I am simply appalled at my former ignorance as a liberal. After finally, truly listening to hardcore conservatives on talk radio and pulpits both bully and clerical, and being awed by their brilliance, I started changing some of my plans for my family.

For example, so that my daughter won’t get pregnant at 17, now that I’ve decided to run for vice president someday, I was going to tell her about “the birds and the bees.” In fact, I was glad her school also would be giving her scientific, straight-talking sex education. But stupid me. I now realize that schools shouldn’t be allowed to do that, because teaching the reproductive ABC’s would only encourage promiscuity among the young. If you teach them how it’s done then they’ll want to do it. So, I stand corrected.

But my would-be 17-year-old should at least be taught about the perils of unprotected sex and that condoms are shields against sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies, right? Wrong. That, too, would only result in lots of premarital bonking. Show them what it’s for, and they’ll go do what it’s for. (I’m now glad that the celibate Catholic hierarchy has an even purer line on this: Don’t even think of using contraceptives. Sex is for having kids, not for pleasure; have sex for pleasure and you know where you’re going, buddy.) Belatedly, I learned that abstinence is really all the sex education kids need. Just don’t do it—that’s the silver bullet. Boy, how ignorant have I been?

But say my kid gets smitten with another teen, fails to control her hormones and gets knocked up, shouldn’t she at least have legal abortion as an option, in addition to giving the baby up for adoption, if she’s not ready to raise it herself? What if she doesn’t want to be a struggling teenage mom, possibly an unwed one? Wrong again, dumbo. My kid is a disgusting fornicator, do I want her to be a murderer too?

In fact, I learned that even if a woman gets pregnant from rape or incest, or if her life is in danger, she still shouldn’t be able to get an abortion. And lay off embryos —not even for stem cell research to save grownups from life-threatening illnesses. We’re talking about taking a life here, people. I now think that anyone who gets an abortion should get a prison sentence at least, and those who perform it should get the death penalty.

Okay. With babies having babies, they should at least get some sort of federally funded programs to help them a little, right? Maybe help them finish school or get jobs, counseling, childcare and the like—help them avoid a life of poverty and be good parents. That was just me thinking; but I’ve been set straight. Such government spending only encourages individual irresponsibility. They should’ve chosen abstinence and not gotten pregnant in the first place.

Besides, social spending is big government; it’s socialistic. Health care, retirement, education, transportation, affordable housing, emergency and unemployment relief—these are private needs that should be served by private enterprise. Government spending should only be for prisons (and there should be even more of them), corporate bailouts and tax cuts, wars and, of course, the military.

Look at all those poor jerks living under socialism in Scandinavia and much of Europe, including England. Sure they have free health care and higher education, state pensions, extensive public transportation, at least five weeks of vacation—so what? No one can really get rich there because they have to pay for these public services with high taxes. Only very few can become truly wealthy, or make five million a year, which is what an American expert, by experience, says qualifies as rich.

Only a handful of Europeans, if any, can own seven houses. Those poor Old Worlders have to live in subsidized urban apartments, or in tiny cottages in the picturesque countryside. No McMansions. That’s socialism for you. That’s why we like visiting Europe for vacation, to see Europeans suffering under their inferior social infrastructures.

And what’s with this liberal worship of nature? The construction industry needs wood, so log those beautiful old growth forests. Our big cars need cheap fuel, so forget the polar bears or the pristine beaches and drill, baby, drill, for offshore and tundra oil. Or invade places that have it. Global warming? I’ll be dead before this planet keels over. What me worry?

Government should stay out of people’s lives and businesses. It should be regulating moral values instead, making sure the nation remains Christian; that the young stay chaste; where only Adam and Eve can get married, not Adam and Steve, even if they love each other. People should be able to have guns of whatever caliber to shoot caribou for fun and profit and to protect themselves from “those people” who are doing all the crime. Government should protect young minds by banning insidious books from public libraries, like “The Grapes of Wrath” or “The Color Purple.”

What a new social vision I now ascribe to—a society that lets the rich be rich; where government doesn’t help the struggling; where the Christianity trumps other religions and science too; where the correct sexual orientation prevails and guns abound; where government decides what is good to read. I am so awed by this possible future for my kid that I now realize I should have chosen abstinence.