Mark Steyn, Please Call Your Office

German birth rates continue to fall.

For Germany, the figures are the warning signs of a demographic time bomb in a fast-graying society. The number of children under the age of 18 in Germany sank to 13.1 million in 2010, down 14 percent from 2000, the German Federal Statistical Office reported Wednesday. The drop came despite considerable efforts by the German government to reverse the declining birthrate through subsidies made directly to parents and for their childcare.

Things are pretty much the same all over with regards to the benefits of prudiciousness.

Among other things, the report found that:

• Fifteen percent of children in Germany live in poverty.
• Children raised by single parents are especially at risk. About 37 percent of them are considered in danger of falling below the poverty line.
• About one-third of children with single parents are living in households that receive social welfare benefits for the long-term unemployed, or Germany's so-called "Hartz IV" benefits.

This was something I'd been saving for another blog post, but I'll ask it in short form here - knowing these stats, how can you be both progressive and libertine? How is it possible to care about the poor and yet not vigorously support objective morality?

Back to my main point. If you haven't read it, you might want to give it a try: