We conservatives spend much time bemoaning the extent to which the “nanny” state is impairing our liberties and taking the place of parents, but when you talk to teachers at inner-city or poor rural school districts, they often say that the nanny state is taking the place of . . . well, nothing at all. Our fatherless kids are being fed breakfast, lunch, and sometimes now even a school dinner, and why not ban Happy Meals if there’s no competent parent around to say “no”? In fact, much of the apparatus of state entitlement is built around the presumption that citizens should enjoy a certain standard of living regardless of their personal choices and conduct. …

So faced with rising illegitimacy and the resulting intractable poverty (the “stickiness” at the bottom of the income ladder isn’t due to greedy bankers — sorry #Occupy — but to shattered families), do we begin to roll back the “reforms” that facilitate the revolution that is bankrupting us? By no means. Our government pushes forward, full speed ahead, separating sex even further from marriage, separating marriage from procreation, and throwing trillions of dollars at the inevitable (and tragic) cultural consequences.