In the U.K., this is how far gone the Conservative Party is, due to creeping socialism’s effect on the cultural whole: a piece in The Telegraph is titled “Conservatives promise 30 hours of free childcare as David Cameron launches manifesto for working families”.
A turning point in my own transition from hard leftist to conservative was during the Bush v. Gore debates of 2000. As a platform position, Gore posited something similar: government-funded daycare of some degree.
At first glance, and with one’s initial emotional reaction, it ‘sounded’ like a good idea.
It was a watershed moment in my own life, however, an epiphany of sorts, when I realized what an unintended consequence of such a policy might be. Today, there are some couples who batton down the hatches and forsake one of their incomes, so that they might save on daycare expenses and allow Junior to be raised by a biological parent rather than a daycare center employee. Such a sacrifice, while having a financial cost, nonetheless serves to shore up the prospects of child being brought up by the child’s actual parents.
Yet a Gore-type policy would immediately render the financial trade-offs for such a sacrifice untenable. The same couple’s decision to sacrifice one income would immediately become financially untenable.
As a result, society would be one more giant step closer to government dependency, literally from cradle to grave.
And now David Cameron is promising the same.
