Coach Dale Brown’s recent article about Louisiana’s disgraceful ratings as the “worst state in the country” and his call for “immediate and massive action” before we implode from within was right on target. So this begs the question — what does “massive action” look like?
Before one can fix a problem, he must first properly define the problem. Louisiana and America’s primary problem can be defined simply as the “Disintegration of the Family Unit.” If it is not fixed soon, our country will indeed implode from within. Consider the following facts:
— We now have a government that pays its citizens in a manner that promotes having children out of wedlock, not working, and buying opioids.
— Our political leaders have promoted the removal of God from our schools and markets.
— Over the last 50 years we have seen (1) out-of-wedlock childbirths increase from 24 percent to 73 percent for black mothers, and from 8 percent to 39 percent for other mothers; (2) the number of “prime-age” men working drop from 95 percent to 85 percent.
— Sowell, the famous African-American economist/professor, stated that “a vastly expanded welfare state in the 1960s destroyed the black family — in 1960 only 22 percent of black children were raised with only one parent; by 1985, 67 percent of black children were raised with either one parent or no parent — kids from homes where they are not given behavioral standards, who are then not held to behavioral standards in schools, are on a path that can lead them straight into prison or fatal confrontations with the police...”
— With the decimation of the family unit and the removal of God has come the erosion of moral values, exploding drug addiction, unemployment, social chaos in disadvantaged neighborhoods (think Ferguson, Baltimore, Dallas, New Orleans and Baton Rouge), and now even 8,000 plus expulsions of pre-K through third grade Louisiana students as there is no respect for authority!
— There is now significant research that shows there is a correlation between the breakdown of the traditional family unit and poverty – and even opioid overdose deaths; for example, in 2015 males who had never been married or were divorced accounted for 71 percent of all opioid overdose deaths – and most of them did not have over a high school education.
— In a 2016 New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu gave a major address on violence in New Orleans and said there were no solutions “since it was intractably tied to broken families and disintegrated social structures.”
— Retired military officers spoke recently at the State Capitol to point out that 75 percent of Louisiana’s young adults can’t qualify for military service because of educational deficiencies, or their too fat, or they have criminal records and substance abuse issues;
— State Rep. Patricia Smith just announced that she is going to sponsor a bill that would let convicted criminals and option to stay at home instead of going to prison if they are the primary caregivers — allowing them to take care of their kids so that they don’t have mental health and behavioral issues.
What is the solution to this problem? Perhaps our good friend Thomas Sowell said it best — “As long as millions of Americans vote on the basis of who gives them free stuff, look for their freedom to be eroded away, bit by bit.” Since our political leaders will never fix Washington, it is now up to “We The People” to fix this mess by using what our Founding Fathers gave us – Article V of the U.S. Constitution. I recommend you look up conventionofstates.com to learn more about this “massive action plan.”
As Ronald Reagan warned us, “freedom is never more than a generation from extinction!”
Steve Gardes is a certified public accountant (CPA) and certified valuation analyst (CVA) with over 40 years of public accounting experience.
