Posted by
JDComments on Monday, October 16, 2006 9:38:18 AM
The NY Times recently
reported that for the first time ever, married opposite sex couples make up a minority of households [49.7%] in the country, which, if true, holds some hope for the Liberals who make up the majority of the Times readers which I will get to in a moment. First , however, I have to say that from numbers they present in the article I cannot make the math work. These include 5% of the households being comprised of non married opposite sex couples, and about 800,000 [or .7%] being male or female couples, totaling just about 6% total. They also mention that 1 in 20 households [another 5%] have single occupants. Adding the 49.7% to the other 11% to come up with a grand total of about 61%. Where is the missing 39% if we have covered married couples, non married couples and single persons? Maybe it is just a bad day for me, but I cannot figure out what's left that would account for more than 40,000,000 households. If you can, please let me know.
Putting this aside, why is the Times trumpeting this? Well, they might feel that this truly is an Earth shattering revelation that deserves their headlines, because I know I wake up every morning wanting to know the demographic breakdown of US homes, don't you? But if I may, allow me to also point out that some recent
articles have correlated married voters with the Republican party, meaning that if they are decreasing, this is good news for Liberals, the Chosen People of the Times. Also, if heterosexual marriage is seen as a declining institution, Gay marriage will probably benefit because they both would appear to be representative of minority constituencies [yes, I know, about 50% vs less than 1%, but who wants to quibble over this!]and suddenly heterosexual marriage is no longer a fundamental pillar of society ["oh those pesky minority heterosexual couples can get married, why not us?"]but just another social sexual union which should be open to all. Much like the all too frequent census counts which are ticking off the days that remain until white non-hispanics are a minority in this country, this household breakdown, if we can ever make the numbers add up, is just another indication that Liberals are remaking the country in their image, and the Days of the Conservatives are quickly dwindling.
Given all of the above, it would seem a nice Liberal news organization like the Times would have more than enough reason to follow this story. However, there has always seemed to me to be an underlying bias against marriage in Liberalism which is a reflection of the fact that of all the social institutions Conservatism seeks to protect, marriage maybe the most important, and thus enemy number 1 of the Left. Why should this be so? Well firstly, it intimately ties religion into the lives of many people, and we all know the Liberal take on religion. But just as importantly, it separates people from the general, homogeneous masses, and creates units of self interest and resources which any self respecting Liberal would prefer go to the government [hence their love of the death tax]. Families offer an alternative to the Government in many respects, and thus competition for the resources and allegiance of the people. Hillary didn't write "It takes a Village" for nothing! Liberals would love to eliminate the atomization of Society caused by marriage, and replace it with a communal population that shares everything. After all, Liberalism taken to its extreme is Communism, which is the ultimate manifestation of this drive to non differentiation. Marriage, neighborhoods, churches, are all ways we express our individuality and independence from the government and its drive to sameness, and so anytime the Times can write an obituary for them, they don't miss the chance. Hopefully, like Mark Twain's, marriage's reported death is greatly exaggerated.