The American public education system is failing many groups, but none more miserably than black males. The numbers are shocking. The Schott Foundation recently reported that only 47 percent of black males graduate from high school on time, compared to 78 percent of white male students. This revelation is beyond disturbing because it exposes the fact that many public schools serve as major catalysts for the desolation of unemployment and incarceration that lies in many black boys’ future.

In many places the disparity between whites and blacks is nearly unbelievable. In Nebraska, for example, the white/black graduation gap is 83 percent compared with 40 percent and in New York 68 percent compared with 25 percent. The way urban city school districts fail black males is more disconcerting considering that black professionals are in charge. Urban districts are among the worst at graduating black males: Atlanta, 34 percent; Baltimore, 35 percent; Philadelphia, 28 percent; New York, 28 percent; Detroit, 27 percent; and St. Louis, 38 percent.

There are surely many reasons for such failure, and family breakdown must rank high among them. Schools may be powerless to transform black family life, but they should not be left off the hook for turning in a dismal performance. In a recent interview, Dr. Steve Perry, principal and founder of Capital Preparatory Magnet School in Hartford, Conn., repeatedly places the blame for the black achievement gap at the feet of the partnerships between the teachers unions and the NAACP, “a civil-rights relic.” The places where black students excel, says Perry, are those where students have access to choice. Sadly the NAACP and the NEA have long undermined the push for low-income black parents to exercise freedom to choose the best schools as a national norm.

For example, even with mounting evidence demonstrating that single-sex education for blacks males from low-income households represents one of the best opportunities for graduation, the NEA petitioned the Department of Education in 2004 to prevent single-sex options from becoming nationally normative, balking because “the creation of an artificial single-sex environment [will] ill prepare students for life in the real world.” What? The Eagle Academy for Young Men, a charter school in the Bronx comprised of primarily black and Latino students, the first all-male public school in New York City in 30 years, boasts a high school graduation rate of 82 percent. This summer, Chicago’s Urban Prep Charter Academy, with a 100 percent graduation rate, graduated a class of 107 black male students all of whom are attending college in the fall.

The NEA exists, it seems, only to overfund failed systems and the non-performance-based salaries of adults at the expense of black students. Nothing prepares black males for life in the real world like graduating from high school and attending college, yet the NEA consistently lobbies against parent choices that lead to black male success.

Civil-rights groups including the NAACP, the National Urban League, Rainbow PUSH Coalition, recently released a joint statement objecting to the Obama administration’s education reform proposal, which includes the closing schools of failing schools, increasing use of charter schools, and other commonsensical moves toward choice and accountability in education. These groups reject Obama’s so-called “extensive reliance on charter schools,” expressing dismay about “the overrepresentation of charter schools in low-income and predominantly minority communities.”

Even though there is overwhelming evidence supporting the success of charter schools for children from low-income households, the civil-rights groups resist the opportunity for parents to exercise freedom to choose those schools. Perry highlights the cost of such blindness, observing “that our nation’s urban public schools have prepared more children for poverty, the penitentiary, and premature pregnancy than they did for college.”

Even though charter schools, vouchers, and tax-credit programs reflect some progress, black parents need brand new and creative options that empower parents with absolute freedom to choose the best schools. In addition to school closings and faith-based options, “mass firings” like the ones in Washington, D.C., “home schools,” and other bold and innovative measures, are all important components of rescuing black males from the betrayal of teachers unions and civil-rights groups that refuse to acknowledge the dignity of low-income parents by blunting their right to choose what is best for their children. As long as teachers unions have influence in the black community and in institutions pledged to black empowerment, and black parents are not financially empowered to opt out of failing public schools, black males are doomed.

“A Thin Line” rolled out the same week MTV and The Associated Press released a report citing the full scope of digital abuse by teens and young adults. According to the study, 50 percent of 14-to-24-year-olds have been the target of some form of digital abuse, 30 percent have sent or received nude photos of other young people on their cell phones or online and 12 percent of those who have sexted have contemplated suicide, a rate four times higher than that found among those who have refrained.

During the program launch Stephen Friedman, general manager of MTV, says "there is a very thin line between private and public, this moment and forever, love and abuse, and words and wounds. ‘A Thin Line’ is built to empower our audience to draw their own line between digital use and digital abuse."

While it helpfully encourages teens to report abuse, MTV seems incapable of getting to the root of the problem: namely, the cultivation of prudence that orients a teen’s choices at the outset. Empowering an audience of teenagers is futile if teens are not encouraged to tap the wisdom of their parents.

Soliciting parental wisdom regarding appropriate cell-phone usage, accountability, and navigating the social morass of adolescence is a key to teens’ proper development. It is a parent’s joy and calling to do their best to instill moral wisdom and protect their children from evil. Sexting, bullying, and neurotic text messaging in dating relationships will remain a problem as long as teens are not aspiring to love what is good in community. The primary place where children are nurtured to this end is the family.

Parents themselves need to be encouraged to fulfill this responsibility. Many parents care more about their children’s financial success than they do about their character and integrity. Dr. Madeline Levine, author of The Price of Privilege, laments that while many teens are academically successful and materially comfortable they lack moral agency and the “ability to act appropriately in one’s best interest.” By promoting parents merely as a place to report abuse after the fact, MTV is missing a huge opportunity to enrich the public good.

MTV should do three things. First, do all it can to empower its audience to involve parents before abuse starts instead of after the fact. MTV could do more to promote the virtues of healthy family life in its programming.

Second, cease the glorification of careless sexuality and interpersonal conflict by canceling shows celebrating the thin line between “love and abuse, and words and wounds.” Programs like “Jersey Shore,” “The Real World,” “The Hills,” and “My Super Sweet 16,” glamorize greed, envy, strife, deceit, malice, gossip, slander, and arrogance. MTV’s left hand profits from “thin line” programming while the right hand now condemns its own broadcasting ethos.

Third, MTV needs subversive innovation in order to broaden its partnerships. MTV’s current partners include Facebook, MySpace, LoveIsRespect.org, and others, but cell-phone practices are moral issues requiring the insights of religious wisdom. Interpersonal ethics is an area begging for the time-tested expertise of our religious communities and to ignore those institutions is to ignore the core foundations of civil society.

“A Thin Line” represents a new opportunity for MTV to demonstrate radical progressiveness. Instead, courageous moral leadership is traded off for band-aid solutions concerned only with consequences. Progressive institutions address real issues at their root causes. To be serious about confronting abuse, MTV needs to look in the mirror, and cooperate with rather than undermine the adults who are trying to impart the message of human dignity to the next generation.

Here’s why. Notwithstanding their rhetoric of freedom and empowerment, many prominent black leaders appear content to send blacks back to the government plantation—where a small number of Washington elites make decisions for blacks who aren’t in the room. Why do minority leaders not favor alternatives that demonstrate faith in the intelligence and dignity of people to manage their own lives?

In a sermon at Howard University, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright reminded university students that, “Racism is alive and well. Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run.” During the presidential campaign, Wright explained to his parishioners that America is “a country and culture controlled by rich white people.” But if racists and “rich white people” control America, why do those sympathetic to Wright assume that those same people will look out for the health of blacks?

If Princeton religion professor Cornel West was right in his 2008 book, Hope on a Tight Rope, that “the very discovery that black people are human beings is a new one,” then shouldn’t blacks raise questions about centralizing health care decisions in a bureaucracy peopled by officials who are only recently cognizant of minorities’ humanity? “White brothers and sisters have been shaped by 244 years of white supremacist slavery, 87 years of white supremacist Jim and Jane Crow, and then another 40 years in which progress has been made” but “the stereotypes still cut deep,” West wrote. He admits “relative progress for a significant number of black people,” but warns that there has not been “some kind of fundamental transformation” in America. Dr. West asserts that “white supremacy is married to capitalism.” If that is true, then why would we want to set up a health-care system that strengthens the government sanction of health-care provision by businesses?

If Georgetown University sociology professor Michael Eric Dyson is correct about the current racial and structural injustice impeding poor blacks, then there is cause for concern. In response to Bill Cosby’s “conservative” reflections on black America in 2006, the Rev. Dr. Dyson wrote, “Cosby is hell bent on denying that race and structural forces play any role in the lives of the poor.” He continued by saying, “The plane of black progress lifts on the wings of personal responsibility and social justice.” If race and structural forces are at work against blacks, why not promote personal responsibility and justice by liberating them from dependence on those structures and putting them in a position to call their own shots?

If CNN analyst Roland Martin was right on February 18, 2009, when he said, “while everyone seems to be caught up in the delusion of a post-racial America, we cannot forget the reality of the racial America, where African-Americans were treated and portrayed as inferior and less than others,” then shouldn’t blacks be concerned about centralized health care, which will tether them ever more securely to a fundamentally corrupt political system? We cannot hope for change, after all: Martin insists that “the realities of race” are “being played out in our communities each day,” and had earlier reminded us that when it comes to white racism blacks should “accept the fact that some people will not change” (September 10, 2008).

Many black leaders seem confused on this point. If America has a race problem, then it will manifest itself in both public and private sectors. Expanding Medicare and Medicaid only subjects poor blacks to more government control. Economic empowerment and returning health decisions to black people are the only way to eradicate concerns about structural injustice. When health-care providers compete for their patronage, blacks are empowered and control their own destinies. Economic freedom in health care is a moral and civil-rights issue because for too long blacks have suffered the indignity of having political structures make surrogate decisions about their bodies.

Black leaders should encourage policymakers to make health more affordable by giving individuals absolute control over their earnings with concomitant power to choose their own health plan. Instead, they are conspiring with Congress to lead us back to the plantation.

High school dropouts cost the nation severely. Not only are American taxpayers getting no return on the $8,701 we spend on average per student, each dropout costs us $292,000 over their lifetime in lost earnings, lower taxes paid, and higher spending for social programs like incarceration, health care, and welfare.

Given the many social pathologies plaguing black males in low-income and fatherless households, the best place for at-risk black males is not the dominant failed public school paradigm. Since public schools are forbidden to teach virtue and often reduce children to receptacles of information, expanding private and faith-based options to black parents is the only compelling solution.

The Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted), England’s chief education inspection agency, recently released a report lauding the attributes of faith schools. The report, “Independent Faith Schools,” examined the quality of formation provided by Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist and Hindu religious schools. The inspectors found “pupils demonstrating an excellent understanding of spiritual and moral attributes.” In all the schools visited, “pupils gained a strong sense of identity and of belonging to their faith, their school and to Britain.” In other words, faith-based schools, by simply teaching about religion, are forming their students to be virtuous citizens.

Has America given up on making virtuous citizens out of black males? In England’s faith schools, “good citizenship was considered by all the schools visited to be the duty of a good believer because this honoured the faith,” the report says. In contrast, American public schools have become prisoner factories for at-risk black males. Because producing educated, virtuous citizens is unrelated to funding, the problem cannot be addressed by the simplistic expedient of increasing government allocations to education. The deeper problem is that the American education system seems no longer to value what faith schools in England are recognized for: producing students with good “spiritual, moral, social and cultural understanding.”

Even in the public sector, blacks are realizing that the current model fails black males. Kentucky State University President Mary Sias says the university is trying to find funding to open a boarding school for black male youth to get them into college. The Eagle Academy for Young Men, a charter school in the Bronx, is the first all-male public school in New York City in 30 years. Eagle Academy has a high school graduation rate of 82 percent, compared with approximately 51.4 percent of black and 48.7 percent of Hispanic students graduating from high schools citywide. This may explain why Eagle Academy had 1,200 applications for this year’s ninth-grade class of 80 students.

Why do the education elites want to keep at-risk black males in schools that dump them in the streets or jail? Why is America content with the lie that funding is the problem? The District of Columbia spends $12,979 per student and has a black male graduation rate of 55 percent compared to 84 percent for whites. Illinois spends over $8,000 per students with a black male graduation rate of 41 percent compared to 82 percent for whites. When are black parents going to be emancipated from the government telling them what to do with their children?

Americans cannot afford, financially or morally, to trap black males in criminal cultivators masquerading as schools. Even though charter schools, vouchers, and tax-credit programs reflect some progress, black parents need radical new options that empower them with absolute freedom to choose the best schools. While every at-risk black male does not have access to good faith-based opportunities, the only hope for liberating young black males to actualize their potential to be productive participants in a global economy and virtuous citizens of a healthy nation is to free black parents from the tyranny of government bureaucrats. Black America needs a “Freedom of Choice” movement.

The American Religious Identification Survey, published by Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., reports that we should expect one in five Americans to identify themselves as having no religious commitments by 2030. The study, titled “American Nones: The Profile of the No Religion Population,” reports that Americans professing no religion, or Nones, have become more mainstream and similar to the general public in marital status, education, racial and ethnic makeup and income. The Nones have increased from 8.1 percent of the U.S. adult population in 1990 to 15 percent in 2008.

According to the study, 22 percent of American 18 to 29-year-olds now self-identify as Nones. For those promoting dependency on government to handle the challenges of everyday life, as well as those who wish to take advantage of a growing market for morally bankrupt products and services, the news of declining religious life is welcome.

The increase in non-religious identification among younger generations highlights a continued shift away from active participation in one of the key social institutions that shaped this country. It may also come as no surprise, then, that according to the research firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, voters under 30 are more liberal than all other generations. When asked about their ideology, 27 percent of those under 30 identify themselves as liberal, compared to 19 percent of baby boomers, and 17 percent of seniors. Pragmatic utilitarianism, favorable views toward a larger role for government in helping the disadvantaged, and a lack of ethical norms characterize this young segment America’s population.

The most significant difference between the religious and non-religious populations is gender. Whereas 19 percent of American men are Nones only 12 percent of American women are. The gender ratio among Nones is 60 males for every 40 females.

The marketplace and society in general will both reap the consequences of high numbers of male Nones. If more and more men are abandoning the religious communities that have provided solid moral formation for thousands of years, we should not be surprised by an increase in the explosion of demand for morally reprehensible products as well as the family breakdown that follows closely behind. With consciences formed by utility, pragmatism, and sensuality, instead of virtue, we should expect to find a culture with even more women subjected to the dehumanization of strip clubs, more misogynistic rap music, more adultery and divorce, more broken sexuality, more fatherlessness, more corruption in government and business, more individualism, and more loneliness.

Alexis de Tocqueville cautioned in his 1835 reflections on Democracy in America, that the pursuit of liberty without religion hurts society because it “tends to isolate [people] from one another, to concentrate every man’s attention upon himself; and it lays open the soul to an inordinate love of material gratification.” In fact, Tocqueville says, “the main business of religions is to purify, control, and restrain that excessive and exclusive taste for well-being which men acquire in times of equality.” Religion makes us other-regarding.

Historically, religious communities in the United States addressed the needs of local communities in way that were clearly outside the scope of government. For example, as David G. Dalin writes in “The Jewish War on Poverty,” between the 1820s and the Civil War, Jews laid the foundation for many charitable institutions outside the synagogue including a network of orphanages, fraternal lodges, hospitals, retirement homes, settlement houses, free-loan associations, and vocational training schools. These were also normative activities for both Protestant and Catholic religious communities on even a larger scale in communities all over America before Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.

The reported decline in religious life is an omen that virtue-driven local charity will decline, the passion to pursue the good will wane, and Americans will look to government to guide, protect, and provide. As we turn our lives over to government control, our capacity for independent thought and action are compromised. The real “opiate of the masses,” it would seem, is not religion but the lack of it.

According to the Environmental Workers Group, corn subsidies in the United States totaled $56.2 billion from 1995-2006. This government intervention has encouraged the widespread use of corn syrup as a sweetener in many manufactured foods. Yet many of the unhealthiest foods are those with the highest levels of high-fructose corn syrup. In effect, government subsidies have made unhealthy foods extremely cheap to produce. Corn syrup is now found in an unbelievable number of products ranging from salad dressing to hot dogs.

Government policy-makers regularly prove themselves to be unwise decision-makers by continuing to introduce arbitrary agricultural price distortions that create incentives for producing unhealthy food through farm subsidies. Perhaps the most effective national health care initiative moving forward would be allowing markets to function so that people can make better food choices.

We cannot be good stewards of our bodies or nature if we do not have accurate information. Prices help to convey that information. For example, what would happen if the market determined actual corn prices? Not subsidizing corn would cause a needed price correction. Perhaps our hamburger value-meals would adjust in price creating disincentives to eat fast-food. Without corn and other agricultural subsidies, maybe the price of meat would adjust to a point encouraging different choices benefiting us all in the long-run. Maybe, for example, eating a 72-once steak at the Big Texan restaurant in Amarillo, Texas would be too expensive to consider.

While individuals are ultimately responsible to exercise good stewardship in choosing what and how much to eat, incentives can be distorted by government meddling in the market. Dr. Barry Sears, author of Toxic Fat: When Good Fat Turns Bad, argues, “The problem lies with America’s continually subsidizing of corn and soybean production.” Government subsidies generate “an oversupply of cheap refined carbohydrates and cheap vegetable oils that when combined give rise to increased diet-induced inflammation.” This inflammation in turn “activates the genes in people who are genetically predisposed to gain weight with relative ease,” giving rise to all the health problems connected to excessive weight. Medical spending for obesity is estimated to have reached $147 billion in 2008, an 87 percent increase in the past decade.

The August 31, 2009 issue of Time Magazine similarly noticed the corn subsidy link to America’s diet and health-care problems. The story explains why a burger, fries, and soft-drink can be cheaply purchased in most fast-food places for around $5 — “a bargain, given that the meal contains nearly 1,200 calories, more than half the daily recommended requirement for adults,” writes Bryan Walsh. Notably, the $100-billion fast food industry and the $23 billion snack food industry are built on corn subsidized by tax-payers. Is it any wonder that these foods tend to saturate lower-income neighborhoods?

Thanks in part to government policy-makers, unhealthy food is cheap and the cost of treating diet-related medical problems is exploding. There is general consensus that a healthier American diet would lead to better overall health and reduce healthcare costs.

The bottom line is this: if we want a healthier America, government should no longer subsidize farmers one penny, leaving the market free to give us the information we need to make good decisions. The Obama administration and Congress would do the country an enormous favor if it stopped asking us to assist the production of food that contributes to poor nutrition. This would be real progress toward better stewardship of our bodies, and better health.

The African Development Bank (AfDB) Group’s Chief Economist, Louis Kasekende, says that the Natural Resource Charter will help governments and societies rich in natural resources to manage such assets in a way that generates economic growth and promotes the people’s welfare. Kasekende expressed these views on May 13 in Dakar, in reference to a presentation on the Natural Resource Charter during the AfDB’s annual meeting.

Unlike many other development initiatives in Africa, the Resource Charter reminds us that additional actors are necessary for long-term sustainable growth, including “international companies, intergovernmental organizations, civil society groups, and the governments of resource-importing states.” These “all have roles which affect the ability of societies to harness their endowments.” Yet the focus rightly remains on “ the governments of resource-rich countries themselves, since they have both the sovereign right, and the moral responsibility, to use the country’s natural wealth for the benefit of their people.”

The first principle of the Resource Charter is that “the development of natural resources should be designed to secure the maximum benefit for the citizens of the host country within the framework of its long-term development goals.” The Charter provides 11 other precepts ranging from increased entrepreneurial competition to public spending priorities.

Even with a few questionable directives for government, the Charter is far superior to the economically naive Millennium Development Goals proffered by the World Bank and the United Nations, which contain no plans to create wealth in order to “end poverty.” The Charter is also superior to the approach of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which would also rather “reduce” poverty than create sustainable, wealth-generating economies in Africa. The IMF continues to operate under the misguided assumption that “greater progress toward meeting global poverty goals in Africa by 2015 will require further increases in government spending on critical public services.”

What many of these organizations are now only beginning to understand is that many countries in Africa will escape poverty only if quality leaders are elected to positions of service. Entrepreneurial opportunities, the enforcement of property rights, the adjudication of conflicts, controlling violence, and terminating corruption are necessary aspects of an environment that will allow many African countries to develop out of poverty and remain vibrant. More importantly, these pillars of reform require certain moral values to truly flourish; in virtue’s absence the same system can serve to create new moral dilemmas. The recognition of human limitations in structural reform matter.

For example, even though Nigeria is a democracy with many free-market principles, corruption rules the day and drags everyone else down with it. Halliburton, a U.S. construction firm, was said to have given $180 million in bribes to top Nigerian politicians and government officials, including those of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), to win the contract for the construction of a liquefied natural gas plant.

In February, Halliburton agreed to pay $579 million to settle charges with the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice over bribes KBR, a former Halliburton subsidiary, paid to win $6 billion in oil contracts from Nigerian officials. The bribe, in which three former Nigerian presidents were also said to have benefited, allegedly spanned the period from 1995, when the contract was awarded, to 2004 and possibly beyond. What is needed, then, are markets and governance that also value character and integrity.

The National Resource Charter could find a stronger voice on personal morality. But it is a definite step in the right direction, and one that many developing economies and international aid organizations should consider in the process of rethinking what is culturally and economically sustainable.

According to the study, U.S. entrepreneurship rates increased for lowest-income-potential and middle-income-potential types of businesses from 2007 to 2008 but decreased for the highest-income-potential types of businesses. In other words, the highest growth rates were among necessity-inspired everyday Americans. The entrepreneurial spirit embedded in all human persons has been stirred in women and men at all levels of society.

The oldest age group—ages 55 to 64—experienced a big increase in business-creation rates from 2007 to 2008 and, as a result, has the highest level of business creation at 0.36 percent. Among immigrants, entrepreneurial activity rates increased sharply in 2008 from 0.46 percent in 2007 to 0.53 percent in 2008, further widening the gap between immigrant and native-born rates. Even within the field of high-income type enterprises, immigrants remain more likely than U.S. natives to start businesses.

Continuing an upward trend that began in 2005, Latino entrepreneurial activity rates increased from 0.40 percent in 2007 to 0.48 percent in 2008. During the thirteen years of the study, Latinos have had the overall highest percentage increase in entrepreneurial activity: from 0.33 percent in 1996 to 0.48 percent in 2008.

Among Asian-Americans, entrepreneurial activity also increased substantially, from 0.29 percent in 2007 to 0.35 percent in 2008. The study concludes by noting that white business-creation rates increased slightly, while African-American rates slightly declined.

Looking at gender, women are experiencing faster growth in their rate of entrepreneurial activity than men. From 2007 to 2008, men’s rate increased from 0.41 percent to 0.42 percent, while women’s climbed from 0.20 percent to 0.24. Geographically, the states with the highest 2008 entrepreneurial activity rates were Georgia (with Atlanta leading among large cities), New Mexico, Montana, Arizona, Alaska and California. The states with the lowest entrepreneurial activity rates were Pennsylvania, Missouri, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Iowa and Ohio.

The data from the Kaufman Foundation should come as no surprise. The entrepreneurial spirit is a natural characteristic of being human. What enables free societies to recover and advance beyond poverty and economic collapse is the extent to which the entrepreneurial spirit of its citizens is liberated and protected so that real needs are freely met in the long-run. Nothing raises the standard of living for a society more than free people using their creativity to enhance the lives of their neighbors.

Championing the entrepreneurial spirit is not, however, a tacit affirmation of all enterprising activity. The best entrepreneurial effort is that what which enlivens virtue and orients society toward the good. Immoral forms of crisis-driven entrepreneurial activity undermine the character and integrity of the producer and the consumer. We have seen this recently in various scams to defraud those who are vulnerable, in the theft of private property that is then sold in international black markets, and in human trafficking and prostitution.

When individuals are truly free to exercise their talents and trade the production of their labor, without oppression from tyrants or the entanglements of unnecessary government “oversight,” the net effect is mutually beneficial for society as a whole. Robert Fairlie, professor of economics at the University of California, Santa Cruz and author of the Kaufman study, notes, “the continuing effects of the recession on business creation are important because entrepreneurs contribute to economic growth, innovation and job creation in the United States.”

There is hope for economic recovery in the United States as more and more Americans use their freedom to make contributions to the benefit of society. More broadly, there is hope that people in all nations will be afforded basic human rights, private property security, and the necessary legal protections to continue to prove that the entrepreneurial spirit is a positive force in bringing the material goods of the world to all.

High black unemployment has more to do with lags in educational attainment and skill acquisition than with racism. In tight economic seasons, employers are less able to absorb the cost of less productive labor as demand for products and services decreases. Low-skilled laborers are often among the first to be laid off and have a more difficult time finding new employment opportunities. Having few skills disproportionately affects African-American males in an American economy characterized by increasing specialization and widespread illegal immigration.

To make matters worse, black males are approaching a high school drop out rate of 50 percent. Not having basic education and a needed skill in an economy in the midst of a major correction increases the chance of unemployment. Currently, those with no high school diplomas are experiencing a 12.6 percent unemployment rate. Those with a high school diplomas or college degrees see rates at 8.3 percent and 4.1 percent, respectively.

Such figures have human faces. The experience of twenty-one year-old Jimmie Jackson is a good example of the struggles many black men without employable skills currently confront. Even with a high school diploma, Jackson hasn’t worked in three years and has no real job experience other than as a teenager in retail and fast-food industries. To make matters worse, Jackson lives in Michigan, which suffers from the highest seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in America at 12.6 percent.

Jackson says that the most difficult part about his failed three-year job search is “not getting a call back.” He notes that, as a black man, he is at an additional disadvantage because of stigmas and stereotypes. “Black men have a bad rep,” Jackson says about living in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Yet Jackson says he regrets playing into the stereotypes himself, conceding that he’s not surprised that employers shy away from a candidate who is “all tatted up.” “If I was white,” he says, “I’d be afraid to hire some black dude with tattoos all over his body too.” An additional frustration for Jackson is that he seeks to change his appearance and presentation but does not have the money to do so. “You can’t just go buy a suit if you don’t have any money.”

The bleak stories behind these unemployment numbers remind us of the hard consequences of remaining in low-skill sectors for too long, the importance of graduating from high school, and the importance of continuing education afterward. One’s chances of contributing to the common good are enhanced by pursuing such education. Encouraging success in this area depends in large measure on cultivating a virtuous culture of self-betterment, an aim frustrated by government welfare.

Sadly, because of America’s exploding government program menu, the virtue of “getting an education” has all but been eliminated in low-income black neighborhoods. Before President Lyndon Johnson’s war on poverty programs, African American parents, grandparents, pastors, teachers, and coaches emphasized to their charges—regardless of their social class—the importance of “getting an education.” Learning and training have always been stressed in black communities as a prerequisite for living better than the previous generation.

Before government promised to meet one’s every need, and because of previous experiences with the oppressive potential of government, black children regularly heard from our elders that the key to living beyond subsistence was acquiring as much education as we possibly could. A good education creates opportunities and options. It is no accident that the civil-rights movement was inaugurated with Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, the unanimous decision ruling that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional.

For young men like Jackson, currently living on “public assistance,” the incentives for self-improvement continue to be sabotaged by the promises of government programs. Jackson says that many of his friends have simply resigned themselves to nihilism: a steady life of drug use, run-ins with the police, and living on a government check. This incentive system undermines the culture of achievement that blacks successfully built in times past. Why work hard in school or work if government’s going to take care of you anyway?

Moving forward, low-income black communities need to be liberated from the prisons of government programs, recover a sense of personal dignity, and recapture the educational mores that have served as catalyst for fulfilling and productive lives.

China’s one-child policy, often enforced by coercive measures, has led to the systematic extermination of girls, a rise in child abductions, and a weakening of the Chinese family. It has created a market in human beings and decimated the traditional family-based system of old-age support. This is the fallout from government mandates that violate the freedom of people to pursue the good.

With most couples limited to one child, cultural and economic factors conspire to create a strong preference for male offspring. As a result, a market for boys has developed. Conservative estimates put the number of child abductions in China at 190 per day. Prices for stolen boys continue to rise, with levels approaching six months’ of an average worker’s wages. In 2006, 49-year-old Lin Yudi, was executed in southeastern China after she was found guilty of being part of a five-member gang involved in trafficking 31 baby boys. The New York Times’ Andrew Jacobs reported on April 5 that demand for baby boys is particularly strong in rural areas of South China. In the Fujian province, Su Qingcai, 38, recently spent $3,500 for a 5-year-old stolen boy.

Lower income parents find it difficult to get help from police to protect their children. Chinese authorities respond more faithfully to high profile cases of crimes affecting people with political connections. It is another consequence of government-planned societies that elitism is enshrined, as the police exist to protect the interests of the decision makers rather than the disempowered, regular citizen.

Article 240 of the Criminal Law of the People’s Republic of China, adopted at the Second Session of the Fifth National People’s Congress on July 1, 1979, made illegal the abducting, kidnapping, buying, trafficking in, fetching, sending, or transferring a woman or child, for the purpose of selling the victim. What is illegal is not necessarily rare. Some Chinese activists have tried to start private organizations to help rescue and protect children but the central government will not approve them. The police only have incentives to protect the interests of the few.

The market for kidnapped boys can be traced directly to China’s family planning policies, which encourage sex-selective abortion of baby girls. In 2005, The New England Journal of Medicine reported that abortion after ultrasoundnography accounts for a large proportion of the decline in female birth rates. Estimates put the number of female sex-selected abortions at 40 million, generating a combination of one of the lowest fertility rates in the world and a disproportionately high number of male births.

Brides have thus become scarce. By 2000, among rural men, 27 percent at age 40 were unmarried. This situation has created demand for other illicit markets: for kidnapping and trafficking women for marriage or sex slavery, and to staff the burgeoning commercial sex industry.

The shortage of children has also made the cost of care for the elderly an increasingly unbearable burden, according to Wang Feng, associate professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine. As the elderly population balloons, financial dependency on offspring is imperative for approximately 70 percent of older Chinese. Because married daughters usually shift their care allegiance to the husband’s family, parents fear not having male heirs to care for them as they age. If current fertility rates hold, by 2025 those 65 and over in China will be 25 percent of the population, which will create an unsustainable burden on working adults and the government welfare system.

China’s policy is another chapter in a long narrative of state intervention impinging on the freedom of the human person. Government exists to protect and cultivate the family, which is vital for a flourishing social and economic order. Parents should be free to make virtuous decisions, consistent with the dignity of marriage, about their procreative contribution to society. China’s policy uses the power of the state to violate parents’ moral consciences. This coercion has promoted abortion, fostered child trafficking, and put the elderly at risk.

China’s government should terminate all such policies. Permitting parents the freedom to pursue the goods of marriage is a basic requirement for a healthy civil society and long-term social and economic progress.