CPAC speaker Isabel Brown is receiving significant backlash from various left-leaning media personalities over her conference statement about families and fertility, but on today’s edition of The Editors, the panelists largely agreed with Brown’s stance.
“I think anti-natalism exposes what is the great unifying theme of progressivism, which I was grateful to see finally put into a single word a few years ago when people on the sort of center left and right alike started talking about ‘degrowth,’” says Dan Foster. “I think the kind of overarching meta theme of progressivism is anti-human and anti-growth.”
“In this particular case,” he says, “the first thing I thought is just how obvious the rejoinder is, which is to say that you’re getting the causation wrong. The advice of the CPAC speaker is, ‘Have kids even when you’re not ready.’ And the missing or unarticulated premise is you’re going to look down at your baby in that hospital room and you’re going to say, ‘I’ve got to do whatever I possibly can to improve my situation, to make sure that this baby never wants for anything.’ And it’s a primordially powerful impulse in humankind.”
While Dan acknowledges that there are individuals who regret having kids, he believes “the overwhelming experience is in the opposite direction. And I think we could argue about what the ratio is, but people who didn’t expect or didn’t necessarily want to have children, the overwhelming experience is after the fact, not being able to imagine your life without them.”
The Editors podcast is recorded on Tuesdays and Fridays every week and is available wherever you listen to podcasts.