We are sometimes criticized for writing about the economy, freedom, etc., on these pages.  Best to focus on pro-life issues, they say.

There is some merit in that assertion.  In our Pro-Life Training Academy (PLTA), we teach pro-life activists how to convince even atheists and communists that abortion is wrong.  Even if they believe we are wrong about politics, economics, etc., that does not justify killing a child.

But it’s important for us to understand how saving children is related to saving the economy.

Over the past 50 years, a deadly idea has been growing in the collective American psyche:  the notion that all of us are “entitled” to whatever we need, and sometimes even what we want, and we have no responsibility to work for it or pay for it.  The list of “entitlements” includes food, shelter, health care, a college education, etc., … and the list is growing.

Entitlement, along with its twin monster Dependency, are cultivated and used by political charlatans as tools for obtaining and consolidating political power.  They make outrageous promises, but of course, those promises must be kept by somebody else (i.e., the productive class), if they can be kept at all.  But it really doesn’t matter if they can be kept or not, because the people on the receiving end are “entitled.”

As to paying for the promises?  Well, somebody else can worry about that tomorrow.

Couple that general sense of entitlement with the non-stop portrayal of free sex on TV, in movies, at school, etc.  Everybody is having sex, nobody gets pregnant, and nobody gets STDs.  In the popular culture, sex is just an expected part of teenage life.  So it’s easy to see how young males would think sex without responsibility is just one more item on their long list of “entitlements.”  All a boy has to do is get a girl to give in to his “request,” and when she does, it’s all good.

Since contraception so often fails or is simply forgotten (source), recourse to abortion is necessary for having sex without responsibility, so abortion must be a “right” as well.  They will even say it, “But if I agree with you about abortion, I’ll have to give up sex!”  Not necessarily, but they might have to accept responsibility, and of course, responsibility is antithetical to entitlement.

Some are more callous than others, “Yep, my girlfriend has the right to kill my child, and I’ll do anything in my power to make sure she does, but the ultimate guilt … er, decision … is hers!”

The more we promote the entitlement philosophy, the more abortions we will have.  The politicians who work hardest to cultivate entitlement/dependency also promote the most extreme child-killing policies, because responsibility and entitlement are incompatible values.

Conversely, although the 2010 elections were not a pro-life mandate, per se, but rather a mandate to roll back entitlements gone wild, the result was a record number of pro-life laws passed at the state level in 2011.  Many of the newly-elected lawmakers who promised fiscal sanity also worked to protect children and moms from abortion.

Furthermore, we must always remind ourselves that the first order of business for the political class is to stay in power.  That means paying off powerful political allies like Planned Parenthood.  They tell us our money will go for food, shelter, education, health care, etc., for people who need it.  But in reality, they take money from the productive class and use much of it to grow the bureacracy and pay off their political friends.

You know about Solyndra, but the half-billion they got is chump change.  Planned Parenthood stands to take in billions of dollars (that’s “billions” with a “b”) annually from ObamaCare (source).  (Annually means every year, for all you people in Rio Linda.)  The more we feed the beast that is our federal government, the more entitlement, dependency, and abortions we will have.

What do you think?  Please comment!

Obama on Capitalism (source):

… there is a certain crowd in Washington who, for the last few decades, have said, let’s respond to this economic challenge with the same old tune. “The market will take care of everything,” they tell us. If we just cut more regulations and cut more taxes — especially for the wealthy — our economy will grow stronger. Sure, they say, there will be winners and losers. But if the winners do really well, then jobs and prosperity will eventually trickle down to everybody else. And, they argue, even if prosperity doesn’t trickle down, well, that’s the price of liberty.

Now, it’s a simple theory. And we have to admit, it’s one that speaks to our rugged individualism and our healthy skepticism of too much government. That’s in America’s DNA. And that theory fits well on a bumper sticker. (Laughter.) But here’s the problem: It doesn’t work. It has never worked. (Applause.) It didn’t work when it was tried in the decade before the Great Depression. It’s not what led to the incredible postwar booms of the ‘50s and ‘60s. And it didn’t work when we tried it during the last decade. (Applause.) I mean, understand, it’s not as if we haven’t tried this theory.

Friedman on Capitalism:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWsx1X8PV_A

1. Republicans controlled Congress during the so-called “Clinton surplus.”  It was the first Republican majority in more than 40  years and the first budget surplus in more than 25 years.
2. The Democrats had controlled Congress for two years leading up to the 2008 economic crisis.  They helped create the deficit that Pres. Obama “inherited”, and would have made it bigger if they could have.
3. As the Wall Street Journal pointed out in The Obama Economy, Bush essentially governed like a Democrat during the economic crisis of 2008, cooperating with their efforts to throw away billion$ on bailouts and stimulus packages.
4. The current economic policies are merely a continuation of the policies that got us in this mess in the first place.
5. Sowell says that if we are going to talk about “the policies that created this mess in the first place,” let’s at least get the facts straight and the names right.

But I should point out that Sowell missed a few facts that are also important.  First, there was no such thing as a Clinton surplus.  The so-called budget surplus of the mid-1990s was a surplus only if you include as revenue the money that was stolen out of the Social Security fund.  If you count it as borrowed money that has to be returned one day, the government was still running a deficit.

Second, Sowell was entirely correct that the mortgage lending crisis was created by Democrats, although it was implemented in full view of Republicans who did too little to stop them.  The mortgage crisis was like gasoline thrown on the fire of economic crisis of 2008, but there were other factors that must be remembered and corrected:

1. The ultimate cause of the economic conflagration was the widespread belief that this economic gravy train—25+ years of Reagan-Bush recovery—would never end.  This belief caused people throw caution to the wind.  They took on way too much debt to buy bigger and bigger houses and other stuff they didn’t need and couldn’t afford.  Lenders lent money to people who couldn’t afford to pay it back.  Corporations focused on short-term profits at the expense of long-term stability.  It’s very tempting to throw your money around at the casino if you get the stupid idea that the game won’t let you lose.
2. The sudden spike in world oil prices in the summer of 2008 was the match that lit the fire.  Suddenly, industries sensitive to oil prices had to cut back, the effects of which rippled through the economy.  People and corporations were way too extended, so they were vulnerable and fearful.  They panicked.  They cut back.  People’s incomes shrank.  They lost jobs and houses.  You know the rest.
3. In 2008, it became apparent that big-government socialists might occupy all three branches of government.  The leading candidate for the White House was preaching bigger and more expensive government, along with dramatic tax increases.  This caused many job-producers to keep their money on the sidelines.  People just will not risk their money in the face of such uncertainty.
4. Finally, it is going to take time to ease the panic and correct the excesses.  According to the Wall Street Journal, credit excesses built up over many years have to be wound down, and that takes time, while banks have to work down their bad assets.

But hopefully, people are beginning to learn some of the lessons of unchecked government spending.  Check out this column by Hugh Hewitt.  He describes how young teachers in California are being punished by a system that pays extravagant benefits to retired teachers, leaving too little for the teachers still on the job.  Raising taxes is no longer an option.  “The present is very much being sacrificed to the excess of the past.”  It’s another kind of excess that will take years to correct.

But not to worry.  In his piece Obama’s Shrinking Presidency, Columist Richard Cohen tells us exactly what Pres. Obama needs to do that will fix all of this.  He says, “The president needs better speechwriters.”  Well, there you have it!