is wholly ignored.
“and also that somehow violent struggle for life is somehow the norm, even though most of our lives don’t reflect that.”
Again, you seem to be ignoring a lot of what I am saying. I am not looking at how these urges are perfectly adapted to today’s world as r and K-strategies. They aren’t perfectly adaptive. The present world is less violent, which is part of why Conservatism is doing worse for the time being (and did better after Sept 11th). But, understand, the primitive switches in our heads which trigger these are still there. Let resources get scarce, or things get violent, and you will see Conservatism rapidly rise. Give free resources, and r will gain strength as long as you keep the resources flowing comfortably.
I am saying violence was a large part of our evolutionary history, it emerges in K-selection, it doesn’t emerge in r-selection, and it shows in our two sets of urges, one of which is still adaptive to that violent environment. Notice, under this model, the second you flood a society with free resources (like freely borrowed money) you initiate r-selection, which I maintain trips switches in our systems that increase the adherence to an r-strategy. Look how r we have become since the mid eighties, which themselves followed Carter’s resource limitation. This ecological analogy is predictive going back. If it is predictive going forward, we will see our system crash (as any glut of free resources always tends to end in nature).
You seem bent on implying that despite similarities to known Darwinian strategies, ideologies have no biological root. You also seem set on the fact things have changed forever, and we will never go back to a more primitive form of existence. I disagree with both.
I think the Romans believed that thigns couldn’t change too, right before the fall, and the pillaging of barbarians which followed. Beirut was the Paris of the Middle East, Bosnia was unbelievably Cosmopolitian. Things change, as they have throughout history. It is why I believe we can adapt our strategies on the fly - something which will probably be quite useful in the next three decades here, if current trends bear out.