Stoppin' the Poppin'

Yesterday's post briefly mentioned the topic of parents raising their families on 'assistance.' This is a subject that I've wanted to speak my piece on for some time, so here I go.

Modern medicine provides us a wonderful new variety of methods to prevent pregnancy, some of which only have to be applied/inserted/administered once a month, once a year, or even less often. So why can't we require women on assistance programs to accept some form of birth control?

If you are a responsible adult and able to support your offspring, you can have as many as you want and I could care less. (More workers to support me when I'm old and decrepit! Yay!) But where does it say that anyone has an inalienable right to produce children that someone else (government, tax base, DHS, etc.) has to pay for and/or raise? I'm sorry, but I don't think they do! America was founded partly on the principle of personal responsibility. So what the hell happened to it? If you are unable to support yourself and/or your children through no fault of your own I will have no problem at all helping out. If some terrible accident befalls me, I sure hope the assistance will be there for me. But if your own bad habits, drug use, failed relationships, inability to hold down a job, etc. etc. are the root cause of your problems, I'm sorry - I think you should be on your own! I think you should have to experience the consequences of your own actions (or lack of action), not be able to pass them along to other people to pay for.

A couple of years ago I was teaching computer skills as part of an after school enrichment program at a school on the "wrong side of the tracks," and had one 5th grader who absolutely refused to have any part of the computers unless it was to play games. Finally one day, frustrated, I asked him what he thought he was going to do as adult if he didn't learn about computers. Even shelf stockers and hamburger flippers have to know how to use a computer these days, I told him. He looked me straight in the eye, and with no sign of embarrassment or remorse, informed me that welfare had been good enough for his grandparents and his parents, and he guessed it would be good enough for him. It was all I could do not to inform him how inappropriate I thought it was that he planned to grow up and live off of me and my fellow taxpayers, after the collective 'we' had already been supporting him - and his parents? - all of his life.

I will support (and did support, by giving nearly 7 years to the US Military) your right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness just as long as it doesn't impact my life and pursuit of happiness, but I happen to think that taking money from the government and the tax base that I support does impact my life. I think that when people accept public assistance, they give up their right to procreate and I see no logical reason why they can't be required to have some form of reversible birth control applied for as long as they are receiving assistance. If you can't even support yourself, why should you be able to have a kid that you can't take care of? This also applies to parents who've already had one or more children taken away from them by CPS or DHS and they keep having more. If you're an unfit parent with child "A" and nothing changes, isn't it rather predictable that you'll be an unfit parent for child "B"?

Modern society seems, in my opinion, to be very confused about rights and privileges. Having children should be a privilege, not a right. (If it were up to me those prison "conjugal" visits would include mandatory birth control too. Hello, we're already feeding and sheltering your lazy criminal you-know-what, and you get to have kids? No, I don't think so.) We are so very uptight and protective about rights for all the bad guys but the victims? They're hung out to dry! Minorities are so 'protected' that it's getting tough to get some jobs if you're a white male. (Sorry, you don't count towards our quota.)

What about the RIGHTS of the average American blue- or white- collar working stiff who's just trying to survive and get a few bits of happiness in here and there? Why is it okay for everyone else to take advantage of us but when we try to protest or assert our rights, we're "bigoted, prejudiced, politically incorrect, insensitive, blah blah blah blah..." Hey, we're the doggoned backbone here and if you want to feel some real pain, just aggravate your back.

Anyways, back to the point .. I know I had one .. oh yeah.. females on any kind of public assistance should be required to accept a birth control measure of some type. Yeah, it'll cost a little more money up front but then think about all the money we'll save by not having to pay for all those children they'd otherwise have had. And think about this .. I don't have any proof, but what do you want to bet that a hefty percentage of those kids would have been drug-affected at birth, individuals who would never have had a 'good' life or been productive?

No, we can't kill kids that already exist, and of course we have to take care of the children once they're here - they're innocents, not at fault, and any decent human being (or even me) would have to be in favor of giving them a fair chance. Nor, although I really want to avoid the whole conception/birth when's it human argument, can we mandate abortion. But what's wrong with preventing the children from ever being conceived? Hey, if the parent is unwed even the Catholics can't protest! Ha!

Personal Responsibility. It's the answer to more of our problems than you can shake a stick at. Face the consequences of your own actions, good or bad. Only under Socialism (where we aren't quite at yet) do the good and bad consequences get spread out evenly amongst all the members of the group, eliminating most if not all of what little sense the world makes. In a Democracy (which is also not quite what we have, believe it or not) people get to keep the proceeds and rewards that come from hard work and good decisions, and personally suffer the consequences of bad decisions and laziness. That used to be how America was, but look around you .. it ain't that way no more. People are all around you avoiding personal responsibility by making you (collective you i. e. the taxpayers) pay for their mistakes while they enjoy the secondhand fruits of your labor.

If you don't see anything wrong with this picture, don't worry about it. Turn back when the dog barks at you, follow the rest of the flock, eat some more grass, and you'll be fine.