HUMAN LIFE IS THE DEATH OF THEM (via Pepys):

Buying a GOP Baby Boom (Froma Harrop, 5/13/06, Real Clear Politics)

Vladimir Putin wants to pay Russian women to have more children. Such pro-natalist policies are common in Western Europe, Japan and parts of Canada.

It was odd, however, to see similar ideas floated last November in the "conservative" Weekly Standard magazine. Authors Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam suggested that Washington mail out checks for "bonus babies," then pay their parents to take care of them at home.

Didn't welfare do much of that? Of course, the authors don't use such an unpopular term. "Subsidy" is a nicer word than "welfare," though to a true conservative, it's not a very nice word.

Douthat and Salam envision a number of transfer payments: handouts for parents who care for children at home; tuition credits as reward for the time spent raising kids; pension credits for the years not spent in the workplace. (I guess the $1,000-a-child tax credit isn't enough for these guys.) Imagine the blizzard of new checks flying out of Washington.

Now why would conservatives make the sort of proposals that have long inhabited the left end of the feminist movement? The answer is that they're not really conservatives. They're Republicans.

How does the Left's future look when it has to face the fact that children are a Republican plot for political dominance?

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 13, 2006 6:59 PM