FAMILY:THE INCUBATOR OF LIBERTY
The most fundamental institution for preserving liberty arose before any other social arrangement, and has existed under every political system in history. The family is the cornerstone of society, and is the surest means by which the most cherished values of any culture are transmitted to the next generation.
The family can accomplish what no government institution can. No organization or association is better suited to imparting the values and principles of a free society. No department of welfare, department of health, or department of education can accomplish what the family does.
It is at the family hearth that children learn the essential truths about God and human existence, and are provided the foundational worldview that in turn shapes and informs their beliefs and interactions.
No government agency can teach children the value of personal responsibility and work; it is in the family that children gain their deepest sense of patriotism, their sense of self-worth and dignity, and their sense of justice and their commitment to freedom. It is the family that is most capable of inculcating the hearts and minds of children with the honesty, character, and virtue that is necessary to preserve a free republic.
Consider the words of former United States education secretary Bill Bennett. In his book The De-Valuing of America, Bennett writes,Nothing more powerfully determines a child’s behavior than his internal compass, his beliefs, his sense of right and wrong. If a child firmly believes, if he has been taught and guided to believe, that drugs, promiscuity, and assaulting other people are wrong things to do, this will contribute to his own well-being and to the well-being of others. And if this lesson is multiplied a million times—that is, taught a million times—we have greater and broader well-being, fewer personal catastrophes, less social violence, and fewer wasted and lost lives. The character of a society is determined by how well it transmits true and time-honored values from generation to generation. Cultural matters, then, are not simply an add-on or an afterthought to the quality of life of a country; they determine the character and essence of the country itself. Private belief is a condition of public spirit; personal responsibility a condition of public well-being. The investment in private belief must be constantly renewed.43
A society that depends on family-instilled virtues must both protect the family as an institution and respect the rights of parents to raise their children according to the dictates of their own conscience. It is no surprise, then, that those who strive to socially reengineer American culture and replace it with radical, anti-religious secularism are seeking to undermine both the family and the timeless right of parental sovereignty within that institution.
As George Weigel has stated, at the heart of the word culture is cult, or religion. Religion is the primary means by which the deepest values and moral virtues are imparted to the next generation of leaders, businessmen, teachers, and history-makers. Since family is the main instrument for instilling and transmitting these ideals, it is families that radical secularists target in so many of their contemporary assaults on liberty.
The weakening or devaluation of the family creates debilitating societal costs. For instance, the success of our economy undoubtedly depends upon the virtue of those individuals who operate within it. While a successful business depends upon the quality, accuracy, timeliness, and reliability of the products and services in which the business trades, it depends far more upon the honesty, integrity, forthrightness, and reliability of those who work within and manage that business—virtues that are first cultivated within the family. If families fail to transmit these virtues, businesses will not be run capably and honestly, and the whole economy will suffer.
Strong virtues can also be cultivated in the workplace for the benefit of families and society. Millions of Americans have learned the value and rewards of hard work as employees of honest, well-run businesses. Such work opportunities have helped countless Americans pursue their God-given potential and strengthened family and community life. A nation committed to promoting economic growth and defending free enterprise therefore invariably promotes the strengthening of family life.
These reinforcing ties between economic freedom and the family make economic conservatives and social conservatives natural allies: those who seek to preserve economic freedom in America should be especially concerned with the defense of family life, and those who care about the dignity and purpose of every life should defend free enterprise. Both groups share common opponents, who typically attack both economic freedom and the institution of family.
Consider the drama that has played out in recent years in California. In November 2008, a majority of California voters approved a ballot initiative called the California Marriage Protection Act, or “Proposition 8.” The measure would amend the California state constitution to define marriage as being between one man and one woman.
The law was immediately challenged before the state Supreme Court as well as the federal district court. While California’s high court upheld the measure, U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn R. Walker overturned the proposition and suspended its implementation, with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals later extending the stay indefinitely pending appeal. As of this writing, the measure’s fate remains in the hands of the courts.44
Whether in the effort by radical activists to cancel Proposition 8, or by the court’s constitutionally insupportable decision to overturn it, or by the refusal of the state of California to defend it, we see the willingness of government elites, many unelected, to run roughshod over the principles of self-government in an effort to radically redefine an institution that has served as the bedrock of American society since colonial times.
Meanwhile, the California government’s inability to produce a balanced budget, its adoption of job-killing business regulations and some of the nation’s highest tax rates, and its refusal to rein in spending that is often ideologically driven, have all brought the world’s eighth largest economy to the brink of financial insolvency.
It should be no surprise that threats to family life and threats to free enterprise are interrelated. To counter these threats, social and economic conservatives should unite, recognizing their common interest in defending the principle that underlies both their causes: the dignity of the individual.
CHILDREN AND THE FUTURE OF FREEDOM
Just as abolitionists understood that slavery could not coexist with human freedom; just as Americans came to understand that eugenics is appalling and dehumanizing; and just as the civil rights movement demonstrated that liberty is unfulfilled unless the law guarantees equal protection to all people; so must Americans eventually realize that without the unalienable right to life for every human being, including the unborn, every other right we possess is devalued and weakened.
Abortion is perhaps the most contentious public issue today, testing the professed American principle that every human life is precious and entitled to constitutional protection. With the advent of increasingly sophisticated ultrasound technology, public opinion on abortion has shifted, with a majority of Americans now identifying themselves as pro-life.
As with any public policy, the more strongly public opinion is swayed in defense of unborn life, the more our laws should and will change as a result. For example, the federal government can immediately cease appropriating public funds to abortion providers. Planned Parenthood, the country’s largest abortion provider, has been receiving more than $330 million in federal, state, and local government funding every year. In 2009 Planned Parenthood performed 332,000 abortions and fewer than 1,000 adoption referrals. A mother was 340 times more likely to have her child aborted rather than adopted if she went to Planned Parenthood for advice.45
It is logically and ethically indefensible for our representative government to continue allocating taxpayer funds to a practice that the majority of Americans find morally abhorrent.
Whether in the cases of slavery, eugenics, or the denial of civil rights, history has proven t
he willingness of the American people to reject even the most entrenched policies once it becomes clear that those policies conflict with our most deeply held values and principles. While government has usually been slow to respond to these shifting sentiments, respond it has and respond it must.
A separate issue pertaining to the family is the need to protect parents’ time-honored right to direct the upbringing of their own children, and specifically to choose the type of education that is best fitted to the needs of their children.
In 1922, Oregon voters passed a referendum to amend the Oregon Compulsory Education Act and require all children between the ages of eight and sixteen to attend public schools. In its 1925 decision in Pierce v. Society of Sisters, the Supreme Court struck down the Oregon statute as unconstitutional, affirming the right of parents to direct the upbringing and choose the best form of education for their children:The fundamental theory of liberty upon which all governments in this Union repose excludes any general power of the State to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only. The child is not the mere creature of the State; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.46
The Court’s ruling became a landmark case affirming parental rights over their children’s education. Almost fifty years later, in the 1972 case Wisconsin v. Yoder, the Court reaffirmed this fundamental principle by stating, “The primary role of the parents in the upbringing of their children is now established beyond debate as an enduring American tradition.” 47
Despite these clear rulings, the case law is becoming increasingly conflicted as parental rights are once again coming under serious threat. Consider the following cases: • In 2007, a West Virginia mother was ordered by a family court judge and a local circuit judge to share custody of her four-year-old daughter with two of the girl’s babysitters whom the judges referred to as “psychological coparents.” 48
• In Washington state, a thirteen-year-old boy was encouraged by his school counselors to complain to Child Protective Services that his parents took him to church too often. He was removed from his family, placed in foster care, and only returned to his family after his parents agreed to take him to church less frequently.49
• In 1980 the parents of a young teenage girl in Washington state sought to place their daughter in a receiving home after she began running away from home and indulging in drug abuse. The girl filed a complaint with Child Protective Services, citing conflict between parent and child. She was removed from her parents’ home and placed in foster care. Despite the judge finding that the girl’s parents had acted within their rightful authority, state law upheld the authorities’ right to remove her from her family.50
Such cases reveal an effort to radically change the long-established authority structure between families and government by forcibly inserting the state between parent and child. The issue is especially relevant today, as our public school system is increasingly geared toward serving the needs of government employee unions and other special interest groups instead of the educational, moral, and emotional needs of our children.
With public schools becoming increasingly bureaucratic, hostile to religious expression, and unresponsive to parental input, American families are increasingly choosing alternative education methods for their children such as private schools, charter schools, and homeschooling. Such options allow parents to customize their child’s curriculum and learning environment, provide a safe environment free of drugs and violence, and impart strong religious values.
More than two million students are currently being educated at home, and that number is increasing by as much as 8 percent every year, reaping significant social benefits. Home-educated students score an average of fifteen to thirty points higher than public-school students on standardized tests, including the SAT and ACT, regardless of their parents’ level of formal education or the level of family income.51 Because families who homeschool do not depend on taxpayer-funded resources, taxpayers save an estimated $16 billion each year thanks to homeschooling.52
The point is not to demonize the public school system; many of America’s (and indeed the world’s) greatest leaders, scientists, educators, and businessmen have been products of that very system. Rather, the point is to reinforce the time-honored principle that the authority and responsibility to raise children, direct their education, and instill in them the values that make a free society flourish, all reside with the child’s parents, not the state. Except in cases of demonstrable neglect or abuse, lawmakers and judges must enact and enforce policies that support the right of parents to direct the upbringing of their children and choose the educational model that best suits the child’s needs, whether public school, private or parochial school, or homeschooling.
A society that trusts and empowers parents to act in their kids’ best interest will inevitably cultivate a responsible and virtuous citizenry, one that recognizes the value and dignity of every human life and encourages every individual to achieve his maximum potential.
Every time America has strayed from the proposition that all men are created by God, and that they are therefore equal, great suffering and turmoil has ensued.
Likewise, every time government oversteps its bounds and exerts control over an individual’s right to religious freedom, or otherwise attempts to usurp his ability to discover truth for himself, it must lie to do so.
A government that enacts or enforces policies that diminish the value of one category of human life is telling the lie that every person is not created equal.
A government that prohibits an individual from praying or reading the Bible or displaying religious symbols in public is telling the lie that our Founders intended only certain types of religious expression to be protected.
A government that usurps the role of a parent by arbitrarily inserting itself between the parent and child, that says it alone knows best what kind of education, what kind of family life or structure, what kind of upbringing is best for a child, is telling the lie that the child’s parents are incapable of discovering the strengths of their own child, incapable of cultivating those strengths, and incapable of lovingly guiding their child toward a future that is productive, moral, and fulfilling.
A government that systematically removes the people’s ability to make laws based on moral or religious judgment is lying about American history, the rule of law, and the American practice of self-government.
A government that tries to eliminate the concept “under God” from our Pledge of Allegiance as well as our entire political philosophy is lying not only about America’s religious heritage but about the nature of human freedom itself.
Freedom is indeed the most fragile of human possessions, and in every generation it has faced some form of these threats. Consider the words of Joseph Story, a former Supreme Court justice, renowned writer on the Constitution, and the first dean of Harvard Law School:Let the American youth never forget, that they possess a noble inheritance, bought by the toils, and sufferings, and blood of their ancestors; and capable, if wisely improved and faithfully guarded, of transmitting to their latest posterity all the substantial blessings of life, the peaceful enjoyment of liberty, of property, of religion and of independence.… It may, nevertheless, perish in an hour, by the folly, or corruption, or negligence of its only keepers, THE PEOPLE.53
Today, a clique of radical secularists is striving to remove the constitutional protections of faith and the faithful from our system of government, and to eliminate any public acknowledgment that these liberties come from God. No one should be fooled into believing that this was the intention of our Founding Fathers, nor that doing so will yield anything but a corrupt, despotic government.
The choice before us is whether to accept such a society, or to reassert the truth within our families, our workplaces, and our communities that the cause of human freedom can only be realized in a society that p
rotects the institution of family and supports and defends the fundamental rights of religious liberty and freedom of conscience.
CHAPTER FIVE
WORK IN AMERICA, IT’S CALLED “OPPORTUNITY”
In her best-selling 2004 book Hello Laziness: Why Hard Work Doesn’t Pay, author Corrine Maier offered her fellow French citizens a how-to guide for avoiding work. Unlike Horatio Alger, whose stories preached the benefits of hard work, honesty, and diligence, Maier argued that “doing the least possible” is the true key to success.1
But she does have one exception to her rule: America.
When asked in a 2005 interview with CBS’ 60 Minutes whether she thought Americans were insane for their work habits, Maier replied, “No, because Americans, I think, believe more in future than French people. We, French people, right now don’t believe that the future will be better than now. We think that the future will be worse than now, so we don’t have any reason to work.”2 Like Thomas Paine, who celebrated the American Revolution as an opportunity to start the world anew, Americans have always anticipated a better future. This forward-looking worldview has been essential to fueling America’s exceptional work ethic and extraordinary system of wealth creation.
From the settlers at Jamestown to the immigrants who land on our shores today, Americans have believed hard work provides the opportunity to pursue happiness and enjoy the fruits of one’s labor. Faith in the future and faith in a just reward for work are, as Corrine Maier intimated, still vibrant sources of American Exceptionalism.
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