Yeah, well, that's the racist argument, too, is it not? Akk, we're being overwhelmed by the non-usses!

Education can have good effects. I, for example, was raised Republican and educated into being a die-hard Democrat.

Change is possible--and even, with good intent, likely.

It may be worth reading, but I'm not at all convinced. For one thing, he ignores the impact of income and education on the numbers of children people have. For another, he decides that Japan is an example of this trend (or at least does in another article if not this one), yet Japan is quite patriarchal to this day and has not had replacement rates of births for fifty years.

I made a lengthy critique of Longman's article at my blog:

http://stevereuland.blogspot.com/2006/03/one-baby-two-baby-red-baby-blue-baby.html

The problems are far more serious than simply assuming that kids reliably adopt the political beliefs of their parents. Longman doesn’t even establish a higher fertility rate for conservatives and he ignores the well-documented differences in fertility rate for ethinic groups, which are far more signficant than any liberal/conservative difference in breeding could possibly be. And he ignores immigration.

The only evidence he gives for a contemporary liberal/conservative variance in fertility is the fact that “red states” had an 11% higher fertility rate than “blue states”. Ignoring the fact that this probably has nothing to do with politics, I did a quick analysis and discovered that if the populations in these states were to start off with a 50/50 split, after a half century, the red state population will only have increased to 51.9% of the total. It takes about 270 years for it to increase to 60%. You’d better warn your great, great, great, great, great, great grandkids.

William Styron, whose Holocaust novel Sophie's Choice became a film and an opera, has died, aged 81...