A lot of comment has been made over the past couple days over a report that marriage is declining among the American middle class. While among the very rich and very poor there has long been a slackness in matters of pre-marital sexuality and, when marriage occurs, an easy willingness to have a divorce, the middle class was thought to be rather safe from it. Turns out, of course, that the middle class has not been immune to our societal shifts. While still far more traditionalist in such matters than the poor, there has been a rapid shift away from traditional morality. Some are wondering if we’re in some way doomed – that the die is cast, and the old ways are gone forever.
Such talk is nonsense. Here is what happened:
1. Government social programs have tended to subsidize irresponsible behavior.
2. Tax and regulatory policy have tended to destroy the jobs of the middle class (ie, jobs which are well paid and open to people who either cannot obtain or do not want a lot of formal education).
3. Relentless propaganda in favor of moral depravity has slowly eroded public morality.
As far as subsidizing irresponsible behavior, we have a situation now where some of the unemployed have received years of benefits and, often, those benefits exceed minimum wage employment (or, at least, don’t go enough over it to convince someone to get up every morning and go to work). If we were to simply make it so that after, say, 90 days of unemployment benefits you had to present yourself to your local government for use as day labor, such absurdities would end – rather than work as graffiti removers or trash collectors, people would go find some other work…and if there truly wasn’t any work, at all, to be had, then at least the unemployed would feel they were contributing…the whole psychology of it would change. And this is just one of a hundred examples of the way we subsidize irresponsible behavior.
Regarding tax and regulatory policy, it is just flat out nonsense to say that the United States cannot make something like a hammer cheaper than it is made in China and then shipped to the United States. But our policies, on the one hand, overburden anyone who wishes to make things (or mine or grow things) in the United States while, on the other hand, the provide a positive incentive for boneheaded corporate bosses to see shipping jobs to China or India as a good idea (talk about killing your own golden goose!). Reform tax and regulatory policy to free up making, mining and growing things and we’ll swiftly start to rebuild such enterprises, thus providing middle class jobs for the American people.
And, finally, we’ve got the moral depravity. For half a century now we’ve endlessly instructed everyone that marriage is a drag, sex is the most important thing, the personal happiness of the individual trumps all. It is no surprise, at all, that after such a campaign we’re finding more and more people falling for such idiocy. In this, we just need a bit of courage – those of us who haven’t entirely fallen for it need to stand up and demand that it stop. First amendment? Certainly – but no one charged a line of bayonets so that pornography could be readily available. Be sensible – don’t fall for an argument which says that free speech is doomed unless we allow a pornographer or Hollywood huckster to make a buck off of filth.
We’ve got all sorts of problems to deal with in America. We have made one huge mess of our nation. But we can put it back together, again. It won’t happen overnight as what took decades to develope won’t be undone in a day. But it can be managed – if we just use our common sense and stop falling for what amounts to a con stating we must forever support layabouts, must forever have Big Government and Big Corporation ruining the economy and must forever allow garbage to be spewed all over our nation.
Blogs For Victory 