OPINION:
When it comes to manipulating information to demonize Republicans, Democrats and their friends in the press stick the landing every time. Newly minted vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance just had his Charlottesville moment and again the public is getting played.
For more than a week now, social media and cable news have been hyperventilating over an interview Mr. Vance gave to Tucker Carlson in July 2021, when he was running for the Senate, in which he said that childless “crazy cat ladies” are running the country. Mr. Vance said, “The entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children.”
To appreciate the similarities to the Charlottesville manipulation, let’s review what the press did to then-President Donald Trump after a 2017 protest over the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in Virginia turned violent.
Mr. Trump spoke to reporters after the riot, saying in part, “But you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides.” That remark continues, to this day, to be used as supposed evidence that the former president is a racist.
Immediately following that statement, however, Mr. Trump rightly predicted that liberals would attempt to cancel George Washington and other Founding Fathers. He then clearly stated, “I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the White nationalists, because they should be condemned totally.”
The media ignored that part. They did not they correct the repeated assertions by Democratic politicians and pundits that Mr. Trump’s comments embraced White supremacy. In truth, he was attempting to defend the people who were on both sides of the legitimate debate over the erasing of our history who were making their voices heard with no intention of becoming violent.
Now, back to the misinformation over Mr. Vance’s comments. In remarks to the Intercollegiate Studies Institute on July 24, 2021, days before the Carlson interview, Mr. Vance made clear to whom he was referring with his sarcastic “cat ladies” remark, stating:
“Now let me do the necessary throat clearing, because I do think it’s important. Look, there are a lot of people who are unable to have kids for very complicated and important reasons. … There are good friends of mine who struggled to find the right girl, find the right guy. There are people of course for biological reasons, medical reasons who can’t have children. The target of these remarks is not them. … Let’s set them to the side.”
But you likely haven’t heard those comments because they’ve been intentionally suppressed and ignored by the press and social media mavens. Are you listening, Jennifer Aniston?
Any suggestion that Mr. Vance disparages women who are infertile or can’t have children is a lie. He was making an important point about marriage and family. But in our age of voter interference through misinformation campaigns by corporate media outlets that are essentially an arm of the Democratic Party, this is what happens.
Mr. Vance is right that becoming a parent changes your perspective and priorities. Who could argue with that? Procreation and strong families are necessary for societies to thrive. Socialists and Marxists believe otherwise. They push the myth that isolated people have more power when, in reality, they make it easier for the state to claw more freedom and agency away.
Whether the people who run the Democratic Party have or don’t have children isn’t the point, however. The messaging of the party and its affiliates have increasingly deemphasized the importance of marriage and family. It’s having an impact.
A recent Pew Research survey highlights the growing divide between the political parties on the importance of marriage and family. The poll conducted in April asked if the nation would be better off if marriage and family were prioritized.
Nearly 60% of Trump supporters agreed, compared with only 19% of Biden voters. Among women 18 to 49, 64% said they “just don’t want to” have children, compared with half of men in the same group. The Pew survey also showed that nearly 40% of respondents said that they wouldn’t have children because of the “state of the world.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York Democrat, has said it is a “legitimate question” to ask whether it’s moral to have children with the looming threat of climate change. She doesn’t have children. Vice President Kamala Harris has echoed those sentiments on more than one occasion. Randi Weingarten, president of the United Federation of Teachers and a top influencer in our failing public education system, is a married lesbian with no children of her own.
The Biden administration’s top public health official is a man who thinks he’s a woman who continues to push for the legalized sterilization of children. The head of the American Library Association is an unmarried avowed Marxist.
This growing strain within the Democratic Party is aligned with the stated goals of American socialism, namely the destruction of morality, foundational institutions and presenting degeneracy and promiscuity as normal, natural and healthy.
Mr. Vance’s point, tying the strength of the nation’s future to the family, is sound. Economic and social data all point to marriage and strong families yielding happier lives, higher earnings, better educational outcomes for children, improved self-esteem, lower risk of severe mental health problems, lower incarceration rates and more supportive aging.
Hobbies, travel, pets, the boat you always wanted and a bigger apartment are all nice, but they don’t bring true spiritual fulfillment.
Yes, Mr. Vance, the adage still applies: If you’re explaining, you’re losing. That’s something the campaign must handle.
For the rest of us, though, we must appreciate those telling us marriage and family don’t really matter, are the same ones who told us Donald Trump is Hitler, President Biden was fit to serve, Ms. Harris had nothing to do with the open border, having boys in girls’ locker rooms is just fine and J.D. Vance is weird.
• Tom Basile is the host of “America Right Now” on Newsmax TV and a columnist for The Washington Times.
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