After assuring us that he wouldn’t drop out of the presidential race unless "the Lord Almighty" told him to do so, Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race. He certainly didn’t want to and may even have been ignorant of the fact at the time, but he knows now. The “Lord Almighty,” apparently, is just a euphemism for his former boss—or whoever it is that tells him where to go and what to say. However we got here, President Biden’s 53-year political career is finally at its end. In the coming days, weeks, or months, it seems all but certain that Kamala Harris will become America’s first female president. And while that would be a historic event, Harris’ most significant demographic trait is not her sex or ethnicity. She shares those characteristics with Candace Owens and Sage Steele—who are her polar opposites in every way that counts. No, the most demographically-significant fact about Harris is that she has no children. I initially thought I was the only one to be concerned by this anomaly, but it turns out a handful of other miscreants—including JD Vance—have already raised the same issue. And been roundly condemned for so doing. Calling into question the fitness of a presidential candidate who’s simply opted out of procreation is a hateful thing to do. It will backfire, we’re told, and may even cost Donald Trump the election. That’s the helpful advice offered by those who would do virtually anything to cost Donald Trump the election.

America has not had a childless president in more than 160 years. James Buchanan—widely regarded as the worst president of all time—was the last commander in chief not to produce an offspring. He’s also the only one who was never married. Rumors abound that he was America’s first gay chief executive—though that is likely just the wishful thinking of those who, as the Smithsonian puts it, are on a “quest for a usable queer past.” The History Channel describes Buchanan’s presidency as follows:

Buchanan’s ignorance of slavery’s divisive role in American domestic politics became apparent soon after he entered the White House. He actively pressured the Supreme Court to rule in the 1857 Dred Scott case that Congress had no right to outlaw slavery, mistakenly believing that Americans would take the court’s decision as the final word and the debate would end. In addition, Buchanan’s expansionist foreign policy, his mishandling of the 1857 economic depression and his failure to curb rampant corruption within his administration revealed him to be inept and out of touch. His passivity toward southern states who threatened to leave the union alienated half of his own Democratic Party and allowed a united Republican Party under Abraham Lincoln to win the presidential election of 1860.

The Dred Scott decision, you’ll remember, which President Buchanan leaned upon the Supreme Court to make, was the ideological predecessor to Roe v Wade. It declared that a human being could be rightly regarded as property under the law. And just like Harry Blackmon assumed with Roe and abortion, Buchanan thought Dred Scott would put the slavery debate to bed forever. It didn’t. We went to war instead. Would James Buchanan—who blamed abolitionists for the Civil War—have worked harder to avoid its carnage if the future of his own children and grandchildren hung in the balance? Who’s to say? But one’s view of the future isn’t the only thing that separates parents from non-parents. You don’t really grow up until you have a child. That’s how Jordan Peterson puts it. There are exceptions, of course, but I don’t get the impression that Kamala Harris is one of them. In fact, she could easily be the poster child for Peterson’s entire premise. She is a 59-year-old woman who carries herself like a teenage girl—a giddy teenage girl who can’t stop laughing. The Babylon Bee’s brilliant send up of her 6-year-old speechwriter is only funny because that’s how Harris talks. Like a child. She may be the smartest person in the room during her tête-à-têtes with President Biden—assuming she still has them, but I can’t imagine she’d carry that distinction in too many other contexts. President Biden—who explicitly selected Harris because of her sex and skin tone—was elected on the premise that it was time for the adults to take over again, but what we got instead was Buchanan-esque ineptitude.

If you consider it a small thing that Kamala Harris has no children of her own or feel I’m simply aiding and abetting a sexist trope, consider the recent “bratification” of the Harris campaign’s X account—following her pseudo-endorsement from singer Charli XCX. If you’re like me, you may have been ignorant of the fact that we’re smack dab in the middle of Brat Girl Summer. What does that mean, exactly? Unfortunately, it’s pretty much what it sounds like: the glorification of acting like a spoiled child. There’s a reason my now 20-year-old daughter was never allowed to play with Bratz—those heavily-makeup’d tween dolls with none of Barbie’s virtue but all of her vice. Bratty behavior, it was understood, was not something to emulate. But now, apparently, being a girlboss is out; being a brat is in. And Kamala is all in. Kat Rosenfield’s Free Press article explains the phenomenon this way:

Where the girlboss had to strive for her success, the brat simply expects it. The idea that she should have to earn the things she wants, rather than having them handed to her, is not just an affront; it is unfathomable… As such, the brat is a living embodiment of feminism as imagined by Gen Z, as infantilizing as it is superficial… Brats are selfish, self-involved, superficial, and careless with other people’s feelings—and convinced that in being like this, they are living their best lives. In her purest form, the brat marries the arrogance of a demanding toddler with the self-conscious slyness of an adult scam artist. She knows she’s behaving badly; she just thinks she should get away with it. All of this makes it that much more remarkable that Kamala—who is already vulnerable to allegations that she’s a “DEI candidate” who doesn’t deserve her power and influence, and whose Republican opponent is possibly one of the brattiest men on the planet—would publicly align her campaign with an archetype defined by her sense of entitlement to things she has done nothing to merit.

What the article doesn’t broach is the role that childlessness may well play in the brattiness of 30-somethings like Charli XCX and almost 60-somethings like Kamala Harris. Parents don’t generally have the luxury to act like children. Single adults—and those dreaded DINKs—often do. They’re far more likely to care about nonsensical platitudes (like being “unburdened by what has been”) or abstract principles (like the imminent and catastrophic threat of climate change) than they are about safeguarding the future of actual people. Elon Musk, whose been accused of being a speciesist, said in his recent conversation with Jordan Peterson that “having a kid is a vote for the future—the most optimistic thing that somebody can do.” Not having a kid, by inference, is a vote against the future. Such sentiment is made explicitly clear in the remarks of Miley Cyrus who complains that she’s “getting handed a piece-of-sh*t planet” that she will not bring future generations into. Noble, right? “We [millennials] don’t want to reproduce,” she explains, “because we know that the earth can’t handle it.” The rationale of Mary J. Blige is a bit less grandiose: “I like my freedom,” she says, “I like being able to get up and go and move and do what I want to do [without having] to tend to someone [else].” Chelsea Handler sums up this new philosophy of childlessness quite eloquently:

It’s important to know when you don’t have the skills to raise a baby. You know, instead of shaming people we should say, “Oh good, good for you for knowing that you shouldn’t have a baby!" I look at it like this — because I don’t have my own children, I’m able to send strangers to college. I’m able to support kids that I’ll never meet, in countries that I’ll never even visit. But I’m able to give so much because I don’t have my own family and to me, that is my purpose. I would be a sh*tty mother. I would be selfish. I would want everything to be great for my kid and forget about all the other kids in the world.

That may all sound thoroughly enlightened, but it’s an exercise in self-delusion. We live in a society that suddenly frames self-love as virtue and self-denial as vice, but there’s nothing commendable in prioritizing indulgence over sacrifice. One problem with the world today is we have too many people trying to raise other people’s kids and too few raising their own. There are too many women trying to “mother” society and too few being actual mothers. And so we find women, with no children of their own, trying to strong-arm parents into complying with abhorrent child-harming policies lest their kids literally be taken away from them. The maternal instinct, when properly applied is a beautiful thing. But when childless women try to instead become mothers to colleges, corporations, or entire countries, watch out. Hell hath no fury. Borrowing again from Jordan Peterson, this time from his recent interview with Michael Shellenberger: 

[The] maternal instinct is hyper-powerful, and it's the defining characteristic of femininity. The question that our culture is facing now is, what happens when women enter into the political arena and that instinct doesn't find its proper place? And the answer, as far as I can tell, is that childless women infantilize everything [which means] we are in serious trouble because we know the most woke disciplines, for example, in the universities are the ones with the highest percentage of women. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not blaming women—because I think men have abdicated the responsibility on that front as well—and I'm also not unhappy that we've been able to determine how to capitalize on the broad intellectual abilities of women… That's not my point. My point is that we didn't know what sort of political psycho-pathologies would be specific to females, and we bloody well know now… And then there's another associated issue, which is women are also very good at spotting predators. (Now) if you have an infant and you misidentify a predator—you call something a predator that isn’t—whatever, you protect your baby. It's not a problem… (But) part of [a woman’s propensity] to cry wolf continually and profit thereby is also a manifestation of that maternal instinct. It's like, “You oppose me; you must be a predator.” And this is the terrible thing about the devouring mother pathology. If you're (perceived as) a predator, no punishment is too harsh for you.

Women are hard-wired to perceive threats to their children, but sometimes they imagine threats that aren’t really there. So they error on the side of caution, which is usually fine in the family context. Especially when there’s a father there to ensure this tendency isn’t given full reign. But when this same impetus is applied not to young children but to entire swaths of society, the results are devastating. Big Brother has become a standard moniker for authoritarian regimes the world over, but Devouring Mother would be far more apropos. Less subversively-named than Orwell’s surveillance state, the devouring mother also destroys in the name of protection. And the devouring mothers you have to watch out for the most are those without kids. But Kamala Harris does have kids, some will insist. She has two stepchildren. This, however, is disingenuous on two levels. First, mothers and stepmothers are not the same things—not by a long shot (see: Cinderella, or the 2019 study reporting that children who live with a stepparent are 40 times more likely to be abused than those who live with their biological parents). Second, marrying a man with an adult son and a 15-year-old daughter, as Harris did, doesn’t exactly qualify her for stepmom status. 

What does it matter that Kamala Harris doesn’t have children? On the one hand, it doesn’t. George Washington didn’t have children, though not by choice. And he adopted the children of his widowed bride when they were only 3- and 5-years old. The same goes for James Madison, who adopted the two-year-old son of his widowed bride. It’s possible that Kamala Harris couldn’t have children. Some women can’t, but women who wait to get married until after they can get pregnant aren’t exactly priming the pump. It’s not that having kids is a distinction all that revealing. Lots of people with policy positions I find abhorrent have children—and our current president has been compromised precisely because of his delinquent child. Having children, thank God, is still rather apolitical, but choosing not to have kids? That is a meaningful distinction—no matter how much the ruling class tells us otherwise—and it tends to run in only one direction.

Jessica Grose, in her New York Times rebuke of JD Vance et al, argues that the criticism of Kamala Harris’ childlessness stems from a “right-wing obsession with the traditional nuclear family.” She says that like it’s a bad thing and dismissively quotes Vivek Ramaswamy for claiming that “the nuclear family is the greatest form of governance known to mankind.” Such thinking, apparently, is self-evidently ridiculous. But it’s also a very old and established ideal. When the Apostle Paul wrote to Timothy in the first century, to lay out the qualifications for church leaders, he specified that they must have a well-managed household and well-behaved children. It’s not that Paul feared an off-the-rails child might sell his father out to Chinese diplomats or Ukrainian oligarchs. He was simply implementing an exceedingly practical principle. Show that you can govern your own household before you’re entrusted to govern lots of households. It’s not just getting married and having children that qualifies someone for governance; it’s having a marriage and children that stand up to scrutiny. I have a surprising number of adult relatives without spouse or kids. I love the lot and wish them only the best, but that doesn't mean I'd want them leading my local congregation—or running the country.

“Having children doesn’t necessarily make you a better person.” Grose says that about halfway through her editorial, and she’s right. I’ve already conceded that there are plenty of bad actors with children, but I want you to ask yourself something. Why did Grose include that pesky little qualifier “necessarily”—which significantly blunts the force of her argument? Why not just say: having children doesn’t make you a better person? Because she understands, I suspect, and is honest enough to admit that for most people, having children does make them a better person. It’s not a guarantee, of course, but that doesn’t negate the general principle that the average person becomes a better, more-wisened, competent, and well-rounded version of themselves after becoming a parent.

Though Grose calls it “appallingly dismissive” to suggest that parents care more about kids than people who don’t have kids, her reasoning feels a bit thin. Channeling her inner Chelsea Handler, she insists that the world is full of childless adults “who dote on the children in their lives and devote time, money and care to helping them grow.” That may be true, but the amount of time, money, and care that, say, an aunt devotes to raising up the future generation isn’t remotely comparable to what a mom devotes. From the kid’s perspective, sure, nothing beats a fun aunt or uncle—but they go home at the end of the day. Aunts and uncles have the fun; parents do the heavy lifting. And it’s the heavy lifting that both builds character and provides the necessary life experience to govern well.

If you want to hone in on what it is that divides our country, Grose offers a helpful clue when she references an address Kamala Harris made in 2021 at the West Haven Child Development Center. To demonstrate how much the then-masked vice president cares about children, Grose glowingly points out that she called them, “our babies.” Grose thinks this is endearing, but in light of the administration’s war on parental rights, I find it rather sinister. Here’s Harris’ quote in its broader context: “You know, when I look at those children, our babies—because I was raised to understand that the children of the community are the children of the community… I am positive there is one of them who will be President of the United States.” Grose predictably leaves out Kamala’s silly lie about being clairvoyant, but it’s what she said about the children of the community I want to draw your attention to. 

The children of the community are the children of the community. Is this just another example of Kamala’s penchant for meaningless repetition? Or is she suggesting that the children of the community belong to the community? More specifically, to her nameless collective “us.” Our babies—and that’s the divide right there. Between people who believe parents should have the ultimate authority over their children and people who believe the government should have ultimate authority over children. For her part, Grose wants a future “in which everybody looks out for the babies of the whole community and isn’t distrusting of people who live their lives differently, whether by circumstance or by choice.” But does she really parent that way, giving the care of her children over to people whose choices she finds reprehensible? I would suggest that it is a primary duty of parents to distrust people who want unfettered access to their children—even and especially when it’s the government.

For the last four years, the vice president’s unique propensity for cringey platitudes and nervous laughter has made her a sort of political punchline. She has been the only politician less popular than President Biden over that stretch, but now her myriad absurdities are being repackaged by “hyper-online progressive content creators” to make her seem like a “likable oddball.” That’s how Taylor Lorenz at the The Washington Post frames it. Kamala is a goofy “wine aunt” according to some of her new admirers. What is a “wine aunt? That would be a childfree, at least somewhat alcoholic older woman. How do you solve a problem like Kamala? You embrace her. The vice president’s “online resurgence,” Lorenz points out, “is being led by progressive leftists who (previously) supported Bernie Sanders.” Some of them will admit that Kamala Harris is still “representative of everything that’s wrong with the Democratic Party — but (at least) she’s funny.” And even if this swell of online support “started from a place of irony,” she “might just be slightly better (than Joe Biden).” And apparently that’s enough—though it doesn’t exactly quell my concern that “wine aunts” lack the maturity and self control to appropriately govern… anything.

Charles C.W. Cooke, who writes for National Review, was on with Megyn Kelly last week when the conversation turned to Kamala’s willingness to embrace the brat persona. Let’s just say he wasn’t surprised. “She is an awful, terrible person,” Cooke mused, “and it's not just that her instincts are authoritarian, although they are, it's that she actually doesn't believe in anything.” She says whatever she perceives to be in her best interest at the time. To this point, when Stephen Colbert asked her in 2020 how she could go “from being such a passionate opponent” of Joe Biden on the debate stage to being his running mate, she laughingly answered, “It was a debate!” In fact, she said that four times. And when Colbert—in a rare moment of lucidity—responded, “So you don’t mean it?” she steamrolled right through his question to declare that she was “1000% supportive of Joe Biden.” But her implication was clear. She shouldn’t be held to anything she said on the debate stage. That’s all just theatre. But there is at least one issue to which Kamala seems genuinely committed—which Megyn Kelly noted in her interview with Charles Cooke. “The Democrats aren't in love with Kamala,” she points out. “She only has a 38% approval rating, [but] they (do) love abortion and she's been the most outspoken member of the administration on abortion rights.” And that’s what I’d like to end with.

Even if I have failed to convince you that Kamala Harris’ childlessness is a genuine liability—and you find my arguments baseless and arbitrary, there is no sugarcoating her views on abortion. Like Joe Biden before her, Kamala Harris has thrown her lot in with the baby killers. I don’t know if she’s ever had an abortion herself. To my knowledge, she’s never broached the subject publicly. But her love affair with Planned Parenthood is undeniable. In times past, Democrats evinced a modicum of shame for their support of abortion. They at least gave lip service to the notion that abortion should be rare. But those days are gone. Earlier this year, Kamala Harris became the first sitting president or vice president to visit one of the abortion clinics in Planned Parenthood's vast network of government-subsidized killing centers. She praised "their work" to the heavens. So you can argue that Democrats are more pro-child than Republicans, but their policies tell a different story. “Free” birth control, “free” abortion, and the sterilization of children through “gender-affirming care.” It’s a toolkit as grotesque as any in history. Their future isn’t female; it’s childless. So perhaps it’s only appropriate that they nominate a childless president to lead them there. 

In a speech Kamala Harris gave last July, she said “When we invest in clean energy and electric vehicles and reduce population, more of our children can breathe clean air and drink clean water.” As you may imagine, that raised some eyebrows. But the White House quickly insisted that Harris wasn’t supposed to say “reduce population.” She was supposed to say “reduce pollution”—as indicated in the official transcript. It was merely a Freudian slip. But this doesn’t change the fact that the Democratic Party is the party of population doomsayers. The party who elevates the virtue of birth control and disparages the wonton consumption of large families. Their unofficial policy position is this. If you absolutely insist on having kids, be sure to at least raise them to hate America, spoil them beyond repair, and get them to change their gender. 

Those who want to save children from abortion and those who want to “save the planet” through abortion offer diametrically opposed visions of the future. One side sees children as community property—to be molded and mended according to the whims of modern orthodoxy. The other side does not. One side thinks children should be forcibly injected with experimental drugs and indoctrinated with deviant sexual behavior. The other side does not. One side encourages children to pursue lifestyle choices that will make their adult lives a living hell, and one side does not. One side envisions a future without families or borders. The other side does not. Elon Musk believes we need more children. Kamala Harris believes we need fewer. Elon Musk has 12 children. Kamala Harris has zero. One envisions a future of abundance and prosperity. One envisions a future of meagerness and depravity. And since the future is largely what we make it, I suppose the real question is this. Whose vision of tomorrow would you rather carry out?