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All this aside, early Christianity probably had a higher fertility rate than general Roman society. Christianity embraced low-status individuals(slaves, women, etc) and treated them well(Constantine made slave welfare laws under Christian influence very early, and Christian writers bragged about treating their women better- notably, the pagan majority doesn't contradict them). That doesn't equate to the modern left's tendency to grow wholly memetically rather than through fertility; all the information we have is that Christianity was a high fertility minority whose memetic appeal was at least partly by distributing opportunities to help themselves to the urban poor.
Yeah, I should have probably brought up this disanalogy somehow, since people here have brought up that Christians had a high TFR compared to other Romans before.
However, my main point is that while Leftists grow memetically, it might not quite be correct to call it "parasitically."
Like, putting aside their high TFR, when Christians showed compassion and charity to lepers, Roman tax collectors and ex-prostitutes, they weren't being "parasitic" on all those groups.
And in the modern day, when mentally ill black sheep move away from home, and find the LGBT community or progressivism waiting there to embrace them and all of their messiness, I don't think it is correct to call it "parasitism." Those communities are taking the cast offs that the families with lots of kids didn't want in the end.
Like, I get why some people on The Motte have a natural aesthetic distaste for the way the progressive left seems to embrace weakness, mental illness and ugliness. But you can't cultivate an attitude like that, and then be surprised when a leper colony has formed behind your back, and become part of a larger coalition opposing you.
I have seen so many broken people "bloom" for lack of a better word when they became a part of the LGBT community in my city. They went from struggling people with no friends, and painful family connections to people who could embrace being the weird black sheep that they were, becoming more confident and emotionally stable in the process. How is that parasitic? Especially when the "solution" to that supposed parasitism for the other political tribe is one they will never realistically embrace.
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