A lot of liberals are making hay with the whole Bristol Palin being knocked-up thing. They think that Republicans have now accepted premarital sex and illegitimate pregnancy. They are crowing about how this shows that the Right is coming around to the Left’s way of thinking.
On the contrary. The Right, as a whole (remember there are always exceptions with all labels) has not moved. We still think that what Bristol has done is not what is best for a 17 year-old, unmarried girl. However, uncommon to the beliefs of most on the Left, we conservatives recognize that Sarah Palin is not solely responsible for the decisions her almost-adult daughter has made. We’re not going to disqualify Sarah Palin because her daughter did something that flies in the face of what she was taught all her life. You know, the same thing we did when we found out Dick Cheney’s daughter is a lesbian.
I am confident that Palin and Cheney taught their daughters well. That their daughters were raised knowing that these actions are contrary to what their parents believe and stand for. Yet these kids have grown into their own people with their own actions and decision-making capability. They have used their freedom to choose and chose contrary to the desires of their parents. Maybe they just don’t believe it’s wrong, or maybe they believe it’s wrong but succumbed to the temptation, especially in Bristol’s case.
The thing that I think conservatives embrace here is something totally foreign to the Left. That is the freedom to choose, even with that choice is wrong, and personal responsibility. In Palin’s situation, Bristol isn’t blaming her mom, her boyfriend, or God. Sarah Palin isn’t seeing it as a punishment, rather a consequence that her daughter and her boyfriend are facing and that will require a great deal of love and support. I know I’ve done things that disappointed my parents. I know I’ve done things that disappointed my wife. I am sure I still have a few stupid moves in my future, but I never blame anyone else. I own it, I learn from it, and I move on. That’s all the Palin’s want.
Of course, Barry Obama sums up how the Left views a teen pregnancy…
Pregnancy is not a punishment. It’s a direct result of sex. If you are going to have sex, even with birth control, a natural result is pregnancy. It’s not a mystery. It’s not voodoo. It doesn’t take years of sex education in school to understand. I got the concept on the playground in first grade, long before we started sex ed. It’s not a hard one.
What the Left can’t stand is that Bristol Palin and her beau are owning the consequences- not blaming someone else or taking an easy way out. It’s not their church, their school, the state, their rubber, or their parents that failed them. They are taking responsibility for their actions and establishing their family earlier than they and their families had wanted. Nonetheless, it’s their doing and they accept it. Something the Left just can’t grasp.
Is it just me, or is this whirlwind trip through Europe and the Middle East eerily remniscent of 
