The last-minute Des Moines Register poll shows Obama and Huckabee surging into leads over their closest competitors outside the margin of error.
Good.
(N.B., I hope y'all can comment on this post. I've noticed that comments are defunct on the most recent two posts. This is out of my control. I've alerted my bosses at Beliefnet, who are no doubt swanning around their parlors today in their muu-muus, making risque remarks like Audra Lindley on "Three's Company." At least I've heard that's the traditional Beliefnet staff way to spend New Year's Day.)
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Trends only occur if they have demographic longevity. That's why areligious are merely a blip, they don't seem able to have kids at replacement for whatever reason.
Check the numbers; the secularists are merely a historical curiosity, soon extinct and forgotten.
I'm not sure where you're getting your numbers. Yes, the 'areligious' are not selfreplacing fully. Yes, the 'religious' have 2.3+ children per pair of parents.
But: the children of the 'religious' are not 100% concordant with their parents- I personally doubt it's 50% true retention at this point. (There's a widely noted passive intermediate stage that is hard to evaluate.) Furthermore, the children of the 'areligious' have a much lower rate of going over to the 'religious' side. In "intermarriages" I don't see a lot of conversion of spouses or the children splitting 50/50 either- I don't have a strong count, but I have yet to see the 'religious' parent win over the children permanently.
Let me ask you why the Southern Baptist Convention is a numbers dispute now, with the internal critics believing that their numbers show de facto real decline in the past year or two. That's hardly a denomination that can be accused of a low birthrate or shrinkage in the number of churches it has, or softness of leadership. It, or something like it, ought to be the paradigm and core of the ReConversionista you envision. Why is it faltering? Or do you think the future lies in, say, a massive Pentecostal conversion?
Jillian,
I don't know where you are getting your numbers.
You say, the 'religious' have 2.3+ children per pair of parents? Even if true, who cares? That's barely above replacement, those "religious" people are toast when going head-to-head with cultures who really breed. And BTW, we have correlations upwards of 0.8 or greater on children following parents based on religious belief, and it's even greater versus the secular. But who cares? If somebody goes secular, they die out, so it doesn't matter even if one does.
Right now, in Africa, there are places with 5 or 6 kids average, showing no sign of slowing down. Those cultures are absolutely the opposite of areligious. Go check out the UN numbers.
There are even people in the USA (all religious, natch) with very high birth rates. No secular people, though.
Everywhere in the world, without exception, there doesn't exist a single areligious peoples who are not vanishing. To all but the most bias and obtuse, it's obvious. Areligious = extinction.
We don't know much, but we do know this: areligious culture is NOT the future "trend." It's merely a blip and the past.
How do you propose that universal health care becomes anything more than a rationing of health care for those who are, in some way, worthy?
Okay, I'm going to explain free market capitalism one more time to Republicans, who have somehow failed to grasp it how it works:
Rationing is a result of shortage. If there are X widgets available, and X*2 people who want a widget, there will be rationing. This rationing, unless on something that is physically unobtainable, such as oil was in 1973, will auto-correct itself, as more widgets are manufactured and more businesses go into the widget business.
Medical prices have gone up in an attempt to 'correct' the shortage in the medical industry, but price increases don't fix shortages, they 'manage' them until the shortage can be corrected. But we're not getting the correction, which admittedly would take time to train new doctors and build new facilities. But it's been almost two decades now.
Instead, we're getting an anti-correction, where we already don't have enough but we're constantly having less. Hospitals are still closing, doctors are getting more and more overloaded, wait times are increasing even with less patients because there's even less people providing service. Our level of care is receding!
Now, I will pull out my Big Book of Capitalism and notice that, if the free market is failing, that something is interfering with it.
And, suddenly, I immediately notice a very very interesting fact about the medical industry that no other industry has: They have a middleman that makes more when less services are provided. Hmmmm. Apparently, not only is that having the obvious effect of providing less services than people want, it's actually gotten to the point where it's damaged the medical industry itself.
As long as the insurance industry is between people and health care, there will not be enough health care. Either via government rationing or cost rationing.
Once we get rid of the insurance industry, the market will operate as normal. Of course, while that removes shortages, that doesn't change the fact that medical care is still too expensive for normal people. Other countries have solved this by having the government operate the medical industry, or having the government pay for the medical care in a privately operated industry.
And if you go those routes, you end up with either a quasi-free market or a planned market, which, of course, can result in shortages if there is poor planning. But it seems better than a 'free market' with a middleman who's ultimate goal is that no one ever, under any circumstances, get medical care, or a free market that no one can actually afford to participate in.
Jillian and M_David, your head-butting over statistics and trends is very interesting. If either of you need ibuprofen, I'm there. ;-)
I submit to both of you, though, that there is one demographic measurement that goes unremarked and generally unmeasured in ways that would facilitate analysis at the level at which you are engaged: the turnout of eligible voters for an election.
While interesting, the national totals (and averages) are not relevant. Because of the artificial impositions by the electoral college, each state's turnout should be critically examined. The numbers point to a very interesting question: if just 10% of those who didn't turn out did turn out, how would the historical outcomes have changed?
In some states, not likely at all. In other states, a great deal.
The details are fascinating. I have an old blog that discusses it in some detail using the 2000 election numbers at http://madfedor.blogspot.com/2006/06/none-of-above.html
For my personal analysis supporting my contention that the electoral college is beyond ridiculous, the numbers don't lie: http://madfedor.blogspot.com/2006/06/why-electoral-college-is-ridiculous.html
;-D
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