A Tendentious New Book Argues against Having Multiple Children

In One Child, Sarah Conly, a professor of philosophy, argues that having two or more children is an immoral indulgence. Heather Wilhelm writes in her review:

The health of humanity is not the book’s central operative metric. Rather, environmental health—the fabled steady state of an innocent, benevolent Planet Earth, which is being corrupted by the “parasites” that dwell upon it—is. Thus, we come to Conly’s . . . conclusion: human beings have a right only to a “minimally decent life” and, as a corollary, a right to having only one child. . . .

Having multiple children, Conly argues, “is not so basic an interest as the interest in sustenance, or health, or social connections.” Having one child, she writes, serves all the potential purposes of procreating in the first place: equality (“being treated as just as worthy as others to reproduce”), creating a family life (albeit without siblings, which she equates to “expensive toys”), and the simple, caveman-like duty of passing along one’s genes. . . .

Children, in this view, are tools; they are ours to own and manipulate, and exist solely for our gratification. This distressing outlook—a sort of raw materialism as applied to human life—flows throughout the book. If your one allotted child dies, Conly blithely notes, you can certainly have another one; the answer is less clear, unfortunately, if your child is disabled or as “good as dead.” . . .

Beyond this, at the heart of One Child, there’s a genuine befuddlement as to what people are actually for. . . . Humanity should continue, she generously concedes, but it’s quite obvious that she has no idea why. Understanding why would require deep thoughts, and deep thoughts have no place here.

Read more at Commentary

More about: Children, Environmentalism, History & Ideas, Idiocy, Morality, Philosophy

How Columbia Failed Its Jewish Students

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.

Read more at National Review

More about: Anti-Semitism, Columbia University, Israel on campus