Tag Archives: Policy

Commentary

Featured blog: Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse

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One of my favorite topics is the interplay between economics and marriage. And the best blog on the topic is Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse. She has excellent credentials as a sound fiscal conservative and a staunch social conservative. She is not only solid on abortion and traditional marriage, but she is one of the few people with enough vision to know the damage caused to the family by no-fault divorce and big government, as well.

Note to you young men who are thinking of marrying: marry someone like Dr. Morse, who understands how economic policy affects the marriage. Regular readers will know how I regularly gush over Michele Bachmann’s attempts to try to wrestle with Democrats to cut spending. That is how wives ought to be – defending their family from high taxes and regulations.

Articles

Here is one of the papers from Dr. J that I really liked. (the PDF version is better!)

In the paper, she addresses many topics related to feminism:

  • work/parenting balance
  • no-fault divorce
  • marriage vs. cohabitation
  • domestic violence
  • fertility
  • single-mother subsidies
  • income disparities
  • recreational sex
  • power struggles in marriage

She also discusses remedies from a Catholic perspective. (Note: the Wintery Knight is a proud evangelical Protestant)

Dr. J’s full list of articles is here.

Lecture

Here is a 30-minute lecture version of that paper by Dr. J, if you prefer watching and listening to reading. The title is “Freedom, the Family and the Market”.

The description of the lecture is:

“The socialist ideal of equality has played an independent role in the breakdown of the family. Socialism has attacked the family directly, and has adopted policies that have led to demographic collapse. Christianity and capitalism offer more appealing solutions to the problems socialism claims to solve.”

I highly recommend this lecture. It’s as good as William Lane Craig, just on a different topic. This lecture is especially suitable for men.

Here’s her bio:

Born into a Catholic working class family, Dr. Morse earned a doctorate in economics during her twelve year lapse from the faith. A committed career woman before having children, she taught economics for fifteen years at Yale University and George Mason University.

The devastating experience of infertility brought her to her knees and back to the practice of the Catholic faith. In 1991, she and her husband adopted a two year old Romanian boy, and gave birth to a baby girl. She left her full-time university teaching post in 1996 to move with her family to California. She is now a part-time Research Fellow at the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty.

Dr. Morse writes about the family and the free society. Her first book, Love and Economics: Why the Laissez-Faire Family Doesn’t Work, shows why the family is the necessary building block for a free society and why so many modern attempted substitutes for the family do not work. Her second book, Smart Sex: Finding Life-Long Love in a Hook-Up World, exposes the sexual revolution’s fraudulent promise of freedom and points the way to the most thrilling adventure of all–life-long love.

Her public policy articles have appeared in Forbes, Policy Review, The American Enterprise, Fortune, Reason, the Wall Street Journal, Vital Speeches,
and Religion and Liberty.

Dr. Morse’s scholarly articles have appeared in the Journal of Political Economy, Economic Inquiry, the Journal of Economic History, Publius: the Journal of Federalism, the University of Chicago Law Review, and the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, Social Philosophy and Policy, The Independent Review, townhall.com, and The Notre Dame Journal of Law Ethics and Public Policy.

I know I don’t have to tell you George Mason University is home to Walter Williams, one of my two favorite living economists, whose work I often feature. GMU has the best economics school in the entire nation, featuring 2 Nobel prize winners. (Their only black mark is their shoddy treatment of intelligent design theorist Dr. Caroline Crocker).

News

UK: Most teenage pregnancies end in abortion

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Startling news from the other side of the pond.

Story here. (H/T My friend Andrew, who has an amazing marriage to Jen)

Excerpt:

Most pregnancies among girls under 18 ended in abortion last year.

Out of around 40,000 pregnancies more than 20,000 were terminated – the first time more had chosen this option than become mothers.

The figure is higher than 2007, when it just hit 50 per cent, and consistent with a steady upwards trend since the Government started its controversial Teenage Pregnancy Strategy in 1999.

Figures out on May 21 will also show that for the first time the number of abortions performed on women living in England and Wales topped 200,000.

The teenage pregnancy strategy, which has cost taxpayers more than £300million, was meant to halve the number of conceptions among girls under 18 in England between 1998 and 2010.

Ministers have tried to slash teenage pregnancies by freely handing out contraceptives and expanding sex education.

But the fall in pregnancy rates has not met Government targets, and in 2007 the rate actually rose.

Teenage pregnancy rates are now higher than they were in 1995. Pregnancies among girls under 16 – below the age of consent – are also at the highest level since 1998.

And:

Phyllis Bowman, of the Right to Life group, said: ‘Contraception campaigners and clinics depend for their living on providing contraception and abortion to underage girls.

‘The Government listens to them, but they are responsible for this disaster.

‘We have the highest level of sexually transmitted disease in Europe and the highest level of sexual activity among teenagers in Europe.

‘Unicef says we have the unhappiest teenagers in Europe.

‘The young have been deliberately sexualised in a culture which sneers at the idea of telling teenagers they should not have sex.’

“When you tax something you get less of it, and when you reward something you get more of it.” – Jack Kemp

I have an idea. Let’s find a special group of people. They must believe that the entire physical universe popped into being, fine-tuned for life, uncaused, out of absolute nothing. They must believe that the massive amount of DNA code in each cell sequenced itself, by chance. They must believe that morality and human rights are illusory. And that the purpose of life is to have happy feelings, even if it means exploiting the weakest among us.

Then let’s vote them into office so that they can impose their irrational worldview on us by government coercion!

What could go wrong?

News

Is Obama keeping America safe?

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Let’s see how Obama is performing on national security issues. Most of these links courtesy of Free Canuckistan.

Former FBI agent tells NewsMax that Obama is making another 9/11 “inevitable”. (H/T Infidel Blogger Alliance)

A former FBI agent who recently won a lawsuit defeating FBI attempts to muzzle him tells Newsmax that the agency’s morale may be at its lowest ebb ever, and warns the “chilling” effect of Obama administration policies is making another terrorist attack on the U.S. homeland “inevitable.”

…”I’m not exactly sure where the president is coming from, but all the signals he gives out is that the United States is prepared to talk peace, we’re not going to do anything to upset any of the people that are conducting all these terrorist acts, we’re going to back out of everything we’ve done before, we’re going to apologize for everything we’ve done in the past – what kind of signals does that send?” Vincent asks. “It sends a signal of weakness and: ‘We are not willing to try and stop what you have planned.'”

Yes, this is what happens when the people claim that Bush could have kept us safe without force or surveillance. We already know how Obama’s leftist diplomacy works. We were attacked multiple times during Clinton’s presidency, and Clinton was like Churchill or Thatcher, compared to the Obama.

IBD had this editorial by economist Thomas Sowell regarding Obama’s national security performance:

In 1938, with Hitler preparing to unleash a war in which tens of millions of men, women and children would be slaughtered, the play that was the biggest hit on the Paris stage was a play about French and German reconciliation, and a French pacifist that year dedicated his book to Adolf Hitler.

When historians of the future look back on our era, what will they think of our time? Our media too squeamish to call murderous and sadistic terrorists anything worse than “militants” or “insurgents”? Our president going abroad to denigrate the country that elected him, pandering to feckless allies and outright enemies, and literally bowing to a foreign tyrant ruling a country from which most of the 9/11 terrorists came?

There was a time when American elected Presidents like Reagan and Bush. Those presidents believed in and fought for the cause of liberty. But that time is gone.

ONE of the world’s most courageous women is locked away in a miserable rat-hole in Rangoon. Her “crime”? Demanding freedom for her people.

…Of course, with an “election” coming up next year, Burma’s kooky generals have every reason to keep their country’s most beloved democrat under lock and key — and most of the world sees through the sham. Voices from Congress to the European Union have demanded Suu Kyi’s release.

And the Leader of the Free World? Silence.

What a change from the previous White House, which had two champions of Burmese freedom in President George and, especially, Laura Bush. Their backing of Suu Kyi was part of a much broader campaign for freedom fighters around the world. Bush sent a clear message to those risking everything for their freedom: If you stand up for liberty, the president will stand with you.

Now, that message is muffled. In recent weeks, some of the worst human-rights violators have seized and detained US citizens — from journalists Roxana Saberi in Iran and Laura Ling and Euna Lee in North Korea, to prisoner John William Yettaw in Burma — with nary a word from President Obama in reply.

Not to mention the forced conversion of Christian children in Egypt to Islam, or the actual torture that goes on in North Korea. (H/T Half Done)

God help us all if the President of the United States is more concerned with scoring political points than improving liberty, prosperity and security, at home and abroad. There is a price to pay for the moral decay that results from rejecting objective morality. When threats arise, the secular left blames America and praises the enemies of liberty and prosperity, as Evan Sayet has argued.

UPDATE: The Heritage Foundation linked to a couple more national security stories.