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20 Years Later, It Turns Out Dan Quayle Was Right About Murphy Brown And Unmarried Moms
Washington Post ^ | May 25, 2012 | Isabel Sawhill

Posted on 05/26/2012 1:48:25 PM PDT by Steelfish

20 Years Later, It Turns Out Dan Quayle Was Right About Murphy Brown And Unmarried Moms

Isabel Sawhill May 25.

On May 19, 1992, as the presidential campaign season was heating up, Vice President Dan Quayle delivered a family-values speech that came to define him nearly as much as his spelling talents. Speaking at the Commonwealth Club of California, he chided Murphy Brown — the fictional 40-something, divorced news anchor played by Candice Bergen on a CBS sitcom — for her decision to have a child outside of marriage.

“Bearing babies irresponsibly is simply wrong,” the vice president said. “Failing to support children one has fathered is wrong. We must be unequivocal about this. It doesn’t help matters when prime-time TV has Murphy Brown, a character who supposedly epitomizes today’s intelligent, highly paid professional woman, mocking the importance of fathers by bearing a child alone and calling it just another lifestyle choice.”

Quayle’s argument — that Brown was sending the wrong message, that single parenthood should not be encouraged — erupted into a major campaign controversy. And just a few weeks before the ’92 vote, the show aired portions of his speech and had characters react to it.

“Perhaps it’s time for the vice president to expand his definition and recognize that, whether by choice or circumstance, families come in all shapes and sizes,” Bergen’s character said.

Her fictional colleague Frank, meanwhile, echoed some of the national reaction: “It’s Dan Quayle — forget about it!”

Twenty years later, Quayle’s words seem less controversial than prophetic. The number of single parents in America has increased dramatically: The proportion of children born outside marriage has risen from roughly 30 percent in 1992 to 41 percent in 2009. For women under age 30, more than half of babies are born out of wedlock.

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: culturewars; hollywood; motherhood; potato; potatoe; psychology; quayle; rkselection
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To: Mark17

“I think most of us knew this decades before that.”

His critics at the time knew it as well; they were just determined to create a “post-Christian America”.

It worked.


21 posted on 05/27/2012 3:33:33 AM PDT by kearnyirish2
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To: Kozak

“So that she can explain to her precious snowflake his worthlessness in the grand scheme of her world view.”

Or so he can be used as a sperm donor and ATM machine by a woman in the same manner his mother used someone else years before. I must say I think many young men are onto this stupid game; many of them are determined not to be the suckers in this game.


22 posted on 05/27/2012 3:37:09 AM PDT by kearnyirish2
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To: Mark17
Democrat Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (one of the last of the honorable, anti-Communist Democrats), in 1965 wrote The Negro Family: The Case For National Action, where he sounded the alarm over the increasing number of single-mom underclass families among blacks. He was widely criticized for it.
23 posted on 05/27/2012 5:29:38 AM PDT by PapaBear3625 (If I can't be persuasive, I at least hope to be fun.)
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To: chris_bdba; Steelfish; Mark17; randog; ReformationFan; ClearCase_guy; thethirddegree; ...

There is a simple way to argue this with a Liberal, which will have ton more effect on them than the way it is being argued now.

Liberals have the same quirk Narcissists have, in that they can be backed into a corner logically, in argument, provided it is done as an afterthought to an already settled debate. I used to enjoy doing this to a Narcissist I knew. If the corner they are backed into forces them to confront an uncomfortable truth, the Liberal will melt down.

Here, you can argue the merits of parenting styles all you want, and Liberals will ignore you. You need to take a different tack. To do that, you need to understand Liberals, and their ideology better. All of these issues relate to the underlying difference between our ideologies. Stop by my website at anonymousconservative.com, and read the first page where I discuss reproductive strategies, and how they relate to idoelogy. If you want, and have the time, pull the paper at

http://www.anonymousconservative.com/modern.pdf

Then explain to the Liberal dismissively that all of this relates to r/K Theory. Explain that the r-strategy is about producing as many offspring as possible, as quickly as possible, similar to how a prey species like Rabbits reproduce. Explain that single parenting is a common strategy in such species, along with docility, promiscuity, and early age at first intercourse. Explain that all of these are attempts to maximize offspring production by producing as many offspring as possible as quickly as possible, regardless of the offspring’s ultimate quality on maturity.

Then point out that Liberalism, as an r-type strategy is naturally comfortable with all of the aspects of such a strategy, and that Conservatism, as a K-selected strategy innately wants two-parent rearing instinctually, since it is focused upon producing as capable an offspring as possible. Point out logic has nothing to do with it, that is just an instinctual difference.

If you explain the science clearly enough, and do it dismissively, as if you don’t even care about the debate, because all of this is settled, Libs will get irate. One of the things which will exacerbate the effect is to do it as if you don’t even care about the argument, because it is already settled. That is key. Never give the Liberal the least bit of indication you care what they think, or care what their opinion is. Take the posture that all of this is settled, and they can argue if they like, but they are just wasting their breath.

In a Lib’s mind, this simultaneously backs them into the corner of being some bunny rabbit type human, who has adopted an r-type reproductive strategy by the position they take on this issue, and it prevents them from arguing back, since you are acting as if there is no debate.

If they try to attack the argument, go back to r/K Theory, and emphasize that r-type organisms have five behavioral traits (Competition and conflict aversion, promiscuity, single-parent rearing, early sexualization of youth, and diminished loyalty). K-type organisms have five traits as well, (competitiveness/aggression, monogamy, two-parent rearing, abstinence until monogamy, and loyalty to in-group.) Tell them Liberalism is just an intellectual manifestation of an r-type reproductive strategy, and Conservatism is just a manifestation of a K-type strategy. Repeat as necessary, since there is no argument against that.

For the readers here, I would just note on this subject, that in nature single parenting will increase in any population, of any species, which does not expressly cull it. Give any population free resources with no competition, and those who engage in promiscuity and single parenting will increase in number, relative to the two-parent parenters, due to the increased number of offspring such a low-investment rearing strategy produces. Known as r-selection, this unselective environment is the origin of the “Idiocracy effect.” In the movie, the retard Cletus has an impact on the population’s (de)evolution because none of his 37 imbecile kids get’s culled by Darwin, and they each go on to have 30 kids themselves. In nature, Cletus get’s outcompeted by a guy just like him, who impregnates 37 women, each with 37 kids, none of whom he hangs around to father. That’s not good for evolutionary greatness.

High-investment, two-parent rearing only gains favor in a population under conditions of K-selection, and it only occurs there because the single-parenting parents see their less capable offspring culled by Darwinian competition, while the lower number of higher quality, two-parent parented offspring survive the competition.

Of course, today, the nanny state offers no disincentive to this highly fecund, r-type cohort, so we can expect it to increase, until it creates an economic collapse, and is then culled back. This is why every productive civilization is destined to collapse. The productivity induces free resource availability, which eliminates any form of selection. Everyone who produces fifteen kids with an r-strategy, while eschewing productivity will gradually become the baseline standard of the population. As a result, the population gradually devolves, since the populations becomes more r-selected. Eventually, there will be a collapse, K-selection will return by force, the population will become K-type and productive again, and then the cycle will repeat.

Nobody will understand politics, or what is happening to our nation, without understanding the effects of r/K selection theory in population biology, and how it relates to political ideology.


24 posted on 05/27/2012 9:53:30 AM PDT by AnonymousConservative (Why did Liberals evolve within our species? www.anonymousconservative.com)
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To: AnonymousConservative

Thanks so much! I will read your paper and your web-site later when I have the time to focus on it. I saved the links.


25 posted on 05/27/2012 2:42:27 PM PDT by SaraJohnson
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To: AnonymousConservative

That’s interesting AC. Question: is economic collapse the only way the herd gets culled? Disease? War?


26 posted on 05/27/2012 4:06:20 PM PDT by randog (Tap into America!)
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To: randog

There are essentially two types of mortality. One performs a selection for fitness, the other is more random, and doesn’t reward the more fit.

Random mortality is like a mouse encountering a snake. Since the mouse is totally over-powered, any mouse which runs into a snake will tend to get culled. Since the mortality offered by an overwhelmingly superior predator doesn’t reward fitness, all it does is cull the population back well below the carrying capacity of the environment, making resources available in large quantities to those who remain, and favoring an r-selected reproductive strategy.

This is why rabbits don’t denude every field of grass, and why each rabbit has way more resources than they can eat. It is also why Rabbits exhibit docility, promiscuity, single parenting, early age of sexual activity, and reduced/nonexistent loyalty. Liberals are, in essence, bunny rabbit people because both exhibit r-selected traits.

Selective mortality favors fitness, and culls those who are not as fit. War is selective, but only if everyone goes. If you pull the paper, you will see how WWII removed our nation’s warriors from the gene pool for the duration of the war. 20 years later, the offspring of those who avoided WWII were the Hippies. In that case, War favored the r-types, at least temporarily. Had we lost, and all our warriors been killed, our nation would have continued to be Hipipe like after the sixties. But we won, and our warriors came home. As the Census showed, as their offspring hit the scene, Bugliosi noted Hippyism suddenly died out. So war can cull the r-types, but only if everyone has to fight, and I suspect there the culling occurs as r-types flee to other territories to avoid the war.

Disease becomes complicated. In nature, where resources are produced by the environment (and exist as a somewhat static constant), a disease which kills everyone randomly will favor r, by killing back the population and increasing the resources available to each survivor.

In humans however, we produce our own resources. Our environment’s carrying capacity is dependent on our productivity. If a disease in America were to collapse our economy, the welfarites who can’t produce for themselves would get culled pretty quick, either by leaving for more socialist environs, imprisonment due to trying to take necessities of survival by force, or some other means. That’s K-selective, even if the mortality is random.

Disease can have another effect. I have noted, the Dark Ages peaked after the Medieval Warming Period increased crop production, providing freer resources, and removing selective effects favoring the fit. After a long period of freely available resources, the population had become highly r. As the population grew, and resource shortages began, competition began to get started.

Right then, Yersinia pestis swept through the populace (the Black Plague). It preferentially killed anyone who was poor and uncompetitive, since it preferentially killed those who weren’t well nourished. Picture our welfarites, ten to a house, in an environment where food is scarce and super expensive, and only had freely by the middle class and above. The plague would have killed back the whole Idiocracy, and fast.

All of a sudden, the Renaissance begins, as science, the arts, and all of the intellectual endeavors explode. Productivity takes off, and it is a golden age. Today, historians try to say the plague made people think about death, and this changed their thoughts about life, and they decided to become productive. How about it killed off the unproductive, who were leaching off the productivity of the productive, and killing the spirit of society?

Here, I think the coming financial collapse will reset the balance. When it comes, we will no longer have the money to support the welfarites. At that point, we should find the money to give them tickets to Hugo Chavez’s and Fidel Castro’s Worker’s paradises, with the condition they not come back.

I should add, ideology is not wholly genetic. We have evolved an adaptability. Some of the research shows that people, confronted with a danger, (such as would be presented by an environment of limited resources) will experience a conversion towards Conservatism, over all measures of the ideology, not just the specific threat presented. Probably due to stimulation and exercise of the amygdala, which promotes a lot of Conservative psychological traits, like rule adherence, aggression when threatened, competitiveness, etc.

When the collapse begins, a lot of people who are presently leftward leaning and anticompetitive, due to their comfortable lives, will likely adopt a more Conservative, competitive psychology, over all measures, including social values.

I would hope this will help to motivate the institution of measures to help maintain a more Conservative nation in the future, less tolerant of the Idiocracy’s demands for government largesse, and the Liberal’s desire that we give everything to our enemies, as a sign of good will.


27 posted on 05/28/2012 6:52:33 AM PDT by AnonymousConservative (Why did Liberals evolve within our species? www.anonymousconservative.com)
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To: SaraJohnson

Thank you. I’m hopeful that as time goes on, and my work gets out there, Liberals will be forced to acknowledge the fact they are devolving our species, and destroying the K-selected greatness of our species, which most of us aspire to embody.


28 posted on 05/28/2012 6:53:34 AM PDT by AnonymousConservative (Why did Liberals evolve within our species? www.anonymousconservative.com)
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