The rhetorical approach to selling eugenics

... is not to emphasize positive over negative iterations of the idea, or even, as I've done in the past, to focus on the consequent egalitarianism that these approaches, if put into practice, will presumably foster. No matter how delicately broached and amenably angled, it's inevitably received as being too harshly comparative, too judgmental, and we simply can't have that! Arguing that this guy should have five kids while this guy shouldn't have any is socially and politically intolerable in the contemporary Western world, irrespective of the merits of such an argument.

It needs to be about individual choice and self-improvement. Forget pushing (to a broad audience, anyway) for one group to do more procreating and another to do less of it. In vitro fertilization has come a long way in the last five decades, and embryo selection has progressed from being all about viability to include avoidance of undesirable traits, the most conspicuous of which is Down syndrome. And the inclusion of putatively desirable traits is somewhere just around the corner. Eugenics need not be about telling the best to breed more and the worst to breed less, but instead marketing it as a game anyone can play. If everyone begins systematically making the most of what they have, we get a rising tide raising all boats outcome.

Since we're on the subject of selling the idea of eugenics for public consumption, Razib Khan recently pointed out the seemingly obvious point (which I nonetheless have never explicitly acknowledged until he spelled it out for me) that eugenics, rather than being a way for the patricians to further distance themselves from the plebes, is actually a means of moving towards that good old American ideal of everyone having an equal--or at least less significantly unequal--shot:

Steve [Hsu] has much to lose in a selfish zero sum sense because he’s already rather assured of intelligent offspring. He’s smart. His wife is smart. Standard quantitative genetics implies that even if they regress to the mean his offspring will be quite bright. There may not be much more juice to squeeze out of that genetic background. It may be very different for a couple with more average endowments. So sorry to turn this upside down, but personal eugenics may in fact be a boon for the ugly, stupid, and psychologically unstable, because it gives them a opportunity to close much of the gap with those who were lucky in the genetic lottery. Some of you may object to terms such as “ugly,” “stupid,” or “psychological unstable.” But people with these issues have to deal with them in their day to day. One can make all the platitudes one wants to make about “inner beauty,” but very few people live by this ideal.

Anyhow, these rhetorical considerations are probably going to become moot in the future. Prospective parents are going to take advantage of technologies that give their children an edge in life regardless of braying from opinion makers. Elites can crow all they want about the need for racial and socioeconomic integration in schools; couples are still going to do their damnedest to get their own kids into the iciest, most affluent schools they are able to.

There is already good deal of conceptual acceptance of eugenic practices on the individual level, especially on the political left. From 2004, the most recent year in which the dichotomous question was posed, the percentages of GSS respondents who say they'd have an abortion or want their partners to have one if a test revealed "the baby has a serious genetic defect", by political orientation (n = 2,451):

Politics	Yes abort
Liberal	49.8%
Moderate	36.0%
Conservative	21.5%

Though the major media regularly treats eugenics as being under the aegis of the right, I suspect the subset of the right to which it actually applies is about as large as the population for which "secular right" is an accurate descriptor.

GSS variables used: GENEABRT, YEAR(2004), POLVIEWS(1-2)(3-5)(6-7)

Time to abort opposition to abortion?

Reflecting on the 2012 presidential election, Half Sigma writes:

Republicans are on the losing side of the abortion issue. It doesn’t matter that Romney, personally, didn’t make abortion a big issue. Everyone knows that Republicans are against abortion, and he selected a staunchly anti-abortion Vice Presidential nominee in Paul Ryan. That the Republican Party has morons like Richard Mourdock who think that the demon-spawn of rapists are a “gift from God” only makes things that much worse.

The Edison exit polls, paid for and reported on by the major media, didn't query voters on abortion at the state level, but Reuters has the information. The following shows the public split on the legality of abortion in the nine tightest swing states as well as in Michigan, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania--mostly white, moderate places that it is imperative for the GOP to convert to red to maintain electoral viability in the face of demographic trends (read Hispanic immigration and fecundity) coloring states like Colorado, Arizona, Florida, Nevada (which has probably already crossed the rubicon)--and eventually even strongholds like Texas--blue. The "legal" column is comprised of those saying abortion should be legal in "most" or "all" cases; the "illegal" column of those responding it should be illegal in "most" or "all" instances. The "unsure" contingents are ignored:

State	Legal %	Illegal %
Nevada	69.3	30.7
New Hampshire	67.6	32.4
Colorado	62.3	37.7
Florida	62.3	37.7
Pennsylvania	60.9	39.1
Virginia	60.3	39.7
Ohio	56.9	43.1
Minnesota	56.7	43.3
Michigan	56.1	43.9
Wisconsin	55.1	44.9
Iowa	53.7	46.3
North Carolina	53.4	46.6

In all twelve of the states under consideration, the pro-choice position is held by a majority of the electorate. And in places like Virginia and Colorado--just a decade ago seemingly reliably Republican--there exists pro-choice 'super majorities'. If the GOP isn't able to enlist the states with old America demography--Ohio, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, and Pennsylvania--in a hurry, it's conceivable to me that I'll never see another Republican president in my lifetime. The above strikes me as reasonable evidence that the part of the official 2012 Republican National Committee platform that reads as follows makes this crucial task even more difficult to accomplish:

We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children. We oppose using public revenues to promote or perform abortion or fund organizations which perform or advocate it and will not fund or subsidize health care which includes abortion coverage. We support the appointment of judges who respect traditional family values and the sanctity of innocent human life.

HS thinks dropping the pro-life platform (along with a determination to hold the line on tax rates for high earners) from the national ticket is the way to get there. The I'm-no-political-strategist disclaimer assumed, the GOP should take a 10th amendment states' rights tact on abortion. It'll retain the pro-lifers (because hey, at least the federal government won't be against us*) without turning off SWPL whites, who don't do much aborting of their own but who like to think they'd be able to if the need ever arose. Taking a page from Gary Johnson's playbook, it could even be pitched as being the ultimate 'pro-choice', position. Onward, liberty!

* In states like Mississippi (37.8% legal, 62.2% illegal), abortion could be outlawed entirely, although there'd undoubtedly be some rhetorical adroitness required to deal with the charge that to get to a states' rights spot on abortion, Roe v Wade would have to be revisited.

What Todd Akin really meant!

Estimating liberally to include not only "legitimate" rapes but also unsuccessful perceived attempts compiled by advocacy groups with the stated purpose of stamping out sexual assault, 1 in 6 women will be victimized at some point during their lives. Not all of these will occur during the period of a woman's life when she's fertile, but with the aim of overshooting if anything, for the sake of argument assume they do.

There are a few days every four weeks when a healthy woman aged ~14-45 is capable of becoming impregnated. About 75% of these fertilizations something will go awry--sperm will lose its way, the egg will shut sperm out, or the body will reject the fertilized egg before or after implantation, etc. One-quarter of the time, a baby will be on the way.

From the CDC, about 4 in 5 sexually active women (according to the GSS, about 1 in 10 women in this age range are not sexually active at any time during the year) of reproductive age use pill-based contraception. Again for sake of argument, disregard other less widely used methods like depo-provera and the today sponge.

So, starting from the top: 1/6 = .1667, 3/28 = .1071. Multiply these to get .0179, and then multiply this by .25 (the successful one-fourth of fertilizations). We get .0045. Finally, multiply this by .28 (the one-fifth of women not using the pill from the 90% of at least marginally sexually active women plus the one-tenth who, not being sexually active, are presumably not on birth control, ignoring that it has other non-procreative uses) to get .0013, or 0.13% of women--1 in 750, with liberal estimation parameters--for whom the question of "legitimate" rape will be a pregnancy-inducing concern.

Getting that out there is worth forfeiting the opportunity to retake the Senate, isn't it?

GSS variables used: AGE(18-45), YEAR(2000-2010), SEX(2), SEXFREQ

Jews and abortion

As has been reported here (and iterated elsewhere), Jews in the US--including Orthodox--are, on the whole, further to the left politically than white Democrats are. There are lots of varying explanations for this--Jews being yoked to the American left wing because "it represented the closest American counterpart to the forces on the left that had favored Jewish emancipation in Europe", a consequence of several centuries of urban concentration, as a vehicle for successfully pursuing a "group evolutionary strategy", and a long history of working with and for the state, just to run through a few.

Despite at least being aware of all of this, I was surprised to find how hostile Jews are towards restrictions on abortion. A recent Pew report headlined for cataloging increasing support for gun rights and same-sex marriage contains a seemingly orthogonal table at the end that tracks percentages of people who think abortion should be legal in all or most cases and those who think it should be illegal in all or most cases. Splitting 86%-11% in favor of legality, Jews are the most pro-choice of the 33 groups Pew breaks out; more so than those who have no religious affiliation, than liberal Democrats, and than those who seldom or never attend religious services.

Why? Perhaps it's as difficult for a gentile to understand this particular aspect of Jewish liberalism as it is for him to truly comprehend why the Jewish affinity for leftism generally is so strong, but the possibilities that crop up in my mind--that setting parameters on reproductive rights smacks of 'Nazism' (notwithstanding how odd a way this would be to express that), that Jewish fertility is in the toilet even though Jewish abortions are rare means that more abortions leads to a larger Jewish population share, or that the pro-life movement is preponderantly a white southern evangelical one and therefore something Jews instinctively oppose--feel kind of kooky.

30% of atheists, agnostics are pro-life

The following comment comes from Skadhi the Raverner (Scandanavia's answer to John the Revelator?) on a thread to one of Steve Sailer's posts:

In my experience more young people don't 'get' what's wrong with homosexual marriage or marijuana, but are more likely to be pro-life atheists and to oppose multiculturalism.

Reading this, I instinctively googled "percentage of atheists pro-life" and was somewhat surprised to find scant quantitative treatment of the question, just links to topical forum threads and organizations for those maintaining the position.

Defining the politically charged phrases "pro-life" and "pro-choice" is difficult to do, with questions about pregnancy complications, rape, and the like clouding things up. The line has to be drawn somewhere, though, so for the sake of this post, that defining line will be whether or not a woman should be able to receive an abortion if she wants one, the specific reasons for her desiring one being irrelevant.

The following table shows the percentages of atheists, agnostics, those who believe but with reservations, and firm believers who are thus pro-life. For contemporary relevance, all responses are from 2000 onward:

God	Prolife
Atheists	29.6%
Agnostics	32.5%
Uncertain believers	42.0%
Firm believers	71.8%

Just fewer than one-in-three atheists and agnostics are pro-life (keeping in mind that the definition of pro-life being employed here is pretty encompassing). So pro-life secularists constitute about 2.37% of the population, a considerably larger share than the secular right community, at 0.67%, can boast!

GSS variables used: GOD(1)(2)(3-5)(6), YEAR(2000-2010), ABANY

Va jay jay

Upon seeing pictures (requires being logged into a facebook account) of a recent protest in Virginia against the big government conservative-style ultrasound bill passed by the state legislature and soon to be signed into law by the governor, I have a reaction and proposed solution.

Reaction: God those women are ugly.

Solution: Male sobriety. It's all the birth control those harpies need. Problem solved!

Shocker: Women's rights do not bloom in Arab Spring

A recent episode of NPR's Talk of the Nation focused on the consequences of the "Arab Spring" one year out. In response to a caller's question about how the overthrow of ruling regimes has affected women's rights, a correspondent in Egypt replies:

I think it's an extremely important question [AE: I wish reporters like this Garcia-Navarro would be asked why, exactly, is a question like this "extremely important"? Surely there are many other potential consequences of the 'Arab Spring' that are of greater importance to the West than this one is.], and I think, you know, it depends on which country you're looking at, but across the board I think many women who were involved in the revolution, certainly in Libya, certainly in Egypt, they do feel that they - that it hasn't necessarily empowered them.

For one, the "women who were involved in the revolution" don't appear to have much influence over what is replacing the regimes they helped topple:

The tally, with the two groups of Islamists together winning about 70 percent of the seats, indicates the deep cultural conservatism of the Egyptian public, which is expressing its will through free and fair elections for the first time in more than six decades. ...

A coalition of parties founded by the young leaders of the revolt that unseated Mr. Mubarak won only a few percent of the seats.

Upon news of the Egyptian parliamentary elections, Razib wrote:

Back in the heady days of the Arab Spring some commenters infected by revolutionary fervor would scoff at the purported Islamist sympathies of the people. What this goes to show is that enthusiasm and hope does not translate into reality. If secular liberals in Egypt bow before the principle of popularity, then they accept that it is right and proper that they present their throats to their new overlords. I don’t view this as an apocalypse. It is what it is. But it was predictable.

As are, I suspect, the prospects in Egypt and other Arab Spring countries for what in the Western worldview constitutes women's rights. The WVS probes respondents in participating countries about their feelings on multiple indicators of Western conceptions of women's rights. The following tables show responses from select Western nations and Muslim countries, and to provide a miscellaneous angle, Japan, collected from 2005-2008 (with the exception of the Egyptian response to the question on abortion, which was collected in 2000):

Agree that when jobs are scare, men should have more right to them than women	Men	Women
United States	8.0%	5.6%
Great Britain	18.2%	14.4%
Canada	14.1%	14.4%
Germany	19.5%	16.3%
France	16.2%	19.8%
Japan	28.7%	25.8%
Malaysia	59.4%	38.7%
Turkey	58.8%	47.7%
Iran	75.1%	63.6%
Iraq	87.4%	80.6%
Egypt	93.1%	84.9%

Men make better business executives than women do	Men	Women
United States	21.4%	11.7%
Great Britain	25.0%	9.5%
Canada	13.5%	9.4%
Germany	23.9%	10.2%
France	18.4%	10.5%
Japan	45.2%	29.0%
Malaysia	66.5%	42.6%
Turkey	59.5%	47.9%
Iran	85.6%	71.6%
Iraq	n/a	n/a
Egypt	89.2%	82.1%

Men make better political leaders than women do	Men	Women
United States	27.2%	22.3%
Great Britain	26.2%	13.9%
Canada	20.5%	16.4%
Germany	25.2%	12.9%
France	24.3%	18.3%
Japan	51.9%	37.7%
Malaysia	77.4%	59.2%
Turkey	66.5%	56.2%
Iran	85.3%	71.9%
Iraq	92.2%	88.1%
Egypt	94.7%	90.1%

Approve of single motherhood	Men	Women
United States	49.0%	55.1%
Great Britain	28.9%	37.7%
Canada	44.0%	48.7%
Germany	33.3%	38.3%
France	59.6%	64.8%
Japan	20.6%	22.3%
Malaysia	16.9%	18.0%
Turkey	9.0%	8.0%
Iran	3.0%	2.3%
Iraq	n/a	n/a
Egypt	1.5%	2.0%

University is more important for a boy than for a girl	Men	Women
United States	11.4%	4.5%
Great Britain	9.4%	4.5%
Canada	5.6%	4.3%
Germany	19.7%	10.2%
France	8.3%	5.3%
Japan	31.0%	18.8%
Malaysia	56.3%	36.1%
Turkey	22.3%	17.2%
Iran	64.2%	46.9%
Iraq	52.3%	46.0%
Egypt	46.7%	31.8%

Abortion is never justifiable	Men	Women
United States	24.4%	26.6%
Great Britain	20.2%	19.8%
Canada	25.0%	27.0%
Germany	15.0%	15.7%
France	12.8%	14.6%
Japan	15.2%	14.5%
Malaysia	40.7%	45.3%
Turkey	62.7%	61.6%
Iran	61.0%	61.6%
Iraq	83.6%	85.7%
Egypt	61.8%	50.9%

Turkey and Malaysia are considered religiously moderate Islamic countries, yet mainstream public sentiment on the items above (and on a whole host of other social issues) in these places are significantly to the right of the Republican party in the US, and of course public sentiment in more fervently Islamic countries like Iraq, Iran, and Egypt is more conservative still.

By way of example, the question on abortion is on a ten-point scale, with all but one of the possible responses allowing for abortion in at least some cases. The respective table above includes only the percentages of respondents who share Rick Santorum's view that it is never--even in the case of rape--justifiable for a woman to have an abortion. Throughout the Muslim Middle East and North Africa, majorities of both men and women feel the same way the "champion of the extreme anti-choice movement" in the US does.

The impression one gets from listening to major media organs in the US like NPR is that the putative rights of women are being squelched against their wishes. In reality, most women in Egypt don't want what the feminists in the West are selling. Four of five Egyptian women feel that men make better business executives than women do, and nine of ten feel the same way when it comes to political leaders. An overwhelming majority think that the workplace is a man's place before it is a woman's. Almost unanimously, single motherhood is censured. If a mainstream politician in the US were to express an opinion on any of these "women's rights" issues that most Egyptian women hold (and more power to them as far as I'm concerned--it's their country and their lives, not ours), it could easily spell the end of his political career.

WVS variables used: V44(1)(2-3), V59, V61, V62(1-2)(3-4), V63(1-2)(3-4), V204(1)(2-10), GENDER

Changes in positions on social behaviors over time, by country

Thinking about Razib's post at Discover magazine and then responding to Razib's subsequent comments on the same, Parapundit's Randall Parker wonders how stable social values are across countries:

It occurs to me that stability in how countries poll in world values surveys is an argument against the idea that the world is inevitably going to become liberal.

There are changes in wording in most of the survey questions by wave (that is, years in which surveys were conducted), but there is quite a bit of consistent overlap in a section over how justifiable certain "hot button" social behaviors are. The number of countries participating picks up enough in the 1990-1991 wave (before that, the pickings are pretty sparse) to make comparisons to the most recent 2005-2008 wave. This 1990-1991 wave corresponds fairly closely with the "end of history" predicted by Francis Fukuyama, when all countries were predicted to be moving inexorably towards liberal democracy.

The following tables show the mean responses of survey participants by country in the 90-91 wave, the 05-08 wave, and the shift in mean score over that decade and a half time period, by social issue. All questions ask respondents how often they feel the behavior in question is justifiable, with potential answers on a 10-point scale ranging from "never justifiable" (1) to "always justifiable" (10). So the higher the score, the more liberal a country's population is. If a country's values have liberalized (which, in the context of this post, refers to the freedom of the individual to choose to behave however he pleases) over time, the result is a positive number in the last column. Conversely, if the country has become less liberalized, the number will be negative.

There are data for 26 countries in both waves, though Slovenia is not included in any of the proceeding tables*. The WVS is mostly populated by affluent, first-world countries, especially in the earlier waves, so the only Islamic representative is Turkey:

Claiming government benefits	90-91	05-08	Change
Argentina	1.9	3.6	1.7
Brazil	2.7	2.7	0.0
Bulgaria	1.8	2.2	0.4
Canada	1.9	1.9	0.0
Chile	4.1	4.3	0.2
China	1.7	3.3	1.6
Finland	4.7	2.1	(2.6)
France	3.5	3.1	(0.4)
Great Britain	1.8	2.2	0.4
India	1.8	3.1	1.3
Italy	2.0	1.6	(0.4)
Japan	2.0	2.1	0.1
Mexico	4.9	4.1	(0.8)
Netherlands	1.6	1.5	(0.1)
Norway	1.4	2.1	0.7
Poland	2.1	2.3	0.2
Romania	1.7	2.0	0.3
Russia	2.1	2.8	0.7
South Africa	2.3	2.6	0.3
South Korea	2.2	2.8	0.6
Spain	2.8	2.5	(0.3)
Sweden	1.6	1.9	0.3
Switzerland	1.9	1.5	(0.4)
Turkey	1.5	1.6	0.1
United States	1.9	2.3	0.4

One standard deviation is 2.7 points, so the average Mexican resident is two-thirds of one SD further to the left (that is, at about the 72nd percentile of the US distribution) than the average American is. Yet another argument free market libertarians should employ when clamoring for open borders!

It's in the European welfare states like Finland and France--where liberalism has been normative for the longest--where the most backsliding has taken place. In most countries though, there has been a moderate shift towards liberalism.

Someone accepting a bribe	90-91	05-08	Change
Argentina	1.1	1.4	0.3
Brazil	1.4	1.9	0.5
Bulgaria	1.5	1.9	0.4
Canada	1.6	1.6	0.0
Chile	1.5	1.7	0.2
China	1.3	1.7	0.4
Finland	1.6	1.6	0.0
France	2.1	2.2	0.1
Great Britain	1.5	1.6	0.1
India	1.4	3.0	1.6
Italy	1.6	1.3	(0.3)
Japan	1.8	1.5	(0.3)
Mexico	2.8	2.4	(0.4)
Netherlands	1.8	1.5	(0.3)
Norway	1.5	1.5	0.0
Poland	1.6	1.4	(0.2)
Romania	2.1	1.4	(0.7)
Russia	1.4	1.8	0.4
South Africa	2.1	2.4	0.3
South Korea	1.8	1.6	(0.2)
Spain	1.5	1.8	0.3
Sweden	1.6	2.0	0.4
Switzerland	1.5	1.5	0.0
Turkey	1.2	1.3	0.1
United States	1.5	1.7	0.2

One SD is 1.6 points. Public positions on bribery have held fairly steady since the collapse of communism, although to the extent that they've moved at all, it's been in a liberal direction everywhere except some of Europe's more corrupt countries, our neighbor to the south, and surprisingly, the Netherlands.

Homosexuality	90-91	05-08	Change
Argentina	3.0	5.3	2.3
Brazil	2.4	4.2	1.8
Bulgaria	1.8	4.1	2.3
Canada	4.1	5.7	1.6
Chile	1.8	4.9	3.1
China	1.2	1.6	0.4
Finland	4.4	5.9	1.5
France	3.9	6.5	2.6
Great Britain	3.5	5.7	2.2
India	1.2	3.0	1.8
Italy	3.6	3.3	(0.3)
Japan	2.4	4.8	2.4
Mexico	2.9	4.5	1.6
Netherlands	7.2	7.2	0.0
Norway	4.1	7.7	3.6
Poland	1.8	3.1	1.3
Romania	1.5	2.1	0.6
Russia	1.4	2.5	1.1
South Africa	2.3	3.0	0.7
South Korea	1.6	2.8	1.2
Spain	3.4	6.7	3.3
Sweden	4.5	8.4	3.9
Switzerland	4.2	7.3	3.1
Turkey	1.6	1.7	0.1
United States	3.1	4.6	1.5

One SD is 3.5 points. It's not just in the US where the legalization of same-sex marriage appears to be an inevitability. There has been a veritable worldwide shifting in moral perceptions of homosexuality in less than one generation, with the only countries holding the line against a rain of fire and brimstone being the Catholic stronghold of Italy and Muslim Turkey (well, perceptions among the Dutch have remained constant, but are coming from a position that was already very tolerant towards homosexuality). Turkey, along with China, is far less tolerant of homosexuality than the rest of the countries represented are.

Prostitution	90-91	05-08	Change
Argentina	2.1	4.1	2.0
Brazil	2.0	3.1	1.1
Bulgaria	2.2	3.0	0.8
Canada	3.4	3.3	(0.1)
Chile	1.8	3.5	1.7
China	1.2	1.4	0.2
Finland	4.3	3.1	(1.2)
France	3.2	3.4	0.2
Great Britain	3.1	3.9	0.8
India	1.5	3.1	1.6
Italy	2.5	2.4	(0.1)
Japan	1.9	2.0	0.1
Mexico	3.2	3.9	0.7
Netherlands	5.5	5.6	0.1
Norway	2.1	4.1	2.0
Poland	1.6	2.5	0.9
Romania	1.9	2.1	0.2
Russia	1.8	2.3	0.5
South Africa	2.1	2.5	0.4
South Korea	2.2	2.5	0.3
Spain	2.8	4.6	1.8
Sweden	2.1	3.1	1.0
Switzerland	3.7	5.1	1.4
Turkey	1.7	1.8	0.1
United States	2.4	3.2	0.8

One SD is 2.8 points. The world's oldest profession is seeing many of its modern objectors falling away, as positions on prostitution have become more liberalized in nearly every country surveyed, with Finland the one glaring exception. Again we see that positions in China and Turkey have moved very little over the time period.

Abortion	90-91	05-08	Change
Argentina	3.4	3.2	(0.2)
Brazil	2.5	2.4	(0.1)
Bulgaria	5.1	5.6	0.5
Canada	4.9	4.7	(0.2)
Chile	1.8	2.6	0.8
China	4.9	2.1	(2.8)
Finland	6.5	5.5	(1.0)
France	5.0	6.5	1.5
Great Britain	4.5	4.9	0.4
India	3.4	3.3	(0.1)
Italy	4.3	3.5	(0.8)
Japan	3.7	4.6	0.9
Mexico	3.8	3.2	(0.6)
Netherlands	5.2	5.5	0.3
Norway	5.0	6.7	1.7
Poland	3.2	3.0	(0.2)
Romania	4.9	3.3	(1.6)
Russia	4.5	4.1	(0.4)
South Africa	2.8	2.6	(0.2)
South Korea	4.2	3.5	(0.7)
Spain	4.1	5.5	1.4
Sweden	5.4	7.8	2.4
Switzerland	3.2	5.5	2.3
Turkey	4.2	2.3	(1.9)
United States	4.0	4.5	0.5

One SD is 3.1 points. As liberalism traipses across the globe, it gets tripped up on the issue of abortion. While many social conservatives in the US despair of what they perceive to be an abandonment of values at home, the moral trajectory of abortion is far less clear than it is of homosexuality.

China, where penalties can still result when an abortion is not undergone by Han who violate the one-child policy, has seen a significant shift towards a more pro-life position as the aberration that is the country's procreation-limiting policy has presumably become more widely understood by the Chinese populous.

Turkey, which has yet to show any liberalizing in sentiment, continues not to show any here.

It's tempting to think that birth dearths in countries where public sentiment has moved away from abortion rights like Russia, Romania, South Korea, and Italy is a result of said decline in fecundity, but there are other nations like Norway, France, and Spain that are well below replacement level fertility yet have nonetheless become more inclined towards abortion over the same period of time.

Divorce	90-91	05-08	Change
Argentina	5.8	6.5	0.7
Brazil	4.9	5.6	0.7
Bulgaria	4.5	6.4	1.9
Canada	5.6	6.0	0.4
Chile	3.5	6.0	2.5
China	4.8	2.7	(2.1)
Finland	7.2	6.8	(0.4)
France	5.6	6.9	1.3
Great Britain	5.3	6.4	1.1
India	2.7	3.9	1.2
Italy	5.2	5.0	(0.2)
Japan	4.9	6.4	1.5
Mexico	4.8	5.3	0.5
Netherlands	6.1	6.4	0.3
Norway	5.3	7.2	1.9
Poland	4.2	4.7	0.5
Romania	5.0	4.2	(0.8)
Russia	4.8	5.4	0.6
South Africa	3.5	3.9	0.4
South Korea	4.3	4.6	0.3
Spain	5.3	7.1	1.8
Sweden	6.3	8.4	2.1
Switzerland	4.8	6.9	2.1
Turkey	5.0	3.4	(1.6)
United States	4.9	5.8	0.9

One SD is 3.1 points. Most countries have been moving in a liberal direction with two notable--and now familiar--exceptions; Turkey and China. Of course, with one-sixth of the world's population, when China moves one direction, even if the rest of the world is moving in the opposite direction, it's tough to sell the change as inexorable on the world stage. What about India and Brazil, two other non-Western and non-East Asian countries with large populations? On abortion, they both have treaded water. On all the other social issues considered thus far, they've shifted in a liberal direction (as have Argentina and Chile, the other two Latin American countries represented in the WVS).

Euthanasia	90-91	05-08	Change
Argentina	3.2	4.0	0.8
Brazil	2.7	3.5	0.8
Bulgaria	3.5	5.6	2.1
Canada	5.0	5.3	0.3
Chile	2.7	3.7	1.0
China	6.7	3.3	(3.4)
Finland	6.2	5.8	(0.4)
France	5.2	6.8	1.6
Great Britain	4.7	6.1	1.4
India	3.3	3.9	0.6
Italy	3.6	3.9	0.3
Japan	5.3	6.5	1.2
Mexico	4.2	4.3	0.1
Netherlands	5.9	6.3	0.4
Norway	4.2	5.6	1.4
Poland	2.1	3.4	1.3
Romania	3.5	3.0	(0.5)
Russia	3.6	5.3	1.7
South Africa	3.3	3.2	(0.1)
South Korea	n/a	n/a	n/a
Spain	3.9	5.6	1.7
Sweden	5.0	6.7	1.7
Switzerland	5.2	6.6	1.4
Turkey	3.0	2.8	(0.2)
United States	4.2	4.9	0.7

One SD is 3.3 points. On what social conservatives deem "sanctity of life" issues in the US, China has markedly shifted away from a liberal position. Turkey again shows no evidence of liberalization. South Africa, the only sub-Saharan African country represented, has, excepting abortion, become more liberal on all the issues considered thus far. When it comes to euthanasia, however, South Africans, along with the Turks, have not undergone any change in public sentiment.

Suicide	90-91	05-08	Change
Argentina	1.7	2.3	0.6
Brazil	1.4	1.8	0.4
Bulgaria	2.3	2.5	0.2
Canada	2.9	2.8	(0.1)
Chile	1.7	2.3	0.6
China	2.6	1.8	(0.8)
Finland	3.8	3.3	(0.5)
France	3.8	3.8	0.0
Great Britain	3.2	3.8	0.6
India	1.6	3.4	1.8
Italy	2.1	2.1	0.0
Japan	2.7	2.9	0.2
Mexico	3.2	2.6	(0.6)
Netherlands	4.4	3.8	(0.6)
Norway	2.6	3.4	0.8
Poland	2.2	2.3	0.1
Romania	1.9	1.5	(0.4)
Russia	2.2	2.2	0.0
South Africa	2.1	2.4	0.3
South Korea	2.9	2.9	0.0
Spain	2.2	3.1	0.9
Sweden	3.4	4.4	1.0
Switzerland	3.0	4.6	1.6
Turkey	1.7	1.5	(0.2)
United States	2.2	2.8	0.6

One standard deviation is 2.9 points. There hasn't been an enormous amount of change in perceptions of suicide anywhere in the last 15 years, although the ratchet is turning towards liberalism in most countries, with China and Turkey again being notable exceptions.

Most of the data comes from the Westernized world, and there's little to dispute that in the West, the move towards liberalism has been a steady one since the lifting of the iron curtain, in the former Soviet Union as well as free Europe and the US. Only on abortion has Russian opinion moved away from liberalism. In Latin America, India, and to a lesser extent, South Africa, it has been the same story--excepting abortion, all have become more liberal.

China and Turkey, however, have conspicuously not. Turkey is more liberal (or in media parlance, more "moderate") than North Africa, which is in turn more liberal than Egypt and most of the Middle East. I'm certainly not qualified to say whether or not Turkey proxies well for the rest of the Muslim world in terms of liberalization of social mores, and Turkey has notoriously crept away from secularism over the last couple of decades, but it at least suggests that Randall's suspicion that the move towards liberalism is evitable may be accurate. And this century is going to be a Sinitic story much more than the last one was. If the Muslim world, where fertility is still high, and China, where wealth and worldwide influence are on the rise, are not liberalizing, liberalism's future is not too bright.

Parenthetically, this is hardly a novel concept. Pat Buchanan dealt with it in his invaluable The Death of the West, and Steve Sailer added to it in his review of Buchanan's book.

WVS variables used: V201, V202, V203, V204, V205, V206, V207

* There were obviously some errors in coding the Slovenian responses for the 05-08 wave, as I first became aware of a couple of years ago. The data corruption extends beyond the one item I initially noticed it on, as the responses for all of the justification questions are extreme outliers, with virtually every behavior being almost always justifiable if the WVS data are to be trusted (which I'm confident in saying should not be done).

Where white conservatives and NAMs find common ground

There are those on the right who, attuned to the (liberal) zeitgeist, attempt to bring NAMs into their political ranks by emphasizing the putative social conservatism of blacks and Hispanics. Rick Santorum recently illustrated this, and the late Richard Nadler epitomized it.

As the US becomes increasingly multiracial and multicultural, our democratic system will increasingly turn into a spoils system, where votes are determined by the demographic characteristics of the candidates in question, who, once elected, will use their power to redistribute wealth away from out-group members to the in-group members who elected them. Even at the federal level, where this is less of an issue than it is at more local levels of government, it is certainly detectable.

While that is related to this post's purpose, the focus should be on the data. The following table shows the percentages of SWPLS (liberal and very liberal whites), white conservatives (conservative and very conservative whites), and NAMs (blacks and Hispanics) who agree with a host of political and social statements. The 20 items are broken up into four categories; those in which SWPLs and NAMs are on the same page, those in which NAMs fall midway between SWPLs and white conservatives, those in which whites of all political persuasions are lined up against NAMs, and those in which white conservatives and NAMs are aligned against SWPLs. For contemporary relevancy, all responses are from 2000 onward:

SWPLs and NAMs agree	SWPLs	WhtCons	NAMs
The death penalty should be given to those who commit murder	50.4	84.8	48.2
Pornography should be made illegal	19.8	52.2	33.1
Expresses a great deal of confidence in the US military	36.3	67.8	42.9
Favors increases nuclear power generation in the US	66.4	86.6	50.0
The government should spend more on health care	85.5	59.5	87.7
Immigration into the US should be increased	14.9	6.7	11.9
The government should raise taxes to reduce income inequality	67.5	24.0	55.6
NAMs fall in between SWPLs and white conservatives
The government should spend more to protect the environment	79.7	26.6	55.9
The government should spend more on the military	15.2	55.7	38.4
The government should spend more on culture and the arts	48.1	6.2	31.0
Background checks should be required for gun ownership	87.0	70.5	79.9
Environmental threats are exaggerated	14.9	67.5	32.5
Whites band together against NAMs
Special preferences should be given to minorities in hiring decisions	22.8	6.1	37.9
The government should spend more on unemployment benefits	34.3	20.1	54.5
White conservatives and NAMs agree
A woman should be able to have an abortion for any reason	69.7	21.8	35.3
Marijuana should be legalized	66.4	22.6	31.7
Same sex marriage should be allowed	81.5	14.5	28.7
Prayer should be permissible in public schools	35.3	68.9	68.2
It is okay to spank a child for disciplinary purposes	52.3	81.0	77.4
Terminal patients should be allowed to die if they choose to do so	86.3	50.4	53.4

Even though white conservatives and NAMs are more closely aligned with one another than either is with SWPLs on multiple social issues, pocketbook concerns trump moral values, especially among those who are not affluent, and of course NAMs disproportionately are not. SWPLs want to take from whites and give to NAMs to achieve social justice and NAMs want to take from whites and give to themselves to realize a higher material standard of living. Even on issues that are not of great interest to NAMs, like the arts (a liberal cause) and the military (a conservative cause), NAMs tend to favor more spending than the opposing white group does. Politically, the best strategy for Republicans is probably to highlight Democratic attitudes on things like religion, drug legalization*, and abortion and hope that reduces NAM voters' enthusiasm for going out and voting.

GSS variables used: RACECEN(1)(2, 15-16), POLVIEWS(1-2)(6-7), YEAR(2000-2010), ABANY, GRASS, MARHOMO, PRAYER, SPANKING, LETDIE1, SPENVIRO, SPARMS, GUNSALES, GRNEXAGG, AFFACT, SPUNEMP, CAPPUN, EQWLTH, PORNLAW, SPARTS, SPHLTH, CONARMY, LETIN, NUKEELEC

* Because of its pervasiveness among the (largely NAM) underclass, lots of whites presume that non-whites are amenable to the idea of decriminalizing drug use. I've spent enough time around blacks to know that among those who aren't users, the stuff is not smiled upon. Blacks living in the hood see its consequences firsthand and they don't like it anymore than you or I do.