JOEL writes:

I’m not sure how conservatives, such as yourself, can object to teen pregnancies, such as Bristol Palin’s. While I agree that single-motherhood is horribly destructive to the fabric of society, I cannot see how preaching and pontificating makes any difference in its inexorable march. As the average age of first marriage steadily increases, what you are asking is for individuals to forego having sex until their thirties, given that the average age of first marriage is now that high in some coastal cities. Recently, I was speaking with some older social conservative types, I live in Seattle, and joked that the reason my peers don’t vote Republican is that “Republicans are the people who don’t want anyone to have sex until thirty-five”, and, with the social reality in big cities, that assessment is not far from the truth.

Where are the conservatives who are talking about making family formation for 22 year-olds economically and socially feasible? I’ve never met one. Human beings are biologically evolved, or created, if you prefer, to procreate between the ages of 16 and 30, at the latest, and our current economic and social conditions are running up against this hard fact of reality. There is a reason why ever-increasing portions of the US population are gradually diverging from modes of living capable of sustaining a well-ordered society, and this reason is that the incentives for living such lives have changed. Living in a major coastal city, surrounded by young, single urbanites, I can assure you that most of them are not a die-hard coterie of ideologically fanatical liberal-leftists. Such young urbanites, a good percentage of them anyway, chafe at preachy conservatives who lecture them on how they should live their lives, yet refuse to address the necessary social institutions to live such lives. 

Preaching at the country’s Bristol Palins, without addressing the social conditions necessary to procreate at a reasonable age, will only cause increasing levels of hatred for conservative ideas and policies among the younger generations.

Laura writes:

But, why do you automatically assume I haven’t addressed the social and economic conditions? Have you read my other writings? Have you read my article “Why We Must Discriminate,” (see it in the sidebar at the top) in which I argue we must return to customary employment discrimination for men? This to me would go a long way to restoring an order in which people married earlier. After all, just fifty years ago, people did marry much sooner. Have you read my critical writings on the type of higher education women receive today? Try my article, “The New Wave Academy for Women.” Though it’s tongue-in-cheek, it is also a serious look at what is wrong with how women are prepared for real life.

You seem to have read only what I have said about Palin and then jumped to the conclusion that all I want to do is keep people from having a good time.

I’ve said many times that female careerism and sexual liberation are the flip sides of the same coin. You can’t have the first without the second. Of course, I’m not advocating a world in which no women work, but one in which the work ambitions of women are dramatically scaled back to where they were in roughly the 1950s. 

Laura adds:

A return to sanity also requires a greater sense of national sovereignty in economics, including the recovery of American industry from globalization; the suspension of legal immigration until our economy can absorb those who have already entered; an end to the illegal immigration which has so hurt the American middle and lower classes;  a rejection of free trade in its current form; and the recovery of small-scale  retail and economic self-determination by America’s communities.

Of course the general trend toward socializing our economy, as typified by the latest health reform bill, and the perceived obligation by families to spend massive amounts of money for college education that is in many cases unnecessary (much too much is spent on harmful and useless education for women) further lend to the indenturing of America’s families. We have become willing slaves.

By the way, regarding women’s education, I don’t at all advocate that they not be educated. I think the current model of higher education for women, as well as the type of training that exists today in mass elementary and secondary schools, should be largely abandoned.

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