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Sunday, July 3, 2011

Amen!

LOVED this article in today's New York Times:

Time for Oratorical Contraception

Choice quote:
...politicians, including both the Democratic and Republican members of Congress who brought up their offspring during last week’s fiscal wrangling, are also sending the message that they can be trusted to whittle down the debt, shore up the country and otherwise safeguard the future precisely because they have a direct biological stake in it. If they breed, they lead, or so their self-promotion holds.

That’s ludicrous. Progeny aren’t proof of caring and farsightedness, qualities manifest in politicians who never procreated — George Washington, for example. This Founding Father fathered none. He nonetheless proved eminently capable of the long view.

How many children someone has says nothing about how well he or she will govern, and the tableaux of family bliss that candidates choreograph regularly prove to be
fictions.

3 comments:

  1. I'm trying to understand how one can even stretch to believe that -- that just because someone is parenting, that they could make good decisions politically for the sake of the nation.

    How bored do you think those kids were?

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  2. lol, thanks for sharing that. Great choice quote.

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  3. There was a gubernatorial campaign last year in the midwest - I forget which state - where basically, one candidate implied that she was better for the job because she was a mother, whereas her opponent (also a female) was not. Such crap on so many levels.

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