The Family vs The State

Throughout history there have been two fundamental human institutions. The first is "the family" in the form of the basic family unit as well as the extended family and the tribe. The second is "the state" in the form of any overarching institution that claims total authority and control over every aspect of the lives of those who live under it.

The family and the state represent two incompatible structures. It is why the goal of such a state is almost always to disrupt and pervert the family unit. The Soviet Union taught children the virtues of informing on their parents, mandating that their loyalty must be to the state above their parents. Nazi Germany planned to replace the family with eugenics under the control of the great father figure of the Fuhrer. The modern left gained a great deal of its power from teaching children to sneer at and rebel against the values and beliefs of their parents.

The clash between the family and the state is not that of a battle between democracy and tyranny, or any such thing. The tribal middle east is filled with totalitarian dictatorships, and while they are brutal regimes, they do not seek to supplant the family unit. Instead they are a product of the family unit, with rule passing from father to son, families held hostages for the good behavior of individuals. Nor is the state necessarily overtly totalitarian, in the West it is often be socialism with a human face, a vast network of bureaucracies with smiley faces pasted over them.

Rather it is a battle between two different systems, the traditional family unit and the postmodern power of the state. And that battle has defined the culture wars and the Islamic invasion of Europe, among many other critical issues, which is why it is vital that we be aware of it. Because where the state gains power, the family declines. Birth rates drop, the institution of marriage begins to vanish, culture descends into the sewer, and amoral and sociopathic behavior begins to rise among children. All these are connected together by a single thread, and that thread is the balance of power between the family and the state.

The family is the root of most human institutions. The Bible begins with a recitation of families, a man and a woman joining together to create the human race, on and on through dynasty after dynasty, family after family. For thousands of years, invasions and migrations came and went, blending together through the family unit to create the modern day nations. Angles, Saxons, Normans, Jutes, Goths, just to name a few, becoming one.

The modern state however has sought to replace the family unit with itself. Its proponents, both on the right and the left, have believed that a scientifically managed system of government could perfect human institutions, bringing an end to human misery and chaos. By surrendering all power to the state, the state would have the ability to mold and shape every one of its citizens into an ideal form.

Liberals have invested more in this belief than any other group. The perfect state has long been a pet project since the French Revolution's newborn Republic created its own calendar, its own religion and holidays-- all in honor of itself. The Soviet Union would recreate that same self-worship of the state tenfold, with cults of personality for its leaders, holidays dedicated to itself and total control of the population right down to their thoughts. The more benign forms of socialism in Europe and North America used social justice to build support for collective institutions and new value systems under the power of the state.

Within the system of the state, the family unit is an obstruction. Within the family unit, parents educate their children how they see fit, rather than how the state sees fit. This has always been a problem, as the state believes that shaping and molding the minds of the "Citizens of Tomorrow" is a vital part of their great social project. Like virtually every social benefit, free public education has been a key tool for placing children under the power of the state.

The family unit also directs loyalty to itself above the state. This is one of the first things the state attacks, by demonstrating to children that their parent's beliefs and values are wrong or outmoded. This is meant to remove credibility from parents and transfer it to the state. The state seeks to repeatedly demonstrate to children as they grow, that everything they need, from medical care to food to knowledge to jobs, they receive from the state. And therefore that the state should command their primary loyalty.

As the cultural shift takes effect, popular culture begins portraying families routinely as "bad" and government employees or liberal advocates, e.g. police officers, reporters, lawyers... as more appropriate role models than parents. Father Knows Best gives way to Social Role Model Knows Best.

The devaluation of the family leads to fewer marriages and lower birth rates. Careers become more important than marriage. The marriages that do happen are delayed and routinely end in divorce. Fewer and fewer children are born. More children grow up in single family homes. Parents become disposable. Socialization takes place through state education and popular culture, which due to the decrease of the influence of the family has sunk down to the lowest common denominator, leading to a rise in gang violence, sociopathic behavior by children at increasingly younger ages.

This is a pattern that holds true across different nations and cultures. Falling birth rates for example are not purely a Western problem, nor are they purely the result of economic prosperity. The cases of Japan and Eastern Europe and Russia disprove two sides of that formula. It is not economic prosperity that lowers the birth rate, or else Saudi Arabia would have a far lower birth rate than Latvia. Instead the situation is the reverse. The Western and non-Western countries that suffer from low birth rates generally suffer from one thing in common, socialism to at least some degree.

If the state is more important than the family, why bother with children at all? And who has time when you're working for the benefit of the state. It isn't after all as if the children will care for you when you're old. That is an outmoded notion. The state does that. It's not as if they will carry on in the family business. The odds are against it. Have children so they can carry on the family name? Their name is more likely to wind up being Sayid or Gonzalez in a generation or two, no matter what.

To strike the final blow to the larger family that is the nation itself, to compensate for the lowered birth rate, immigration radically accelerates population transfer, destroying the remaining institutions, both religious and secular. The quieter European and North American socialist version of the war on religion and nationalism waged more overtly by the French Revolution and the Soviet Union.

In the end, the state itself proves to have feet of clay and falls. The family that is the nation is overwhelmed and destroyed by the corruption of their own culture and the outside invasion. That is the final formula for the confrontation between the family and the state.

In destroying the family, the state ultimately destroys itself. That is a lesson that Russia learned the hard way, and no amount of frantic effort to revive the Russian birth rate, both during and post the USSR, has changed the numbers. By 2050 Russia is set to lose nearly a third of its population and Islam is set to back the dominant religion. The picture looks no brighter for Europe, where fitful attempts by the state to encourage parents to do what they have done naturally for thousands of years once again misses the point. The family is not something that the state can turn on or off. With its ascendancy, the state has suppressed the family. The only way to change that is for the state to step back and once again place the family at the center of the nation's life and institutions.

Barring that the tragic decline will continue, and the victory of liberals over the family will prove to be a Pyrrhic one indeed.