House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was recently asked pointed questions by George Stephanopoulos about the congressional move which allocates substantial funds to birth control clinics (read: abortuaries) as part of the economic stimulus package (See article). She defended this by stating that “ . . . family planning services reduce cost. They reduce cost. The states are in terrible fiscal budget crises now and part of what we do for children's health, education and some of those elements are to help the states meet their financial needs. One of those - one of the initiatives you mentioned, the contraception, will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government.”
This is insane. It should terrify you that this woman is third in line to lead this country, should the President and vice-president meet an untimely demise. This single statement reveals an underlying set of assumptions and a mindset that is totally incompatible with reality, and the American way of life.
The justifying assumption for this statement is that babies are an economic drain on the government. They are wards of the state, and a liability to the state. State resources which could be better spent stimulating the economy would be spent on taking care of babies and children, from which no return would be realized. By spending money to actively discourage and prevent these births, in Speaker Pelosi’s twisted logic, we would save the state money in the long run.
There are so many logical errors here, it’s difficult to know where to begin. Most of us just stand in slack-jawed amazement that anyone could be so phenomenally idiotic with such a straight face.
In the first place, Pelosi’s assumption that the government is responsible for the care of children is in error. This sort of intrusive governmental assumption of responsibility promotes an abdication of personal responsibility on the part of the individual citizen. Once upon a time in this great country, unwed pregnancies were a scandal. Women went to great pains to avoid this condition, because of the harsh personal economic consequences of trying to raise a baby alone. Yes there were back-alley abortions, but they were exceptional. There was a social stigma associated with unwed pregnancies. Unwed pregnancies today should still be a scandal, but for different reasons. The availability of preventative birth control, coupled with the level of education and empowerment on the part of single women should easily be enough for any woman to exercise her libido without worrying about the consequences of becoming pregnant. It’s simply irresponsible for any woman to need to resort to an abortion to terminate an unwanted pregnancy.
The government has absolved the unwed mother of responsibility for providing for her unwanted children, by ensuring that she receive welfare funds from the public treasury to care for the child. Again, personal responsibility has been usurped by the government. Yet the government as a nanny state simply cannot provide the level of personal care and attention required to turn a child into an exceptional, self-sufficient, independent, productive member of society. This is a logical fallacy of the left, that governmental support of single-parent households will have a net positive effect. In the government’s well-meaning haste to help out someone, they end up doing more harm in the long-term than good.
This assumption that citizens are wards of the state, and a financial responsibility of the state leads the State to the logical conclusion that it has the power to regulate the number of citizens to be added to society. The result of this conclusion should be enough to cause most people to question the validity of the initial assumption. Unfortunately, the left is so convinced that their assumptions are correct, that they will slavishly dedicate themselves to those assumptions, regardless of the consequences to which they lead.
The second fallacy is the assumption that the State has any power to stimulate the economy through direct action. Economic history shows time and time again that the only power the State has to positively affect the economy is through inaction. State attempts to regulate or influence markets invariably lead to less than optimum results. This was demonstrated in the New Deal actions which only served to extend the Great Depression, Nixon’s wage and price control policies, which served to turn an economic downturn into a full blown recession and led the way to stagflation, and the most recent government meddling in our banking system which led to our current economic crisis.
Children are the promise of the future. They are the economic engine which will drive this country, this society, this culture, this economy forward twenty to forty years from now. Babies are an investment, which if properly cultivated, will yield rich rewards in the future. They are the primary investment in the future, and the investment upon which all other investments are justified. Only a totalitarian megalomaniac would come to the conclusion that babies are a disposable liability, and advocate allocating funds to restrict the number of children available to the future.
To make a public proclamation that such funding will stimulate the economy is an assault on your intelligence and mine. The sort of thinking that leads to such a conclusion is that the government is the ultimate power in society, and that all providence flows to and from the government. This is a dangerous idea, which many Americans have fought against over the last century, and it saddens me that it has not only come to our shores, but has found its way into the highest halls of power. Our founding fathers took great pains to see to it that the people were the ultimate power in our country. This is a lesson that Speaker Pelosi would do well to re-learn, and it’s incumbent upon us all to remind her and all her colleagues of this the next time we go to the voting booths.
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