“My precise criticism of liberalism is that it remakes the person and the ‘family’ in the image of its voluntarist and procedural concept of justice and the basic anthropology this entails.” David S. Crawford
Once upon a time equality was the rallying cry of patriots and abolitionists, the good and true belief that “all men are created equal” in the sight of God, are equal in dignity and deserve equal rights before the law. Today, equality is just a word tossed about in the empty void of leftist political, ethical, and social discussion, a word to be used to beat the peons into submission.
A 2015 attack of insanity comes to us via Professors Adam Swift of the University of Warwick and Harry Brighouse of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who, in their ivory tower bastions, adrift in the glow of adoration from their fellow leftist academics, believe they have discovered the root of all inequality in society, and it ain’t money! IT’S THE FAMILY.
Those disgusting traditional families consisting of a man and woman who provide their offspring with advantages like stability and love – how dare they! Social scientists have long known that children who grow up in traditional families are more likely to attend college, less likely to suffer or perpetrate abuse, less likely to do drugs or break the law and have a higher likelihood of passing these ‘advantages’ to their own children and THAT’S JUST NOT FAIR! “Functional family interactions form a largely unseen but palpable fault line between families. The consequence is a gap in social mobility and equality that can last for generations.”
According to Swift, the family is the source of unfairness in society and It’s plausible to believe that we should abolish it to level the playing field. But, since abolishing the family is probably not an achievable goal, at least not at this time, Swift and Brighouse want to just disable it a smidgen. Little things like eliminating private schools, inheritance, and summer camp, nannies, bedtime stories or any other advantage parents confer upon their children. ALL KIDS MUST BE EQUALLY DEPRIVED!
“Politicians love to talk about family values but meanwhile the family is in flux so we wanted to go back to philosophical basics to work out what families are for and what’s so great about them and only then can be figure out whether it matters if you have two parents or three or one, or maybe four, or whether they’re heterosexual etcetera. If you start to think about a child having 10 parents then that’s looking like a committee rearing a child; there aren’t any parents there at all.”
Their idea brings to mind C.S. Lewis’ famous epilogue to The Screwtape Letters, entitled “Screwtape Proposes A Toast.” The retired tempter tells graduates of a demonic college to teach humans that good habits, the kind that improve society, are “undemocratic.” Instead of nurturing and encouraging virtues like morality and academic excellence, humans should be trained to resent and destroy them. The goal of which is the “elimination of every kind of human excellence – moral, cultural, social or intellectual.”
Now while one might expect this from the undersecretary of Hell, it is a bit more alarming to hear this drivel from tenured scholars.
It does not take a village to raise a child. It takes a nurturing family. Period! Families are the foundation of society much like the bricks that form a brick wall. Or as Reagan said in his 1985 address to the nation, “there is no instrument of hard work, savings, and job creation as effective as the family. There is no cultural institution as ennobling as family life. And there is no superior, indeed no equal, means to rear the young, protect the weak, or attend the elderly. None.”
“You don’t get to choose your family. They are God’s gift to you, as you are to them.” Desmond Tutu
