Kids Are the Controversy

Rural Red vs Urban Blue

Population decline is a real worldwide phenomena in industrial and urban areas. The United States is experiencing this now (https://apnews.com/article/how-many-babies-are-born-us-25d99f438645908e5ed6ae29d3914b89). This won’t be noticeable due to immigration and longer lives as well as being a slow process (https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2023/population-projections.html).

The reason it is happening is the lack of focus on having kids in industrial and urban areas. Everyone should be able to say they have brothers and sisters (note, the plural). When children are the focus of society, the society has a future as it focuses on posterity. Children rely on each other and learn team- building skills. In thriving rural areas, this focus is more obvious and pronounced. Parents are more likely to insist on having grandchildren and couples are more focused on having kids. This is the divide between urban and rural.

But industrial urban centers are more interested in gay couples, transgenderism, pastel hair dyes and abortion, instead of children and grandchildren. Hey, if you don’t have children or grandchildren, why should you worry about the supposed man-made climate change theory matter to you anyways? Places like Omaha and Lincoln are slowly turning into a full-blown gay cities of debauchery, drug-abuse, homelessnes and are largely allergic to the need of having children. This eventually will lead to a decline in urban populations.

To add, an aging population with few children loses sense of history, progress, and change. To a child, everything is new and their eyes are wide open with curiosity and questions. Whereas older people are cynical and accustomed to long-used processes and habits. The interaction of these generations is important for human health and well-being as well as progress, prosperity and posterity. These interactions make holiday celebrations meaningful.

Omaha homeowners, tired of the increasing property taxes and the expense of maintaining a home, are selling and leaving Omaha. Fewer new homes are being built as apartment developments receive more TIF funds (https://andrewlsullivan.substack.com/p/abolishing-home-ownership). Apartment buildings may have families but they have few children. The impact is fairly obvious to those observant enough to notice.

Of course, this is not to imply urban areas are outright hostile to child-rearing or not accommodating families. The problem is the focus is not on children. We can banter about statistics and argue over government policies and the cultural wars, but the evidence matters.

The Pawnee Republican(https://www.pawneerepublican.com/) newspaper put out a special edition for Christmas with extra pages, a lot for such as a small paper. I expected a list of Christmas events (such as Santa Clause posted above from the paper) or perhaps extra letters to the editor, something which the Omaha World-Herald never does now. Yet, when I opened it up, the paper has dedicated 5 pages, YES 5 PAGES, to Dear Santa letters from area school children.

With the “Dear Santa Letters”, kids are starting their way into communicating with writing and the paper in printing the letters has the community focused on the kids. This is a very, very good for posterity. Perhaps urban areas can take a lesson from this.