In The Sociological Tradition, Robert Nisbet referred to the Industrial and French Revolutions as the two great ideas of the western world. No two events so dramatically altered civilization as significantly, their temporal overlap only intensifying their effects.

If the two Revolutions are the two great ideas of the Western world, then the third great idea must be birth control. No innovation has fundamentally altered the premises of civilization quite like birth control.

While liberals believe the central unit of life is the individual, conservatives believe that it is the family unit. We are not a civilization of individuals, we are a civilization of families, with the family unit being the foundational brick on which civilization is built.

The traditional family unit is predicated on the following biological premises: Men have an unlimited supply of sperm, and biologically speaking, can never truly know if they are the father of a child. The child may bear a strong resemblance to the man perceived to be the father, but for all he knows, it could be someone else. Therefore, men look to reproduce WIDELY. Women, on the other hand, have a finite number of eggs. The clock is ticking for women, and time eventually runs out on their reproductive years when they reach menopause. From a biological perspective, sex will lead to pregnancy, which is a high-cost long-term enterprise. Women bear the cost of pregnancy more so than men, therefore sex is costlier to women. This high cost means women must be selective with whom they reproduce, so women look to reproduce WISELY….

The above comes from a Dec. 1 story on the site of The Imaginative Conservative.