Amid all the emotion over same-sex marriage, the limited-government argument for marriage as uniting a man and a woman keeps getting short shrift.... 

Virtually every political community has regulated male-female sexual relationships. This is not because government cares about romance as such. 

Government recognizes male-female sexual relationships because these alone produce new human beings.

For highly dependent infants, there is no path to physical, moral, and cultural maturity—no path to personal responsibility—without a long, delicate process of ongoing care and supervision to which mothers and fathers bring unique gifts. Unless children mature, they never will become healthy, upright, productive members of society.

Marriage exists to make men and women responsible to each other and to any children that they might have.

Marriage is thus a personal relationship that serves a public purpose in a political community. As the late sociologist James Q. Wilson wrote, “Marriage is a socially arranged solution for the problem of getting people to stay together and care for children that the mere desire for children, and the sex that makes children possible, does not solve.”

The late atheistic philosopher Bertrand Russell echoed the sentiment: “But for children, there would be no need of any institution concerned with sex,” he wrote.  “[I]t is through children alone that sexual relations become of importance to society, and worthy to be taken cognizance of by a legal institution.”

Not every marriage will produce children, but every child is the result of a male-female union—and needs a mom and a dad. Marriage exists to bring a man and a woman together as husband and wife to be father and mother to any children their union produces.

Marriage is society’s least restrictive means of ensuring the well-being of children. State recognition of marriage protects children. How? By encouraging men and women to commit to each other permanently and exclusively—and to take responsibility for their children.

Social science confirms the importance of marriage for children. According to the best available sociological evidence, children fare best on virtually every examined indicator when reared by their wedded biological parents. Studies that control for other factors, including poverty and genetics, suggest that children reared in intact homes do better than those who aren’t in categories such as educational achievement, emotional health, familial and sexual development, and delinquency and incarceration.

The statistics have penetrated American life to such a great extent that President Barack Obama refers to them as well known:

Fathers matter, and marriage helps to connect fathers to mothers and children. But how could the law teach that fathers are essential if it redefines marriage to make fathers optional?

Redefining marriage would further distance marriage from the needs of children and deny the importance of mothers and fathers. It would deny, as a matter of policy, the ideal that children need a mother and a father.

Marriage laws work by embodying and promoting a true vision of marriage, which makes sense of those norms as a coherent whole. Law affects culture. Culture affects beliefs. Beliefs affect actions. The law teaches, and it shapes the public understanding of what marriage is and what it demands of spouses.

Indeed when the law redefined marriage by introducing no-fault divorce, it taught something about marriage: that it need not entail a real commitment to permanency. It used to be that divorce was issued for fault—the three A’s of common law: abuse, abandonment and adultery—but no-fault divorce allowed a spouse to divorce for any reason or no reason at all. And as a result divorce rates rose from single digits to nearly 50 percent.

And the costs were high.

A Brookings Institution study found that $229 billion in welfare expenditures between 1970 and 1996 can be attributed to the breakdown of the marriage culture and the resulting exacerbation of social ills: teen pregnancy, poverty, crime, drug abuse and health problems. A 2008 study found that divorce and unwed childbearing cost taxpayers $112 billion each year. Utah State University scholar David Schramm estimated that divorce alone costs local, state and federal governments $33 billion each year.

Marriage benefits everyone. Separating childbearing and childrearing from marriage burdens innocent bystanders: not just children, but the whole community. Often, the community must step in to provide (more or less directly) for their well-being and upbringing. By encouraging the marriage norms of monogamy, sexual exclusivity and permanence, the state strengthens civil society and reduces its own role.

By recognizing marriage, the government supports economic well-being. Here’s how W. Bradford Wilcox, a University of Virginia professor, described the benefits of marriage in summarizing a study he led as part of the National Marriage Project: “The core message…is that the wealth of nations depends in no small part on the health of the family.”

The same study suggests that marriage and fertility trends “play an underappreciated and important role in fostering long-term economic growth, the viability of the welfare state, the size and quality of the workforce, and the health of large sectors of the modern economy.”

So it should be no surprise that the decline of marriage most hurts the least well-off.

A leading indicator of whether someone will know poverty or prosperity is whether, growing up, he or she knew the love and security of having a married mother and father. A Heritage Foundation report last year by Robert Rector points out: “Being raised in a married family reduced a child’s probability of living in poverty by about 82 percent.”

And although all citizens have the right to live and love as they choose, no one has the right to redefine marriage for everyone.

Redefining marriage to exclude the norm of sexual complementarity (shared by a man and a woman) makes other marital norms optional and sabotages the reason for marriage policy. Again, the government’s interest is to ensure that relationships that could result in children are permanent and monogamous, so that those children have a mom and a dad.

Civil recognition of the marriage union of a man and a woman serves the ends of limited government more effectively, less intrusively and at less cost than does picking up the pieces from a shattered marriage culture.

-Ryan T. Anderson is the William E. Simon Fellow in Religion and a Free Society at The Heritage Foundation. He is co-author with Sherif Girgis and Robert P. George of the book “What Is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense” (Encounter, 2012).

This 10 minute video helps dispel some myths about government that many of us were taught.  It explains:

• Why law is necessary for freedom.
  
• How people who seek power often use anarchy to gain control.
  
• Why James Madison called democracies “spectacles of turbulence and contention.”
  
• How republics preserve life and liberty.
  
• Why limited government allows people to produce and prosper.
  
• Why “the essence of freedom is the proper limitation of government.”

 ...It’s worth pondering whether Americans’ life, liberty, and happiness are well served by devotion to a two century old document. Does the Constitution matter today? Could you explain why to a teenager?

Reverence for the Constitution isn’t universal, even among its chief custodians. Justice Ruth Ginsburg recently raised eyebrows when she advised an audience of Egyptian activists she wouldn’t look to the US constitution as a model in 2012. She pointed instead to the constitutions of South Africa, Canada, and the European Charter of Rights and Freedoms, praising them as “great work,” more recent and more generous in “human rights.” The late Justice Thurgood Marshall also was cautious, asking a PBS interviewer: “What does the Constitution say about rocket ships?”

Actually, the Constitution says as much about rockets as it does about horses and buggies;
because it’s not the US Code governing Americans, it’s more like the rule book or owners’ manual that governs the government. It’s a uniquely successful compact in history. But it remains vital only as Americans understand it, support it, and demand politicians do likewise. Here’s my attempt at a simple, easy to share explanation:

Life is hard and sometimes dangerous. Government can help, but it’s important to think about what government should do, as our Framers had to when they organized America.

The big thing they realized is governing is unique. Some things need governing, but others are just about voluntary cooperation. Lots of people or groups, like street preachers, hotdog vendors, corporations, your mother—have things they want you to do: repent, buy stuff, call home. But Government has things you have to do or can’t do, at the risk of fines, jail, or, at some level of resistance, getting shot.

Government’s essence is controlling people—forbidding things, requiring things, and extracting the taxes to pay for things. Our founders realized the power to control people, as opposed to offer or invite is potentially dangerous. It must be limited and channeled, as George Washington described fire: a dangerous servant and fearsome master.

The Founders figured out controlling people involves three different kinds of power: making rules, enforcing rules, and resolving disagreements between the enforcers and the people. They also realized the controllers could be kept honest and fair only if those different powers were kept apart: the people who make the rules shouldn’t be the ones who enforce them; the enforcers shouldn’t decide disputes between themselves and the people.

That’s why the Founders arranged separation of powers. They created Congress in Article I, the Executive in Article II, and the Supreme Court and judiciary in Article III.

Our Founders also realized the young nation sat at the edge of a continent it might grow to fill.  Even the 13 colonies had a diverse mix of heritage, religion, resources, climate, industry, and so forth. They determined people should govern themselves as locally as possible. Daily government was left with the states. The national government would be limited to matters that truly needed to be nationally uniform. It was delegated only enumerated powers.

The Founders crowned their structure with a Bill of Rights, identifying some, but not all, of the sacred liberties and protections needed for the free pursuit of happiness. The finished work was an intellectual revolution more spectacular than the military revolution that made it possible. The path has not always been smooth or safe. But most people agree, it’s the most successful system of
governing ever designed.

Some clever people today say the Constitution is outdated. It was designed for a small, simple society. Our modern world needs something more complex. This claim is curious, both as a matter of observable history and of theory.

If you hear such criticism, you might challenge it. Historically, ask if any other national system has lasted longer, or produced better fruits, including freedom, due process, stable government, opportunity, prosperity, and a magnetic draw to people around the world.

On theory, ask what has changed in the world or human nature that suggests government’s controlling powers shouldn’t be limited. Or why it makes sense to mix the powers to legislate, enforce, and judge. Ask too, if rigid, centralized government across diverse states and communities, geography, cultures, and economies makes more sense than before.

The critics likely will talk about how things should be different; but they won’t show that anything has ever worked better than the United States Constitution.

"In this third lecture of the 'Introduction to the Constitution' series, Dr. Larry Arnn, Hillsdale College President, continues his outline of the key arrangements of the Constitution. He discusses the principles of Separation of Powers and Limited Government, and how they relate to Representation and the ideas of Nature and Equality in the Declaration."  Here is the Study Guide for Lecture 3.

OK, this video is really called The Free Lunch Myth, but the same principles apply to the myth of free birth control or the myth of free healthcare.  

Government doesn’t pay for it, we do.  And when government takes our money to pay for something like healthcare, politicians take a cut, and then claim the power to tell us what care we can get, when we can get it,  and how we must live our lives to qualify for the "free" care that we paid for with our taxes.

Government has no money of it’s own.  It always takes its money from the people. 

Sometimes government does things in a way that conceals where the money is coming from.  For example, politicians may say they are taxing businesses, not people, but businesses have to pass taxes on to consumers.  Business owners may write the check, but they add their expenses to the goods and services that people buy.  

And taxes on employers end up being paid by the employee.  All taxes are eventually paid by the people.

Some say that government can just print more money to pay for government services, but you can’t print money without cost.  It ends up being another form of taxation.  

When you print more money, people have more money to spend.  When you spend more money on the same amount of goods and services, prices go up, The result is that everyone is paying a tax through inflation.  That hits retired people who are on a fixed income the very hardest because their life savings are devalued and then they struggle to make ends meet.

I was 16-years-old the first time I lived outside of this country.  My Dad had wealthy friends in Mexico City and they invited me to spend a summer with them so I could learn Spanish.  They were a wonderful family and life was pretty glamorous compared to what I was used to in Huntington Beach, California.  But after a while I found myself missing the freedom in America.  

We lived in an estate surrounded by huge walls and a locked gate.  The outside world was very poor, and not very safe.  When we went places, we always paid the police on guard -- not because they were protecting us, but so they wouldn’t slash our tires or steal parts of our car when we left.  Crime and corruption were everywhere, especially in the government.  There was one set of rules for the rulers and the wealthy, and a massive, confusing bureaucracy for everyone else.

I had a similar experience living in Spain for almost two years, and in other travels outside of the country.  People in many countries are oppressed by their governments.  We live in unusual peace, safety, prosperity, and freedom in the United States.  

For more than two centuries our Constitutional republic has been a bastion of liberty and opportunity.  But all that is changing.  Our rulers no longer respect the Constitution.  They are dismantling America and destroying the rights and protections that have created liberty and prosperity for Americans, and provided inspiration and hope for people all over the world.

Now we have school police, speech police, food police, work police, airport police, internet police, environment police, healthcare police...the list goes on and on.  We are monitored everywhere.  From traffic cameras to internet observation, our government is always watching us.  Unwitting citizens are discovering they can violate government regulations and face huge fines and even prison time without ever intentionally committing a crime.  

Americans would be upset if they fully realized what is happening, but mainstream news organizations only report bits and pieces of the demolition of the system, and like a person who is ravaged by an insidious cancer, by the time we feel the inevitable agony, it may be too late.  

Wake up!  Each person is important!  It’s time to rescue America! 

President Barack Obama recently called the 16 months leading up to the 2012 election a critical period to “debate [our respective] vision[s] for America.” 

He noted that much of the debate will focus on government’s role “in creating the kind of growth that we need.”

The president seems to think he will win that debate. I say — and I hope every Republican candidate for president says: Bring it on.

It’s well past time to have a spirited debate over the proper role of government, and the proper reach of government into our lives. Clearly, there are two very different visions for what this role should be.

One vision assumes that government is the problem-solver of first, and last, resort. Every issue we face as individuals and as a nation should be addressed, controlled, regulated, overseen and “fixed” by the government.

Under this paradigm, we can restore economic prosperity only by maintaining or expanding the federal government’s current spending levels — even if it means we engage in perpetual, large-scale deficit spending.

The other vision rests on the opposite assumption: the firm conviction that individuals have sovereign rights and responsibilities to control their actions and their fate.

This vision holds that the private sector, not government, is the source of innovation, competition, growth and jobs. It holds that economic conditions will not improve until we take affirmative, deliberate steps to restrict Congress’s borrowing and spending practices.

Federal spending and government interference has so run amok that such steps must include a constitutional amendment requiring Congress to balance its budget and spend no more than a fixed percentage of gross domestic product.

Proponents of each vision can be found in both political parties.

The first approach has become familiar to us over many decades; many prefer it for that very reason. For incumbent federal office holders, this also has the added allure of protecting Washington’s existing power structure. Members of Congress are more powerful when they can borrow and spend unlimited sums of money — and therefore have a built-in reason to prefer the status quo.

The second approach, in contrast, would significantly limit the power wielded by each member of Congress and otherwise upset the status quo. Americans either love it or hate it for that very reason.

Most love it. According to a recent CNN poll....  Read More:  Politico.com

Thomas Jefferson taught, “He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.”

As Patriotic Moms, one of the important ways we teach our children is to help them recognize “falsehood and errors” that are taught in the public education system and in the media.

For example, I grew up being taught that the United States of America is a democracy.  Very few teachers talked about our country being a republic and what that means.  And many times teachers spoke of the “political spectrum” with “communism on the left and fascism on the right.”  These, and other teachings, are unhelpful or untrue, and contradict principles of liberty and good government.

The following 10 minute video helps dispel a few of the myths about government that many of us were taught as we were growing up.  It explains:

• Why law is necessary for freedom.
  
• How people who seek power often use anarchy to gain control.
  
• Why Madison called democracies “spectacles of turbulence and contention.”
  
• How republics preserve life and liberty.
  
• Why limited government allows people to produce and prosper.
  
• Why “the essence of freedom is the proper limitation of government.”