Liberalism Destroys Families?

[GePap]

The atomizing force of the market is probably one of the most corrosive forces on the collectivist notion of the family. There is hardly going to be any security when ones worth as a member of the economy is based purely on your current market value, something that can and will change regardless of anything you do, at any time. Its hard to keep anything stable in such a situation. The closer we get to a market ideal, the harder it will become to maintain something as stuck in traditionalism as the family.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Berzerker
Molly

You pick 1 year out of 300? I could pick at least 20. Britain was under a series of monarchs, that's authoritarian. The brutality was not practiced just on various colonies under the authoritarian rule of Britain, it had a caste system to boot. The sun didn't set on the British Empire because people all over the world were jumping at the chance to be ruled by foreigners.

Here's a hint: authoritarian doesn't mean 'rule by monarchs'.

There are and have been many systems of monarchical rule, including Poland's elected monarchy, Enlightened Despotism, Continental absolutism, and of course constitutional monarchy.

The first English monarch to really attempt to use an authoritarian system of government was Richard II.

In case you didn't know, he was deposed and killed.

Despite the attempts of the Tudor monarchy to increase power in its own hands, even Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I were constrained by the power of parliament.

What authoritarian worth his or her salt is routinely checked and balanced by parliament or statute law ?

The last English/British monarch to attempt personal authoritarian rule was Charles I, and he couldn't even get Scotland to accept a religious settlement contrary to the wishes of the Scottish Presbyterian Kirk- this provoked the first Bishops' War.

He also ended up deposed and tried by Parliament. In fact, the nearest England or Great Britain has come to 'authoritarian' rule was by an elected member of Parliament, Oliver Cromwell, in the Republican Interregnum.

When James II tried to exceed what Parliament felt was the authority a constitutionally bound monarch should have, he too was deposed, and replaced by a monarch chosen by Parliament.

Wow, I'm thinking the elected Parliament seems to have an awful lot of power...

As for your ill-chosen words, Great Britain did not have a caste system- a class system is not a caste system, no matter what you think.


With regard to the brutality- no worse and in fact a good deal better than that practised by the Americans in the Philippines, the Belgians in the Congo or the French in Algeria.

So reluctant were Indian princes, rajahs, ranis and maharajahs to be ruled by 'brutal, authoritarian' Great Britain, for instance, that they avidly cooperated with the Crown and the East India Company, sent their children to schools in Great Britain and appeared in Burke's peerage.


Dear me, Hollywood & Disney history is taking over the world, isn't it ?

[Sikander]

Re: Re: Liberalism Destroys Families?

Originally posted by MrFun

Or how about the basic reality that families could no longer live off of one person's income for quite some time now.

That's neither basic nor reality. During the depression my family lived on almost nothing, 2 parents and 10 kids. None died from want of food or medicine. The change is in what is desired, not what is required.

[molly bloom]

Re: Re: Re: Liberalism Destroys Families?

Originally posted by Sikander


That's neither basic nor reality. During the depression my family lived on almost nothing, 2 parents and 10 kids. None died from want of food or medicine. The change is in what is desired, not what is required.

But the definition of 'poverty' has changed, as have people's expectations- I grew up with an outside lavatory, no central heating, no hot water supply and no bath and no gas supply.

I didn't feel deprived, but you couldn't even build a council house with that substandard kind of accommodation now.

Food prices have risen, and most people in Great Britain would not accept the kind of overcrowding I grew up with as the son of immigrants. I don't think this has anything to do with liberalism, but it has more to do with a rising standard of living, and consumerism.

Where when I was four certain things were perceived as luxuries, now a four year old can't get by without a Gameboy, colour television with cable or satellite, foreign holidays and designer footwear, let alone a dedicated hot and cold water supply, inside lavatory and bathroom.

[Sikander]

Re: Re: Liberalism Destroys Families?

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove
Let's see, if a couple has their kids when they're 20 to 25, and their kids have kids at the same age how old are the grandparents? I think you'll find that most people become grandparents between 40 and 55, well before they're old enough for Social Security. Among the people in my practice grandparents are very often the primary caretakers for the kids because the parents have to work 3+ jobs to make ends meet because the good paying jobs all went to China.

The breakdown of the extended family over generations but particularly after WW2 (often due to people's willingness to move away from their extended families) did / does have an effect on how much family childcare is available. My relatives in the south have kept their extended families more intact than those of us elsewhere, and there is very little paid childcare used by them, the vast majority is done by relatives.

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove
I think that our over-sexed, me-first, self-centered culture is more likely at fault. The average teen boy generally isn't thinking "Aw heck, if we screw up let the government pay for it" when he seduces Sally, they don't think that far in advance. He's thinking about how all the other young bucks have mucho notches in their sex pistols and he neds to work over time to catch up. Ditto with the girls. Maybe if we didn''t have such a libertarian attitude about sex in this country the out of wedlock rate wouldn't be so high.

There is less incentive for poor parents to reign in such behavior as the tab for those children won't put them in danger of being ruined financially. I doubt that this is the the sole or even primary reason, but I'm certain it has an impact.

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove
So libertarianism isn't for women too? My, my, my. No, the vast majority of women work not because they want careers, unless you consider flipping burgers a "career", nor did they do so because of hubbies high taxes - the job that paid enough to but Dad into a tax bracket went overseas years ago. They went to work because they want a chance to live like everybody else - 2 cars, 2000+ feet of living space, a TV in every room. etc., etc. In tightly knit clans the adult children remain essentially children until the parents are close to death. Think about Prince Charles. Divorce is high in this country because our culture so highly values individualism. Unfortunately the obverse side of that coin is often one person in the pairing sucking up mountains of abuse just to maintain the marriage.

Women work because they can. Work gives them freedom and their generally greater neediness for status through material plenty rivals their maternal instinct to the extent that we are cruising at about replacement level in terms of our birthrate. This has little to nothing to do with the raw economic levels, we are in the stratosphere in terms of our standards of living. It's about fighting for position and status in a rich tribe where the desire for status and fulfillment through material possessions have been elevated to a pathological degree.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Odin
The rise in divorce rates is a result of it not cariryng the social stigma it did 50 years ago, and because women are now less likely to stay in a bad marrige for economic reasons because the workforce is much more open for women than it was 50 years ago. Berz's nonsense about how welfare is cauising divorce makes just as much sense as Ned's claim that Britian caused WW2. The reason both parent's work now is a result of the drop in wages relative to prices as a result of the 70's stagflation. That is traight from the mouths of both my US Government professor, who is a moderate libertarian Republican) and my US History proffesor (who is a centrist Democrat). So Berz, two of my Proffs say you are wrong, and they are no left-wingers, PWNED. QED.

Your prof's theory doesn't adequately describe the data, in particular the huge rise in divorces after WW2. The stigma against divorce has been waning for hundreds of years, and to assume in any case that a social trend like that is only leading people to divorce rather than a reaction to other factors is presumptuous. I agree that women's greater economic opportunity is a factor. Your theory that stagflation is the reason for the elevated divorce rate misses the fact that the vast majority of the rise in the divorce rate occurred before the stagflation of the (late) 1970s even began. These things are almost certainly small factors, but they don't line up well with the trends in the data. I would point to alienation between men and women due to seperation during the war years as well as the accelerated disintegration of the extended family and its traditional support for marriage as more likely factors. These fit much better into the data timeline.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Are doctors more likely to be liberal since their job is taking care of people?

Doctors trend Republican, though not quite to the extent that lawyers trend Democrat.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly


Quick, what's the single biggest factor contributing to the rise of the two-income household?

Here's a hint: it's not women's lib.

Here's another: it's strongly associated with both Reagan and Thatcher.

Give up? It's the aggressive, 30-year campaign by Big Business and their conservative lapdogs to crush organized labor. That, more than any single thing, has pushed women who'd rather stay at home into the workforce, by eliminating the ability of working-class men to earn enough money on which to raise a whole family.

Anytime you want to start the "Does Capitalism Destroy Families?" thread, just let me know...

A weak theory to say the least. Unions weren't destroyed by minority Republican governance, they rode high throughout the post WW2 period and contributed to their own demise when other countries began to recover enough to compete in world markets. This is why industrial unions have been in sharp decline since the 1970s while unions of government employees have either prospered or at least retained most of their power. Japan couldn't build better teachers for American schools cheaper then we could, unions or not.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Oerdin

Little facts like that are ignored by the right since they are not convient to their ideology.

See several posts above for an indication that this is a phenomon not limited to the right.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by GePap
I find the notion that welfare "ruins families" is a strange fantasy. Vast cuts in welfare payments and a huge number of greater roadblocks have done nothing to "bring the familiy back", so the only sane judgement would be to state that Welfare's effect on "the American Family" as a whole was limited, specially since only a small portion of poor Americans were ever elligible for welfare in the first place, so the collapse of middle class families had 0 to do with welfare in the first place.

Just because we quit clear cutting doesn't mean that climax forests are right around the corner where today all there is are a sea of stumps. You may be entirely correct, but one can't confidently assert as much based on the reversal of a few policies affecting what is now for whatever reason a very different environment.

Originally posted by GePap
In the black comunity the vast encarceration rates of black men probably had more to do with the breakdown of the family unit that welfare ever did. The notion of welfare queens was always a sort of sick fantasy. People scamming the system might have made real money, but the vast number of average people on welfare were stil dirt poor, and I doubt anyone says "hey, I get a check from the government! Let me stay dirt poor!"

The massive encarceration of African American males doesn't really jibe well with the disintegration of the Black family on the timeline. It may not have been welfare that did the deed, but it's a better case than incarceration for most of the period of the decline.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by GePap
The atomizing force of the market is probably one of the most corrosive forces on the collectivist notion of the family.

Commie.

[Sikander]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Liberalism Destroys Families?

Originally posted by molly bloom

But the definition of 'poverty' has changed, as have people's expectations- I grew up with an outside lavatory, no central heating, no hot water supply and no bath and no gas supply.

I didn't feel deprived, but you couldn't even build a council house with that substandard kind of accommodation now.

Food prices have risen, and most people in Great Britain would not accept the kind of overcrowding I grew up with as the son of immigrants. I don't think this has anything to do with liberalism, but it has more to do with a rising standard of living, and consumerism.

Where when I was four certain things were perceived as luxuries, now a four year old can't get by without a Gameboy, colour television with cable or satellite, foreign holidays and designer footwear, let alone a dedicated hot and cold water supply, inside lavatory and bathroom.

I agree. My point is that this different set of values is really our choice. Social order needn't break down in the face changes which limited the selection of Italian made shoes for instance. It almost certainly wouldn't in the face of even greater challenges.

[chequita guevara]

The Black family is not in trouble. The poor Black family is in trouble, just as the poor white family is in trouble. The majority of Black people grow up in two parent families.

[molly bloom]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Liberalism Destroys Families?

Originally posted by Sikander


I agree. My point is that this different set of values is really our choice. Social order needn't break down in the face changes which limited the selection of Italian made shoes for instance. It almost certainly wouldn't in the face of even greater challenges.

I agree with you up to a point- the point at which envy greed and acquisitiveness replace satisfaction with one's lot, and the sense that 'everyone' should have the right to 'everything' or 'anything'.

In part, the sense of individuality inculcated by militant Protestantism is, I think, responsible too, although I should also stress that there was/is a constant conflict (frequently expressed) between the Protestant emphasis on the individual's communion with and responsibility to, God, and the subjection of servants and family members to the head of the house: in effect, what many Protestant sects did was replace a social order predicated on domination by an episcopal church and monarch/aristocracy with a rule by a presbytery or at the least, the male head of the household.


I've always felt too that 'rights' are championed at the expense of responsibility- responsibility to each other, our community, the world at large and the environment.

I can't help but feel that this is a logical extension of the natural rights/law philosophy.

[Kidlicious]

Re: Re: Re: Liberalism Destroys Families?

Originally posted by Sikander


That's neither basic nor reality. During the depression my family lived on almost nothing, 2 parents and 10 kids. None died from want of food or medicine. The change is in what is desired, not what is required.

It depends. The poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer, while the middle class shrinks. Sure a middle class family could get by without the women working if they wanted to, but they have to keep up appearances, so they usually don't. If the man doesn't have a high paying job though, the women has to work.