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The Soul-Destroying Despair of Being a Liberal
The desire to have children is pretty well hardwired into the human psyche. It takes a lot to override that instinct. Can you imagine being so forlorn and lost that you negate the possibility to procreate? But we are there now, thanks to Trump Derangement.
After Election Day, Planned Parenthood reported a 760% increase in IUD appointments and a 1200% increase in vasectomies. Laurie Pohutsky, a Democratic state representative from Michigan, announced that she underwent a voluntary sterilization procedure as a result of the election. And, of course, transgender surgery also usually results in the inability to have children.
To permanently sterilize yourself is to abandon all hope for the future – because you don’t believe there is any point in bringing new life into the world. Only someone who is certain that there is no future worth living in will negate even the possibility of making babies.
By contrast, religions that celebrate life are religions that cling to hope – of a future that is better than the present (and certainly much better than the past). It is because of hope that people will invest in the future.
Religion is more than the name of a deity, or specific rituals. Faith speaks to our entire way of thinking, the way we select and assess inputs and the filters we apply when we make decisions. And the faith of liberals has sunk to such a depth of accumulated bat-guano that the only certainty they embrace is certain death with nothing to live for.
The hopeless TDS mental illness offers only hopelessness and despair, a death-spiral in every way. This is in sharp contrast to both traditional Christianity and Judaism. Indeed, it may well be that hope is the single most important defining characteristic of both religions: a belief that the future can and will be better (whether in this world or the next).
The Hebrew word for “hope” is kaveh, and it is part of the liturgy and even Modern Israeli nationalism (cities are named after hope, as is the national anthem). But in the Torah, the word is not generally used this way.
Instead, kaveh and its essence, mikveh, are more elemental, because the word is intimately connected to the basic precursor of life: water. Here are the verses:
God said, “Let the water below the sky be gathered (kaveh) into one area, that the dry land may appear.” And it was so. God called the dry land Earth and called the gathering (mikveh) of waters Seas. And God saw that this was good. (Gen. 1:9-10)
I hope (kaveh) for Your deliverance, O G-d! (Gen. 49:18) [This is a foreshadowing of the splitting of the sea, as discussed here.]
And G-d said to Moses, “Say to Aaron: Take your rod and hold out your arm over the waters of Egypt—its rivers, its canals, its ponds, all its gatherings (mikveh) of water—that they may turn to blood; there shall be blood throughout the land of Egypt, even in vessels of wood and stone.” (Ex. 7:19)
These verses show that this word, that we today think of as meaning “hope,” actually refers to the very first steps toward creating and nurturing life. Gathering the waters allowed dry land – and life – to appear. Groundwater similarly was the only source of critical water in Egypt.
And the last use of this word in the text is found discussing spiritual life and growth in addition to physical life.
However, a spring or cistern (mikveh) in which water is collected shall be pure [capable of elevation]. (Lev. 11:36)
The arc of this word is complete. The word for “Hope” is the building block around which G-d creates the world – he pools the waters. Removing the impediment allows life to proceed.
In Egypt, the same kaveh sustains life. People need to drink, after all.
But the grand story arc in the Torah is mostly about our states of mind. Spiritually, it is kaveh, hope, that allows the people to procreate despite the oppression of slavery in Egypt, because we anticipate deliverance.
And lastly, the spiritual meaning of a mikveh is that we use it to reset ourselves, to wash away the past and stride once more into the future. It is the mikveh, the essence of hope, that makes it possible for us to elevate ourselves toward holy and productive relationships with each other and with G-d.
This word – this very concept – is integral to any society that thrills at the opportunity to delight in their grandchildren.
Published in General
I nominate those who voluntarily remove their ability to reproduce for “eternal achievement” Darwin Awards
They are awarded to those that managed to kill themselves by doing something particularly stupid. To wit
These people are doing our descendants an immense service! They deserve to be honored!
How confident are you that you have correctly ascertained the singular reason that all people who do not want children share?
I write to try to better understand, and to do that, a thesis needs to be struck. I invite inputs and corrections.
I admit that I do not really understand those who sterilize themselves. Nevertheless, they certainly seem to be a deeply unhappy bunch.
-Some people can’t reproduce for some health reason. That is understandable. Society will still go on. This has always been a fact of nature.
-Some don’t reproduce because they house fears of what kind of world they are bringing children into. These are irrational fears like those who hate Trump hold or those who have fallen for the scare-mongering about global warming. This is a sign of a sick society, a godless one. We can’t survive too many of them.
-Some people marry too late to reproduce or to reproduce at replacement rate. This is a real problem.
-Some people become or born homosexual and don’t create marriages that can reproduce. Society has continued in the past despite a small percent predestined to be attracted to the same sex. Sadly, the explosion of such lifestyles by choice has created far more “marriages” of this sort than naturally occurring. The effects have yet to be seen as nature takes its course.
–Some people don’t want to reproduce because they don’t want the burden of parenthood. Society can go on as long as there aren’t too many of them. It is now questionable whether or not we have reached that point.
Western countries are no longer reproducing at replacement rate. Much of this is by choice. That is a sign of a dying culture. Mark Steyn wrote about this problem in Europe in 2006. Westerners there aren’t reproducing at replacement rates but immigrants are. Western culture is dying there as those people have become more secular. The problem has now reached the US. We have imported many poor people. Our productive people are too busy to reproduce at replacement rate but the entitlement takers are reproducing at a greater than replacement rate. The country has become more secular along the way. Many of the secular folks aren’t just content these days to be secular themselves but have an overt war on our Judeo- Christian values. It won’t end well . But then hasn’t that been the way throughout mankind’s history?
Au contraire. That’s quite a provocative remark and entirely too strong. To be permanently sterilized simply means that you decided that you’ve had enough children. I’ve had 5. That’s enough. But I have lots of hope for the future, much more than I did a year ago.
If someone decides that they do not want children (or any more than they already have), I would prefer that they opt for sterilization. Much better than impregnation followed by abortion. It makes sense that there would be a substantial increase in sterilizations, given that some states have made abortions much more restrictive.
Along this topic, an article from a few years ago.
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/china-limits-vasectomies-to-avert-population-decline-report/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=more-in-tag&utm_term=second
Why does adoption keep being ignored? There are people who want to have kids but can’t. We are killing so many babies here thanks to abortion that Americans are having to look overseas. My nephew has two adopted boys.
Wow, thank you for this. This is a beautiful gift. I did not know this and yet it’s right there in front of me. Thank you so much
People have always weighed the circumstances around them in their decision to form a family.
The baby boom that occurred after World War II was dramatic because it was so obvious why people were suddenly interested in having children again. :)
I think that worse than the spiritual decline on the left is the economic decline brought about by our transformation into a knowledge-based economy, to use a term coined in 1994 by Peter Drucker. It’s expensive for individuals to get the credentials they need to attain financial self-sufficiency in that economy. Having a baby means taking on a massive debt. And it’s an important debt. We all want financial self-sufficiency for our children.
I like the trend toward hiring people without college degrees for good paying jobs. That will encourage young people to get married and have families.
And college is only part of the money aspect. The special needs of children are another part of it. It can be very costly to meet their needs.
The best way to promote family life is to promote prosperity. We can’t look at family formation apart from the economy.
And that is what I am counting on from Donald Trump, since he did so much of that during his first administration.
Money really does make the world go ’round. :) :)
There are plenty of kids available for adoption here, but they are not the right color.
It’s not just western countries. China and Japan are having the same problem.
Didn’t deter my nephew. We have a multi-racial family.
I haven’t followed this thread completely but thought I’d weigh in. My oldest daughter is Japanese and my youngest is Guatemalan and Mexican. Both adopted at birth. The youngest was born missing the left hemisphere of her brain. Sometimes you’re taken up in a God Tsunami and all your answers are “Yes.”
This almost never happens with men.
Having said that, the excess gender dysphoria we are having right now is a Democrat contagion.
This is me. My dad has severe narcissistic, personality disorder, and I just want some peace. lol
You can’t import poor people and keep forcing inflation. If you keep robbing from the productive with inflation, what are they going to do, have babies?
They have no idea of how to keep the fractional reserve banking system, and the war machine together without inflation and they don’t know what they are doing.
All of this excessive debt is going to be inflated away. Good luck.
The government can’t force anybody to provide decent prenatal care. That is a fact. I wish we would just drop this for four presidential cycles.
Learn a trade. In fact, get three or four trade licenses.
I wish the bottom 50% of the colleges would just say screw it to the accreditation system. I realize I’ve said this a dozen times, but when I was in college, I could not believe the number of smart people that thought liberal arts were stupid and they thought you were stupid, if you didn’t think they were stupid.
Everybody should get an insurance contract for this before the kid is born. We are too stupid to have this type of foresight.
Yep.
The Chinese kids hate the communist party and they do this thing called “laying down”. They don’t get married and they don’t have babies and they just work enough to get by.
cEntRal pLAnNing MakEs oUr liVEs beTTEr
foRCInG uS tO uSE goVErNmENt moNEy mAKes ouR lIvEs betTEr
pRIvAtE mONeY wOuLD bE TErriblE sO iTs ILlegAL
“2%” iinFlAtIoN mAKeS ouR lIveS bEtTer
I’m pro-life but agree with you. Accept the win. Continue the culture fight in your state,
I’m not going to spell this right, but look up on YouTube Porges and Schore. If you hate the kid or you are extremely anxious about it in the third trimester, frequently you are going to end up with attachment issues, which are a real bitch to fix with a psychologist. Furthermore, you can’t make them go to the doctor or control the amount of Doritos and beer they drink etc.
I realize this gets people all hot and bothered, but the solution is to hand out Plan B pills. It’s birth control. If you are against birth control, then fine, but that’s what it is.
Interesting if true. Well, we know the babies part is true, but I had never heard about the rest of it. Where do you get that?
I forget.
“Work hard and procreate for the state, Comrade!”
“Uh, I don’t think so.”
OK. But now that you’ve mention it that way, I’m going to be on the lookout for more information about that phenomenon.