News

Is the economic recovery real or illusory?

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The Obama administration has poured about $6 trillion of borrowed money into this economy over the last four years. Has this resulted in a growing economy, or is the economy slowing down?

Take a look at this must-read editorial in the Wall Street Journal.

Excerpt:

The Great Recession is an apt name for America’s current stagnation, but the present phase might also be called the Grand Illusion—because the happy talk and statistics that go with it, especially regarding jobs, give a rosier picture than the facts justify.

The country isn’t really advancing. By comparison with earlier recessions, it is going backward. Despite the most stimulative fiscal policy in American history and a trillion-dollar expansion to the money supply, the economy over the last three years has been declining. After 2.4% annual growth rates in gross domestic product in 2010 and 2011, the economy slowed to 1.5% growth in 2012. Cumulative growth for the past 12 quarters was just 6.3%, the slowest of all 11 recessions since World War II.

[…]February’s headline unemployment rate was portrayed as 7.7%, down from 7.9% in January. The dip was accompanied by huzzahs in the news media claiming the improvement to be “outstanding” and “amazing.” But if you account for the people who are excluded from that number—such as “discouraged workers” no longer looking for a job, involuntary part-time workers and others who are “marginally attached” to the labor force—then the real unemployment rate is somewhere between 14% and 15%.

[…]The number of Americans unemployed for six months or longer went up by 89,000 in February to a total of 4.8 million. The average duration of unemployment rose to 36.9 weeks, up from 35.3 weeks in January. The labor-force participation rate, which measures the percentage of working-age people in the workforce, also dropped to 63.5%, the lowest in 30 years. The average workweek is a low 34.5 hours thanks to employers shortening workers’ hours or asking employees to take unpaid leave.

When we borrow massive amounts of money and spend it today, we should expect to see some sort of return for all of that spending. But it turns out that when government does the spending instead of private citizens and private industry, then much of the money is wasted on nonsense that doesn’t create jobs and grow the economy. The numbers we have today put this point beyond dispute.

The Obama administration has been failing skilled immigrants for the past four years, as well:

When employers can’t expand or develop new lines because of the shortage of certain skills, the employment opportunities for the less skilled are also restricted. To help with this shortage, the administration’s proposals for job-training programs do deserve support. The stress should be on vocational training, postsecondary education and every program that will broaden access to computer science and strengthen science, technology, engineering and math in high schools and at the university level.

But the payoffs from these programs are in the future, and it is vital today to increase the number of annual visas and grants of permanent residency status for foreigners skilled in science and technology. The current situation is preposterous: The brightest and best brains from all over the globe are attracted to American universities, but once they get their degrees America sends them packing. Keeping these foreigners out means they will compete against us in the industries that are growing here and around the world.

This administration prides itself on being “pro-immigration” but they actually favor giving citizenship and voting privileges to millions of people who do not have marketable skills, who cannot speak English, and who disrespect the law by coming here illegally. The administration wants those people to become citizens because those people will vote Democrat. Meanwhile, skilled immigrants with advanced degrees in math, science, engineering and technology can just clear out of the country. They can learn here and work here temporarily, but eventually they have to go home. There are no green cards or naturalizations for skilled immigrants – they have skills, and they may be tempted to do nasty things like vote Republican. Democrats don’t want any of those independent, hard-working immigrants in this country. They are too hard to control and too hard to lie to.

Commentary

Gay conservative explains his opposition to same-sex marriage

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From the Public Discourse, a different perspective on gay marriage.

Excerpt:

The notion of same-sex marriage is implausible, yet political correctness has made stating the obvious a risky business. Genderless marriage is not marriage at all. It is something else entirely.

Opposition to same-sex marriage is characterized in the media, at best, as clinging to “old-fashioned” religious beliefs and traditions, and at worst, as homophobia and hatred.

I’ve always been careful to avoid using religion or appeals to tradition as I’ve approached this topic. And with good reason: Neither religion nor tradition has played a significant role in forming my stance. But reason and experience certainly have.

[…]Unfortunately, a few years later my marriage ended—a pain known too easily by too many. At this point, the divorce allowed me to explore my homosexuality for the first time in my life.

At first, I felt liberated. I dated some great guys, and was in a couple of long-term relationships. Over several years, intellectual honesty led me to some unexpected conclusions: (1) Creating a family with another man is not completely equal to creating a family with a woman, and (2) denying children parents of both genders at home is an objective evil. Kids need and yearn for both.

It took some doing, but after ten years of divorce, we began to pull our family back together. We have been under one roof for over two years now. Our kids are happier and better off in so many ways. My ex-wife, our kids, and I recently celebrated Thanksgiving and Christmas together and agreed these were the best holidays ever.

Because of my predilections, we deny our own sexual impulses. Has this led to depressing, claustrophobic repression? No. We enjoy each other’s company immensely. It has actually led to psychological health and a flourishing of our family. Did we do this for the sake of tradition? For the sake of religion? No. We did it because reason led us to resist selfish impulses and to seek the best for our children.

And wonderfully, she and I continue to regard each other as “soul mates” now, more than ever.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve found our decision to rebuild our family ratified time after time. One day as I turned to climb the stairs I saw my sixteen-year-old son walk past his mom as she sat reading in the living room. As he did, he paused and stooped down to kiss her and give her a hug, and then continued on. With two dads in the house, this little moment of warmth and tenderness would never have occurred. My varsity-track-and-football-playing son and I can give each other a bear hug or a pat on the back, but the kiss thing is never going to happen. To be fully formed, children need to be free to generously receive from and express affection to parents of both genders. Genderless marriages deny this fullness.

There are perhaps a hundred different things, small and large, that are negotiated between parents and kids every week. Moms and dads interact differently with their children. To give kids two moms or two dads is to withhold from them someone whom they desperately need and deserve in order to be whole and happy. It is to permanently etch “deprivation” on their hearts.

I think that children also need to see moms and dads cooperating with each other and caring for each other in a relationship that is not driven by selfishness or lust (e.g. – premarital hooking up) but is driven by self-sacrificial love from within a lifelong commitment. Kids need to see the two people who made them in their homes and to know that something more than “love” is holding their parents together to care for them.

Anyone can see that a child needs to have two people who are their parents who will model for them male/female love and give them male and female guidance. It’s wrong to deprive children of the safety of a home where both of their parents are present and taking care of them. Gay marriage is not the only threat to this ideal. It’s not even the largest threat (divorce and single motherhood by choice are worse threats, in my view). But we have to dig in our heels and protect marriage somewhere, so let’s start here and then work on rolling back no-fault divorce and single motherhood by choice.

UPDATE:

My attention has been drawn to this article by the same author, Douglas Mainwaring, in which he says some very disturbing things, seeming actually to endorse homosexual parenting and societal approval for homosexual “families,” including children, which runs counter to what he appears to be saying in the article I have linked here. Many of the things he says above about parenting and gender are very good, but conservatives should know for future reference that Mainwaring is actually not consistent nor truly conservative on these issues.

News

UK survey finds that men and women expect to have sex after a few dates

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Dina sent me this depressing article from the UK Daily Mail.

Excerpt:

Men now expect to sleep with a new partner on their third date – but women typically won’t consider it until the fifth, according to an intriguing new study on dating in the 21st century.

On the first date men are most likely to pay for dinner and drinks, with most couples tending to split the bill from the second date onwards.

But by the third date men expect sex and are willing to splash their cash to hurry the romance along.

[…]Both sexes are now spending small fortunes in a bid to prepare themselves for a date that could end in sex, the study found.

Men typically spend £46.79 on grooming, while women spend £5 less at £41.79.

Women prepare for a first night of passion by waxing their legs (58 per cent), buying new lingerie (32 per cent), and waxing their bikini line (17 per cent).

Men are most likely to buy new underwear (28 per cent), groom their pubic hair (27 per cent), and buy new bed linen (15 per cent).

The money is being spent wisely, as men say their biggest turn-offs are a hairy upper lip, dirty sheets, and hairy legs.

And women are turned off by dirty sheets, untidy nails, and an untidy bedroom.

I’ve posted before about how having a large number of premarital sex partners causes marriages to fail. This finding is true for men who have many partners, and especially true for women. The fun that people have before they are married gets paid for later when they cannot hold the relationship together. Premarital promiscuity teaches you nothing about how to be faithful and self-sacrificial in a marriage. It trains you to think that sex is not something to save for a commitment, but something to be done in order to have “fun”. When people have premarital sex, they are treating sex as a recreational activity. They are not willing to commit to loving and taking care of the person they are having sex with for life, so that the other person will not be harmed if the relationship fails. We shouldn’t be having fun with a person in ways we’re we will be deeply connected to them and then just pull away from them and leave them alone. If that happens to a person enough, it ruins their ability to be trusting and vulnerable. It’s hard to repair the damage once it’s been done.

I think that if we are going to be serious about marriage, then we need to think seriously about rolling back our support for this sort of promiscuity, as well as laws that promote break-ups like no-fault divorce. Instead of encouraging people to think that sex before marriage is normal, we should be encouraging them to look at the data that shows that waiting a long time (or even better, waiting until marriage) before having sex is the right thing to do.

And for Christians, let me just reiterate that premarital sex and adultery are both forbidden. You cannot be a Christian and be having sex outside of marriage. The Bible is very very clear about that. Although people like to think that Christianity is compatible with sex outside of marriage, it’s not. We need to be careful about watering down Christianity in order to avoid the need to bow the knee to God’s authority in sexual areas.

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