I agree. Family planning has failed. You blame the state. I blame families. We the public.

If the state or other institutions offers an unethical immoral easy way out who is to blame — the state? Or those who accept such temptation? Removing the temptation (as was done with liquor in the 1920s) does not change the human condition.

Families are taught by myriad modern social engineers (not just family planning) to accept and then reject products, ideas, virtue and ethics at their convenience. Convenience and expediency reign. So, using their huge frontal cortex, they rationalize: Why should it be any different in this case?

Are immoral institutions the cause of suffering and death? Or an effect of the public’s weakness and failures?

I argue the latter. It’s convenient for me to blame “the banks” for the latest economic failure. But it was the public, in their crazed rush for success, which allowed these vermin to proliferate. Banks did not force the public into unwise illegal investments. Planned Parenthood does not force individuals into unethical immoral behavior. Our beloved friend China does.

Another side is this: cultures and families, indoctrinated by other immoral institutions (Catholic church, Islam, etc.) see fit to produce failing societies and families by over-population, leaving an equitable trail of suffering and death. The unwillingness by societies, individuals and couples worldwide to accept abandoned children into their family through adoption shows a pitiful disregard for life.

If families submit themselves to either end they will fail. Within each of us is a vast pool of knowledge, skepticism and emotion — our unconscious. Turn off the frontal lobes every now and then, the area so susceptible to the salesmen of this world. The unconscious is not enslaved to family planning or any other manipulation. When institutions fail we must prove how human we really are.

Individual character and family should determine behavior, not the pressure and temptations of corrupted institutions. Freeborn County’s abysmal attempt in curbing unethical immoral behavior among its leaders and citizens is merely the effect of rampant materialism crushing responsible individual behavior. And unnecessary human suffering and death, whether in the womb or without, is its legacy.

Patrick Cunningham

Twin Lakes