Among the openly Big Government “nationalist” wing of the conservative movement, the new talking point and rationalization for government intervention is that the free market is destroying the traditional family. International trade and the rat race of keeping up with the two-income family norm has made it impossible, they say, to support a family on a single income.

Extinction events in nature rivet our attention. Most children know that the dinosaurs, masters of our planet for hundreds of millions of years, disappeared with astounding rapidity, probably from the consequences of a meteor colliding with the Earth. There’s drama, even tragedy, in such colossal destruction of animal life.