When Bill Clinton was president, he had a favorite line he would throw into speeches. He would explain a new program or justify some action with the phrase, "for the children."

Almost anything was justified if it was "for the children."

To many of the busybodies who want to control everyone else's life, another seemingly irrefutable justification is the "cost to society" argument.

Smoking and smokers must be controlled. Why? Because of the cost of smoking to society. Certain popular foods should be outlawed because of their "cost to society."

Combining these two arguments makes any action justifiable. We must have universal health care, free food in schools, complicated restraints in cars and punishment and sanctions against nontraditional parents. Why?

Because it is "for the children" and because of the cost to society.

When the elites have a cause, it will be crammed down our throats regardless of what the majority wants or any consistent logic that they themselves utilize.

Gay marriage is a done deal. Immigration is a done deal. We backward peasants need to get our heads straight. The legalization of drugs could be a done deal. Most of the elites have used illegal drugs, but at the same time, it is an issue that allows immense control for the power hungry, so we will have to wait a few more years to see on what side this one falls.

The hypocrisy of these compelling justifications becomes obvious when one of the ruling elites' sacred cows would have to be gored to truly benefit the children or prevent a cost to society.

In 2005, according to government statistics, 54 percent of families receiving welfare were one-parent households. The percent of households receiving welfare that were classified as "two-parent" families was 1.7 percent. The rest of the welfare families were headed by grandparents and other relatives.

Duncan Lindsey at UCLA described children of single mothers as, "The largest impoverished age group in America."

According to the Census Bureau, the percent of children being raised by a single mother grew from 11 percent in 1970 to more than 24 percent by 2005.

It is estimated that currently more than one-third of all babies born in the U.S. are illegitimate.

Some of you are cringing that I would dare use that word. While a person is "hateful" if they don't approve of gay marriage, is it also "hateful" to look at a statistic boldly when children's welfare is at stake? Too often there is an implied suggestion that it is wrong just to ask a question within earshot of a sacred cow, especially when the elite don't like the answers.

Statistics and studies vary, but children of single mothers constitute the majority of inmates in state juvenile detention centers. Some sources maintain that almost three fourths of teenage births, dropouts, suicides, runaways, juvenile delinquents and child murderers involve children raised by single mothers.

These children are two to five times more likely to kill themselves, multiple times more likely to drop out of high school, abuse chemical substances, commit sexual crimes and end up in prison. One study found that 90 percent of the change in violent crime over the last decades could be accounted for by changes in the illegitimacy rates.

Another found that the increase in single-parent families can account for virtually all of the increase in child poverty since 1970. Research has shown that the rates of the four major problems that destroy a youth's chances in life, teen pregnancy, teen drug abuse, school dropouts, and juvenile crime, are more correlated with fatherlessness than with any other socioeconomic factor.

Statistically, having a baby without a husband creates a one-way ticket for the child to pathology and poverty.

So, where is the equivalent response of our elites to smoking and eating cheeseburgers to this problem? Where are they to be found changing laws, initiating lawsuits, and modifying constitutions to constrain "illegitimacy"?

Nowhere.

To address this issue, the elites would need to honestly stare into the face of racism, anti-male bias, sex and the destruction of the traditional family. They are not going to do that irrespective of the cost to society or anything that may be done "for the children."

Occasionally, someone will produce a study that will appease the guilt, but pagans have always sacrificed their children on the altars of their gods, and some things never change.