Comments on The Morning News, Special Late Edition

Bush the First broke the internet!

Why didn't you use one of the other internets?

Well, it certainly is refreshing to hear evangelicals coming right out and saying that their plan for the future is to not plan for the future at all. It's hard to imagine a more dangerous political position for large numbers of people to adopt, but at least we now can all be clear that their plan for dealing with all the problems of the modern world is to wait for a deus ex machina to fix everything with no effort on our part whatsoever.

Why is it more scary for evangelicals than anyone else? The average mexican family in California has 5.2 children. That is more scary to me than the average evangelical family (only because there are far fewer evangelicals).

These women aren't just anti-abortion, they're cultists. I'm beginning to wonder how dangerous this will all be in 30 years, if these people are successful in breeding their ignorance into dominance.

I want a foot tall talking Jesus doll but only if I can reprogram it to talk like Mr. T.

Tonymacaroni, There are estimated over 70 million evangelicals in the US. Nice try on your thinly veiled racism.

I am of course disturbed by these breathtakingly ignorant, hyper-fertile cultists, but there's a flip side: the intensely human desire to rebel. I believe many of these "quivers," once they discover that they have been abused (having kids you can't afford is a form of abuse in my opinion) and lied to all their lives, will become violently opposed to the very way of life their parents wish to propagate. Sure, some will never emerge from the muck of ill-bred innocence, but while nurture has its place, so too does nature.

Bringing Trent Lott back and hearing conservatives talk about a Giuliani-Santorum ticket in 2008 is making me giddy. If they want these people as leaders, by all means! Show your true colors.

Re the breeder slaves mentioned above:

Rachel Scott, who calls herself a "one-woman Quiverfull activist," describes her conversion moment. One night after the birth of her fourth child--their third "oops" baby due to birth-control failures--when the prospect of tuition for four consumed husband Christopher and their pastor was urging vasectomy, Christopher saw a warrior angel in his dream. A "large, worrying warrior angel" with a flaming sword that he pointed at Christopher's genitals, telling him, "Do not change God's plan."

Christianists have all the best dreams.

"I obviously was working harder in the campaign than he was," Mr. Bush said of Mr. Rove.

I love watching them turn on their own.

Iraqi PM Maliki must go. He is obviously in cahoots with the Shi'ite death squads.

OMG! I saw the same large, worrying warrior angel with a flaming sword in my dream too... only he didn't say anything about god's plan. In fact we really didn't talk much.

Currently the "Quiverfull" crew is a pretty small subgroup of Evangelicals. Unlike, say, the anti-gay crowd, they don't have a denomination backing them (yet).

I do love how they keep talking about how birth control is one of the Evils of the Sixties. The Anglican Communion (aka the head of the Church of England and the heads of the various related churches he invites to the Lambeth Conference) came out in favor of bith control in 1930. Yeah, BEFORE the 50s. Before WWII. Hello.

#14 -

Exactly. Although I'd bet you dollars to doughnuts that these Psalms 127 cultists are not only a "pretty small subgroup of Evangelicals" but also a contented component of the "anti-gay crowd."

I thought we voted to get rid of those whiners? Didn't they get the message?

Having grown up the youngest of 13 in a dirt-poor family, I actually feel somewhat qualified to speak on the subject of what it's like to grow up under those circumstances. Believe me, not a single one of us grew up with any burning desire to replicate the circumstances under which we were reared. What the "arrows for Jeebus" movement is failing to take into account is that most children naturally experience some degree of rebellion against their parents' lifestyles.

I predict the vast majority of the kids will end up street kids or cannon fodder. Some small percentage will grow up as shiny-eyed zealots with a zillion kids, but the majority will basically rebel against the extremism they grew up with, and assimilate into society and have 2.1 kids, just like most everyone else.

There was one really interesting point made in that Nation article that I had never really thought of. There was a statement that basically, the options available to an average working-class female are not materially more attractive than they were 100 years ago; in fact, a case could be made that some of the options are a lot LESS attractive. If you grow up poor, with no hope for education beyond a high-school diploma, and have no particular abilities or skills, you're looking at a life of cashiering at Wal-Mart and never being able to better yourself. The well-paying manufacturing jobs that used to be available to the working class are gone.

For a woman in those circumstances, I can see how there'd be some appeal in a philosophy that says, you don't have to be a striver, you don't have to fight against a world that's heavily weighted against you; just marry and be a walking womb and let your husband worry about everything. And if your husband goes off the reservation and leaves you with 10 kids, you can blame that on "social change."

#17 -

You hit the proverbial nail on the head. And from this economic extremis naturally flow assaults to the spirit and mind - consider this excerpt from Robert Jay Lifton's book, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, regarding the psychology of extremism:

For the individual, the polar emotional conflict is the ultimate existential one of "being versus nothingness." He is likely to be drawn to a conversion experience, which he sees as the only means of attaining a path of existence for the future. The totalist environment - even when it does not resort to physical abuse - thus stimulates in everyone a fear of extinction or annihilation. A person can overcome this fear and find "confirmation," not in his individual relationships, but only from the fount of all existence, the totalist Organization. Existence comes to depend upon creed (I believe, therefore I am), upon submission (I obey, therefore I am) and beyond these, upon a sense of total merger with the ideological movement.

I totally agree, #17 &18.

Plus, there's the simple fact that two parents are fundamentally incapable of spending one-on-one time with their children further disenfranchising them from a desire to replicate that lifestyle. Sadly, not having much of a chance at normative education, the children have extremely limited prospects as adults. They're significantly more likely to have children younger and work in menial jobs. Future generations are caught in the downward economic spiral - it's incredibly hard for individuals to claw their way out and traumatizing to leave their families in such dire straights.

Awww, sweet! Maybe the new planet'll have UNICORNS!!!

Only if they're Pink Unicorns!

I can tell you this for sure: it's no fun being the youngest of a really large family. Maybe it is in a wealthy family, where you're not basically just one of the horde demanding expensive things like shoes and glasses and food, but it sure as hell wasn't any fun in my family. I'm not convinced my parents necessarily always remembered who I even was. "That's one of the younger kids, I think. Or is that one even ours?"

And it's totally unfair to the oldest kids, because they end up being surrogate parents whether they want to or not - and most of them show their extreme displeasure by becoming either tyrants or torturers. My oldest sister left home and got MARRIED at 15, because being married to an abusive 30-year-old semi-pedophile was easier than taking care of all those little kids.

What kills me about the pro-natalists is that they think there's something so wonderful about large families - but do they ever actually ask the children who grew up in really large families what THEY think about it?

Won't someone please think of the chillllldrunnnn???

At least you got my hand me down clothes, Geni. I figure the oldest expect it - it was useful practice for when I had a kid.