Is This Progress?

With all the new fangled gimmicks, gadgets, procedures and products like the I-Phones, H-D T.V., Blue tooth, medical marvels like angioplasty and colonoscopies (to name only a couple), etc., etc., why are we so backward when it comes to sex education, and other social activities in trying to maintain a normal family environment?

Let's take sex education. When the birth control pill arrived and sex education classes were instituted in the schools in the 1960's, 5.3% of births were out-of-wedlock births. In 2010, after more than 30 years of abortion on demand and sex education in the public schools, over 40% of American babies were born out of wedlock, the figure in the black community is a disastrous 70%. Our permissiveness in the area of sex and personal relationships (gay marriage, one night stands etc.) has spawned a plague of sexual diseases, including HIV, broken homes, domestic violence and general unhappiness.

Is that progress?

Around the turn of the century (around 1900) there was a real need for labor unions as many workers were being exploited and their working conditions were less than adequate. The unions proved to be a good thing for the workers then, as they helped many workers become part of the burgeoning “middle class”. But, as time went by and unions became very powerful, the need for unions lessened and in some cases became quite non-useful. The unions hit its membership zenith in the 1950's, but since that time until today, unions have been scaled back by many millions of workers in the private sector. Modern corporate executives today realize that they should treat their employees well, as that would be good for business as well as doing the right thing, therefore unions are not needed as much today as they were around 1900.

Also, with the advent of “Right-to-Work” laws in quite a few states, companies have moved from union-intensive states to the right-to-work states, and they have prospered much more than before they made the move. Oppressive union wages and work rules were no longer required by the companies in those states.

But, bucking this trend of declining union membership, the public sector (government jobs) workers have found a “cash cow” by forming unions all across the public sector job field, and they have used their clout in the political arena to “cajole” (a form of bribery) politicians into sweetening their “economic environment” (wages and fringe benefits) in return for campaign contributions and a host of campaign workers, come election time. The excessive wage and fringe benefits derived from this unholy relationship has brought many of the states and the federal government to the brink of bankruptcy.

Is that progress?

Another phenomenon we are facing today is in the area of “political correctness” whereby our lives are turned upside down as we try to adhere to the “unwritten decrees” set forth by unelected self-serving busybodies, mainly represented by the legal profession and special interest groups like the ACLU and the NAACP. We can't do this, we can't do that, we can't say this and we can't say that, all because of these busybodies. If you do what they say you shouldn't do, you are open to a lawsuit (probably frivolous) or ridicule on the public stage. Many worthwhile activities had to be curtailed or done away with all together, to avoid the stigma of being “politically incorrect”. That is one of the reasons why we have our present President, Barack Hussein Obama, because people wanted to erase their “imagined guilt” of racism of a black man by electing him president to assuage that guilt. Look where that has gotten us - over $15 trillion in debt and our economy in shambles.

Is that progress? I, for one, don't think so!

Conservative commentary by Chuck Lehmann