Yes, We Need a National Conversation on Dating, Family Life and Economics

Wholly unable to defend their actual record on pressing issues such as stagnating wages, soaring inflation, violent crime and mass illegal immigration, the Biden-Harris regime and its fourth-estate stenographers have deflected by ginning up an astroturfed hysteria over a random old TV clip from vice presidential contender J.D. Vance.

The elaborate ruse, intended to shield Democrats' tongue-tied and dimwitted nominee-in-waiting from scrutiny during her extended post-coup rollout, has resurfaced this 2021 interview that Vance did with then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson: "We're effectively run in this country via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too."

The fact that the national media conversation has shifted to this ludicrous terrain, rather than the core bread-and-butter issues the American people repeatedly tell political pollsters they care about, speaks volumes about the profound disconnect between the American people and the elite press, who shamelessly leave no stone unturned in their core mission of protecting the Regime Party (Democrats) and punishing the Deplorable Party (Republicans).

But even engaging this dishonest left-wing information operation on its face, we must ask: Where exactly is the lie in Vance's 2021 comments? Is elite American society not currently run by a decadent ruling class of Regime Party loyalists? Of course it is. And do corporate oligarchs in such places as Silicon Valley not rule the roost? Even leftists such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) would presumably assent to that.

That leaves the part about "childless cat ladies." There are at least three points to make.

First, speaking of petulant, hectoring "cat ladies" has become something of an online meme in recent years. Boomer journalists might not get the reference, but Vance's 2021 quip to Carlson reflects, in part, the Ohio senator's demographic status as a millennial. Boomers may not relate, but part of the appeal of picking Vance as former President Donald Trump's running mate is to accelerate the movement of iconoclastic younger Americans away from the stodgy old Regime Party and toward the irreverent Deplorable Party of Trump.

Second, many single women who are tragically unable to conceive children for medical reasons have incorrectly taken umbrage at these comments. In discussing the overarching substantive point -- America's, and the Western world's, escalating social crises of dating, marriage and birthrates -- over the years, Vance has often been at pains to differentiate between those who desired children but were sadly unable to have them, on the one hand, and those feminists and climate zealots who outright scorn marriage and childrearing, on the other hand. The former need not take offense; it ought to be clear that Vance was referring to the latter.

Third, and most important, Vance is emphatically correct -- through not merely his offhand "cat ladies" remark to Carlson but also his support for an expanded child tax credit and openness to other family policy proposals -- on the actual substantive debate over the basic human necessity of childrearing, the need to fix America's (and the West's) broken dating and marriage markets, and the duty of public policy to cultivate the formation of strong families.

Many feminists do encourage young women that they can "have it all" -- college- or graduate school-level education, a rigorous career, a husband and children -- while conveniently ignoring obvious tradeoffs and omitting the very real constraint of human biology. And many greenie radicals, who are more likely to worship the pagan earth goddess Gaia than the "be fruitful and multiply"-exhorting God of the Bible, do discourage creating more carbon dioxide-emitting toddlers.

America's dating market is fundamentally broken. A shockingly high percentage of young women, according to all available polling, lament a dearth of marriageable men. The result is that fewer Americans date seriously, fewer get married, and even fewer have children. A birthrate that declines to well below replacement level, as is the case for America and so much of the West, does not merely bespeak a crisis of confidence in one's nation and civilization -- it is an existential threat to that nation and civilization.

Anyone who earnestly loves America must, by definition, care about making more American babies.

It follows that a common-sense economic policy agenda should focus on creating more better-paying jobs to increase the pool of marriageable men, as well as accelerating the rate of wage increase and decelerating the cost of living, such that more families can get by the way they used to -- on a single household income. "Baby bonus"-style family policy, similar to what some Central European countries have implemented, should also be debated.

If the media's "cat lady" distraction somehow engenders that broader conversation, then perhaps it will inadvertently have been worth it.

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To find out more about Josh Hammer and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.