Huckenfreude: the Andrew Sullivan edition

A "proletarius" was a person without property who therefore could be taxed only on account of his offspring. It's not a general term for people with children, nor does it imply any contempt for "offspring."

Well, of course every class of Roman society had children. The contempt toward the proletarians was based in the left-unstated lack of property, accomplishments, group-embodied virtue or ability to restrain their urges, or education.

Irenaeus is right about the pro-natalist policies of Augustus, which were almost draconian, but nevertheless unsuccessful. Augustus was not alone in recognizing the critical importance of children to the Roman state, and in being gravely concerned about the decline of large families from the Late Republican period onward.

Of particular, higher, classes of Romans.

Unfortunately, the economy and Roman inheritance laws created strong disincentives against having more than 1 or 2 sons, while daughters were simply an economic liability. So the Roman Empire was plagued by chronically low fertility rates, despite repeated legal efforts to encourage child-bearing. When malaria and other plagues arrived in Italy and other parts of the western empire in the 4th century, the Romans paid the price for low fertility with a demographic collapse from which they could not recover.

Fertility rate as distinguished from actual population, which was enormous relative to the economic base and barely sustainable.

Rome was the first city in the West to break a million in counted population, in 5 B.C., and it's not clear how much larger it became. The downfall in the fourth century is a complicated issue, but in part based in Italy's population under the emperors exceeding the food the peninsula could grow. When the grain imports from Egypt and Tunisia declined and vanished, the population of Italy had to decline. Arguably, the low fertility rate was necessary and kept the Roman Empire from collapse due to overpopulation a lot earlier.

Someone wrote: Rod, Sullivan did not refer to them as "poor white trash", he said: Isn't Huckabee the obvious representative of all the Jamie Lynn Spears' out there?

Really now, who's medicated Rod? I'm aware that Sullivan is not praising Huckabee, but Sullivan didn't call Spears and Huckabee supporters "ignorant white trash," you suggested that he did. And Sullivan didn't go looking for the tackiest picture he could find of manufactured "white trash." No Rod, this "white trash" business is your projection of what Sullivan thinks. I'm not sure why bad teeth is one of your criteria for "white trash." I imagine Spears makes more money than you and Sullivan combined and obviously doesn't need financial or orthodontic help like those in the picture you found.

But we do get the picture - Sullivan thinks Huckabee is a religious simpleton, and you want to distance yourself from the Conservative Elite, which is commendable despite your sloppy rhetoric. This "ignorant white trash" epithet says a lot more about you than it does about Sullivan, Huckabee or Spears.