Everyone agrees that we need government to regulate various parts of our society. In fact, the Constitution sets forth some of the vital functions for the government. But I also think that most of us believe there are too many government regulations.

Peter Roff, writing in U.S. News and World Report, put it this way. “Existing regulations are sometimes unnecessary, frequently in conflict, and are enforced by bureaucracies that have lost sight of their original mission. Instead they seek to ensure the right tickets are punched and the proper boxes are checked as though they alone can guarantee consumer safety, economic competition and financial market stability.”

There is an economic cost we end up paying to comply with all of these regulations. Think of the amount of time many of us spend in filing our income taxes. Now multiply that by hundreds and thousands of hours. You can begin to see one cost of regulations. And this does not even count the number of efficient ways we could produce a product or service if there weren’t government regulations preventing a simpler way of producing it.

Peter Roff says “there’s no really good way to determine the total annual cost of the regulatory burden.” Some groups have tried to get an estimate on the costs, and they have done it in a way that drives the point home to each of us.

In previous commentaries I have talked about the Cost of Government Day. This is the date on which the average American has paid his share of the financial burden imposed by the spending and regulation that occurs on the federal, state, and local levels. This date usually lands in July. In other words, you spend more than half the year working to pay for the cost of taxes and the cost of all regulations.

It is time for Congress to study the regulatory burden that regulations and the regulators put on individuals and businesses.

During the televised debates and during the campaign stops, we are hearing candidates talk about the problem that various groups are “not paying their fair share.” Democratic candidates lament that: “the wealthy pay too little” in taxes. Other candidates point to loopholes in the tax code that allow individuals and even corporations to pay little or nothing in taxes.

When you hear a candidate say that, you should ask for him or her to be more specific. It is a sound bite intended to get people to cheer or at least to shake their heads in agreement. But the lack of specificity often illustrates that it is nothing more than a campaign slogan meant to generate interest and enthusiasm.

At the least, we should ask: Doesn’t your definition of “fair share” really just mean “more?” Why should we require some people to send more to Washington, when Congress and the president haven’t been able to live within their means?

Thomas Sowell cites one article in the New York Times that does get specific. It says that raising the tax rate on the top one percent would generate about $157 billion a year more in tax revenue. At least here is a specific claim that can be evaluated.

First, we must say that the assumption is likely flawed. Thomas Sowell reminds that there is a mountain of evidence that raising rates do not automatically means raising tax revenues. The rich don’t just stand by and make no changes when tax rates go up. They take their money and invest elsewhere or put it into savings.

Second, the additional income is small compared to what the federal government spends. It spends more than $10 billion each day. That supposed windfall in tax revenue would fund the government for about two weeks.

Let’s face it. The bigger problem isn’t that people aren’t paying their fair share. It’s that government spends too much. The federal government doesn’t need more money when it cannot live within its means.

Is the traditional family dead in America? No. Supreme Court justices and other federal judges can try to redefine marriage, but that can’t change the reality of the natural family. That was certainly the conclusion from the World Congress of Families held recently in Salt Lake City. Robert Knight was on my program recently to talk about his Washington Times column on the family conference.

First, it is important to remind everyone that God is not dead. In fact, the movie with the title “God’s Not Dead” brought in more than $66 million at the box office. Movieguide publisher Ted Baehr hosted a screening of the next film, “God’s Not Dead 2.” It will surely do well when it comes out.

Second, it is important to remind everyone that Christians and other people who believe in traditional values aren’t going down without a fight. One of the other speakers at the conference was Rafael Cruz. He has been on my program and is the father of Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz. Robert Knight reported that Rafael Cruz got a standing ovation for pledging civil disobedience to the Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage.

Third, more and more Americans are witnessing the devastation of the sexual revolution on society. One of the other speakers was Jennifer Roback Morse, author of the new book, “The Sexual Revolution and Its Victims.” You don’t have to have a PhD in the social sciences to see the negative impact of sexual promiscuity and the wholesale redefinition of marriage.

Finally, the 2015 election demonstrated a backlash against the liberal progressive agenda. Voters in cities like Houston and voters in states like Kentucky voted for traditional values and against progressive values. This may be a preview of what voters might do November of 2016.

The traditional family is not dead. We have many reasons to be encouraged by many of these social trends.

Over the last few months, Christians are beginning to wonder if they can work as florists, bakers, or photographers. Sooner or later a homosexual couple will ask them to perform their services for a gay wedding. We know what happens next.

Now even Christians who print t-shirts may wonder if they will be confronted. Blaine Adamson is the owner of a screen-printing company. He and his company (Hands On Originals) faced discrimination charges because he turned down a homosexual who wanted him to print rainbow t-shirts for a gay pride parade. Blaine Adamson was brought before the city commissioners who accused him of discrimination.

In this case, he was exonerated. The court ruled that he did not have to give up his religious liberty just because some homosexual activists demanded that he print a rainbow t-shirt. This only makes sense. We wouldn’t require an artist to paint a picture that he or she did not agree with. Likewise, companies or individuals printing t-shirts should not be told how to use their artistic expression.

It was interesting to see the support that Blaine Adamson received from other t-shirt shop owners who were homosexuals themselves. They recognized the right to decline business if they disagreed with the message. One woman said she doubts her business would print a t-shirt for the anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church. Her business partner said she could see Blaine Adamson’s viewpoint because she put herself in his shoes. When making a design, you put yourself into the artistic endeavor.

I was encouraged to hear that some of the businesses, even with homosexual owners, understand the threat by some gay activists who have become gay bullies demanding that everyone serve them and endorse their message. We need more people to respect different viewpoints and not misuse anti-discrimination laws.

In past commentaries when I have talked about poverty, I usually point to the importance of marriage and family. In some of my commentaries, I even quote from William Galston, who served in the Clinton administration. He talks about how important it is for young people to graduate from high school and to wait to have children until they get married.

In a recent op-ed he put it this way. Want to know the best poverty cure? Get married. Single parenthood hurts all children, and black children bear the greatest brunt of single parenthood’s harms.

Education is important. Among black women with a bachelor’s degree or more, the ever-married rate is 71 percent. For those without a high-school diploma, it in only 56 percent. Race does matter in these statistics since the percentages for black women are lower than for white women.

He cites other startling differences. “Consider that 71 percent of African-American infants are born to unmarried women, compared with 29 percent for white women.” Having a child does not encourage couples to get married. The father may leave, or the couple may choose to live together.

Galston points out that cohabitation is not a replacement for marriage. Cohabiting couples only stay together for about 18 months on average. Most children see their parents break up before their teen years.

It turns out that family instability harms all children, but some are affected negatively more than others. Boys, for example, fare worse then girls. And African-American boys fare the worst. Many of the problems they have in school are due to behavioral issues such as truancy and classroom disruption. This is one of the major reasons for the significant difference in boy-girl high-school graduation rates.

Galston cites many studies that all remind us that children reared in an intact marriage with the biological father and mother do much better. Marriage is the best cure for poverty.

Twenty years ago, no nation on earth endorsed legal same-sex marriage. Now same-sex marriage is everywhere. How did this happen? That is what Dr. Albert Mohler attempts to answer in his new book, We Cannot Be Silent. He was on my radio program to talk about his book.

He explains that this didn’t start with same-sex marriage. First, we had a sexual revolution. Initially some of the legal and cultural battles were over issues like birth control and contraception. America began to redefine marriage first by changing laws concerning divorce and later with the acceptance of cohabitation and sex outside of marriage.

There was also a homosexual rights strategy. Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen proposed a way in their book, After the Ball, to normalize homosexuality and marginalize Christians. They took advantage of the AIDS crisis to establish homosexuals as a victimized minority deserving of special protection and care. Albert Mohler explains how their strategy changed homosexuality from a vice to a virtue.

He also talks about the impossible possibility of same-sex marriage. Homosexual activists were able to shift public opinion in their attempt to redefine marriage in a relatively short period of time. The emerging generation sees this redefinition as necessary because homosexuality is portrayed as the next civil rights battle. Albert Mohler also talks about the transgender revolution. Most Americans are not even certain how to talk about it, especially in this postmodern world.

He concludes with chapters setting forth the biblical perspectives on sex, marriage, and family. And he raises important questions of what the homosexual movement will mean for religious liberty and the right to be a Christian. Our religious freedoms are in the balance in large part because of the sexual revolution and the redefinition of marriage. That is why we cannot be silent.

When you increase the minimum wage, two things happen. Some people lose their jobs while those who keep their jobs see an increase in their paycheck. Unfortunately, politicians focus on the second effect and often ignore the first.

I thought of this when I saw the latest AEI report from Seattle. It said that the $15 minimum wage increase “is getting off to a pretty bad start.” Leah Jessen, writing for the Daily Signal, wonders whether the loss of 700 restaurant jobs in the first nine months of this year might be due to minimum wage hikes on restaurant jobs. That seems a reasonable conclusion.

The Seattle City Council passed a $15 minimum wage ordinance that is being phased in. On April 1, the minimum wage jumped to $11 per hour. And employers are anticipating the next jump to $15 per hour.

Mark Perry is an AEI scholar and economic professor at the University of Michigan’s Flint campus. He sees a contrast between Seattle and the rest of the state. There has been an increase of 5,800 new restaurant job positions in the rest of the state of Washington. This is his careful conclusion: “It’s too soon to tell for sure, but there is already some preliminary evidence that the recent minimum wage hike to $11 per hour, along with the pending increase of an additional $4 an hour by 2017 for some businesses, has started having a negative effect on restaurant jobs in the great Seattle area.”

You don’t have to have an economic degree to figure this out. Imagine you own a restaurant and have to pay your employees more. You can try to raise prices to cover the extra cost but this might mean fewer people eat at your restaurant. Those in the city may bring a bag lunch. Those in the suburbs may stop driving to the city. The only other way to make ends meet is to continue with fewer employees.

Seattle shouldn’t be surprised about the loss of restaurant jobs. We have seen it before time and time again.

Universities talk a great deal about free speech, but they have been clamping down on speech they don’t like for many years. When I first started speaking on college campuses in the mid-1970s, I was impressed that professors would invite a Christian speaker into their classroom. Sometimes they would even say to the class: “You have heard my views on this subject. In the interest of academic freedom, I wanted to give you a chance to hear a Christian’s views on this subject.”

By the late 1980s, I noticed that political correctness was taking over and opportunities in the classroom waned. In fact, university administrations often warned faculty not to have outside speakers in the classroom. Soon this applied not only to Christian speakers but any speaker (like a conservative) that wasn’t deemed politically correct.

Sadly students have accepted this situation as normal and normative. Young America’s Foundation working with a polling company surveyed 1,000 college students about their attitudes toward free speech. They found that students generally support the abstract idea of free speech but reject the idea if the speech is not politically correct. They agree with the proposition that undergraduate education should include a “diversity of opinion.” But when that diversity includes conservative ideas, support drops significantly.

This may sound confused and contradictory. But David French, in a recent column, says he doesn’t think students are confused at all. “Perhaps they are good learners. Colleges by word and deed teach students that there is free speech — the speech they find valuable enough to protect — and not speech — the expression they really, really don’t like.”

He is correct. University students have learned their lessons well. Free speech is the speech they like. Everything else does not deserve protection. That is why they allow universities to promote speech codes and to protect them from free speech they will soon experience once they graduate from college.