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No, We’re Not Required to Say “Kids are Great”
A response to Atlantic writer Tyler Austin Harper
The Atlantic contributor Tyler Austin Harper, in a recent thread on X, attempts to craft a diplomatic reaction to an interview CNN’s Dana Bash conducted with J.D. Vance — and fails.
In the CNN interview, Bash asks about Vance’s comments about “childless cat ladies,” and Vance clarifies to Bash that he isn’t against childfree cat ladies, but rather a “set of ideas” that are anti-child.
Harper generously tweets within his reaction thread that he doesn’t believe Democratic policies are anti-family, but adds, however, “it’s worth exploring why this line that dems are ‘anti-family’ seems believable for so many people.”
Based on what he seems to think are persuasive reasons, my guess is that when he says the anti-child line is believable for “so many people” he actually means it’s believable for Tyler Austin Harper.
Those reasons follow, and I’d like to respond to them one by one:
…a lot — not a majority, but a lot — of college educated dems are anti-child and view having a family as a threat to their all-important “freedom” to do what they want.
Using sarcasm (“all-important”) and quotation marks around “freedom” reveals that Harper has…