CR Nation

While we’re on the subject of healthcare and failing government policies, take note of this brilliant idea.

Is it just me, or is everything wrong with using taxpayers’ money to fund this program? Since when does the government subsidize morality? Oh, wait, it’s not morality, abstinence is not required! Plus it’s totally discriminatory, because unless you had a sister who gave birth before age 18 and (evidently) do not have a family member who’s obtained a college degree, you’re not eligible! It’s just like liberals, though, when “creative ways are needed” to address an issue they get creative with other people’s money.

Not only that, let’s do the math here: 6/125 (# of girls in the program who got pregnant or otherwise dropped out) > 7.2/1,000 (average national teen birth rate) Granted, the people choosing the lucky participants say that this is a high-risk group. But if you ask me, the criteria they’re using are catching low-risk young women: Are you more or less likely to get pregnant as a teen after watching your sister go through it, especially if you’re still in school and working toward college?

One more quick calculation: 12 (years program has been running) x $75,000 (per year cost) = $900,000 To keep 119 girls from getting pregnant. “If it works”, Mr. Program Director? When are we going to make the tough call?

More disturbing is the Federal budget item associated with this happy statement. If the above is an example of them “carefully testing innovative approaches”, that money is doomed before it’s spent. Nothing new, I know. Just another example of well-intentioned politicians doing as they please with tax dollars, and botching the job in the process. But we all know about the road to hell and good intentions!

A new study has found that conservatives tend to be happier than liberals.

An excerpt from the Live Science article:

Regardless of marital status, income or church attendance, right-wing individuals reported greater life satisfaction and well-being than left-wingers, the new study found.

Its the Kennedy way. Its the liberal way.

A homeless advocacy group is challenging all Democrat Presidential candidates to sleep on the streets for one night in order to bring to their attention just how the other half lives…

[a] challenge laid down this month by the National Coalition for the Homeless (NCH), a non-profit advocacy organization, to all of the announced candidates in the 2008 contest for president [is] to spend a night as a homeless person. None accepted the invitation; in fact, only Illinois Democratic Sen. Barack Obama — who introduced a bill in April that would provide more housing for homeless veterans — responded to the group, and he demurred, citing scheduling conflicts.

Rule: Democrats only say what they must to get elected. Democrats really don’t want to “help” the poor, they only want to seem like they want to in order to get votes.

And let’s not forget that their term for “help” really isn’t help, because increasing federal funding for housing will only make more people dependent on government, in addition to increasing the level of addiction of those already receiving HUD funding.

I assume that this stunt is, in the long run, intended to increase federal housing funding for the poor. However, good a goal helping those less fortunate then us might be (and it is a duty to help the poor), it in no way necessarily implicates government.

Philosophically speaking, the poor can be just as effectively helped by private charity then by public governmental institutions. Government doesn’t have to be the answer nor should it be.

Proving that theory correct then are measures of the efficiency of government relative to charity and private industry which show that the latter is overwhelming more effiicient at what it does than the former.

Yesterday I wrote a post about the philosophies on human nature underlying the conservative and liberal political ideologies.

Liberals believe that the exercise of Western-styled freedom through political rights misconstrues human nature in a way that makes man self-interested. In order to correct the misconstruing of man’s nature, liberals seek to remove what separates “man from himself”, which essentially means the removal of rights as understood within the Western political tradition, i.e. no more religion, no more private property, etc.

This explains two things: The liberals’ persistent attack on religion and economic freedom.

One of the ways liberals remove the freedoms that allegedly separate man is through progressive taxation and wealth redistribution. The goal is for everyone to generally have the same stuff as everyone else. This way private property will no longer separate one man from another. The vision is for man to live in community amongst other man with each need provided for by the master-planned community (government).

This vision is apparent today in the health care proposals made by the Democrat Presidential candidates, the current funding impasse over SCHIP, and some of the veto threats made by President Bush.

The liberals want everyone to have the same government-run health care; the liberals want to redistribute your wealth through progressive taxation and wealth redistribution programs like SCHIP. This is founded in their philosophy as well as in their interest in winning elections. In other words, some Democrats actually believe what they say, while others only say what they need to in order to get elected.

Yet conservatives (in general) have the audacity to fight for freedom, traditional Western political values, and for the ruggedly individualistic conception of human nature that has made America so great.

In this fight our greatest tool has been and will be fiscal responsibility. Look at what it did for Ronald Reagan…

And it makes sense that fiscal responsibility is our greatest tool. If the socialists’ goal is for government to tax and spend to correct the inequalities our misconception of human nature has created, then it seems common sense to assume the counter-play would be to not tax and not spend.

It is very simple: as fiscal responsibility increases, government redistributes less, and if government redistributes less, socialism is left without a tool to attack with and attempt to undo the principles upon which we are founded.

So, although the heart of conservativism is found in its enduring love for freedom, its shield can be found at the present time in a pen held by our President.

Not only is the President philosophically consistent with the founding principles of this nation if he wields his veto pen in the name of fiscal responsibility.

Not only is government most effective and efficient when it is small and limited.

But also, by vetoing rejecting Socialism and exercising fiscal discipline the President will put the Republican Party back on track. For electoral sucess Republicans must recapture the label of the fiscally conservative party in the minds of the American people, and it begins with walking the walk.

Fiscal responsibility in any shape or form, be it veto or filibuster, is a shield we must fear to raise in preventing the slow creep of socialism into our land of freedom and the opportunity derived from it.

Fiscal responsibility: It is right, it is effective, and it wins elections. Can’t ask for much more than that…