GorT had a flurry of emails and is slowly working through them…

First up is from IT Operative B:

Thanks for the recent Liberal Conundrums posts.  My personal favorite conundrum is the tension between zero-population-growth and the cradle-to-grave social welfare state.  Read any thread about child-rearing or anything child related at your favorite progressive site (my favorite is  BoingBoing–hey I’m a thirty-something IT guy) and you’ll soon get the choruses of people saying that ‘children are bad for the planet’, ‘no one should have kids’, ‘humans are a cancer on the earth’, etc etc. But these same people blindly advocate the expansion of the welfare state into the full-on Swedish model.
I’m no genius, but when we all stop having kids and then want to retire, who exactly foots the bill for my last 6 months of life? The only way social welfare works, as Europe is finding out, is to keep
having kids, or start a country on top of some vast oil resources, but that one has trouble scaling.
Then again, maybe I’m just touchy because I have 4.95 kids (only 2 weeks to go on #5).

Congrats on imminent arrival.  It is amusing on some level and odd on another that liberals support positions that are “anti-children” – pro-choice, population controls, etc. but through their entitlement programs they fiscally need a substantial population behind them to support them.

KH writes in regarding this post:

Eminent GorTechie,

Today you wrote, “Politicians for the most part are content to kick the can down the road and not address these programs.”

A better example of the immutability of human nature can scarce be imagined. If it please the court, I wish to submit into evidence People’s Exhibit A:

“And Isaias said to Ezechias: Rear the word of the Lord of hosts.
Behold the days shall come, that all that is in thy house, and that thy fathers have laid up in store until this day, shall be carried away into Babylon: there shall not any thing be left, saith the Lord.
And of thy children, that shall issue from thee, whom thou shalt beget, they shall take away, and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.

And Ezechias said to Isaias: The word of the Lord, which he hath spoken, is good. And he said: Only let peace and truth be in my days.”

(Isaiah 39:5-8, Douay-Rheims Bible)

Plus ca change, or something like that….

Thanks – great point and thanks for writing in.  We do hope that there is “peace and truth” in our days but as pictured, the liberals aren’t helping.

GorT

GorT is an eight-foot-tall robot from the 51ˢᵗ Century who routinely time-travels to steal expensive technology from the future and return it to the past for retroinvention. The profits from this pay all the Gormogons’ bills, including subsidizing this website. Some of the products he has introduced from the future include oven mitts, the Guinness widget, Oxy-Clean, and Dr. Pepper. Due to his immense cybernetic brain, GorT is able to produce a post in 0.023 seconds and research it in even less time. Only ’Puter spends less time on research. GorT speaks entirely in zeros and ones, but occasionally throws in a ڭ to annoy the Volgi. He is a massive proponent of science, technology, and energy development, and enjoys nothing more than taking the Czar’s more interesting scientific theories, going into the past, publishing them as his own, and then returning to take credit for them. He is the only Gormogon who is capable of doing math. Possessed of incredible strength, he understands the awesome responsibility that follows and only uses it to hurt people.