Are there too many people in the world? Some say there are, and some say there aren't. The topic does not seem to lend itself to easy answers.

The last time I touched on the subject, it involved considering whether there is such a thing as conservative eugenics, and I was no more comfortable with it than the commenters. A statement that "conservatives have increasingly expressed concern that privileged women are failing to breed, while less privileged women are breeding too much" worried me, as did the notion of encouraging people to breed (and implicitly criticizing them if they don't), but it's not a passion of mine. My attitude probably reflects the fact that although I never had kids personally, I don't like telling people what to do with their personal lives, especially their reproductive organs. I don't like the leftie (Ehrlichian) idea that people who have kids are bad for having them, nor do I like the "right wing" (if it is that) idea that people who don't have kids are bad for having not had them. Enough things have been made unattractive by being politicized, and if they succeed in making the having or not having of children a political act, what's left?

Breathing?

(Now, you know the answer to that, so I don't need to elaborate.)

Anyway, last night I found myself forced to wonder whether it somehow violates conservative principles to opine that there are too many people in the world.

What started me down the trail of this meme was that Glenn Reynolds linked a post by Randall Parker on the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch," which Parker concluded this way:

We need fewer people and people need to wake up to the scale of human interventions in the environment.

...the patch's size is unknown...

...Estimates on size range from 700,000 square kilometres (270,000 sq mi) to more than 15,000,000 square kilometres (5,800,000 sq mi)...

...The area may contain over 100 million tons of debris...

...It has also been suggested that the patch may represent two linked areas...

But my point is not to defend or attack the Pacific Garbage Patchers or the skeptics. What annoyed me last night was the way Randall Parker was treated by snarky conservatives for voicing the opinion that there were too many people.

They were seriously pissed, and here's a sampling of excerpts:

Anyone who says "We need fewer people," should volunteer.

Why do all environmentalists prefer genocide to inovation and problem solving?

Only a fascist thinks we need fewer people.

I call upon all environmentalists/green advocates/earth-gaia mothers/PETA members and any other guilty-feeling group to come to the aid of the planet and do their part to lower the burden on our planet, in heroic and unselfish fashion.

Just offer yourselves up to the starving polar bears! Two problems solved in one!

Fewer people? You first, fool.

Please take pity on the world and take yourself out now if you believe this drivel.

Futurepundit advocates genocide...or perhaps just simple democide.

FWIW, I don't think it is possible to determine whether there are "too many people" as a factual matter, because it inherently comes down to being an opinion based upon additional data and/or assumptions requiring explanation, but I see Randall Parker's point, and he was not advocating genocide.

What concerned me is that there were so many angry and insulting comments that it seemed as if there's an emerging conservative litmus test on the population issue. If you think there are too many people, you're open to the accusation of being a liberal, and if you have a reputation as being on the right side of the political spectrum, then you should be condemned and insulted as a heretic.

The latter runs counter to the traditional rule that conservatives are looking for converts, and liberals are looking for heretics, and I hope it is not a trend. I say this not only because I think it could backfire in the political sense, but because it is already backfiring for me in the personal sense.

One of the reasons I became fatigued with blogging was that I was sick of insults directed by the left against the right. As I have explained, I am more of a defender by nature than I am an attacker, and during the Bush years I found myself in my "public defender" mode. Leftists would attack, and I would defend their right-of-center victims. Leftists would attack the country, and I would defend the country. It was ideally suited to my nature, and also to my politics, because even though I'm not a true conservative, to be be libertarian is usually to be right of center.

While my political views have not changed in any way that I can discern, since the election of Barack Obama, the mechanism has changed, and something on the right has changed. Perhaps it's the adoption of leftist tactics, but I have noticed that conservatives have become more aggressive in demanding adherence to what they call "conservative principles," and much more vociferous in their attacks. Things have reached the point where even I -- a libertarian blogger who has never claimed or pretended to be anything other than that -- feel under more pressure now to become a conservative than I ever have. The word "libertarian" is being systematically left out of most political discussions (and it almost never appears in polls), and it is as if libertarians are supposed to go into some kind of conservative "closet," and refer to themselves not as libertarians but as "conservatives." It feels as if there is a serious attempt in the works somewhere to relabel libertarianism as conservatism, and beyond that, to attempt to either transform libertarians into conservatives, or at least demand that they stop saying what they think.

It's not so much the conservative label that bothers me, because as I have observed countless times, I really don't care what label other people bestow on me, as long as they don't demand ideological adherence to it. If liberals want to call me conservative and conservatives call me liberal, that's OK, because I can defend myself against the attacks. But don't call me a conservative and then expect that just because I don't object every time, that I agree with whatever some self-appointed conservative spokesman says conservatism is supposed to be. For the umpteenth time, may I just be allowed to think what I think?

But there is something I object to far more than the conservative label, and far more than the pressure to conform to "conservatism." What really creeps me out the since the election of Obama is this sense that not only am I supposed to be a conservative, but I am supposed to be an aggressive and insulting conservative -- a right wing echo of the left wing insult hurlers I so loathed for so many years. That's like asking me to do what I most hate doing.

To stay with the "public defender" analogy (and I did work for the San Francisco public defender's office), it is like taking a public defender and then suddenly demanding that he work as a District Attorney! I don't like the DA mentality. Much as I recognize the need for prosecutors, being one is just not in my nature. Just. Not. What. I. Do. (I can do anything occasionally, but to do something like that constantly is unsustainable.)

So, while I can't be certain of whether it's conservative heresy to opine that there are too many people in this world, I'm delighted to defend against the charge.