Here’s my message to Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance: I am a retired baby boomer grandma, and I vote on issues for a future that I will not experience. My family is grown, but I care about the policies that will ensure the health, safety, education and happiness of all Americans. In my opinion, that makes a good citizen.
Oh, by the way, my family has always had cats as pets; dogs and fish too.
— Sandra Marcus, Glenview
‘Childless cat ladies’ remark
As an American, I take offense at the Republican vice presidential candidate’s remarks about “childless cat ladies.” Three of my nieces are married and without children. When JD Vance complained that some women, Democrats in particular, are “childless cat ladies,” and he advocated that adults without children should pay higher taxes and have fewer voting rights, I took it as an attack on my extended family. Two of my three childless nieces are Republican, and I do not know how they think about one of the leaders of their party denigrating them.
The circumstances of my three nieces’ lack of children is none of my business, nor should it be anyone else’s. Freedom is what this country is based upon. The freedom to make personal decisions is a bedrock to our democracy that we are responsible for protecting generation to generation. It is my duty as an uncle and as an American to guard and protect my nieces’ rights and privacy as well as those of every American. Decisions about a woman’s health care are a private affair, and neither government nor anyone who wants to serve as a leader has any right to weigh in on them.
Vance and, by extension, Donald Trump, who selected Vance as his running mate even though the denigrating remarks were already public, are at fault for not protecting, much less knowing, the constitutional rights of childless women and, by extension, all Americans. They can make snide remarks about Democrats and bemoan the falling birth rate, but they may not disparage the rights of Americans that our citizens fought for 250 years ago.
As our Founding Fathers warned, the fight for freedom must be refought in every generation. Now it is time for Americans to stand up against the forces that wish to take those rights away from us; those forces are seemingly embedded right now within Republican Party leadership.
We must stand guard and help preserve our liberties. As a descendant of 12 people who fought for America, it is my turn, and I must call out Trump and Vance as being unpatriotic.
We must not allow ourselves to be blinded by theatrical pundits who don’t know what America stands for.
— Jim Troxel, Chicago
Board fails to call out Vance
It seems the media cannot ignore the outpouring of enthusiasm for Kamala Harris, but I am highly disturbed about the lack of attention to Donald Trump and JD Vance’s illogical, untrue, vitriolic and sometimes incoherent statements.
The Tribune Editorial Board gave us an example on July 31 (“JD Vance’s approach to reversing US birth trends is the wrong one. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem”) when the board not only dismissed concern about Vance’s ridiculous stance on the role of women in our society but also recharacterized his statements as a concern about reductions in the birth rate.
Vance said Democrats are a party whose “entire future … is controlled by people without children,” calling these women “childless cat ladies.” Not only did the board dismiss this statement by writing: Vance’s “quotes rightly are viewed as insulting to those who … don’t procreate. But Vance isn’t wrong to draw attention to a U.S. birth rate that … fell to … the lowest since … the 1930s.”
In one fell swoop, the board allowed Vance’s remarks not just to go unchallenged, but it also claimed that he was talking about a lowered birth rate. Nowhere in Vance’s ideological statements does he reference birth rate as a concern. His remarks, of course, demean women and justify his support of the idea that the majority status of white people is being threatened.
I am severely distressed that the Tribune Editorial Board would cater to these divisive remarks and allow Vance’s remarks to go unchecked, particularly in an editorial such as this. I hope that the board will do much better, starting now.
— Patrick J. Comer, Clarendon Hills
Orderly immigration system
The editorial responding to JD Vance’s views on the U.S. birth rate rightly identifies some legitimate concerns about our aging population while challenging his notion that there’s something wrong with those of us who have not become parents. Thank you.
But the U.S. has never been a closed system relying solely on current residents for population growth. Voluntary immigrants have always been a significant source of our population’s growth and strength (as were enslaved Africans and English indentured servants in brutal years past). Many major U.S. employers today rely on immigrants, whether in their fields, their labs or their boardrooms. Our economy grows with our population. Having more people doesn’t mean that we must fight for ever-smaller pieces of the pie. The pie grows!
Rather than see that reality, too many see immigration as evil, portraying immigrants as wicked — people out to take your father’s or sister’s or child’s job, steal your belongings or worse. Republicans in the House defeated a bill this spring that would have brought substantial reform to our immigration policies, practices and facilities while reducing the number of people admitted entry. But it’s better to demonize the party in the White House during an election year than constructively address the issue, it seems.
No one needs to ask people to rethink their decisions not to become parents, nor intrude into their privacy to learn why they didn’t or couldn’t, in order to grow the working-age U.S. population.
We do need a humane, orderly, well-equipped immigration system, quite unlike what we have now.
— Joan Pederson, Chicago
How is this ‘pro-family’?
U.S. Sen. JD Vance has disparaged those who are without children. He claims that childless people don’t have a stake in this country’s future. He said anyone who has children should get more votes than those who don’t.
Someone might be childless by choice or for medical reasons or because they simply can’t afford them. Vance could help make it easier for people to have and raise kids, but he refuses to do so.
When the child tax credit was temporarily expanded during the pandemic, it reduced childhood poverty by more than 40%. A bill to restore this expansion and make it permanent was passed by the House, yet Vance and his Republican colleagues are blocking it in the Senate. Republicans also blocked bills that would’ve protected a woman’s right to in vitro fertilization.
Vance and his Republican colleagues claim to be “pro-family.” Their actions prove otherwise.
— Mike Mosser, Chicago
Vance disappoints hopes
I had rising hopes and expectations that JD Vance might become a new and emergent voice in Republican politics, rebuilding the party with a less derisive vision than what has gone down before, until his misguided and insulting comments about childless women and couples who opt out of parenthood. Does he not know that there are many more compelling reasons couples decide not to have children beyond selfishness and desire for career advancement? How about the neglect and abuse people might have experienced growing up with parents unfit for that role souring them on parenting?
I speak from the heart on that issue, having lived through divorce and having had an uninterested and uninvolved alcoholic father who was a frightening presence in my life. I knew at age 18 I did not desire to be a father. So why must societal pressure and occasional scorn be heaped on men and women choosing another way? How many times in my 30s did friends and colleagues thoughtlessly chide me about this and ask when they could expect to see our babies? I smiled and laughed it off, but insulting remarks like that went on for years until my wife was past her childbearing years.
Childless couples are often subjected to exclusion, gossip and criticism. In this enlightened age, this kind of archaic prejudicial attitude lingers. Looking back on it, my wife and I have no regrets about our decision. Shame on Vance for his insulting comments about childless women. It is unacceptable and the kind of backward and fanatical thinking the Republican Party must move away from if it is to have any modicum of success in the future.
— Richard Lindberg, Chicago
World needs fewer people
In a recent editorial, the Tribune Editorial Board refers to comments by Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick that are critical of women who have not given birth to children. The editorial goes on to imply that more women need to have children because the U.S. needs a sizeable population to be able to fill all jobs a sizeable economy may produce. Such an opinion, in this writer’s view, is ridiculous in view of the threat climate change poses at the present time. The world has too many people in it, and this overpopulation is one of the main reasons for the threat to life on this planet posed by climate change.
To reduce the overuse of the world’s natural resources, farmlands, forests and pollution-causing items and to have a world that is healthy and beneficial to our children, the world needs fewer people, not more!
— W. Muellner, LaGrange Park
Trump should drop strategy
Several commentators and opinion writers have suggested that Donald Trump’s comments at the National Association of Black Journalists’ convention confirm that he is a racist. Trump has many faults and baggage, but I do not think he is a racist. In fact, during his presidency, he did more to help Black people than many of his predecessors.
That said, he does have big problem when he makes ad lib comments such as some he made at the convention. Therefore, if he hopes to win the presidency, he should avoid comments about Kamala Harris’ identity. She may be vulnerable on her record and past comments, but trying to question her ethnicity is a losing strategy.
— Dan Schuchardt, Glen Ellyn
Advice for candidate Harris
Advice to Kamala Harris from a 90-year old:
Don’t be “anti” or “pro” anything — use common sense. Don’t use labels — talk to the people. Don’t play the woman card — address fellow Americans. Deplore prejudice, malice and divisiveness — foster civility and respect. It wouldn’t hurt to appoint Mark Kelly vice president and the country’s gun czar.
— Anne Essex, Glenview
Project 2025’s ‘mandate’
It is essential that the American public be educated as to what the 920-page document Project 2025 has planned for a second Donald Trump term. Trump spoke of it on April 2022 (see Snopes.com) when he complimented the Heritage Foundation plan and called it his “colossal mandate.” He now denies knowledge of it.
The plan calls for dismantling numerous government agencies, such as the Department of Education; fill civil service with political appointees; repeal infrastructure, inflation reduction and marriage equality laws; reverse all Joe Biden policies with regard to climate change and environment; and much more.
— Christine Burns, Crystal Beach, Florida
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