Marco Rubio's Couragaeous Speech, by Star Parker 09/05/2011

Florida’s young Republican Senator Marco Rubio gave an important speech at the Reagan Presidential Library in California that has set off the liberal talking head universe.

He had the temerity to suggest that the huge growth in government’s role in American life over the last century “actually weakened us as a people.”

The resulting onslaught from liberal blogs and cable hosts comes as no surprise because Rubio directly took on the idol at which liberals worship – Big Government.

But his analysis was courageous and profound.

Eighty percent of Americans are not happy with the direction of the country. And, new Gallup polling shows that only 17 percent are positively disposed toward the federal government.

Americans want answers.

Senator Rubio, in this speech, stepped up to the plate to provide answers.

If liberals disagree, they are going to have to get equally serious. They’ve certainly got to do better than MSNBC’s Ed Schultz, calling Rubio “a political hack” who wants “to get rid of social safety nets.”

Our fiscal crisis is undeniable. The trillions in debt we’ve taken on to finance massive government spending has resulted in the unthinkable downgrading in rating of our government’s bonds.

But Senator Rubio took a bold step beyond looking at our problems just as an accountant.

He suggested that we cannot separate our budget from our culture. The culture of government has displaced the culture of personal responsibility.

I have been making the point for years regarding what the welfare state culture has done in our black communities. How it has created a permanent underclass, defined by family breakdown, sexual promiscuity, disease, and crime.

American culture has changed profoundly over these years that Americans have come to increasingly believe that government social engineering can solve life’s problems and challenges.

A snapshot of today’s American family shows how much things have changed, even compared to 1981 when President Reagan took office.

Since 1980, the percentage of babies in America born to unwed mothers has doubled, from 20 percent to 40 percent.

Fifty two percent of Americans over the age of 18 are married today, compared to 72 percent in 1960.

Among blacks, 44% of the population over 18 has never been married, compared to 17% in 1960.

Sixty four percent of American children today live in a home with two married parents, compared with 75 percent in 1980 and 87 percent in 1960.

And, according to the Pew Research Center, 44 percent of those between ages of 18 to 29 “agree marriage is becoming obsolete.”

We used to be a nation, as Senator Rubio pointed out, where parents raised and cared for children, then those children cared for their aging parents. Where neighbors cared for neighbors.

We might note that the welfare state idea is not an American invention but an import from Europe. We also might note that about 20 percent of Europeans attend church regularly, half that of Americans.

Europe is characterized today by low birth rates – so low that they are not replacing themselves – and high unemployment rates. The unemployment rate in France has hovered between 8 and 11 percent over the last 25 years.

We must wonder if even we can take on our fiscal problems, if traditional American family life can be restored, and if we believe it even matters.

It is to Senator Rubio’s considerable credit that he has stood up to argue that we must look at the picture of our nation in its entirety. That we cannot separate our budget matters and our attitude toward government from our overall culture and our personal behavior.

What is before us today is not a battle of competing numbers but a battle of competing visions.

Is America to continue in the direction of welfare state materialism? Or will this be a free nation under God?

Star Parker is founder and president of CURE, the Center for Urban Renewal and Education, a 501c3 think tank which explores and promotes market based public policy to fight poverty, as well as author of the newly revised "Uncle Sam's Plantation:" How Big Government Enslaves America's Poor and What We Can do About It.

Very Near to my Line of Thinking

Fairness or Unfairness - by John Hawkins

If one child complains that he didn't get as much food as his brother because his frankfurter was cut into four pieces, while his brother's hot dog was cut into five pieces, we laugh. What we often don't realize is that the definitions of "fairness" that adults use are often every bit as arbitrary as those of children. This is why politicians are so in love with the word "fairness." Using that word justifies their attempt to swoop in, ignore merit, overrule the market, and take something from one group of people to give it to another group of people who are more likely to vote for them. So next time someone starts talking about "fairness," put your hand over your wallet, put on your thinking cap, and consider that what is defined as "fairness" could look extremely "unfair" if you're open minded enough to take a look at it from another perspective.

1) Affirmative Action's only "fair?" The idea here is that we're going to discriminate against white Americans who have not done anything wrong in order to help black Americans who may not have been discriminated against so that we can make up for past discrimination against black Americans. That begs the question: Do we flip this around at some point and start deliberately discriminating against black Americans again to make up for the government's discrimination against white Americans? It may sound outrageous, but that ridiculous idea would be every bit as "fair" as Affirmative Action.

2) Making losers pay for legal costs would be "unfair" to the little guy! Because liberals get a lot of money from trial lawyers, they oppose a "loser pays" rule for lawsuits. They justify this by saying that system would be "unfair" to the people suing. Why, what if they couldn't afford to sue because their opponents’ legal fees would be too high? Of course, that's a really backward way to look at it. After all, how fair is it for someone to have to spend countless hours of their time and tens of thousands of dollars defending themselves from a meritless lawsuit without compensation? Surely, if it's "fair" for the plaintiffs to get money if they win, then it should be "fair" for the defendants to at least have their expenses covered if they triumph.

3) The rich aren't paying their "fair" share. It's easy to take shots at rich people. There usually aren't enough of them to swing an election with their votes, nobody really feels sorry for people who have a lot of money, and as often as not, they give contributions to both parties as "protection money." But here's a thought: How can the rich not be paying their "fair share" when the top 10% of Americans pay 69.9% of the money we take in from the income tax while 47 percent of Americans don't even pay a single dollar a year? Arguing that people -- who probably pay for all the services they'll get from the government in an entire lifetime over any given month -- aren't paying their "fair share" while so many people pay nothing at all, seems more than a bit....."unfair."

4) Cutting spending would be "unfair!" Any time you try to cut something from the budget, there are aliens in other galaxies who can undoubtedly hear the screams from space. We get rants about cruelty, Tea Party "terrorists," pushing old people off cliffs, balancing the budget on the backs of the less fortunate -- it goes on and on. However, there's no such thing as "free" government money. So, what we're actually doing is selling our children into debt slavery so that liberal politicians can borrow more money to buy votes today. What could be crueler or more "unfair" than a child who's born starting his life more than $176,000 in debt before he's ever opened his eyes for the first time?

5) Minimum wage laws make sure people get a "fair" wage. If you're making the minimum wage right now, it's entirely possible that the law benefits you by insuring that you get paid a higher wage than you otherwise would. Liberals would call this "fairness." But, how about all the people with low skills who either aren't worth the minimum wage or who could be hired for jobs that don't merit the minimum wage? It's all well and good to say that a job's not worth someone's time if it doesn't pay the minimum wage, but there are probably a lot of unemployed Americans who'd be grateful to make $7 an hour while they look for a better job. What's "fair" to those people about putting a law in place that prevents willing businesses from hiring willing workers who desperately need the money?

6) Not allowing illegal aliens to become American citizens is "unfair!" If we allow people who sneak across the border or overstay their VISA to become American citizens, then doesn't that make legal immigrants look like complete idiots? There are people who spent years in their home countries, paying thousands of dollars, and filling out endless paperwork while liberals want to give people who broke the law the gift of American citizenship? What's the message to people who became citizens the right way supposed to be other than, "You are a moron for following the rules?" How can it be anything other than grossly "unfair" to legal immigrants to give illegals a break? Additionally, how about all the American workers, including legal immigrants, who have less money to bring home in their paychecks each week or no jobs at all because illegal aliens who pay no car insurance, health insurance, or taxes can afford to do the job at a cheaper price and drive down wages? How "fair" is it to hurt American citizens to help people who didn't even come to this country legally?

7) Wal-Mart isn't "fair" to its employees. Liberals generally don't like big corporations and they especially don't like Wal-Mart because it's an enormous company that has successfully fought off unionization. This leads to cries that Wal-Mart's "unfair" because it doesn’t pay its employees enough or allow its employees to buy fancy health care plans. Of course, if Wal-Mart could be perfectly honest, its response would probably be, “We don't force our employees to work for us and if they decide they’re unhappy, they can always go somewhere else.” That being said, there's another group of people who aren't being "fairly" treated by the liberal push to unionize Wal-Mart – Wal-Mart customers. Wal-Mart employs more than 2.1 million people in America, but roughly 82% of American households shop at Wal-Mart each year. If Wal-Mart is forced to pay its employees more, then you're taking money out of the pockets of everyone who shops there to pay for it. Why should a dirt-poor widow with four kids who buys her groceries at Wal-Mart be forced to pay more money than she would otherwise to subsidize union salaries? That seems more than a little "unfair."

John Hawkins is a professional blogger who runs Right Wing News, Linkiest, and Viral Footage.

Thoughts just off Center comment: This article was originally published by Townhalldaily.com. I changed the title and edited one or two words that I found inappropriate.