Hans Fiene of The Federalist wrote an absolute bomb of an article called “Why Men and Women Can Never Be ‘Just Friends’” where he chides women for putting men into the “friend zone” (I think that is one of the dumber terms out there).  His ideas on relationships are horrible.  I don’t have to provide any commentary to prove it.

But these views on relationships aren’t even the worst part about Fiene’s position.

He tries to make a connection between these friendship issues and economics.  He blames the “friend zone” for a lower birth rate in the United States.  And then he oddly slips in politics at a few points during his article:

Free him to find a woman who actually wants to marry him, however, and he’ll have several more years to sire children who will laugh, create, sing, fill the world with love and, most importantly, pay into Social Security.

Pay into Social Security?  And that’s most important?  Is that what Fiene thinks that love, marriage, and procreating children are for?

So get brave. Get married. Get pregnant a bunch of times and give birth to a bunch of beautiful little future taxpayers.

Wow.  It is sick to view children as cattle on the tax farm.  It legitimizes the idea that the state owns you.  This means that the state would come before the individual.

So if Fiene hasn’t creeped you out yet, get ready for it.

When I finished reading this article, it immediately reminded me of a passage from 1984 that I probably haven’t thought about since I read the book 10 to 12 years ago.

As soon as he touched her she seemed to wince and stiffen. To embrace her was like embracing a jointed wooden image. And what was strange was that even when she was clasping him against her he had the feeling that she was simultaneously pushing him away with all her strength. The rigidity of her muscles managed to convey that impression. She would lie there with shut eyes, neither resisting nor co-operating but submitting. It was extraordinarily embarrassing, and, after a while, horrible. But even then he could have borne living with her if it had been agreed that they should remain celibate. But curiously enough it was Katharine who refused this. They must, she said, produce a child if they could. So the performance continued to happen, once a week quite regularly, whenever it was not impossible. She even used to remind him of it in the morning, as something which had to be done that evening and which must not be forgotten. She had two names for it. One was “making a baby,” and the other was “our duty to the Party.”

Fiene argues that you should get married and have kids so that the government can get money from them.  Katharine referred to trying to have children as “our duty to the Party.”

What’s the difference?