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American right-wing family pregnant with 18th child
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I don't know why things have to be so political on these boards but I guess it just comes with the territory. I suppose that this story might be less of a story here if the family was left wing. What I deny is that we can plausibly make deductive or a priori analytic judgments about people's lifestyles based on their political preferences. And vice versa. There is no necessary connection between the two.
There is also the assumption (as I've glanced through several posts) that people who happen to subscribe to biblical outlooks can only have a right wing political orientation: especially in America. Not only is this stereotypical but ignores the history of the
progressive religious tradition in America. There were the Quakers of the 18th century who helped support the underground railroad for slaves, the Unitarians of the 19th century who rejected fundamentalism, the social gospel movements in the 1920s and 1930s that railed against factory working conditions and unequal pay for women working in factory jobs, and the civil rights movements and black churches of the 60s that fought for equality and social justice. It was only during the post civil rights era that the religious left fell away from the political left : thus allowing the right wing to seize the platform on values. But I'm hoping that this last situation will change in the elections this fall. People here are beginning to understand that the bible thumpers on the right have in the last eight years wrecked the economy, stacked the courts with like minded ideologues, and damaged relations with the rest of the world.
I think that I was responding to this same story on another message board another day and someone was talking about how having big families doesn't help the environment. Now
that is a nugget to nibble on. Imagine the quantity of resources (e.g., food, electricity for the household, gas for automobiles to get family members here and there, etc) that this family consumes. When most people discuss tackling global warming and pollution, the talk always seems to reduce to conservation, cleaner fuels, lowering CO2 emissions, less car use, etc. But almost no one wants to talk about having less babies. Environmental problems are almost inextricably linked to overpopulation. Population control is a thorny issue that has to be delicately, but fearlessly, addressed by all who are deeply concerned about the environment.
