A Response to Dorothy Rabinowitz

Dorothy Rabinowitz, a member of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board whom I normally agree with, wrote a particularly scathing criticism of Rick Santorum in today’s Op-Ed pages that bears responding to.  Her hypothesis is rather simple, a “large sector” of the American electorate will find Senator Santorum’s pronouncements on social issues, “unpalatable, to put it mildly”.

In short, reading between the lines, Senator Santorum’s discussion of moral and social issues makes Ms. Rabinowitz uncomfortable.  This is a mildly bizarre position since some of the best evidence that Senator Santorum is right on these issues has come from the WSJ’s pages over the years, but nevertheless, we must make room for the possibility that Ms. Rabinowitz does not read her own paper. 

So what examples does Ms. Rabinowitz give of these unpalatable positions?  Her first example is Rick Santorum’s visceral reaction to John F. Kennedy’s 1960 speech on the separation of church and state.

In that speech, President Kennedy promptly essentially tries to create a wall between church and state that cannot possibly exist.  Why?  Because he calls for decision making that is completely absent of religious influences and that is just intellectually dishonest.  Every man who is truly a man of faith will take that into account when they make a decision.  The ultimate judge for any man is not the voters of this earth but the constituent of one God in heaven. 

So given that, the choice is either to ignore their religion or to assume, as Kennedy lays out in that speech, that they do not agree with all of it (how you know which parts I don’t know).  Both of those are to our own peril as we’ve seen in the past few months.  Any attempt to question Barack Obama’s faith in 2008 was shot down, but yet as he works to eradicate all conscience protections, it might have been helpful to know what kind of Christian he was.

Her next example has to do with comments that Santorum made in his 2005 book about contraception being, “harmful to women”.  Clearly Ms. Rabinowitz is not aware that oral contraception is classified by the American Cancer Society (among others) as a known Level I carcinogen right alongside tobacco and asbestos.  Sound research exists demonstrating a clear linkage between oral contraceptives and a specific type of breast cancer, whose incidence has skyrocketed over the past several decades.  Would this not count as being harmful to women? 

But more to the point, Senator Santorum has made clear he does not intend to impose his beliefs about contraception on the nation.  That is not Barack Obama’s position based on the HHS mandates and Ms. Rabinowitz seems to be asking Catholics and conservatives to unilaterally disarm on these issues.

Ms. Rabinowitz goes on to criticize Santorum for remarks about having a problem with homosexual acts.  Perhaps Ms. Rabinowitz is not aware that voters in 31 states, including such noted conservative hotbeds as California, have voted against the legalization of gay marriage.  Surely that suggests at least some uneasiness with homosexuality? 

And for her final haymaker, Ms. Rabinowitz opts to go with an attack on Senator Santorum’s remarks about public schools last weekend.  I could fill all of the pages of a year’s worth of WSJ editions with all of the statistical evidence that public schools are a failure.  I live in Chicago, where Mayor Emanuel has ostensibly taken over control of the public schools, as has happened in numerous other cities, in a desperate attempt to turn them around. 

At the end of the day, if this is all of the examples that Ms. Rabinowitz can provide to support her discomfort with Rick Santorum, then I am frankly happy that Ms. Rabinowitz is uncomfortable.  It is time that Rockefeller Republicans became as outdated as that phrase. 

There is ample evidence to demonstrate now that our social ills are tied to our fiscal ills.  The more government expands, the more the traditional family shrinks.  As families shatter, the government then shells out trillions more in social services trying to compensate for broken families.  Then government expands to pick up the slack left behind.  We are on a treadmill to nowhere. 

In 1964, Barry Goldwater fought a seemingly doomed campaign for President.  He was deemed a right wing nut job.  But he gave birth to the political career of Ronald Reagan and the modern conservative movement.  Every movement has a start. 

It may also be worth reminding Ms. Rabinowitz that 4 years ago the Democratic Party nominated a rookie Senator, who attended Rev. Wright’s church for 20 years, and who launched his political career in the living room of a known, unrepetant, domestic terrorist.  Vegas probably would not have given you odds on it, but today he is our President.  So I think we have to be careful about deciding what, up front, will or will not doom a candidate.    

I think it is legitimate to criticize Senator Santorum for not going all the way and articulating the linkage between our social ills and our economic ills.  That is the argument that needs to be made, to force the segment of Americans like Ms. Rabinowitz to get off the fence and engage in these issues.  Right now they live in a fantasy land where these uncomfortable things don’t have to be discussed and we can pretend that every choice is equally valid.

I don’t know that Senator Santorum is the man to make that argument, but I do know if it took us 16 years after Barry Goldwater to get Ronald Reagan, we had better get started on this movement now.  Unless we resolve to once again be one nation under God and strengthen our families, we may not have 16 years.

Santorum is Right About Public Education

                Headlining the Nation/World section of my Sunday Chicago Tribune was this, “Santorum Blasts Public Schools”.  I wondered what kind of over the top criticism he had offered up, so I eagerly read the article, but was quickly disappointed.  He really offered up only a few obvious and fairly benign critiques.

                Now, of course we have to pause here because every article covering Santorum on education is going to note that he is one of those freaky homeschool people.  As if only homeschoolers have issues with public education, they may be the most active in doing something about it, but they are hardly the only ones to have issues. 

                The fact is the public education system in America, as we know it, is over 100 years-old.  We have upgraded virtually every other area of our society significantly in the past 100 years, but the same model is being used in public education.  It also should be more and more obvious that the government is not doing a great job. 

                The government model of education is breaking.  I could spend the rest of this blog citing statistics that we all have heard that demonstrate it.   It is a large, inflexible model that operates largely in secret because too many parents let it.  The fact is, in a world where 2 parents feel the need to work to have the material comforts they want, it is easy to believe that a benign government is doing a good job of providing a free education.  What is the alternative?  Homeschooling?  Paying private school tuition on top of property taxes? 

                But the system effectively works like this.  Within a given geographic area, a group of kids are rounded up and shipped to a school.  The school is staffed with teachers and administrators who are compensated almost purely on the amount of time they have been able to hold that job.  Furthermore, their retirement depends on how long they stay in that job.  Also, not everyone is considered capable of the role, they must have gone to college specifically for training in education, even if they have significant subject matter expertise.

                The curriculum your child is exposed to over 12 years will include things like Socialism, Communism, Marxism, Islam, and sex education.  I say this based on my experience of going all through public schools in one of the top states in the country for education (based on test scores) and in one of the top districts in that state.  Notice in my listing of the curriculum, I did not note Capitalism or Christianity.  Those are not taught.  In our “religions of the world” lesson in 8^th grade we covered Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism.  The Islamic stuff was almost entirely incorrect by the way. 

                Your child may be lucky enough to sit in a 9^th grade classroom and watch a teacher put a condom over a banana.  I had that experience.  That was only after my 8^th grade experience where a guest speaker put her condom over her entire arm for us in some kind of awkward sex talk.  Your child may sit in an 8^th grade classroom whose bookshelves contain none of the classic, yet two copies of a book graphically depicting teenage sex and drug use.  I had that experience. 

                They may even be able to look out a window of their school and see a park across the street where dozens of kids were permitted to gather everyday in lieu of attending class.  Instead of studying geometry, they studied Marlboros.  The truth is the teachers weren’t their parents, didn’t feel that responsible for them, and were happy not to have them disrupting class.

                I am not bitter about my public education experience.  It is what it was, there were good lessons in there, I did have great teachers at times, and my parents could not afford to pay taxes to this system and private school tuition.  But there is a reason, even coming through it as a college student, I realized a lot of what I learned that was of value, I learned on my own in the books I chose to read.

                We need to unleash market forces on education.  It is not an experiment, any more than public education.  Let schools compete for voucher dollars, with the best teachers and best curriculum they can put together.  Let the government administer and compile the standardized testing data, to let us know how they are doing.  Advocates of public education will decry this as something that will suck funding away from public schools.

                Well, the public school system as we know it is on the verge of collapse, we cannot afford it anymore.  The state of Florida implemented vouchers because they cost the state less per pupil and can alleviate funding crises in overcrowded districts.  As budgets get cut at all levels, it will become more and more necessary to pursue such solutions.  I for one will be happy to pay $3,000 a year to send my child to a Catholic School.  It is a very reasonable sum for a good education and I do it not because I did not attend public school, but because I did.

               

Will We Become the Land Down Under?

So I was recently clued in to the fact that Australia is actually out in front of the U.S. in terms of family decay.  They have crossed the threshold where 35% of children are born out of wedlock.  We can learn some things from the land down under and also sow the seed for what I think is at the heart of a Catholic conservative movement and a renewal of America.

               

 Most interesting has been the response in Australia.  It has been partly religious, but it has also been a very pragmatic response on the part of a government trying to live within its means.  As far back as 1998, the Australian Parliament actually published a report, called “Have and Hold” on marriage in Australia.  And no, this was not a report promoting same sex marriage or apathetically describing the statistics around the “new” family as our government might put out here.

What it did was lay out the downside to a society not orientated around the traditional, nuclear family.  A society that was still, albeit to a lesser degree due to plummeting fertility rates, bringing children into the world without the basic structure of a married mother and father.  Most impressively, the study assigned hard costs to this abandonment of the family.  These costs are just for a 2 year period:

·         $3.1 billion in welfare payments to single parents – 70% of those payments going to single parents who had at one point been married.  $2.2 billion directly tied to the breakdown of the family.

·         Family court and legal aid expenditures of $152 million.

·         $169 million in child support payments, something akin to what Social Security does here.

·         $250 million in lost tax revenue due to tax credits to single parents (we have similar tax credits for the poor that would largely encompass single parents).

That totals $2.7 billion and does not include other expenditures like emergency funding for the homeless.  They estimate the actual, annual cost is $3 billion if not as high as $6 billion.  Keep in mind, the government budget in Australia in 1998 was only $130 billion, so $6 billion represents almost 5%. 

But, keep in mind the population of Australia was only 18.5 million in 1998.  That is a fraction of the United States, yet the costs could have been $6 billion due to family breakdown.  Extrapolate those costs over the current U.S. population and you get to $100 billion annually due to the breakdown of the family. 

There is more.  Those are just annual costs.  You have to keep in mind the toll exacted on future generations.  What happens to children raised in homes where they cannot count on mom & dad always being together, or where they live with just one parent, or with a homosexual couple.  We have decades of sociological research that shows any arrangement outside of the traditional, married, nuclear family for children is substandard and it frankly should not be acceptable.

Last year, a Professor at the University of Sydney put out a report called, “For Kid’s Sake”, detailing some of the sickening statistics around what is happening to kids as Australia sees family life essentially disappear.

·         The Foster Care system is full, the number of children in foster care has doubled since 1997.

·         25% of young people 16-24 have been diagnosed with a mental disorder.

·         Another 24%, not diagnosed with a mental disorder, are experiencing moderate to severe psychological stress.  

·         The number of children who do not reach age 15 as part of an intact family has doubled within a generation.

·         Reports of child abuse have almost tripled since 1998. 

What is the practical economic impact of all of this?  Kids outside of intact families do not do as well in school, are less likely to go to college, and therefore, will earn less and pay less in taxes.  They are also more prone to fall into a cycle of poverty if they are born out of wedlock, meaning multiple generations being supported by the government.  So even by the cold math of someone trying to sustain a $3.5 trillion budget, the decline of the family is problematic.

But let’s go back to the children.  It is funny in America, we like to make sure that our kids have every safety device known to man.  Car seats until they are 24, padded corners on furniture, helmets for tricycles, hoodies without drawstrings, things previous generations never had.  We also like to get our ire up, and rightly so, if anyone dare harm a child – just ask Penn State.

Yet when it comes to cohabitation, marriage, or divorce, the really big stuff when it comes to child welfare, we have completely taken children out of the decision.  Those decisions are for the “adults” or parents to make based on what is best for them.  How can I say that?  It is almost never in the best interests of the child for the parents to separate, but what happens all too often in this country.  The Australian report found that at best, 30% of divorces involved “serious marital conflicts” to where you could make a case the children were better off if the parents separated.

But the reality is marriage matters.  Marriage between a man and a woman matters.  Two people, who bring complimentary gifts to the table, committing to be together forever is the single most effective and cost efficient model for bringing up the next generation.  There is a security there, a comfort, a stability, options for kids.  They can talk to dad about certain things, they can talk to mom about certain things.  Whether you are a girl or a boy, you have a parent in the house of the same gender.  You also have one of the opposite gender for when you need that perspective.  It is the perfect model.  What you need to start a business is confidence instilled by mom and dad more than knowledge gained from a book.

Adults behave differently outside of marriage.  They fight differently, they socialize differently, and they communicate differently.  They are more likely to drink, use drugs, stay out late partying, or in short, behave like single people. 

Children pick up on these things.  This adds stress.  When children get stressed out they react in any number of ways, because they are not equipped to handle it.  They wet their bed, they act out, they have trouble in school, they eat more, they eat less, they shut down, they bully, etc.  These are all psychological realities, not political rhetoric.

When children exhibit the above behaviors, it detracts from what they are supposed be learning, both formally and informally.  It leaves them less than fully equipped to succeed in the world.  In many cases, it means they will not do as well or better than their parents economically.  Maybe the best analogy is to the farmer sowing seeds.  If he sows too many on rocky soil or in places where they will not grow, his yield will diminish.  He will then have less harvest for which to feed his family and the village.  Relationships built on same sex attraction, cohabitation, or any kind of arrangement outside of a traditional marriage between a man and a woman are rocky soil. 

So for a society that is built on an economy built on population growth, entrepreneurship, job creation to be overlooking this is catastrophic.  It is frankly a way to end society as we know it.  We need smart, motivated, stable, well-adjusted adults to keep this country moving forward and we are producing less and less of them. 

                So what’s the answer how does this link into the cause of Catholic conservatism?  What it means is that instead of needing to argue for the support and defense of the traditional family strictly from a moral standpoint, we can round out the argument.  We now have a growing body of evidence showing that other arrangements are detrimental to the health and welfare of children. 

Even more than that, we can demonstrate how those costs get shifted to the government, a government with a citizenry increasingly comprised of these non-traditional family arrangements.  Fast forward a few years and it is not hard to see how the U.S. could start to look like Australia, unable to effectively spend enough as a nation or society to support a large population of individuals from broken families. 

It means the argument that Rick Santorum is making is not just one for the future of the family, but one for the future of America.  That has wide reaching policy and cultural implications.  I don’t yet know if Rick Santorum is going to be able to articulate this case well enough to be elected President of the United States.  But I do know that this is the argument that needs to be advanced if we are to start to embolden the many individuals in this country, who believe the family is the way forward, but today lack the courage to stand against a culture that seeks to redefine the family as irrelevant.

Those Who Do Not Learn From History...

                We should all be paying close attention to the sad narrative of Greece.  But it is not even just Greece.  It is Rome, Germany, the USSR, and China.  It is a classic story that has played out through human history and we seem incapable of retaining the lesson.  You can see why God never intended for sin and death to enter into his design, because it leaves subsequent generations relearning the same lessons over and over again.

                I do not need to cite a single economic statistic to tell you the tale of Greece.  The story is well known at this moment.  An ever expanding government took more and more of the economy for itself.  In doing so, it made government officials more and more important, thus contributing to them, currying favor with them, and bribing them became viable risks to take because the rewards were so great.  So you introduced what economists call “friction” into the economy.  I simply call it greed.

                But more than that, as the government expanded, it displaced the private sector in the economy.  As the government takes on more services, there is less room for individuals to start businesses providing those services.  But the government is not using those revenue streams to grow or expand, the way a business would, they are just trying to cover costs.  So you need increasing amounts of job creation from the remaining private sector purview to cover for lost opportunities to government.

                As we have seen in this country, it does not even have to be a direct providing of services.  It can be just through overregulation of the financial sector, insurance, telecomm, and the airlines, everywhere that government has stuck their hands in and dictated how industries may or may not grow.  Eventually, government starts to choke out the private sector, there is not enough oxygen left in the economy for both.  Jobs get scarce because job creators get scarce (sound familiar?).

                Let’s use Obamacare as a mini-case study.  Right now, if you want to become a doctor, you are only limited by whether or not you can get into medical school, your ability to graduate, and your ability to land a job after medical school.  You can work for any number of public, private, or religious hospitals or healthcare practices.  As Baby Boomers age, there is growing demand for healthcare, which means this sector is growing rapidly to meet the demand.  New jobs are being created all the time. 

                But, the Federal government is in the process of taking over the health care industry, 1/7^th of the U.S. economy, under the guise of controlling costs.  So guess what?  They are going to have to cap the amount of doctors, they are going to have to cap what doctors make.  You cannot centrally plan something like health care if you do not know how many doctors you will have in 2013 versus 2012.  Since your mandate is to control costs, if you only had 112,000 doctors in 2012, then you will only want to have 112,000 doctors in 2013.  Which means, regardless of how many would-be doctors graduate from medical school, central planning will dictate how many can actually work in that field.  The government is going to achieve cost savings by artificially suppressing demand for health care, rationing it, and leaving unmet needs the private sector would have met.  Those that would have been able to find work as doctors, in a true free market, will now have to crowd into other sectors.

                What happens when we have several hundred politicians and bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. trying to plan a vast array of industries they know nothing about?  Well, there historically have been two different roads.  In Germany, when the government controlled 51% of the economy, it was the tipping point.  You cannot run an economy by committee, and the people went looking for a central authority figure, an economic czar if you will, to run everything.  They found a Fuhrer.

                The Greeks have gone a different path and this is the one we are on in this country.  It keeps the masses in the dark longer about what is going on.  The Greeks chose to borrow money to prop-up their economy.  They essentially got onto an economic treadmill from which there was no escape. 

A government less efficient at creating jobs kept expanding, crowding out the private sector.  To provide social services and investment to bridge the gap, the government borrowed.  But every time the government borrowed, it expanded, which exacerbated the gap.  So you get to a point where the rate of decline is accelerated.  This is where the United States has been the past few years. 

(I should note that this is not Cloughard-Piven, this is not same vast conspiracy that got us here, nothing that fancy (unless you can prove that Richard Nixon and Barack Obama were ever in a room together).  It is just plain old lack of faith in God.  A portion of this country made government their new religion and we are all paying for their worship of this golden cow.)

The Greeks, much like the USSR before them, have gotten to a point where they can no longer borrow enough or deliver enough government investment to offset the gap.  The treadmill has broken.  The EU is now forcing Greece to live within its means, almost overnight.  As the government pulls back, there is no private sector infrastructure to pick up the slack.  There is essentially a gaping hole in the Greek economy.  The result is sky high unemployment and incredible social instability.  People lost track of how dependent they were, even indirectly, on the government.

Inevitably, when there is scarcity of resources, the economic solution demanded is rationing.  Rationing requires a strong central authority.  I predict the civil unrest will be the impetus for some sort of authoritarian government to emerge in Greece.  Rather than pushing capital out as broadly as possible, scattering seeds far and wide to see what grows, this new government will likely employ a knee-jerk reaction.  They will ration resources, trying centrally to pick winners and losers in their bets.  This will only ensure Greece remains paralyzed for generations to come.

So what about the U.S.?  Must this to be our fate?  The answer is no.  We have a small, but closing window to avoid this.  If we quickly reach consensus that our government is too large, we can still orchestrate an orderly reduction of the size, scope, and budget of government at all levels.  If we do so, we can then offer a corresponding reduction of tax rates and regulation. 

We still have enough of a private sector and enough entrepreneurial bones in our nation that in short order (though not instantaneously and not painlessly) the private sector can take up much of the slack and be growing our economy in a sustainable way.  It would probably usher in the kind of growth not seen since WWII, perhaps even bigger than the Reagan Era. 

But the challenge is real.  We have built our economy around the government, not families.  While the economic slack of government cuts can be absorbed by existing infrastructure, are families ready to pick up the slack as those services go away?  Are we ready to give enough to feed and clothe our neighbor as the social safety net is reduced?  Are we ready to take more responsibility for feeding our own families, for working, for educating your children, for disciplining them?  Are we willing to pay the price for freedom?  I don’t know.

What I do know for certain, is our politicians will not decide this for us.    It would be political suicide for either party to take this on without a clear mandate from the American people and we have made power much too comfortable for them to risk it.  We have to send a clear signal in THIS election.

                 

               

Feminism vs. God's Plan

                I am amused by the “controversy” over the writings of Rick Santorum and his wife that feminism has hijacked the definition of acceptable roles for women and places little value on those women who do not work outside the home.  Amused of course, because what they wrote is absolutely true.

                It of course started innocently enough, with the notion that women should have the right to pursue any career they choose and be treated respectfully should they decide to enter the workforce.  Although I am not sure the portrayals of some great wall of sexism preventing women from entering the workforce prior to the feminist movement are exactly accurate. 

One grandmother of mine was widowed in 1954 at the age of 36.  She managed to work after having not planned on it, earning enough to supplement social security and provide for her two children.  My other grandmother was an army nurse in Britain during WWII and returned home after the war to practice here.  I never heard any great tales of sexist treatment or closed off career paths from either of them. 

Feminists would tell you of course my grandmother was a nurse, only those stereotypically female career paths were available to women.  I disagree, I think women gravitated towards fields like teaching and nursing because they fit their natural gifts.  I watch my 4.5 year-old daughter interact with our 2.5 year-old son and she instinctively wants to be teaching him things.  She enjoys pretending to read to him and giving him “instruction”.  She has done this naturally. 

So feminists threw open the doors to working women in the 1970s.  The problem is, most women initially did not walk through it.  The Department of Labor did not keep track before 1970, but in 1970 40% of women over the age of 16 were working.  By 1980 that number had grown to only 48%.  So feminists adopted a more radical stance.  They drove a culture that seemingly began to only value women’s contributions outside of the home.  They got the percentage of women working as high as 57%, and as high as 75% for women in the 25-54 year-old age group where it has peaked and is now slightly receding.

The question is, why did they have to adopt such an aggressive approach and what were they fighting?  The answer is not just biology, but I believe the design of our God and inherent gifts bestowed upon women that go beyond biology.  No, this does not mean I think women should be banned from the workforce and chained to a stove.  They ought to be given a true choice and that choice should be respected whatever it is.

But the reality is and I say this as someone who has spent a decade working alongside women in large corporations, in a field where they make up close to half of the department in many major corporations, most women, once they have children, would prefer to stay home and raise their children.  This is not about what they will answer on a survey when society has made them feel as though the entire future of their gender rests on them charging into the workforce and breaking through a “glass ceiling”, but this is about what is in their heart of hearts and what they will tell friends in private moments. 

There is also another way to look at this as well, that is from the perspective of (gasp!) the child.  Kids want to be at home with their mothers.  The fact that this is no longer an obvious statement to most people speaks volumes about where we are as a society.  Most parents put their offspring in day care from about week 13 of this planet on and never get to see the other side.  We were more fortunate.

My wife worked part-time after the birth of our daughter for 20 months until the birth of our son.  Our daughter went to daycare three days a week.  She knew the routine.  One of the last weeks my wife was working, she needed to be in the office the entire week, all five days.  So on Tuesday, not a normal daycare day, she dropped our daughter off.  Our daughter revolted.  This was not the deal, she knew it, and she wanted to be home with mama.  She attempted to lead a jailbreak of the entire daycare center.  On Thursday, another day she was supposed to be home with mama, she went even further.

This was not about deviating from “a routine”.  She did not protest on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays when she began to stay home with mom.  No, this is a child who wanted to be at home with mom.

I will give you one more perspective, from that of the economy.  For working women, who are good mothers, work is never their top priority, even when they are there.  They are, almost constantly, thinking about their kids, what is going on at home, what they are making for dinner that night (as studies have shown, even when both spouses are working a majority of the homemaking tasks fall to women), etc.  For an employer to expect any different would be insanity.

Additionally, because work is not their #1 priority, they tend to be much quicker to acquiesce or accommodate other points of view, regardless of how legitimate their argument may be.  To working mothers, it is not always about what is best for an organization, but about getting through the day to get home and take care of the family (to feminists this will sound like an insult, but really, do we want mothers wired any differently)?

Contrast this with heterosexual, married men.  Family men, the kind that used to fill the ranks of the Fortune 500 back in the “Mad Men” era.  These men are trying to provide financial stability for their families.  They are invested in their work to a greater degree because the better they and their company perform, the more they can earn.  Men are also wired to seek glory outside the home, not exclusively, but their self-worth is not as exclusive to family life as it is for women.  Men also, by their nature, tend to be less accommodating if they believe they are right.  They will push an organization harder if they see it going in the wrong direction, because they have something (be it ego or financial) to gain or lose based on how the company performs.

Leadership and the ability to change an organization, despite what we are sometimes told, also depends on the ability to judge someone as a person, make a call on their ability or willingness to do a job, and act accordingly.  It also involves chewing people out, sometimes publically to make an example out of them, who are not exhibiting the behaviors you wish to see.  There are many men in today’s corporate world who lack the ability to lead this way, but it certainly must be even more difficult for women.

This is not to say that because of this fact, women cannot be outstanding employees or make great contributions in the workforce, they absolutely can.  What it speaks to is that they are best suited for certain kinds of roles and the impact they can have on a company’s culture.  There are women who are suited to be CEO of a company, who can be every bit the hard-charging change agent a male can, let’s talk about them for a minute.

                I have encountered these women.  They, to put it bluntly, behave like men.  Studies have found them to be much less conflicted about their family-career balance and I have found them to have no issues being assertive.  These are choices that are open to women, but bringing us back around to Senator Santorum’s point, is this a choice to be praised above and beyond that of a stay at home mother?  As a society, do we want a high percentage of women behaving this way versus embracing their role in bringing up the future generation (if you want to work on a critical, high-profile new product launch, what better project than your children)?

                This is where the feminism push to make work outside of the home the ideal for women falls apart.  How do young girls learn to be wives and mothers?  By watching their mothers.  Our 4.5 year-old daughter walks around all of the time talking about, “when I am a mommy”.   When my wife goes to make dinner, she instinctively pushes a chair over to the counter, climbs up, and watches her.  She has talked about wanting to, “work as a teacher until she is a mommy”.  Without any prompting, pressure, or instruction from us, she has voiced thoughts as to what her calling is.  There is something inherent in little girls that steers them in this direction and it is beautiful.  It is not something to be squashed or dismissed or devalued, it is beautiful and we should hold women up to the world as beautiful for what they are called to do.

                Let us look at the alternative, which we are seeing.  Children reared, from week 13, in a daycare center, by strangers.  Children then shipped off to government schools by day, returning home to an empty house.  Food, cooking, dinner, are no longer the center of the family.  These young girls will grow up not knowing how to pull those great meals together like grandma.  Does that sound trivial, really? 

                In a time when we are less connected than ever, think back to how a great meal could bring the family together.  Food was the center of immigrant life as this country was being built.  It was hardly a bad thing. 

                Here is maybe a better point, because I have seen this in my peers.  Think about girls who grow up and now are afraid to stay home with their children because they have no idea how to do it.  They have not seen this behavior modeled and they have not been told they have the instincts.  From even a parenting standpoint, what they have seen is based on watching the young women at their daycare. 

The future of our free society depends on the next generation.   While there are many “choices” or arrangements available for how to do this, they are not all equal.  Just as the choice between attending the community college down the street or Harvard will not provide equal educational results, neither will the choices here.  What we have to learn in this society is the difference between tolerance and endorsement.  While Senator Santorum has rightly suggested that we can accept the choice that women may make to work outside of the home, we should not lose sight of that other choice that needs to constantly be affirmed. 

May we all pray for the day when our society realizes that there may be very little room for choice here after all, that women’s most vital role is at the heart of the family we so desperately need to build our society upon.  That raising the next generation is the most important task you could ever undertake.  The renewal of America depends upon the renewal of the family. 

               

HHS Fight: The Left Wing Empire Strikes Back

Well, this was all predictable was it not?  The Obama Administration throws crumbs the way of the Catholics, Catholics fail to accept what amounts to no “accommodation”, and suddenly we are the bad guys? 

A sampling of the news today:

Bill Press says we are “crying wolf” in the Chicago Tribune…

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/sns-201202131100--tms--bpresstt--m-b20120213feb13,0,5224040.column

The Washington Post says we are being political…

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/catholic-america/post/the-politics-of-catholic-opposition-to-birth-control/2012/02/12/gIQAltsb8Q_blog.html

The Philadelphia Enquirer goes with the ever popular “Catholics are hypocrites” defense…

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/religion/139196384.html

The esteemed Huffington Post has also accused us of “playing politics”…

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-chuck-currie/timothy-dolan-catholic-bishops-stop-partisan-politics_b_1270633.html

So what is the truth?  Well, for starters, the Catholic Church did not insert themselves into politics; politics inserted themselves into the Catholic Church.  We have not moved in 2,000 years.  It is interesting that only one side here wants to deal in universal absolutes.  Catholics are not seeking to ban all insurers and employers from providing coverage for or access to abortion or contraception.  The Obama administration wants to fit us all with that rule.  The Obama administration picked this fight.

Furthermore, many of the left like Bill Press seem incapable of understanding how this new governmental power could be abused.  Like all new government power grabs, it looks great when your guy has it, but what about the reverse?  What if a conservative Catholic President decided to prohibit all insurers and employers from providing coverage for abortion and contraception?  The outcry from the left, and rightly so, would be that he or she was imposing their religion on the rest of the world. 

Just because Barack Obama has no discernable formal religion, does not mean he is not imposing a religious ideology of some sort on us.  In fact, if we were to view this as a theological debate, who would you rather side with?  The Catholic Church and 2,000 years of theological thinking and study, or Barack Obama?  The argument that the Catholic Church is inserting itself into politics holds no water.

As for the argument that we are hypocrites, that is an attempt to paint Catholic leadership as a bunch of old, out of touch, unmarried white guys.  It will only get nastier, we will sex abuse cracks and reporting on that resurface. 

The truth is not all Catholics follow the church teachings on these issues.  Just like not everyone follows what their doctor or dentist might recommend for them.  It does not invalidate the teaching nor the source of their authority. 

Nor, in this case, does it somehow prove the Obama policies desired.  Those Catholics who are using birth control now are paying for it.  Those employees of Catholic institutions who may be non-Catholics or using contraception, are paying for it.  The rallying cry of Obamacare was not, “free pills for all!”.  It was not even discussed.  The Obama Administration, working on a policy no one is sure we can pay for, decided of their own volition to step into this.  The question is why?

Only Bill Press’s piece hints at this.  For older, far left wingers, members of the Baby Boom generation who fought these battles in the 1970s, there is an animosity towards the Catholic Church.  They believed the defeated the Catholic Church when birth control pills came out in the late 1960s.  They believed in 1973 with Roe v. Wade we were again defeated.  They are very angry that we have not “gone away”.

But a funny thing happened on the road to victory.  Science picked up our argument.  Research has conclusively demonstrated a link between abortion, oral contraceptives and cancer.  Check the American Cancer Society website for known Level I carcinogens.  Tobacco, asbestos, and oral contraceptives.  Hmm, if I were in-house legal counsel at a big pharmaceutical, I would be nervous.

This notion of “progress” took hold in our society as well.  You know the argument that was used to advance these causes?  Young people seem to be asking themselves why progress is supposed to move forward in every other area of life, but somehow stop in the area of contraception in the mid-1970s?  They do not feel good about 40 years of abortion.  They have been marketed 8,951 different variations of birth control.  It does not feel like progress.

There you start to get to the root of why the Catholic Church’s position on these issues has not gone away.  On some level, liberals like Bill Press know this and this is what agitates them.  There are only two reasons why, in the face of unbelievable cultural advocacy for abortion/contraception on the political, industrial (how much has big pharma made off of birth control pills), and media fronts the Catholic Church’s position still rallies millions of defenders. 

The first possible explanation is that everyone believes it and it has been completely ingrained into every member of society.  Clearly not the message we have gotten for the past 40 years.  The second possible explanation?  The Catholic Church is right. 

But what we should not lose sight of in this debate is that even if the Catholic Church is right, it is still only the other side seeking to impose their viewpoint on everyone.  That is the amazing thing about Jesus Christ on whom the Catholic Church’s teachings are based.  Though he gave us the truth and the full revelation of God’s word, he did not try to do it by fiat.  The same cannot be said of President Obama. 

Obama's Next Move?

               So President Obama’s anticipated “accommodation” is not being well-received, other than by the same Catholic group so eager to give him cover (the CHA).  The USCCB has not yet weighed in although their initial statement did not sound hopeful.  My guess is that Cardinal Dolan would like to use this opening to engage in direct dialogue with the White House.  It is rather interesting that the Obama administration thought appeasing the CHA (a rather low bar apparently) was the right approach as opposed to working with the USCCB.

                I think it is clear the Obama Administration has no easy way out of this.  The Catholic Church will not budge.  In addition, the far left’s aggressive push in states like Illinois (where even referring same sex couples to other agencies for adoption was not enough to save Catholic Charities) leaves people of all religious groups in a less than trusting mode when it comes to government and protection of their religious freedom. 

                But on the other side, the President is getting enormous pressure from Planned Parenthood and others to stand his ground.  They will not be forgiving if he does concede, and in an election year where the President is going to be painted as the liberal he is, he cannot afford to have the support of the far left.

                Let’s talk about that election.  As I mentioned in an earlier blog, my wife was polled about these policies this week.  Based on the questions, it seems like it was being run by the Obama campaign.  So my guess is they now have data in hand that says that if this issue persists, they lose the Catholic vote, and then most likely the election. 

                My guess is Obama’s attempt at “accommodation” was an attempt to buy time to talk to the far left.  He’ll remind them of all of the “progress” he has made in growing government, the progress he made by reinstating Federal funding of abortion, funding abortion overseas, and the crown jewel, gaining control of health care.  He will blame this loss on the stodgy, old, white male dominated Catholic Church.  He’ll probably pledge some future government assault on the church and ask the far left to lose the battle in order to win the war.

                But we shall see.  The President’s approval rating is so weak, he cannot afford to take the Clinton approach.  Bill Clinton was the master of compromising with the other side in election years to appear moderate and calling the left wing’s bluff that they would not back him come election time.  Obama has not been as pragmatic.  Truth be told, he may want the government mandate of abortion and health care just as much as Planned Parenthood.

                The only known in this is that the Catholic Church will continue to provide an alternative viewpoint in a culture of death.  God does not always meet us where we are, sometimes he asks us to grow a little bit to reach him.

My Email to Sister Keehan

For those of you not aware, Sister Keehan is head of the Catholic Health Association, an early supporter of Obamacare and a group that rushed this morning, before the Obama administration's "accomodation" had made news, to issue a statement in support.  This is my email to her.

 

Sister Keehan:

 

I was very confused by the following sentence in the statement your group rushed to put out, "We are pleased and grateful that the religious liberty and conscience protection needs of so many ministries that serve our country were appreciated enough that an early resolution of this issue was accomplished."  We are pleased and grateful to whom I might ask for the protection of religious liberty?  The government, the Obama administration?  I have news for you, we live in the United States of America, where religious freedom was guanrateed as a basic right as part of the founding of this nation.  We do not have anything to be "grateful" for, it is our RIGHT.  Our rights are defined in those founding documents, they are not the crumbs that whatever administration in power may seek to toss our way.  If you and your organization continue with the view that we should be "grateful" to the government when they should choose to recognize religious liberty, then you will be part of trying to send this nation down a slippery slope. 

 

I was also a little puzzled by this statement, "The unity of Catholic organizations in addressing this concern was a sign of its importance".  You and your organization do not appear unified in your "gratitude" for this "accomodation".  Your organization rushed to praise this accomodation apparently before any other Catholic organization even knew what it was.  Furthermore, you do not have the good sense to see that from the begining, your organization has been used by the Obama administration as cover to ram through this far reaching power grab. 

 

While as Catholics we do not seek to use law or government to impose our teachings on anyone, we also should not be sitting idly by and gleefully accepting whatever crumbs the government my choose to throw our way in regards to a basic and fundamental right.  We should learn from what the Susan G. Komen Foundation went through, weakness is not the answer, easy capitulation is not the answer.  It is in fact, what the far left is counting on.  If Obamacare is truly about providing health care for all, then this should be something can be easily and constructively solved.  I am willing to bet that is not the true motivation for Obamacare, hence the issues here.

 

Another point.  Catholic Charities here in Illinois was referring same sex couples to agencies willing to place children with same sex couples when the state came in and yanked their foster care contracts because they would not directly place children with homosexual couples.  Yet, that is precisely the "accomodation" your group is so willing to accept here.  How long do you think this will last?  Do you think the far left has suddenly found the line for which they will not cross in the name of abortion and contraception?  Surely you have read the very prescient Humanae Vitae which correctly foretold that abortion was far from the last front in the birth control war (as its activists promised at the time), but merely the begining?  Abortion was not enough, the original birth control pill was not enough (how many variations have been launched since), the morning after pill was not enough, Federal funding was not enough, funding abortions overseas was not enough.  They have never stopped their all out assault on the unborn child. 

 

Finally, you should know that the Obama administration searched for other political strategies before going the "accomodation" route.  My wife was polled this week, by the Obama campaign.  They asked her religion, her rating of the President, her rating of the recent HHS action as you would expect.  But then they also had a question about support for collective bargaining rights.  What they were fishing for, Sister, was to see if they could use traditional Catholic support for workers' rights as a way to drive a political wedge between Catholics and keep them from uniting behind this issue. 

 

In other words, what the last two weeks have taught us is that the playbook of the far left is to attack, attack, attack and try and get the other side to give in.  If they will not all capitulate like Komen, then you seek to divide the opposition.  The next tactic, which you are now a participant in, is to offer up some fake "accomodation" (they cannot even bring themselves to say the word "compromise"), to buy time while they work through other means to get what they want.  You ought to know who you and your organization are in bed with.  Ask the Jews in Hungary during WWII what happens when the Catholic Church is all too willing to "accomodate" a government. 

That immovable object....it is the Church of Christ

                The events of the past couple of weeks offer a rare look at the tactics of those who would seek to radically remake our world.  There are clear lessons that must be drawn from this moving forward about the source of true authority and how to react to these challenges.

                On the one hand, you had the Susan G. Komen Foundation take a fiscally responsible, scientifically supported stand in deciding to no longer fund Planned Parenthood.  Planned Parenthood is an organization that almost exclusively provides abortion and contraception.  Both abortion and contraception have been linked conclusively to breast cancer (this may be news to you because this is not research the NIH is eager to put forward).

                The reaction of Planned Parenthood was swift and unyielding.  For a grant that amounted to less than 1% of their overall funding, they pulled out all of the stops.  They had donors, politicians, feminists, tearing the Komen board apart publically and privately.  Despite the fact that Komen received a large amount of support from pro-lifers who could now finally donate to and support the group, after 3 days they relented and decided to continue sending funds to Planned Parenthood.

                Now contrast this with debate over the HHS requirements that all employers (minus actual churches) be required to provide health care plans covering abortion and contraception.  There the opposition came from the Catholic Church. 

You know that stodgy old church, run by a bunch of unmarried men who cannot possibly have a valid viewpoint on these women’s issues.  The church that is out of touch with its membership, many of whom use birth control (at least so I read in several articles this week).  The church that ceded its authority in the sex abuse scandals of the past several decades, you know, that Catholic Church.  So clearly, if such a reputable foundation as Komen caved, the Catholic Church would be no match for the forces of the left, right?

Well, a funny thing happened along the way.  It is far from a done deal, but at least as of this morning, the Obama Administration is making noise about finding some kind of compromise.   So in what appeared to be a meeting of the irresistible force (Obamacare) and the immovable object (the Church), the force proved not to be irresistible – and therein lies the lesson.

When the resistance is anchored in the truth that is the full revelation of God’s word and a full understanding of Jesus Christ it need not yield.  When you stand for something, and have a clear position anchored in that truth, as the Catholic Church has stood on life issues for millennium, you command authority, credibility.  You also learn that the forces that seek to radically remake this world count on the other side blinking, giving in as Komen did.

Oh, they tried to find a way to divide the opposition in this case, to divide Catholics and the church itself.  My wife received a polling call (presumably from the Obama campaign) this week.  They asked her religion, her rating of the President, her rating of the HHS rules, and then curiously also about her thoughts on collective bargaining.  I believe they wanted to see if they could use the anti-labor sentiment from the right as a wedge issue to separate some Catholics (traditional supporters of workers’ rights) from the HHS opposition.  I can only conclude it did not work based on this morning’s announcement.

But you see the tactics at work.  Put forward your agenda as secretly as possible (these rules were only clarified now over a year since Obamacare was signed into law).  When things come to light, stand your ground, demonize your opposition, try and intimidate them into backing down.  If they will not back down, then seek to find an issue to divide the rank and file, limit the damage.  Only as a last resort do you consider compromise. 

But I think as we will learn a compromise is just a way to buy time to regroup, rearm, and come again.  Roe v. Wade was not the final battle in the assault on life, it was merely the first.  As predicted in Humanae Vitae, it was not the last birth control measure launched, but merely the first.  How many new birth control pills have come out in the last few decades – including the morning after pill?  We have seen Federal funding for abortion, taxpayer funding for abortion not only in this country, but abroad.  We have now seen a pro-abortion lobby become so powerful that they can boss around a charity with science and reason on their side.  Who thought, in 1973, when they may have cheered the Roe v. Wade decision they were signing up for all of this?

But there is hope, there always is with Christ.  The last two weeks have given us the playbook.  It is to stand with Jesus, stand confident in our beliefs, and anchor ourselves to the rock that the Catholic Church is built on.  We can resist the forces of the culture of death, of big government, of a secular deism that worships a government comprised of men, rather than Kingdom of God.  Compromise is not the answer, but it is what they are counting on.