Since 1991 was exactly 18 years after Roe v. Wade, the article’s authors pondered if the “Roe Effect” might have had something to do with all this. The Roe effect would predict that the effect of a reduction in birthrates would be greatest in liberal states, where pregnant teenagers would be more likely to exercise their "right to privacy" and thus less likely to carry their babies to term. The numbers seem to bear this out.

The 10 states with the biggest percentage decline in teen birthrates were: California, Maine, Michigan, Alaska, New Hampshire, Washington, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Hawaii.

The 10 states with the greatest percentage improvement in child poverty rates were: Connecticut, Vermont, Maryland, Michigan, Maine, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Ohio, California, and Massachusetts.

And the 10 states with the greatest reduction in the number of children living with single mothers were: Michigan, Missouri, New Hampshire, Vermont, California, Massachusetts, Delaware, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Maine.

John Kerry carried nine of the top 10 states in each category, which is remarkable considering he won only 19 states overall. (The District of Columbia, if it were a state, would place 10th on the first list and first on the other two lists.)

Thus it would appear that there is a strong correlation between trends of reduced teen pregnancy and reduced child poverty rates, and the relatively slow population growth in Democratic-leaning states.

What does this all mean? Liberal birthrates are falling in all blue states, making liberals less likely to accumulate enough voters to prevail in future elections, unless of course their numbers are reinforced by illegal aliens who can vote without proof of citizenship by showing only a driver's license and fraudulent documents.

Who would have thought there was an un-American ulterior motive of corrupting the legitimate American democratic process by instutionalizing open borders, redistributing taxpayer wealth in the form of social services to illegal aliens, and issuing state driver’s licenses to illegal aliens to legitimize what would otherwise be illegal votes?

Red State Patriot

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Colleges used to have to keep tuition low in order to attract students. However, federal student aid makes this unnecessary by subsidizing the schools. This allows colleges to attract students whether or not the college makes itself affordable -- after all, your tax dollars will make up any difference. Poorer students get financial aid and wealthier students are able to handle the rising costs, but the middle class gets stuck with higher costs and huge debts.

In our market economy, the universal tendency -- virtually without exception -- has been for products to increase in quality, decrease in price, and steadily become more widely available to more people. However, it is no coincidence that the two areas of the economy where the government is most involved -- health care and education - are the two areas with the greatest price inflation. In both cases, the solution to runaway prices is not more central control and subsidy, but less.

The inflation-adjusted cost of college tuition today is just about triple that of the 1970s. The average tuition increase in 2005 was eight percent—down from the previous two years' double-digit hikes, but still daunting nonetheless. Since 2002, the average tuition rate is up 36 percent, while consumer prices rose less than nine percent. Tuition is rising substantially faster than family incomes, a trend that will cause many problems in the near future, not the least of which is “affordability.” What happens to the economy when affordibility prices most citizens out of the home market? What will happen to education achievement of nation as a whole, and our national economic future, when affordability prices out most students out of a secondary education - all because of government subsidy?

One of the reasons is simple: federal aid has increased in double-digit percentages for years.

As Vedder noted, "When someone else pays the bills, we become less sensitive to price." If tuition is $10,000 and the federal government pays $8,000, it won't be long before tuition is $18,000 and we'll just expect a larger scholarship next year.

As usual, the solution lies in limiting Congress’ role in "helping" to constitutional limits, which means no more "help" at all.

If you remember nothing else about a government subsidy of education:

• Without exception, a government subsidy of any commodity causes prices to rise.
• Because of exorbitant cost, many of the best and brightest in the “middle class” will be prevented from getting the education that would benefit Team America.
• Because of socialist ideology, an education will be given (as a form of income redistribution) to those classified as somehow disadvantaged, or members of arbitrary social classes designated as minorities.
• Those with wealth will pay whatever it takes.
• Those in the middle class who do obtain an education will have to mortgage their future in most cases with insurmountable levels of debt.
• Debt repayments reduce individual disposable income that otherwise would be spent on goods and services.
• Subsidy of education eliminates the need for suppliers of education to compete.
• The academic institution simply sets the “going rate” and the government pays with your tax dollars.
• Tax dollars withdrawn from the economy and channeled into education subsidies further reduces consumption expenditures for economic goods and services, reducing national economic demand.

When was the last time you heard of a state or the federal government lowering subsidies to public education?

Whatever the problem, Congress and state legislatures think more money for more programs and more subsidies for students will somehow magically provide a solution to the American crisis in educational achievement. And the crisis becomes worse.

The unintended national consequences of the redistribution of education, another form of income redistribution within the ideology of liberal socialism, will result in denying many of the best minds of America from receiving the education that Team America so desperately needs. How else are we to compete in the world market place of industry, technology and innovation?

If that were not enough, government subsidy of education will have a profound long term deleterious effect on the national economy proportional to tax dollars collected (and available to be redistributed).

As educational achievement goes, so goes America. On the current trajectory, “third-world” status is a foregone conclusion, and the intellect of the average American will finally descend to that of the average Congressman.

Red State Patriot

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One of the most depressing things you will ever do is tour eastern states by motor vehicle, north to south, east of the Mississippi River, big cities, municipalities, small towns and rural communities. North Carolina and South Carolina in particular look and feel like the Twilight Zone -- a memory that will be hard to forget. Hundreds and hundreds of factories and businesses were closed long ago. They are now silent, boarded up, fenced off from vandals, covered with graffiti and abandoned. For a multitude of reasons, the manufacturing jobs that once were our pride and economic power - are gone. Residents wander the streets looking like survivors in a war zone, most of them Americans of African descent, pushing a shopping cart with no place to go.

According to those who frequent the local watering holes and barber shops, most manufacturing and many service jobs either fled the Carolina's or have been out-sourced. When I asked why, the consistent reply was (in my words trying to combine many conversations) oppressive regulation, mind-numbing taxation, and government-imposed employee social benefits. Add to that the intervention of administrative agencies such as OSHA and EPA, lack of a work ethic, dearth of useful skills in the available workforce, a failed government public education system, a society spring-loaded to litigate hot cups of coffee, trade policies (NAFTA and CAFTA), relentless union disruption of an orderly flow of wages and benefits, and federal immigration laws that are not enforced. When all of this was combined with a mind-numbing federal and state tax burden, the costs of production in the Carolina's became so great that it eliminated any chance of profitability.

Businesses which could no longer be competitive in the United States marketplace saw their departure from American shores (with the jobs) as a matter of economic survival. The American workers, now ex-employees, were left behind to sort through the economic ruins of American businesses trying to fathom what happened. Most of the ex-employees are currently employed by the taxpayer-subsidized "Entitlement Industry." Congress, and particularly eastern state legislatures steadfastly refuse economic and social policy reforms to this day.

If you have a problem with this reality, you may want to recognize that this agenda was championed by both political parties. State governments and city councils bear much of the responsibility for the devastation east of the Mississippi River - a man-made economic wasteland. It wasn't all the fault of Congress. The only recourse appears to be to look for conservative political candidates to begin the economic reconstruction that will take a decade or more to correct the failed liberal adventure into the quicksand of socialism. Unfortunately, there aren't many conservative candidates and certainly too few to cause meaningful change.

Why did it have to happen? What is it about capitalism in general and conservatism in particular that liberals reject? Is it the attributes of integrity, excellence, initiative, self-reliance, freedom, education, competition, profit, legal voting, law-abiding, self-government, morality, the Constitution, American flag, patriotism, military service or value systems derived from faith? If not, what then? You know the value system a conservative embraces. What value system guides a liberal's waking moments and aspirations?

In contrast, what do the proponents of socialism have to offer? Ask them to articulate it. It is an interesting and amusing exercise to ask a liberal to list the cultural and economic advantages of a socialist ideology that will lead to a better life for all individual Americans. You will have a difficult time finding them written anywhere or spoken coherently. They only exist in history books that document failed social policies of failed nations. In a few words, what is the principal unspoken ideological concept that forms the core belief of a liberal? Self interest. Maybe a few examples will help.

What we do know from demonstrated behavior, repeated over and over? A liberal asks what government can do for you. A conservative or libertarian asks, what can you do for yourself? Liberals want to give you things in return for your vote; conservatives want you to earn what you want in life or go without; libertarians want government out of their lives entirely.

A conservative contends charity is the right or responsibility of individuals and charitable institutions, rather than the 'forced charity' employed by liberals that confiscate and redistribute tax money by force.

Conservatives believe all people are not born genetically equal but with equal opportunity. If all men were truly born equal, why are some people receiving welfare? Conservatives believe that each American has a right to earn his niche by the sweat of his brow. Some will sweat more and carve larger niches, strive for education and realize the American dream. None of this, however, gives anyone the right to confiscate and redistribute the earned or inherited wealth of one American citizen to another - nor to an illegal alien.

What incentives realistically remain when growing numbers of Americans simply refuse to work and are offered a lifetime annuity in return for their votes. Many are so poorly educated that they've become functionally illiterate and for all practical purposes unemployable? The vast majority of the aforementioned are constituents of the Democratic Party. Liberals demand that those who work (conservatives) must support those who do not (liberals). A conservative who works like a liberal is generally considered a lazy bastard. Conservatives demand that each person accepts individual responsibility, while Libertarians deny that government has any proper place or authority in the affairs of a free society.

Liberals would intentionally misinform you and tell you that conservatism is equally an ideology, just as is liberalism. Again, facts prevail. Conservatism is not an ideology. Conservatism is the negation of any ideology - the absence of any ideology, motive, agenda, prejudice, or ulterior motive. Conservatism simply is: "Earn it yourself or do without." Conservative value systems have developed over time, thousands of years, from success after success, over many generations, in the form of traditions, customs and habits.

Socialist ideology, in contrast, is the result of the particular philosophy of a few influential economists, such as Karl Marx, seeking an economic utopia. Liberal socialism is about how a person wants the world to be, regardless of reality, with everyone serving the state and deriving their "equal" existence from the state. The liberal view is that reality is only an illusion that occurs due to the lack of tax revenue.

The most important comparison is the bottom line. Socialist ideology has produced failure after failure, over many centuries, many governments and countless generations of victims. Even our nation's first settlers in Massachusetts had to abandon collectivism in order to survive - but who reads history anymore? The modern Congress (both political parties) are gradually returning the United States to national collectivism - a fact which does not bode well either for our children or Christianity.

One thing is for sure. Liberals, as a result of their ideology, have a generalized and consuming hatred of all things conservative, no matter how beneficial for America. The reason appears to lie in one simple fact. Conservatives seek the welfare of every citizen as a result of their labors and industriousness. A conservative wants every American to have the opportunity to be anything and everything they want to be, without class boundaries, as well as to be held accountable for their own life and cumulative achievement. Even the term, “middle-class American,” is but one example of a liberal construct that simply does not exist in conservative thought. By contrast, liberals seek the welfare of every citizen as a distribution of government. Liberals would prefer that government was omnipotent and that every citizen, every business and every asset was the property of the state. What you receive in a world of liberal socialism is what you receive from the government, not what you earn - that belongs to the government.

Classic examples of liberal preference of form over substance abound. A current example of liberalism would have to include the conflict between how you say something as opposed to what you say - form over substance, which you recognize as "political correctness." Remember, any man who feels the need to be politically correct cannot by definition be honest. We would all be better off without a government-imposed ideology of form over substance.

If something is good for America, why is it bad for liberals? It expands individualism and self-reliance.

And conversely, If something is bad for America, why is it good for liberals? It expands government and collectivism, class structure and dependency.

Red State Patriot

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