You Want Better Government, Embrace the Biblical Family

As Baltimore, and most recently Seattle, became the latest examples of the disgusting fruit of liberalism in America, it is becoming more and more difficult for liberals to explain away the devastation that their politics and policies have wrought. This devastation extends far beyond the burned police cars, broken windows, looted businesses, and even beyond the violence suffered by the human targets of riotous thugs. As I recently noted, such mayhem will continue in cities and towns all across the U.S. where liberalism is entrenched.

As Baltimore burned, an abundance of pundits correctly took the opportunity to call it like it was (and is). “After festering for half a century,” wrote Roger L. Simon, “we're witnessing the endgame of LBJ's Great Society.” At National Review, Kevin Williamson explained, “American cities are by and large Democratic-party monopolies, monopolies generally dominated by the so-called progressive wing of the party. The results have been catastrophic, and not only in poor black cities such as Baltimore and Detroit.”

At the New York Daily News, S.E. Cupp noted how slow and opaque was Hillary Clinton when it came time to weigh in on the Baltimore fiasco. Said Cupp, “Clinton’s reticence to discuss race hints at the glaring reality that Democrats simply don’t have the answers on how to end the growing inequality that creates the distrust and civil unrest we’ve seen in Missouri and Maryland.

“If any city is an example of the failures of liberal policies — from the economy to education to unemployment — it’s Baltimore, which has had a Democratic mayor for the last 48 years.

“For decades, the city’s political elite has thrown billions at development projects that were somehow meant to trickle out toward Baltimore’s impoverished areas, but that hasn’t happened.”

David French chimed in, declaring that “Blue America has failed at social justice. It has failed at equality. It has failed at accountability. Its competing constituencies are engaged in street battles, and any exploration of ‘root causes’ must necessarily include decades of failed policies — all imposed by steadfastly Democratic mayors and city leaders.”

Even the liberals at The Daily Beast pointed out how “America’s Cities Mirror Baltimore’s Woes.” Here, author Joel Kotkin noted that “the average poverty rate in the historical core municipalities in the 52 largest U.S. metro areas remains at 24.1 percent, more than double the 11.7 percent rate in suburban areas.” Kotkin goes so far as to declare that the Reagan era “was pretty good for blacks, if not for their leaders. Even as poverty spending growth slowed, the poverty rate dropped in the Reagan years to around 30 percent for African-Americans.” Kotkin concludes, “Clearly an improved economy is more important than ramping up social spending.”

Yet, when looking for “answers” or “root causes,” ramping up social spending is nearly always the liberal answer to most any social ill. Whether burning cities, rampant crime, massive unemployment, or failing schools, liberals always seek the same solution: more taxpayer money.

After the Baltimore riots, President Obama lamented that, though “there’s a bunch of my agenda that would make a difference right now,” under the current Congress, he would not get the “massive investments in urban communities” necessary to enact such an agenda. Representative Donna Edwards (D-MD) parroted the typical liberal drivel to Chris Wallace and declared that, in Baltimore, there needed to be more investment in education and “economic development.” Never mind that Baltimore was already spending the third highest per capita in the U.S. on its pitiful government schools.

Do you know what is the best predictor of academic success? Family success. Do you know what is one of the “most significant factors in determining whether a community offers low-income children hope of economic mobility?” According to a new study by two Harvard professors, it’s the presence of two parent families.

In spite of their best efforts to ignore or explain away what common sense and sound morality have always revealed, a few liberals are finally coming around to the notion that the biblical family model actually produces good results. So we’re finally going to see liberals cease their war on the family, right? Hardly.

While acknowledging the advantages of the traditional (biblical) family model, instead of promoting the oldest institution in human history, some liberals have recently gone so far as to suggest that in order to eliminate the “unfairness in society,” we need to abolish the family. In a profile of two British political philosophers, Australia’s ABC points out that “So many disputes in our liberal democratic society hinge on the tension between inequality and fairness: between groups, between sexes, between individuals, and increasingly between families. The power of the family to tilt equality hasn’t gone unnoticed, and academics and public commentators have been blowing the whistle for some time.” In other words, these academics are merely advocating that liberals do what they so often do: if you can’t beat it, destroy it.

Ahh, but that’s just those crazy liberals across the pond. Such would never happen in America. Wrong. Even when their own attempted a campaign to highlight the link between things like out-of-wedlock births and poverty, liberals determined to hold to their orthodoxy, blasted these efforts, declaring “This campaign seems laser-focused on shaming already struggling teen parents or, ludicrously, convincing teens not to get pregnant because really bad things will happen.” Because, you know, it’s “ludicrous” to teach young people the negative consequences of sex outside of marriage.

For decades now, liberals in America have preached and promoted policies, and of course passed legislation, that has done nothing but wrought havoc on the biblical family model. Everything from the welfare state to abortion, pornography, promiscuity, homosexuality, a perverse redefinition of marriage, and the like, has undermined God’s design for the family.

Sadly, libertarians more concerned with personal pleasure than with good government (“Libertarians of Convenience” as some call them), have decided that the moral arguments they so favor when it comes to the welfare state and the like, simply don’t apply when it comes to abortion, pornography, homosexuality, marriage, and similar such issues.

As I’ve noted before, “Strong and healthy marriages lead to strong and healthy families. Strong and healthy families lead to strong and healthy communities. Strong and healthy communities lead to strong and healthy churches, schools, businesses, governments, and so on. Each of these institutions lies at the heart of any great nation.” In other words, the biblical family model is at the heart of good government. When the family is abandoned, chaos and anarchy reign. And what is so often the “solution” to such chaos? Bigger and more powerful government.

If you want good (and smaller) government, then you better support all efforts that promote the biblical family model.

Copyright 2015, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor and his wife Michelle are the authors of: Debt Free Living in a Debt Filled World
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com