My present city is a pretty horrible place to live. I had previously attributed it to the general poverty and dustiness of the area, the general grossness of the infantrymen who populate it, and the general horribleness of the south's social order. But I'm increasingly convinced demographics are the reason why. I live in a military town with a median age in the mid-20s. Nearly half the population is under 25. These people don't have kids.

The result is a predictable lack of civic virtue. People get in fights. They speed violently. There's strip clubs, grillists, decal shops, and the like everywhere. Everything sucks and everyone hates it here.

Children civilize things. They promote awareness, respect, and awe for the order of being, through which God has permitted man to participate in the act of creation (hence the near-religious reverence parents feel holding their newborn children for the first time). They remind parents of their obligations and encourage them to behave -- not only to set a good example but to contribute to the betterment of society for their children's sake. Children make obvious the goodness of obedience to authority, the dutiful care for one's family, and reverence for elders and ancestors.

A society without children is a markedly deficient society -- one that has no reason to live at all, much less live well. I suspect this is why liberalism so desperately hates the idea of parenthood and children: it's only possible in a society with comparatively few children.