I ran into our Turkish neighbor yesterday evening and asked her how she felt about the election in her country. As I expected, she was very depressed about it. Then she gave me the best political analysis I had heard: “We democrats did not multiply,” she said. She noted that she and her three sisters had produced, among them, only two children. While the less educated, more religious segments of the population were procreating at a much higher rate. This struck me as a problem not just for Turkey, and made me wonder about the future viability of democracy.
