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Religion and Natural Right

Quote: "High fertility rates," [says Phillip] Longman, "correlate strongly with support for George W. Bush." Looking back to 2000, "if the Gore states seceded from the Bush states and formed a new nation, it would have the same fertility rate, and the same rapidly aging population, as France." Very interesting and short little article at the National Review today. Peter Augustine Lawler continues: "Fertility rates," Longman goes on, "correlate strongly with religious conviction. In the United States, fully 47 percent of people who attend church weekly say that their ideal family size is three or more children. By contrast, only 27 percent of those who seldom attend church want that many kids." Here's a bit more:
Our religious conservatives are the reason we are not fading away like France. That fact is as important as any other for our national security. Surely there is some deep connection between our nation's singular acceptance of its global military responsibilities, our singular acceptance of our familial responsibilities, and our singularly strong religious belief. The nation that can, for good reason, argue for the natural superiority of its principles and practices in the world today understands itself, at its best, as seeing no conflict between its natural duties and its duties to its Creator. The conservative view of the complex distinctiveness of the American idea of liberty is that it allows for the flourishing of all the goods that constitute lives that are free, rational, familial, social, political, and religious by nature. Liberals, conservatives believe, endanger those goods by understanding liberty too readily as freedom from the responsibilities that we are given with our natural purposes.
I couldn't resist. The importance of the western cutlure wars is grossly underestimated.

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