Family First
By G.C. Dilsaver
(Full page article, The Wanderer, 1992)
Evoke the cause of the family and the hearts of Americans still stir, even though the traditional paradigm rapidly wanes. The family of yesteryear is becoming distant and shrouded, yet it remains that which gave suckle to today’s adult majority.
With a pang of nostalgia Americans feel that somehow family is good; yet they are, for the most part, unable to achieve that good; inundated by the mass media’s conveyance of values antithetical to those that gave rise to the traditional family an increasing number are no longer even able to define that good.
So too, the American public has been conditioned to respond to slick packaging and pitch lines, tactics that play on sentiment rather than reason. The political parties know this well. Hence the use of familial sentiment while proposing values devoid of, or antithetical to, family values. This invocation of family values, so potent yet ambiguous, has taken on a magical quality – and like all magic involves sleight of hand or smoke of hell.
It was sentiment that elected the grandfatherly Ronald Reagan. There was no reasoned conservative conversion among the electorate in 1980. The voters didn’t buy into the conservatism proposed but the sentiment conveyed – it wasn’t a revolution but a fad.
Such is the state of the American electorate. And so both the Bush and Clinton campaigns audaciously dish out tempting sound-bites of doublespeak. And though doublespeak became the official language of political debate long before this election, it has reached a new level of eloquence this year.
Little political acumen is needed to recognize the shenanigans of the Democratic presidential campaign. The party platform, while labeled pro-family, is packed with anti-familial values. Among the more sensational of these values are homosexual rights, the advancement of feminism (under guise of parental leave and day-care), and abortion rights. But such can be expected from the Democratic party, which has eschewed any trace of conservative ideology; including the valuation of objective truth and intellectual integrity.
The fundamental truth of liberalism is that there is no truth. The Democratic party preaches a radical egalitarianism that embraces all save those that don’t subscribe to their indiscriminate subjectivism. It’s an absurd philosophy from the beginning. Hence the Democrats are free to tell a lie big enough to be believed. This year they’ve told the biggest whopper yet – that they are pro-family; and the public vulnerability to such a duping steadily increases in accord with the growing confusion concerning the nature of the family.
The Republicans, on the other hand, still claim to be authentic promoters of the traditional Western Christian ethos; a value system that recognizes objective truth, natural law, and honor (such as keeping you word and saying what you mean). They righteously offer themselves as the standard bearer of truth and as America’s last best hope. Their platform staunchly declares and defines truths. They know what the traditional family is. But to he that has been given much, much is expected. Sadly, much of the Republican’s political practice differs from its official verbiage. They know better, much better than their Democratic counterparts, but they act barely better.
There was the blasphemy of the irreverent Jesse Jackson in New York, and the veracity of the courageous Pat Buchanan in Houston, There were the platform victories of the true-believers at both conventions. Yet the integral pro-life, pro-family platform of the Republican is condemned as totalitarian and bigoted by the Clinton campaign, while the pro-death, pro-feminist/sodomite platform of the Democrats is tacitly approved by the Bush campaign.
The Republican platform is more conservative than Bush. But Bush doesn’t seem to be all that bound by his party’s platform – as he often insinuates. Of course Bush himself, depending on his audience, is often more conservative than Bush. Bush panders to conservatives in a politics of expediency. Experience has shown that he is not beyond betraying either his own words or those of his party’s platform.
Clinton, likewise, panders to conservatives, but is nonetheless openly committed to his party’s radically liberal platform – the Democrats will brook no heresy. It’s no one’s fault but his own if he is unaware of the Clinton agenda – its there in black and white.
To be hypocritical you must have enough sense of decency to know what the admirable is. Hypocrisy is not possible for a man like Clinton – he is too far gone for that. He doesn’t recognize the truth. His extra-marital affairs, for instance, really aren’t a moral problem for him, they are consistent with his political philosophy. He supports Planned Parenthood; he supports abortion; he supports no-fault divorce; he supports homosexual rights. You don’t expect any shred of decency from such a man.
But the right is afforded no such immunity. For hypocrisy is the occupational hazard of the conservative – indeed it is fatal. Conservatism depends on objective truth and intellectual integrity, it incorporates truths of the past into the present, and it discovers truths for the future by harmonizing them with those already ascertained.
So it is not unfair, as the Bush administration cries, when Clinton seems to get off easy on his draft dodging antics, while Quayle’s raked over the coals for his National Guard opting. For Quayle purports to know – in fact it’s an integral part of his political persona – that to serve one’s country militarily is a manly and patriotic duty; and he knows that he partially shirked that duty. Such a flawed historical decision undermines the Vice- President’s conservative patriotic rhetoric.
Bush postures himself as diametrically opposed to Clinton. But in most issues the President merely stays a little to the right of Clinton and claims the conservative high ground. But being a little to the right of Mr. Clinton is hardly conservative.
A key case in point – since it is being advanced as the Democrat’s banner pro-family issue – is that of parental leave. The Republicans, eager to capitalize on the popular concept, don’t disagree with it, just the means of implementation; i.e. private sector choice (with coercive tax “incentives’) versus federal government mandate. Likewise, the Republicans would like to exclude the father from such leave – a deletion that apparently conveys their refined appreciation of the difference between motherhood and fatherhood.
Still the concept of parental leave has in essence been accepted by both parties; which, in reality, has made it a non-issue; which means paradoxically, it will be batted about a lot.
But the idea of parental leave is intrinsically antithetical to family. Parental leave has nothing to do with the promotion of families; it has everything to do with the promotion of feminism; and feminism is pure poison to the family. Here it is not motherhood that is valued, but the working woman; not family values, but economic value. Parental leave’s reason for being, like its precursor, day-care (another non-issue) is pure and simple; to keep the woman – the mother – in the work place.
On other family (read moral) issues the Bush campaign has likewise quailed, or at least turned the issue over to Quayle – who is supposedly the most conservative of the candidates – the moral bulldog of the incumbency.
When asked if the Bush Administration would bar homosexuals from the cabinet, Quayle answered that it wasn’t an issue, that there was no policy because “personal lifestyles is something that would never come up” – applying the “color blind” racial policy (i.e. no quotes because race is not a factor) to sexual deviation. Asked about the military’s ban on homosexuals, he passed the buck to the popular General Colin Powell, saying the Administration was following the General’s lead (which upholds the ban).
Concerning marriage the Vice-President was asked point blank whether or not divorce was too easy to attain in this country considering its epidemic rate – a crux of the matter question. Quayle hemmed and hawed, and spoke of concern for children, but couldn’t bring himself to reply affirmatively.
Mr. Quayle, seemingly in an effort to tone his pro-life stance and bring it more in line with the President’s, claims that “abortion is an issue that reasonable people could disagree on.” One wonders if the Vice-President has ever debated the issue with pro-abortionists. Reasoning has absolutely nothing to do with the arbitrary line drawn as to who has a right to life and who doesn’t; as to who is a person and who isn’t.
The other mate of Bush’s, Mrs. Bush, speaks truthful for herself and her husband when she says that abortion shouldn’t be an issue; in other words, it should be a private choice. Unfortunately, for the Bushes, this issue has become all too public – it’s become political. And Bush’s only way to garner votes from it is to woo the pro-lifers.
Indeed, the Bush team seems eager to assure America that they are non-ideologists. Sure we’re a little “conservative,” they seem to imply, but we’re harmless, we really wouldn’t try to implement our views if push came to shove. The Bush policy of adopting the “color blind” approach to moral issues, and the weak-kneed acceptance of “understandable differences” concerning these issues, smacks of a liberalism far gone.
Still Mr. Bush remains politically pro-life, though not to the point of supporting his party’s integral pro-life plank. When asked about the resolution to work for a pro-life constitutional amendment, he refuses to answer, and huffily states that “you know my position in the past, it’s the same today.” One may be tempted to muse which position in the past, that of the recent past, when Bush adopted Reagan’s view; or the pre-Reagan past, when Bush’s view was anything but pro-life, but was truly his own?
The politically pro-life Bush knows that much of his constituency loses sight of the big picture by focusing on the atrocious issue. He can go ahead and piece together the jigsaw puzzle of neo-paganism and secular-humanism; putting together a section here for homosexuals, and a section there for the fanatic feminists; pert near filling out the entire liberal moral agenda save the pro-abortion section. He’ll leave that out for now. And his pro-life constituency will be satisfied, hardly noticing the rest of the pieces are easily found. Pro-life voters would be well advised to start looking at the whole picture if they truly want a final, deep seated moral victory.
The sad truth is that true believers in the Judeo-Christian ethos aren’t all that electable – at least that’s what the Bush campaign believes. Hence the truth is toned down, and the message is rife with inconsistency. Rabid ideologues of the left, however, are electable; and Clinton, even with his attempts at moderation, fits that category.
The true believers in big-league American politics today are the party line Democrats – and they don’t believe in anything closely resembling traditional Western ideology.
The country is irreconcilably divided; in the throes of, as Mr. Buchanan tersely termed, a “religious war.” And there is no denying that religious wars are the bloodiest sort. And it is foolhardy to evaluate the liberal enemy as anything but of the bloodiest sort (they kill in utero don’t they?). The Left believes militantly in their cause. They will do anything to win the day; they are without the constraints of morality; they do not admit of objectivity. It is consistent for them to employ double-speak. As their vicious agenda would have it, they are consistently inconsistent.
But the Right is afforded no such luxury. There is no room for hypocrisy or issue waffling in conservatism. Nor is this the time for inconsistency and compromise – the militancy of the enemy will not allow it. Those that espouse a true conservatism should heed the words of scripture: “I would thou wert cold or hot. But because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will begin to vomit thee out of my mouth.” (APOC 3.15-16).
While both parties have stumbled unto the issue of the century – the unprecedented break-up of the family – they skirt the issue and mouth platitudes, or work insidiously for its complete demise.
Of course all the talk of family values has been downplayed by the press – their polls, indicating that it is fourth or fifth in concern to Americans (though they place education as one of the outranking issues, which remains a family issue, regardless of the National Education Association’s devious designs). Even if this is so, it only accentuates the duty of a true family values candidate to undertake the mission of awakening the public to the preeminence of family. He would speak forcefully about the unprecedented demise of the family and its dire consequences. He would evaluate domestic conditions in light of the family by boldly prescribing economic and social reforms that would favor the one-income, multi-child family. In short, he would be less political and more prophetic – submitting even his political ambitions to aspirations for the nation’s families.
Still a “Family First” candidate would realize that national politics concerning the family is at best incongruous. Imposing family issues from Washington goes against the core familial principle of subsidiarity. The only national agenda for the family that doesn’t carry with it its own seeds of destruction is one that sanctions the autonomy of the family. In truth a radical Family First political policy would be nothing more than an agenda of familial insulation from Governmental intrusion; e.g. tax codes and employment laws preferential to the one-income family. In short, such a policy’s goal would be to reinstate the privileged status of the family.
But such a candidate has yet to rise to prominence in the two-party system. Even under the Reagan hiatus the anti-family forces gained. For it was during the Reagan years that the two-income family became institutionalized. And Bush is no Reagan.
“Family First!” should be the conservative cry. Would that an acceptance speech conveyed the conviction that extremism in the defense of family is no vice; moderation in the pursuit of truth is no virtue.
This election year presents quite a quandary – political expediency would demand that the candidate who will do the least harm be elected. But other factors must also be weighed. There is the risk of continuing to defuse the conservative movement with another four-years of the present administration; there is the possibility of a coalescing of the conservative movement under the surely obscene, but clear-cut, debacle of a Clinton administration; there are third-party candidates.
Political expediency is the predominate choice among conservatives. They recoil at the thought of a Clinton presidency, and consider a third-party vote to be squandered. Still – in the spirit of authentic conservatism – there is something to be said for voting your conscience regardless of the outcome.
By G.C. Dilsaver
(Full page article, The Wanderer, 1992)
Evoke the cause of the family and the hearts of Americans still stir, even though the traditional paradigm rapidly wanes. The family of yesteryear is becoming distant and shrouded, yet it remains that which gave suckle to today’s adult majority.
With a pang of nostalgia Americans feel that somehow family is good; yet they are, for the most part, unable to achieve that good; inundated by the mass media’s conveyance of values antithetical to those that gave rise to the traditional family an increasing number are no longer even able to define that good.
So too, the American public has been conditioned to respond to slick packaging and pitch lines, tactics that play on sentiment rather than reason. The political parties know this well. Hence the use of familial sentiment while proposing values devoid of, or antithetical to, family values. This invocation of family values, so potent yet ambiguous, has taken on a magical quality – and like all magic involves sleight of hand or smoke of hell.
It was sentiment that elected the grandfatherly Ronald Reagan. There was no reasoned conservative conversion among the electorate in 1980. The voters didn’t buy into the conservatism proposed but the sentiment conveyed – it wasn’t a revolution but a fad.
Such is the state of the American electorate. And so both the Bush and Clinton campaigns audaciously dish out tempting sound-bites of doublespeak. And though doublespeak became the official language of political debate long before this election, it has reached a new level of eloquence this year.
Little political acumen is needed to recognize the shenanigans of the Democratic presidential campaign. The party platform, while labeled pro-family, is packed with anti-familial values. Among the more sensational of these values are homosexual rights, the advancement of feminism (under guise of parental leave and day-care), and abortion rights. But such can be expected from the Democratic party, which has eschewed any trace of conservative ideology; including the valuation of objective truth and intellectual integrity.
The fundamental truth of liberalism is that there is no truth. The Democratic party preaches a radical egalitarianism that embraces all save those that don’t subscribe to their indiscriminate subjectivism. It’s an absurd philosophy from the beginning. Hence the Democrats are free to tell a lie big enough to be believed. This year they’ve told the biggest whopper yet – that they are pro-family; and the public vulnerability to such a duping steadily increases in accord with the growing confusion concerning the nature of the family.
The Republicans, on the other hand, still claim to be authentic promoters of the traditional Western Christian ethos; a value system that recognizes objective truth, natural law, and honor (such as keeping you word and saying what you mean). They righteously offer themselves as the standard bearer of truth and as America’s last best hope. Their platform staunchly declares and defines truths. They know what the traditional family is. But to he that has been given much, much is expected. Sadly, much of the Republican’s political practice differs from its official verbiage. They know better, much better than their Democratic counterparts, but they act barely better.
There was the blasphemy of the irreverent Jesse Jackson in New York, and the veracity of the courageous Pat Buchanan in Houston, There were the platform victories of the true-believers at both conventions. Yet the integral pro-life, pro-family platform of the Republican is condemned as totalitarian and bigoted by the Clinton campaign, while the pro-death, pro-feminist/sodomite platform of the Democrats is tacitly approved by the Bush campaign.
The Republican platform is more conservative than Bush. But Bush doesn’t seem to be all that bound by his party’s platform – as he often insinuates. Of course Bush himself, depending on his audience, is often more conservative than Bush. Bush panders to conservatives in a politics of expediency. Experience has shown that he is not beyond betraying either his own words or those of his party’s platform.
Clinton, likewise, panders to conservatives, but is nonetheless openly committed to his party’s radically liberal platform – the Democrats will brook no heresy. It’s no one’s fault but his own if he is unaware of the Clinton agenda – its there in black and white.
To be hypocritical you must have enough sense of decency to know what the admirable is. Hypocrisy is not possible for a man like Clinton – he is too far gone for that. He doesn’t recognize the truth. His extra-marital affairs, for instance, really aren’t a moral problem for him, they are consistent with his political philosophy. He supports Planned Parenthood; he supports abortion; he supports no-fault divorce; he supports homosexual rights. You don’t expect any shred of decency from such a man.
But the right is afforded no such immunity. For hypocrisy is the occupational hazard of the conservative – indeed it is fatal. Conservatism depends on objective truth and intellectual integrity, it incorporates truths of the past into the present, and it discovers truths for the future by harmonizing them with those already ascertained.
So it is not unfair, as the Bush administration cries, when Clinton seems to get off easy on his draft dodging antics, while Quayle’s raked over the coals for his National Guard opting. For Quayle purports to know – in fact it’s an integral part of his political persona – that to serve one’s country militarily is a manly and patriotic duty; and he knows that he partially shirked that duty. Such a flawed historical decision undermines the Vice- President’s conservative patriotic rhetoric.
Bush postures himself as diametrically opposed to Clinton. But in most issues the President merely stays a little to the right of Clinton and claims the conservative high ground. But being a little to the right of Mr. Clinton is hardly conservative.
A key case in point – since it is being advanced as the Democrat’s banner pro-family issue – is that of parental leave. The Republicans, eager to capitalize on the popular concept, don’t disagree with it, just the means of implementation; i.e. private sector choice (with coercive tax “incentives’) versus federal government mandate. Likewise, the Republicans would like to exclude the father from such leave – a deletion that apparently conveys their refined appreciation of the difference between motherhood and fatherhood.
Still the concept of parental leave has in essence been accepted by both parties; which, in reality, has made it a non-issue; which means paradoxically, it will be batted about a lot.
But the idea of parental leave is intrinsically antithetical to family. Parental leave has nothing to do with the promotion of families; it has everything to do with the promotion of feminism; and feminism is pure poison to the family. Here it is not motherhood that is valued, but the working woman; not family values, but economic value. Parental leave’s reason for being, like its precursor, day-care (another non-issue) is pure and simple; to keep the woman – the mother – in the work place.
On other family (read moral) issues the Bush campaign has likewise quailed, or at least turned the issue over to Quayle – who is supposedly the most conservative of the candidates – the moral bulldog of the incumbency.
When asked if the Bush Administration would bar homosexuals from the cabinet, Quayle answered that it wasn’t an issue, that there was no policy because “personal lifestyles is something that would never come up” – applying the “color blind” racial policy (i.e. no quotes because race is not a factor) to sexual deviation. Asked about the military’s ban on homosexuals, he passed the buck to the popular General Colin Powell, saying the Administration was following the General’s lead (which upholds the ban).
Concerning marriage the Vice-President was asked point blank whether or not divorce was too easy to attain in this country considering its epidemic rate – a crux of the matter question. Quayle hemmed and hawed, and spoke of concern for children, but couldn’t bring himself to reply affirmatively.
Mr. Quayle, seemingly in an effort to tone his pro-life stance and bring it more in line with the President’s, claims that “abortion is an issue that reasonable people could disagree on.” One wonders if the Vice-President has ever debated the issue with pro-abortionists. Reasoning has absolutely nothing to do with the arbitrary line drawn as to who has a right to life and who doesn’t; as to who is a person and who isn’t.
The other mate of Bush’s, Mrs. Bush, speaks truthful for herself and her husband when she says that abortion shouldn’t be an issue; in other words, it should be a private choice. Unfortunately, for the Bushes, this issue has become all too public – it’s become political. And Bush’s only way to garner votes from it is to woo the pro-lifers.
Indeed, the Bush team seems eager to assure America that they are non-ideologists. Sure we’re a little “conservative,” they seem to imply, but we’re harmless, we really wouldn’t try to implement our views if push came to shove. The Bush policy of adopting the “color blind” approach to moral issues, and the weak-kneed acceptance of “understandable differences” concerning these issues, smacks of a liberalism far gone.
Still Mr. Bush remains politically pro-life, though not to the point of supporting his party’s integral pro-life plank. When asked about the resolution to work for a pro-life constitutional amendment, he refuses to answer, and huffily states that “you know my position in the past, it’s the same today.” One may be tempted to muse which position in the past, that of the recent past, when Bush adopted Reagan’s view; or the pre-Reagan past, when Bush’s view was anything but pro-life, but was truly his own?
The politically pro-life Bush knows that much of his constituency loses sight of the big picture by focusing on the atrocious issue. He can go ahead and piece together the jigsaw puzzle of neo-paganism and secular-humanism; putting together a section here for homosexuals, and a section there for the fanatic feminists; pert near filling out the entire liberal moral agenda save the pro-abortion section. He’ll leave that out for now. And his pro-life constituency will be satisfied, hardly noticing the rest of the pieces are easily found. Pro-life voters would be well advised to start looking at the whole picture if they truly want a final, deep seated moral victory.
The sad truth is that true believers in the Judeo-Christian ethos aren’t all that electable – at least that’s what the Bush campaign believes. Hence the truth is toned down, and the message is rife with inconsistency. Rabid ideologues of the left, however, are electable; and Clinton, even with his attempts at moderation, fits that category.
The true believers in big-league American politics today are the party line Democrats – and they don’t believe in anything closely resembling traditional Western ideology.
The country is irreconcilably divided; in the throes of, as Mr. Buchanan tersely termed, a “religious war.” And there is no denying that religious wars are the bloodiest sort. And it is foolhardy to evaluate the liberal enemy as anything but of the bloodiest sort (they kill in utero don’t they?). The Left believes militantly in their cause. They will do anything to win the day; they are without the constraints of morality; they do not admit of objectivity. It is consistent for them to employ double-speak. As their vicious agenda would have it, they are consistently inconsistent.
But the Right is afforded no such luxury. There is no room for hypocrisy or issue waffling in conservatism. Nor is this the time for inconsistency and compromise – the militancy of the enemy will not allow it. Those that espouse a true conservatism should heed the words of scripture: “I would thou wert cold or hot. But because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will begin to vomit thee out of my mouth.” (APOC 3.15-16).
While both parties have stumbled unto the issue of the century – the unprecedented break-up of the family – they skirt the issue and mouth platitudes, or work insidiously for its complete demise.
Of course all the talk of family values has been downplayed by the press – their polls, indicating that it is fourth or fifth in concern to Americans (though they place education as one of the outranking issues, which remains a family issue, regardless of the National Education Association’s devious designs). Even if this is so, it only accentuates the duty of a true family values candidate to undertake the mission of awakening the public to the preeminence of family. He would speak forcefully about the unprecedented demise of the family and its dire consequences. He would evaluate domestic conditions in light of the family by boldly prescribing economic and social reforms that would favor the one-income, multi-child family. In short, he would be less political and more prophetic – submitting even his political ambitions to aspirations for the nation’s families.
Still a “Family First” candidate would realize that national politics concerning the family is at best incongruous. Imposing family issues from Washington goes against the core familial principle of subsidiarity. The only national agenda for the family that doesn’t carry with it its own seeds of destruction is one that sanctions the autonomy of the family. In truth a radical Family First political policy would be nothing more than an agenda of familial insulation from Governmental intrusion; e.g. tax codes and employment laws preferential to the one-income family. In short, such a policy’s goal would be to reinstate the privileged status of the family.
But such a candidate has yet to rise to prominence in the two-party system. Even under the Reagan hiatus the anti-family forces gained. For it was during the Reagan years that the two-income family became institutionalized. And Bush is no Reagan.
“Family First!” should be the conservative cry. Would that an acceptance speech conveyed the conviction that extremism in the defense of family is no vice; moderation in the pursuit of truth is no virtue.
This election year presents quite a quandary – political expediency would demand that the candidate who will do the least harm be elected. But other factors must also be weighed. There is the risk of continuing to defuse the conservative movement with another four-years of the present administration; there is the possibility of a coalescing of the conservative movement under the surely obscene, but clear-cut, debacle of a Clinton administration; there are third-party candidates.
Political expediency is the predominate choice among conservatives. They recoil at the thought of a Clinton presidency, and consider a third-party vote to be squandered. Still – in the spirit of authentic conservatism – there is something to be said for voting your conscience regardless of the outcome.