Conservatives like to think that the current dissolution of the family should be prevented by state intervention. The state, according to these people, should make sure that homosexual couples are discriminated against when it comes to public financial help, adoptions are restricted to heterosexual couples, abortion is made illegal and so on. As a social conservative myself I agree completely with the moral assumptions underlining these requests. But is it the modern bureaucratic state the instrument to uphold Christian values?
If we are to seek the help of the modern bureaucratic state in safeguarding the traditional (Christian) family it would be helpful to take a look to the record of their troubled relationship. Though they both came out of the medieval European milieu they are the result of two very different trends. The family is fundamentally a libertarian institution, in the sense that it has at its core the concept of freedom of association. Individuals, as sole possessors of rights and liberties, come together in associations on a purely voluntary basis renouncing through an explicit contract or covenant to some freedoms previously held, and take up specific responsibilities. Does that sound like the contractarian justification of the state? No. Individual responsibility means that a “social contract” that is spreading like Original Sin from generation to generation, without the explicit acceptance of those that find themselves under its yoke, is out of the questions. A free association is one that groups only those willing to take up the responsibilities that come from a given contract or covenant. The libertarian Voluntary Society knows only such associations and institutions and the family, as envisioned by the Christian tradition, fits in it perfectly being the first civil institution of the western world that has known a reform along libertarian lines, announcing the semivoluntary society that we know today in our semicapitalist countries.
Not so with the modern bureaucratic state. This is as far from a voluntary association as you can get. You are a subject of a given state by birth, as some kind of genetic disease. You can sometimes run away and then you simply change a variation of the disease with another. If that is enough to make you happier, there you go. Social Contract guaranties that there is an institution above you that decides unilaterally what you owe it and what it owes you. You may live in a democratic state that has an electoral system that makes you share the guilt for the deeds of that state and silences your dissent by pointing to your supposed – and purely fictitious – capacity to influence those deeds through the said electoral system. „You don’t agree? – they say – Stop lamenting and vote, or run for office.”
Now, since the modern state and the Christian marriage are the expression of two very different forms of organizing society it is no surprise that the most tenacious and vicious enemy of the liberties and responsibilities associated with the traditional family is … you guessed it: the modern state. And its strategy to undermine slowly but surely its opponent was to take over more and more of the responsibilities associated with the traditional Christian family, such as caring for the physical welfare of the members of the family, as well as for their education, healthcare, and the like. Nothing did so much for the atomization of society and disintegration of any kind of sense of Christian morality then the intrusive modern state with its tyrannical pretence to reorganize whatever a government or other saw fit.
Of course, this went hand in hand with the hostile takeover of responsibilities from the Church by militantly secularist states. The family being the child of the Christian Church(es) its rejection on the part of modern left wing political movements was assured. The contemporary liberal brouhaha against the traditional Christian family and the promotion of various alternative lifestyles is rooted precisely in this bitter hatred on the part of the secular religion for the old religion. Conservatives know this well, but they have fallen in temptation to use the weapon of the enemy. Can a weapon designed to radically remodel society as o whole and smash any opposition be used to uphold what is dear to the other side? Can we use the One Ring against the Dark Lord to whom it rightly belongs? Record seems to show so far that such an option is counterproductive at best and fatal at worst, yet conservatives are more and more keen to take the easy way instead of the right one.
There is no question in my mind, therefore, that the best solution to conserve Christian family values – values that have become “traditional” in our societies – is to leave them to the voluntary associations of the civil society. It is the job of the churches and other free associations of any kind to create communities that live by those principles through their free choice. Which, of course, means that other communities, upholding other sets of values, should be left free to pursue happiness their way. The bureaucratic state is capable only to impose the values of a particular group, may that be conservative or liberal, on all the others through coercion.
And one more thing. If conservatives do manage to employ the coercive power of the state for the cause of Christian values, what this will bring is only a growth in the intrusiveness of the state in the intimate lives of private citizens. And guess what? The same political power will be ready to be used by liberals against the traditional family later on, when the electoral tide turns.
If we are to seek the help of the modern bureaucratic state in safeguarding the traditional (Christian) family it would be helpful to take a look to the record of their troubled relationship. Though they both came out of the medieval European milieu they are the result of two very different trends. The family is fundamentally a libertarian institution, in the sense that it has at its core the concept of freedom of association. Individuals, as sole possessors of rights and liberties, come together in associations on a purely voluntary basis renouncing through an explicit contract or covenant to some freedoms previously held, and take up specific responsibilities. Does that sound like the contractarian justification of the state? No. Individual responsibility means that a “social contract” that is spreading like Original Sin from generation to generation, without the explicit acceptance of those that find themselves under its yoke, is out of the questions. A free association is one that groups only those willing to take up the responsibilities that come from a given contract or covenant. The libertarian Voluntary Society knows only such associations and institutions and the family, as envisioned by the Christian tradition, fits in it perfectly being the first civil institution of the western world that has known a reform along libertarian lines, announcing the semivoluntary society that we know today in our semicapitalist countries.
Not so with the modern bureaucratic state. This is as far from a voluntary association as you can get. You are a subject of a given state by birth, as some kind of genetic disease. You can sometimes run away and then you simply change a variation of the disease with another. If that is enough to make you happier, there you go. Social Contract guaranties that there is an institution above you that decides unilaterally what you owe it and what it owes you. You may live in a democratic state that has an electoral system that makes you share the guilt for the deeds of that state and silences your dissent by pointing to your supposed – and purely fictitious – capacity to influence those deeds through the said electoral system. „You don’t agree? – they say – Stop lamenting and vote, or run for office.”
Now, since the modern state and the Christian marriage are the expression of two very different forms of organizing society it is no surprise that the most tenacious and vicious enemy of the liberties and responsibilities associated with the traditional family is … you guessed it: the modern state. And its strategy to undermine slowly but surely its opponent was to take over more and more of the responsibilities associated with the traditional Christian family, such as caring for the physical welfare of the members of the family, as well as for their education, healthcare, and the like. Nothing did so much for the atomization of society and disintegration of any kind of sense of Christian morality then the intrusive modern state with its tyrannical pretence to reorganize whatever a government or other saw fit.
Of course, this went hand in hand with the hostile takeover of responsibilities from the Church by militantly secularist states. The family being the child of the Christian Church(es) its rejection on the part of modern left wing political movements was assured. The contemporary liberal brouhaha against the traditional Christian family and the promotion of various alternative lifestyles is rooted precisely in this bitter hatred on the part of the secular religion for the old religion. Conservatives know this well, but they have fallen in temptation to use the weapon of the enemy. Can a weapon designed to radically remodel society as o whole and smash any opposition be used to uphold what is dear to the other side? Can we use the One Ring against the Dark Lord to whom it rightly belongs? Record seems to show so far that such an option is counterproductive at best and fatal at worst, yet conservatives are more and more keen to take the easy way instead of the right one.
There is no question in my mind, therefore, that the best solution to conserve Christian family values – values that have become “traditional” in our societies – is to leave them to the voluntary associations of the civil society. It is the job of the churches and other free associations of any kind to create communities that live by those principles through their free choice. Which, of course, means that other communities, upholding other sets of values, should be left free to pursue happiness their way. The bureaucratic state is capable only to impose the values of a particular group, may that be conservative or liberal, on all the others through coercion.
And one more thing. If conservatives do manage to employ the coercive power of the state for the cause of Christian values, what this will bring is only a growth in the intrusiveness of the state in the intimate lives of private citizens. And guess what? The same political power will be ready to be used by liberals against the traditional family later on, when the electoral tide turns.
Solutions? Divorce the family from the state. Divorce childcare from the state. Divorce education from the state. Divorce healthcare from the state. Divorce anything under the sun from the state and put a “wall of separation” between them and the state. Give back the responsibilities to the voluntary forms of association like families and churches. Leave those who do not want to live by a determined set of values to form other kind of communities and associations in order to meet their (perceived) needs.
In short: let the Voluntary Society emerge naturally and spontaneously, and to hell with the artificial/coercive power of the state – from where it came and where it belongs.
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