Dogs & Children 2

Of course now that we have established (thanks Phil Longman!) that there may very well be more dogs than children in Seattle, the question is "What's it all about, Alfie?"

Phil Longman suggests:

I think that a city that has more dogs than kids will have a very different character than one that has more kids than dogs.  A city in which childless dog owners outnumber parents will be much more tolerant of social deviancy, and less inclined to social conservatism.  No need to protect your dog from what he might see on television, or explain to him what the gay pride parade is all about. No need to worry either about whether your dog will flounder in the public schools, or have his morals corrupted by Internet porn.  In short, a city of childless dog owners will develop a far more liberal, cosmopolitan, and libertine culture than one in which parents predominate. But since it will also produce far fewer children, and dogs don't vote, the question is, how long will that culture prevail?

Before we get into the substance, let's address the fluff: this phrase "social deviancy." Longman's use  might suggest, at least it suggested to me, that he thinks that mothers and fathers in Birkenstocks, primarily deep-Blue Kerry-voters, of Seattle have warm and fuzzy feelings about "social deviancy" such as child molesting. That's a pretty strange perspective, absurd, of course and insulting as well as just plain inaccurate. Take a look, for example, at how Wallingford (a deep Blue Seattle neighborhood) reacts to 'half-way' houses for ex-cons:  Sex-offender project stirs anger: Wallingford house riddled with BBs.

No matter the political persuasion, parents don't like sex offenders in their neighborhoods. And if Longman thinks that single men, or especially, women are somehow indifferent...Well, his casual implication suggests that he may not be in touch with what Blues are actually thinking.

But let's assume, out of liberal charity, that his was a slip of the mind.

Let's get on to the debatable question.

... how long will that culture prevail?

Well yes that is a question.

And the question assumes a biological (or at least "nurturing") basis for liberalism....that liberalism is somehow inherited and that Red parents will have Red children, Blue parents will have Blue children etc etc. And of course over the very short run there may well be such a bias.

The only problem with that is that Liberalism has already shown itself to emerge from Red cultures -- i.e. we are here now and after all our culture did not start as "liberal." What was the world like 50, 100, 150 or 400 years ago?  Well it was filled with rigid, narrow-minded, illiberal, bigoted folks...our forebears, in fact! ...people more attuned let's say (more delicately) to social conservativism.

Yet somehow society evolved. "Witches" were no longer burned; the franchise was broadened; Jews could ride horses and live outside the ghetto; black slaves were freed; women could vote etc etc. Liberalism has emerged out of the majority "conservatism" of most cultures. It has happened once and it will happen again. It is the long-term trend of humanity (which is of course what the kooky conservatives find so upsetting: they are on the wrong-side of history.)

As I wrote recently here, liberalism emerges out of capitalism, out of a market culture in which "the deal" trumps the ethnic tie. It doesn't come from mommy and daddy. It is, in an ecological sense, a more successful way to organize a complex society and, as with culture as with species, there is survival of the fittest.

So when you look at a question like "... how long will that culture prevail?"  you have to consider where we came from.

UPDATE: This is neither here nor there but as one commentor suggest that "[t]he major practical difference is that in the red zones, parents would much more likely have won the fight and had the halfway house sited elsewhere" it might be relevant to note that Housing plan for sex offenders dropped.

UPDATE 2: This phenomenon -- the emergence of Blue from Red -- is noted here:

It's worth keeping in mind, of course, that secular society has not existed alongside religious society since time immemorial. We are all the children of "red America" in some sense, just as today's secular Europe was born of yesteryear's religious Europe.

 

Comments

[Brian Miller]

Heck, small city midwestern (Indiana) suburbia is pretty conservative. Look at how corrupted I turned out :)

Your example just shows how much stereotyping goes on both sides of the political divide, David. I assume that the author was sneering at the fact that you see few carloads of Seattle yuppies looking for "queers" to bash, as heartlands and biblical values would suggest.

[TM Lutas]

Your argument would have more force if liberalism were something that you could draw an ideological line from 17th century Scottish liberal thinkers straight through to today's Birkenstock shod Seattleites. The thing is that you can't so the argument has more than a whiff of the confidence game about it.

If I describe american liberalism to europeans without labeling it as liberalism, their impression without fail is that I'm describing a light variant of socialism. Mislabeling things has long been part of the socialist project so one really has to be careful when you stretch things that far back.

As for the sex-offender halfway house, you're setting yourself up for refutation. Nobody thinks that blue neighborhoods are entirely devoid of children. It's as silly an idea as all red neighborhoods being without singles or childless couples.

The difference is in emphasis in public policy, in numbers to gain democratic majorities. Sure the blue neighborhood mothers and fathers are just as mad as red neighborhood ones. The major practical difference is that in the red zones, parents would much more likely have won the fight and had the halfway house sited elsewhere. Blue neighborhood parents are more likely to have to go outside the law to make their point instead.

I believe that both red and blue parents create children who grow up to be part of the opposite party. Fore example, Chicago's Mayor Daley's son (off to Army Ranger school at last report) is a Republican. If you look at the larger picture, the trend is to follow in the footsteps of your parents.

[David Sucher]

"The major practical difference is that in the red zones, parents would much more likely have won the fight and had the halfway house sited elsewhere."...Uh...Housing plan for sex offenders dropped.

[Brian Miller]

I don't know. Unless a sex offense means permanent life imprisonment (which is another topic for discussion) these "facilities" have to be placed somewhere.

I don't see this case as an example of blue versus red parenting per se. I'm guessing its more "educated/affluent parents win a battle, so the transitional housing is stuck (yet again) in an inner city ghetto.

Not that if I were a parent I would want such a house near me, but...

[David Sucher]

I was not reaching the issue of where to put such half-way houses. Obviously they have to be somewhere and a local Federal Court in fact has ordered the State of Washington to do something. Nor was I commenting on whether Red or Blue parents care more or etc etc. The issue was Phil Longman's implication that Blue cities don't care as much about what he terms "Social deviancy." He gave no examples so offered a real one; but someone else might come back offer examples about which there is in fact a lot less social agreement than child-offending; his statement was so odd that it caught my attention and he preferred not to take the opportunity I offered to amend it. So I commented.

[Michael Lewyn]

On the silly side:
Who says pets can't be conservatives too?

http://groups.msn.com/DerbyWorld2/aratsguidetotheelection.msnw

Of course, they're not dogs.

[Chris Burd]

Maybe I'm not following you, David, but the idea that childless people can afford to be more tolerant of social deviancy than parents strikes me as pretty obvious.

Take my family's recent search for a new house. At one point we looked at a spacious, elegant Victorian in an "emerging" neighbourhood at a very reasonable price. The owners were moving out "to be closer to [their 4-year-old] daughter's school." No doubt that's, but the remarkable number of condom wrappers and used needles we found in the small park across the street probably played a role as well.

No-one who had a choice would raise young children near a park like that. But, you know, if we were childless and not planning to have kids, that house might have been OK. We don't play hide-and-seek in the bushes, after all. Our values would be the same, but their practical effect would be different.

Multiply these kinds of decisions by the population of a large city, and you'd expect relatively childless cities to be more tolerant (or perhaps indifferent) to child-unfriendly activities.

[panasianbiz]

I stumbled across your blog while I was doing some online research. How interesting that the assumption made by Longman is that dogs would outnumber children in a city because the parents and dog owners are two exclusive groups. Many families (homeowners) have dogs, and many single people (apartment dwellers) do not.