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Every year since 2001, the Gallup organization has surveyed Americans regarding the moral acceptability of 19 social issues. These social issues range from birth control to extramarital affairs, from divorce to suicide and from human cloning to medical testing on animals.

Of the 19, the most morally acceptable behavior is the use of birth control, even across party lines. Largely accepted, although with less consistency across party lines, are divorce, sex between an unmarried man and woman, stem cell research, gambling, the death penalty, buying and wearing animal fur, out-of-wedlock births, homosexuality and medical testing on animals.

Coming at this list from the other direction, extramarital affairs, cloning humans, polygamy and suicide are seen by Americans as highly unacceptable. Three issues were found to be largely unacceptable: sex between teenagers, pornography and the cloning of animals. Interestingly, the most contentious social issues of the day – the two issues that divide society right down the middle – are abortion and doctor-assisted suicide.

I mentioned in a previous commentary that one author calls this new moral acceptance “utilitarian hedonism” – a fancy term to describe the growing sentiment in society that pleasure is an intrinsic moral good and a moral pursuit. Now, this isn’t a new idea. Utilitarian ethics have been around as long as selfish people and were canonized as a science into polite society nearly two centuries ago. Some of the old believers even created a calculus of pleasure and pain intended to identify, measure and weigh nearly every human action to maximize pleasure and reduce pain.

This all gets rather silly. But there is a growing fascination with pleasure as a political credo. The Gallup poll attempts to measure the degree to which modern Americans accept behavior that gives pleasure and reject behavior that gives pain. Again, the most morally acceptable behavior in the Gallup survey is the use of birth control. While civil libertarians like to get misty eyed about the right to control one’s own body, in this other context, birth control is more about pain relief. Unsupported unwed mothers are viewed as a stain on a progressive society, especially in an age of inexpensive and widely available birth control.

Polygamy also is viewed as harming woman and children but it doesn’t have a pill to make it go away. Its only prescription is legal prohibition on the conduct. Public opinion behind each of the 19 categories in the Gallup survey is highly predictive in terms of pleasure and pain.

Up until recently, most people haven’t viewed morality in relative terms, let alone as a calculus. Most Americans are people of faith who tend to see the world as a whole and not in pieces. Indeed, many people connect all of these issues. If you have a problem with extramarital affairs, you should have some problem with sex outside of marriage and homosexuality. If you frown upon suicide and abortion, you would think that the death penalty wouldn’t be so popular either.

Pleasure and pain morality, I think, feels easy for people increasingly confused by progressive times. The harder morality always has come from the Bible. It argues that life should be infused with meaning, dignity and potential and our job is to discern those deeper meanings. We, conservatives, often stress in our political philosophy what it means to be a human being – and once you’ve acquired that meaning it’s pretty tough to separate these social issues.

 

I got my first job when I was 15 years old loading groceries into cars at one of the nation’s first membership stores in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. I made $2.15 an hour that, for a 15 year old in 1973, was nothing to sneeze at. After a while I got a ten-cent raise and was promoted to work inside the store in its warehouse.

I remember vividly the day that the union representative from the retail workers’ union stopped by to sign me up. He explained all of the benefits to joining the union. I knew how hard I worked and I recall asking him how much the guy pushing the broom all day was paid hourly. The union rep told me proudly, “He makes the same as you! That’s the strength of our union!” I told him I didn’t want any part of an organization that would pay that guy the same as me. We did different work. Furthermore, I did more work than the other guy and I expected to be paid more. I didn’t have anything against unions – how could I, I was 15 years old? – but I had a strong sense of self-interest.

The minimum wage has long been the sweetheart of unions and progressives alike. In 1973, the minimum wage was $1.60 – a point the union rep was sure to highlight when I was making $2.15 under union rule. But the same rules that paid me higher than minimum wage also kept me from making more if I worked harder and produced more.

Today, the minimum wage is $7.25 and the Obama administration is pushing for an even ten dollars or higher. Last February, around 100 employees of McDonald’s demonstrated and were arrested outside of its corporate headquarters for demanding $15 an hour. There is something hypnotic about the minimum wage for many people.

Minimum wage jobs are typically service sector jobs such as in restaurants and department stores and those businesses face certain realities. One reality is that service industries are extremely competitive and have tight profit margins. Increasing the minimum wage creates pressure on these industries to raise prices and that’s not always a competitive proposition.

Minimum wage increases put upward pressure on all wages – a fact not missed by unions whose members typically make higher than minimum wage. And there are lost jobs involved. When wages are artificially increased on an industry, that industry will adjust naturally to an employment equilibrium that makes sense for it. It has X amount of dollars for wages and if wages are forced higher, jobs will be reduced. Ironically for progressives, the jobs that are usually dropped first hit the poorest people.

Henry Ford established a living wage in his heyday. Ford would pay married men with families more than his single workers because he saw them as more dependable and harder working on the whole. But that was in the early 20th century when culture and personal values upheld the concept of supporting a family on one breadwinner’s wage, helping to keep the family intact and healthy. With the disintegration of families, these wage disparities (even if justified) are no longer possible. The progressive answer is the minimum wage. The problem, like most circumstances derived from egalitarian thinking, is that no industry outside of Kuwait can afford to pay everyone a living wage.

My friend, Lawrence Reed, president of the Foundation for Economic Education, said it best, “You cannot make a person worth a certain amount by making it illegal to pay him less.” Increasing the minimum wage is a bad idea.

Most of the New Republican strategy hinges on the rise of Millennials into adulthood. Millennials are today’s 18 to 29 year olds. They are the highly schooled (though little educated), highly opinionated Obama supporters still living in their parents’ basement. They blame their economic woes on George Bush instead of their worthless, taxpayer-funded art history degrees or their endless attempts to turn skateboarding into a career. Their hope of a bright economic future rides on school loan forgiveness programs.

Can you see what easy prey Millennials are for savvy political operatives? Just bait the hook – tell these permanent adolescents that they’re America’s future; tell them their voice matters; tell them their ideal of a tolerant world demands respect; tell them their child-like construct of a world without war is visionary; tell them their generation’s technological savvy trumps their parents’ admirable work ethic; tell them Comic Con is worth quitting their job to attend – and Millennials will vote for you in droves.

That seems to be the strategy of the New Republicans – and it makes sense to them because they are largely libertarian-minded like the Millennials they seek to win over. So instead of fighting against outrageous Big Government schemes, New Republicans look to the low hanging fruit dangling for Millennials: “gay rights,” pot smoking and privacy issues. It’s a failed strategy if freedom is your goal.

So I have a challenge for Utah’s libertarian-minded community leaders, in behalf of their misled and wandering Millennial offspring: Set aside your myopic politics and join conservatives in prudently addressing the real evils of the day. Use your deep commitment to fairness and democratic processes to stop self-appointed elitists in their tracks.

After the defeat of Bob Bennett and its failure to gain traction in Utah’s unique caucus and convention system, Utah’s Moderate Establishment wants its political power back. It will feign righteous motives and demonize its enemies but all it wants is its own greedy hand on the ship of state to spread legal plunder to its friends.

Libertarian-minded citizens need to understand that the real threat to freedom in Utah isn’t conservatives who oppose unconditional adulthood. The real threat comes from Utah’s Moderate Establishment. Utah’s responsible libertarians should be protecting their Millennial offspring from conniving old businessmen, not wasting their time defending childish behavior in principle.

Utah’s libertarian-minded community leaders need to prioritize. You are losing your Millennial base to conniving old businessmen in principle. The more time you spend arguing over Utah’s liquor laws, the less time you have to fight against a culture of corruption in a pay-to-play world of politics. The more time you spend arguing for legalizing pot, the less time you have to argue against Count My Vote. Your principles are meaningless in a war that consistently passes you by.

In an age of savage attacks on federalism, in the age of Obamacare, in a deep culture of corruption inside this state and the threat of Utah’s Moderate Establishment to regain its stranglehold on state politics – Utah’s libertarian-minded community leaders need to salvage what’s left of their Millennial base, focus priorities on things that truly matter, humble yourselves and quit tilting at windmills.

I actually do have libertarian-minded friends – successful entrepreneurs, good citizens and great parents – who nonetheless have let cynicism diminish their political influence. It’s time for these friends to get back into the arena and to fight the good fight against the so-called “moderate” forces of entitlement, privilege and corruption.

I’m following with interest the criticisms being directed at United States Senator Marco Rubio. Rubio is a conservative Republican from Florida who defeated an establishment Republican incumbent in 2010. Back then, candidate Rubio was an “enforcement-first” backer of immigration reform. Today, Senator Rubio argues that efforts to legalize undocumented immigrants already living in the United States have to precede any other component of immigration reform.

Talking to Sean Hannity, Rubio explained why enforcement-first wouldn’t work, he said,

That was my position: Let’s do the fence first and then let’s worry about it. Here is the problem and why I kind of felt that the other way may be better. The 11 million that are here now illegally, we want to know who they are as soon as possible. We don’t want that number to become 12, 13, 14. Because we cut this off, we say you had to have been here by December of 2011. You have to be able to prove that you were here by December of 2011. Well, I don’t want this word to get out that once [we] are done securing the border, then [we] are going to legalize people, because then you will have a rush.

For his opinion Rubio has been castigated from The Heritage Foundation in D.C. to the caucuses of Iowa as a supporter of amnesty for his work to pass the Senate immigration bill. I can relate. When Sutherland Institute came out in favor of state-based comprehensive immigration reform for Utah, I was called just about every name in the book and, mostly, my conservative credentials were questioned.

I have to admit: I haven’t read the 1,000-plus-page immigration bill. Having worked in Congress I can tell you that a 1,000 page bill about anything probably has 999 pages of nefarious substance and one page of good. Sometimes the one page of good outweighs the other 999 pages of bad.

A big problem requires big ideas and, from all that I can tell, the senate immigration bill is trying to address some huge problems. I agree with Senator Rubio: legalization of the millions of undocumented immigrants already living in our country should be the priority. As I argued here in Utah, only first by pushing undocumented immigrants to the surface of society can we ever hope to get a handle on the illegalities associated within the shadows of immigration.

As conservatives, we should oppose massive efforts to militarize our southern border. We do not support a police state. That border needs more reinforcement than anything border patrol, the National Guard, or even our federal military can throw at it – it needs a healthy economy in Mexico and diplomatic relations that aggressively work with Mexico to return its economy to a free market (especially free of its drug cartels). I often wonder why self-avowed conservatives prefer a police state build-up to alternative ideas that actually advance freedom?

I’m not a big supporter of a pathway to citizenship as an ideological cause. I believe that future citizenship is a function of current legalization and possible only after newly legalized immigrants have proven themselves worthy. But who knows? Maybe legalized immigrants might actually increase the standard of citizenship we citizens have seemed to abdicate in the age of Obama? The process is worth the risks, in my opinion.