Social conservatives: "phony solutions for real social ills"

David Boaz writes in the LA Times about the contradiction between the problems that socons identify in society and their proposals to solve them:

Social conservatives say they're trying to address the problems of family breakdown, crime and welfare costs, but there's a huge disconnect between the problems they identify and the policy solutions they propose. It's almost like the man who looked for his keys on the thoroughfare, even though he lost them in the alley, because the light was better.

Social conservatives tend to talk about issues such as abortion and gay rights, stem cell research and the role of religion "in the public square": "Those who would have us ignore the battle being fought over life, marriage and religious liberty have forgotten the lessons of history," said Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) at the Family Research Council's 2010 Values Voter Summit.

But what, exactly, are the policy problems they say they aim to solve?

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, at the same summit, said: "We need to understand there is a direct correlation between the stability of families and the stability of our economy…. The real reason we have poverty is we have a breakdown of the basic family structure." And Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) said: "It's impossible to be a fiscal conservative unless you're a social conservative because of the high cost of a dysfunctional society."

Those are reasonable concerns. As a 2009 Heritage Foundation report stated, children born to single mothers "score lower on tests, have increased chances for committing a crime, have higher chances of living in poverty, experience more emotional and behavioral problems, are more likely to abuse drugs or alcohol and have higher chances of becoming pregnant as teens." And social problems like that do tend to lead to higher government spending.

But those problems have nothing to do with abortion or gay marriage, the issues that social conservatives talk most about.

...

When Huckabee says that "a breakdown of the basic family structure" is causing poverty — and thus a demand for higher government spending — he knows that he's really talking about unwed motherhood, divorce, children growing up without fathers and the resulting high rates of welfare usage and crime. Those also make up the "high cost of a dysfunctional society" that worries DeMint.

But the "Family Values" section of DeMint's Senate website talks about abortion and gay marriage, along with adoption. There's no mention of divorce or unwed motherhood.

...

Reducing the incidence of unwed motherhood, divorce, fatherlessness, welfare and crime would be a good thing. So why the focus on issues that would do nothing to solve the "breakdown of the basic family structure" and the resulting "high cost of a dysfunctional society"? Well, solving the problems of divorce and unwed motherhood is hard. And lots of Republican and conservative voters have been divorced. A constitutional amendment to ban divorce wouldn't go over very well, even with the social conservatives. Far better to pick on a small group, a group not perceived to be part of the Republican constituency, and blame it for social breakdown and its associated costs.

That's why social conservatives point to a real problem and then offer phony solutions.

But you won't find your keys on the thoroughfare if you dropped them in the alley, and you won't reduce the costs of social breakdown by keeping gays unmarried and preventing them from adopting orphans.

Telco balls-up

Another revolting development in the dismal saga of government regulation of the telcos. A federal court has overruled the Harper government’s overruling of a competition-killing ruling by the Telecommunications Oligopoly Board (also known as the CRTC). As a result Wind Mobile, okayed for business in 2009, and having worked to build a customer base over more than a year, is being told that it’s not okay, that they are – horrors – foreign-owned (as their capital originates from Egypt, of all places; ironically a jurisdiction even more indifferent to modern communication than Canada).

This does not take effect at once, of course. The company has been given a breather for 45 days to prepare their response; they will probably appeal, the government will probably appeal (to preserve Cabinet’s scope of action), and the whole thing will drag on. And on and on.

While it is always tempting to lash out at the courts for this dim decision, the real fault likely lies elsewhere. Courts can’t disregard the law, however stupid it may be; they have to validate what is written. More responsibility lies with the government for trying to do an end-run around retrograde legislation instead of just repealing it outright. Admittedly, this might not be easy for a minority, as the opposition parties would fly into flag-waving hysterics at the mere mention of a foreign-owned company attempting to enter our sacrosanct communications market. At the least, though, the guv should have scoped out any potential pitfalls in their approach, maybe by asking a law prof if it would stand actually up to a challenge in court. They appear not to have done this – but then again they’ve only been in office for 5 years, so the idea of due diligence is probably still a bit new and strange.

This site doesn’t have any opinions about the legal technicalities of the ruling (except that nothing could be more boring). But the main point isn’t the law: its oligopoly and protectionism. What matters isn’t foreign-ownership – it’s lower prices. A cell phone company owned in equal parts by Mexican drug lords, Saudi princes and Robert Mugabe – if it offered better rates – would be a huge improvement over market control by Telus, Rogers and Bell and their sock-puppet discount arms. Not coming any time soon, though.

Good news

Every now and then in the weird, dismal and depressing news stream a few cheery items come bobbing along. First off, in New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is thinking about axing jobs – government jobs, and quite a few, in fact – up to 15,000 according to the Times. It’s a start. The Economist of a couple weeks ago put the coming battle with public sector unions on the front cover. The lead editorial was a little too conciliatory but at least there are signs of people waking up to the social catastrophe that public sector unions represent.

Elsewhere, from the often wacky world of health news, a little ray of light came in the revelation of the fraudulence of the alleged contribution of the MMR vaccine to autism. Pseudo-science doesn’t often get so totally torpedoed in this way, so it’s nice to see it when it happens.

Then there was the study in education suggests that test-taking can actually improve learning more than other methods. Mud in the eye for the teacher’s unions and the other flaky defenders of unquantifiable, results-free teaching, for whom it is an article of faith that test-taking is irrelevant when it isn’t damaging.

And finally, Bjork is on the warpath against Vancouver-based Magma Energy Corp, seeking to prevent the takeover of an Icelandic geothermal energy producer. This is exactly the kind of thing a variety of pundits predicted in the run-up to the Harper government interfering with BHP Billiton’s attempt to take over potash production in Saskatchewan: that it would inspire protectionists and other enemies of trade everywhere. We applaud this campaign and hope that Canadian investments overseas are blocked, blocked and blocked again until it starts to sink into the cementheads at home that this isn’t the way things work in a global economy.

Of course, public sector unions, teachers unions, health kooks and protectionists are about as well-immunized against reality as it is possible to be. So hearts and minds aren't going to be won there, no matter what the news. But it may help to erode the credibility of their positions with the general public, by however little. All in all not a bad week for common sense.

Canada and the UAE

A much-debated editorial article in Gulf News, a publication from the UAE has provided me much amusement this New Years Eve. It seems that when they decided to run the article the preparers decided to try to cram as much criticism of Harper and his government (relevant or not) into as few paragraphs as possible. The blatant errors and hypocrisy amused me.Harper would have to have invented a time

MP Bob Sopuck: Right Wing Scientist?

The Toronto Star has an interesting article on Bob Sopuck, the new Conservative MP from Manitoba. I strongly recommend the article as it seems to give an unbiased look at his environmental credentials and background.What caught my eye however, was the fact that he attended and graduated from Cornell University. That name may not be as familiar to you as Harvard or Yale, but it is an Ivy League