Liberal Arguments About Children Fall Flat

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I spend a fair amount of time on social media.  I have various Facebook accounts, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, LinkedIn, tumblr, and Pinterest.  Along my journey through my accounts (of which I usually use my phone for when in waiting rooms, or in transit somewhere as my wife drives) I came across the liberal left meme pictured on the left of this article.  The attempt by the maker of the meme is to try and show hypocrisy among conservative republicans on the issue of children.  Interestingly, they left our Pro-Life stance out of it, but I get what they are trying to do.  As for the quip about transgenderism, I am not even going to go down that mental illness rabbit hole right now.

Here’s the text portrayed as thoughts of a red, white and blue elephant in the meme: “We must protect the children! From being int eh same bathroom as a transgender person!  But not from school shootings, or poverty, or hunger, or cuts to education, or lack of health care, or climate change.”

On the surface, for someone not well-informed, it would seem to be a very effective meme.

Let’s address the things listed, and see if any of them hold any water. . .

1.  School Shootings: The liberal left Democrat Party theory is that stricter gun control (and ultimately, gun confiscation, but they are careful about saying that) is the only thing that can reduce school shootings.  Therefore, since Republicans are against gun control, that (in the mind of the leftist) means the “right-wingers” have no interest in protecting children from school shootings.  However, let’s take a look at a few facts. According to the Crime Prevention Research Center, from the 1950’s through July 10th of 2016, 98.4 percent of mass shootings have occurred in gun-free zones, with just 1.6 percent occurring where citizens are allowed to have firearms with them.  Let us instead listen to some true wisdom. “We must reject the idea that every time a law’s broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.” — Ronald Reagan.  Also note, not a single one of the mass shooters have been Tea Party folk, conservatives, or Republicans.  They’ve all either been registered Democrats, or Muslims (or both).

2.  Poverty: The war on poverty has failed, but the Democrats refuse to recognize the truth.  Children are not saved from poverty by more school lunches, or more welfare programs. In fact, it is those very programs that have made poverty worse. Government is not good at making a distinction between needy and those willing to game the system.  Moms have been taught not to marry the father of their kids because that would reduce their welfare benefits. Welfare invited people to be dependent on government, and for them to toss incentive out the window. Two-parent black families are rarely poor. Only 8% of black married-couple families live in poverty. Among black families in which both the husband and wife work full time, the poverty rate is under 5%. Poverty in black families headed by single women is 37%. As early as 1900, when racism was rampant, the duration of black unemployment was 15 percent shorter than that of whites. Today, in a time were we just finished two terms of the first black President, and experienced the candidacy of a black neurosurgeon named Ben Carson in the last election for the White House, it’s about 30 percent longer.  When it comes to the black community, their problem is not racism and endemic poverty as the Democrats claim, but Democrat Party welfare programs.  A full dive into resurrecting our free market system as originally intended is the best recipe for giving families the opportunity to pull themselves out of poverty.  California is arguably the most liberal State of the union, and is controlled by a super-majority of Democrat Party Control. California’s poverty rate is 23.4%, which is 17% higher than second place Nevada. Indeed, while California has 12% of the nation’s population, it is home to 33% of the nation’s TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) welfare recipients, more than the next seven states combined.  With a Democrat Party super-majority, the Democrats can’t blame the Republicans for all of that poverty.

3.  Hunger: Childhood hunger does exist in some communities, but it always turns out to be communities under control of Democrats. Cleveland ranks Number 1 in the nation in child hunger and Number 3 in the United States in overall hunger.  That said, the challenge of childhood hunger in this country is being overstated by the liberal left to create a crisis where one does not necessarily exist. Despite impressions to the contrary, most of the poor do not experience undernutrition, hunger, or food shortages. Information on these topics is collected by the household food security survey of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The USDA survey showed that in 2009:

• Ninety-six percent of poor parents stated that their children were never hungry at any time during the year because they could not afford food.
• Some 83 percent of poor families reported that they had enough food to eat.
• Some 82 percent of poor adults reported that they were never hungry at any time in the prior year due to lack of money to buy food.

As a group, America’s poor are far from being chronically undernourished. The average consumption of protein, vitamins, and minerals is virtually the same for poor and middle-class children and in most cases is well above recommended norms. Poor children actually consume more meat than do higher-income children and have average protein intakes 100 percent above recommended levels.  Most poor children today are, in fact, supernourished and grow up to be, on average, one inch taller and 10 pounds heavier than the GIs who stormed the beaches of Normandy in World War II.

4.  Cuts to Education: More money does not equal better education. An international survey found that the United States spends more than any other developed country in the world on education, but American students trail foreign students consistently on international tests.  California spends the most, of all States, on education, but is among the worst in the country in terms of:

1. Test results in reading and math
2. Remote-learning opportunities from online public schools
3. Dropout rate
4. Pupil to teacher ratio
5. SAT scores
6. Percentage of graduates finishing an AP course and test
7. Percentage of students who asserted they had been threatened or hurt by a weapon while in high school
8. Bullying incident and youth incarceration rates

California ranked ninth to last just a couple years ago. California schools were considered the third-least-safe in the nation, as well, surpassed only by Indiana and Washington D.C.

5.  Lack of Health Care: Prior to Obamacare, which actually drove up health insurance rates, stripping many families of health care that could no longer afford it, but made too much income to participate in the subsidies program (I am one of those folks who lost his health insurance as a result of the skyrocketing rates caused by Obamacare), States had safety net programs already in place (Children have rights under SCHIP [the State Children’s Health Insurance Program]), covering children with State programs when emergencies made it necessary to use such a system.  There are also a number of charitable organizations who offer health care services for children. Unfortunately, we do not have a market-based health-care system today.  When we did, prior to government intrusion into the system, health care was not considered a major issue.  Costs were down, and quality was up, because doctors had to compete for patients in a truly competitive free market environment.  Some of us can still remember when doctors made house-calls.

6.  Climate Change: Whether or not the idea that man-made influence on global temperature exists in the first place, is really the question.  From the Democrat liberal left point of view, the sky is falling, and we have to save the planet, or else our children will live on a planet more reminiscent of the mythical desert planet of Dune, than the Earth of today.  Denying human influence on the naturally changing climate does not mean that conservatives do not wish to protect their children.  It means that they are not going to try and protect their children from something they do not believe exists.  Simply put, conservatives who deny the climate change hysteria recognize that climate change exists, but that it is not due to human influence, or human influence is so small that it is negligible.  World history shows natural rises and falls in global temperature existing long before the rise of human industry and the burning of “fossil fuels”. Evidence shows that natural influences, such as solar activity, are larger influences on global temperature than is human activity. The problem with the liberal left Democrats is that even when they are wrong, they will do whatever they can to protect the narrative.  For example, there is evidence that they’ve not only been manipulating their data so as to make sure they get the answers they want, but core samples show that historically the rise and fall of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere lags behind temperature fluctuations on a global scale.  In other words, a rise in carbon dioxide does not increase global temperatures.  A rise in global temperatures, instead, creates a natural rise in carbon dioxide levels – a reality that is completely contrary to the man-made climate change claim.

– Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary