The demise of the family due to the sexual revolution is hardly a new principle of conservative dogma. In the 60s, serious commentators routinely bemoaned the death of family norms. They likened the rise of sexual liberation to the fall of the Roman Empire, with the culprits being hippies instead of Huns.
Their assertions were just as fatuous then as now.
23
I'll cut to the chase:
Whited sepulchers
Moneychangers in the temple
Casters of first stones
My observation (I taught life drawing for years, and was startled by the layperson's prurience about nudity) is that censoriousness about other people's sexuality comes from an unhealthy attitude towards sex, often envious.
Trump's behavior is hardly a model of restraint, modesty, or morality.
Worshipping fetuses and disrespecting women, mothers, and families is not pro-life, it's pro-slavery, which is not surprising, since slavery is also OK with these hypocrites.
What they don't like is freedom or democracy, as it gets in the way of owners, exploiters, and the likes of Putin's oligarchs.
29
Political ideology arguments about global trends is a distraction from the truth. The truth is that MORAL ideology is pushed by the powers that be.
You see it when you turn on the radio, the television, your streaming services. You see it when you read a best-selling book, when you visit your friends, when you use social media, when you read comments and chats, when you watch the news.
Look at the Oscar-winners, the TV shows most advertised and reported on, the big budget video games, the lectures given by educators.
MORAL ideology has has degraded, and no one political party or group is to blame. The bible calls this ever-present brain-washing "the authority of the air" (Ephesians 2:2) because like air, it's everywhere, you breathe it in constantly.
Those with morally conservative views are vilified, the morally bankrupt are celebrated as heroes.
Live the life you want! Don't let a marriage and kids weigh you down! Pursue your dreams! Put yourself first! Don't regret sacrificing your career!
And let's not forget...
Buy more! Live to a higher standard! Get all you can out of life! Being single is freedom!
Not only does a life of wanton egotistical moral filth (treating people like products to be used and discarded) make you a horrible human being (and an unhappy one) but it DESTROYS entire societies.
The Roman Empire fell because people had become hedonistic. History has a way of repeating itself.
14
This is simple. Barr, like Trump, is about projection. For them, lies, hate, and rage are levers. There is no small irony in the fact that they are the ones furiously using those tools to fracture our families, our communities, and our nation.
19
The hypocrisy of religious conservatives is shameless. In fact, secular people tend to have much higher moral standards than many religious conservative people I know. Some examples. I am an atheist married to an atheist for 30 years, two adult sons who did not rush into having sex not because some god told them so, but because they have many deep interests in life and they view sex as part of deep relationships. Most atheists I know are in long-lasting, committed, happy marriages with well raised, caring children. Contrariwise, several religious conservatives I know make a big show of going to church on Sundays and claim they are against a woman's right to choose, but then they are very promiscuous, get divorced, remarried, and divorced again. So shame on religious conservatives who spread the lie that secularism is destroying the family and society. Quite the contrary: it is their hypocrisy that is destroying society and pushing smart people away from organised religion. Personally, I have nothing against religion, but I have something against the moralising hypocrisy of some religious conservatives. Jesus in the Gospel had a name for such people.
31
Deneen: “Democracy, in fact, cannot ultimately function in a liberal regime.”
Barr: "in the Framers’ view, free government was only suitable and sustainable for a religious people"
These (unsupported) statements, unfortunately, are more sinister than simply delegitimizing liberals.
These kinds of conservative claims lay the groundwork to end democracy and move to authoritarian (perhaps nominally theocratic) dictatorship.
We must be very careful of someone like Barr, because he represents the capable, insidious side of the evil that Trump conveniently cloaks in buffoonery.
27
Another way of looking at the "decline" that Barr laments is that the problems he cites are now impacting whites at a greater rate. He and his ilk couldn't be bothered to notice when the impact was greatest among minorities.
12
Dear Mr. Edsall, please read Mr. Blow’s opinion article today about the origins of the Thanksgiving holiday, and then re-examine the hypothesis of your article...
4
There is no such thing as "conservative thinking". It's a mere polarization exercise, as usual, and it's marketing. The problem is that all these college-educated buffoons think it's real. "Licentiousness" and "moral order' pure Puritan dogma, and so is the rest of it. Note also that in keeping with the conservative algorithm, it's based on the rhetoric of 50 years ago at least. It's for the people who don't get The Simpsons, and it works. The problem isn't the idea, it's that people can't see what utter trash it is.
As for the constant, incorrect use of the word "elite", can the NYT and others with vocabularies kindly check out the meaning of the word? It's being applied to everything including the vast mass of American self-proclaimed saviors who never said a word on any subject about which they're so suddenly passionate for decades. See marketing, know marketing, respond accordingly.
1
Edsall completely ignores the effect of LGBTQ culture and transgenderism on the family and our understanding of the relationship between and the proper roles of men and women. Drag queen story hour, mandatory transgender education(i.e., propoganda) for kids starting in first grade, an ideology that seeks to force parents to help confused, pre-adolescent children "transition, including providing them with hormone blocking drugs--these are the kinds of thing that Barr is talking about that are being pushed by the liberal left and by the liberal left alone. And by "pushed" I don't mean merely advocated but insisted upon with a self-righteous fervor that labels any disagreement or opposition as "bigotry."
17
It is foolish to pretend that Barr cares about anything he says. It is all fish fodder for the undeserving and credulous peasants.
8
Barr is of the “every knee must bend” school of socialization. I am not surprised when brittle religious zealots espouse coercion, but in an AG it is dangerous,not merely distasteful.
9
So-called conservatives such as the despicable William Barr need to generate fake liberal bogey-men in order to hide their own moral bankruptcy and intellectual hypocrisy. Having the R's back Trump eviscerates any claim that they support any measure of social order, justice or the common good. They're liars, hypocrites and destructive, disgusting people.
8
The American family is not in decline. The availability of reliable birth control, divorce, and careers for women mean that the American family is *changing.* Women are no longer forced to marry for economic reasons. They are no longer forced to stay married because divorce is scandalous and hard to obtain, and/or because they are parents. So yes, people have children without being married to the same person their entire lives. On the other hand, they often successfully remarry. It's true that households are better off with two earners. But because people are not *forced* to marry for economic reasons, they can wait till the person they the can happily live with comes along. What's so bad about that? There have been many kinds of families in different societies and different times in history. We don't have to remain glued to an older, dysfunctional model.
16
There were just as many, in fact more, unmarried and unintended pregnancies in the 50s. The difference is that back then, society and the woman's father absolutely demanded, with a gun to the head if need be, that the man in that instance marry the woman. LOTS of "shotgun marriages" and births that took place less than 9 months after the wedding back then.
Nowadays, no one demands he marries her. Instead, if she has low education and no prospects, she's likely to have the baby as a single mother, the state will garnish what low wages (if any) he has, and the child grows up in poverty. And among the upper classes, it simply doesn't happen because women use birth control, the day-after pill, and as a last resort get abortions.
It's not a good outcome in either situation. Back in the shotgun marriage days, yes, more children had married parents. But there was WAY more domestic violence and generally miserable parents who hated each other, screamed all the time in each other's presence, and kids were hit and yelled at as a matter of course.
Nowadays there is far less screaming and hitting in families, but less families living together overall, and many more poor single parents. It's obvious that one adult will almost always have less economic resources than two adults sharing living expenses and earnings.
And rich men in every historical era have always had multiple mistresses and/or multiple wives. Conservative or liberal, religious or not, that has never changed.
12
While I do not concur with with Mr. Edsall in some of his conclusion in this particular piece, I must say that I now consistently look forward to his very insightful and thoroughly researched articles.
Mr. Edsall clearly laid out ample evidence that the traditional American family is in decline which has highly negative impact on kids raised in single parent households. While I agree with him that economic stagnation in the manufacturing industry, expedited by China's ascension to the WTO, did have a role to play in this development , I do NOT discount the equally important role of liberal mass media and entertainment media. As an agnostic politically moderate family man I can tell you that even I sometimes get the feeling that "normal" families with kids are somewhat under assault by a barrage of in your face anything goes liberal agenda in media and the entertainment industry. I am heartened by the trends that even liberal families are now rediscovering the tremendous advantages of a traditional families especially as it comes to the successful upbringing of families.
12
Conservatives always work backwards, rationalizing their existence by suggesting that it promotes goodness and prosperity. I always laugh when I hear a conservative talking about the dangerous modern trend toward a lack of individual responsibility. What could possibly be a stronger force for the lack of personal responsibility than the modern corporation? The very existence of the corporation is to avoid personal liability. I would argue that this force has been more destructive to American society than any other.
16
Has the Attorney General spoken with the President about the prevalence of divorce leading to societal breakdown? That should be a productive conversation.
15
This is the delusion of the Conservative. That somehow, in some long mythic time ago, things were better.
This article reminds me of the interview Ross Douthat had with Cardinal Raymond Burke about two weeks ago. There was a paragraph towards the middle that sums up this sentiment.
"Well, this euphoria set in during the council years and after. Now suddenly we’re all free. The discipline of the seminary was looked upon as repressed, and any kind of check on the will of the individual was seen as negative. But I look back now, and I see all those rules as geared to curbing the effects of original sin, and disciplining us so that we could really be good men. And it worked. But in 1968, the seminary rule book was thrown out and there ensued chaos. And we know, for instance, that a lot of the sexual abuse of minors took place in that period, where there was this idea that any tendency that I have, because that’s my tendency, it’s good."
The delusion of the Conservative is that somehow liberalism throws open the door for people's basest instincts. Forgetting that those base instincts have been part of humanity since we evolved.
Conservatives practiced burying things to fester, or blamed all society's flaws on liberals of those times, just as today. The licentiousness, social disorder and family break ups have always been there.
Conservatives of have always just looked back at earlier eras, even in earlier eras, as examples of "better times," just like they do today .
8
The conservative critique is not altogether baffling. It just rests on a failure, innocent or otherwise, to distinguish between practicing liberals -- the majority -- and activist liberals, who prefer to be known as progressives.
Progressives, in turn, are a somewhat varied group of people. However, definitive progressives today exhibit an ideological hostility to the very idea of the family, which they attack as anything from a sentimental delusion to a patriarchal power structure.
Conservatives are reacting not to the substance of practical liberalism, but to the leading edge which liberalism presents to the world.
6
I would like Mr. Edsall to write less about the chicken-and-egg debate about partisanship vs. policy and more about what has driven us to the present situation. In particular, what and whose policies and practices have created the present situation? Which side's (assuming for the moment there are two sides) fears about the other are more justified, and how much so? Which side actually wants to force what upon the other, and how much difference would it make? Which side engages in more fear-raising, and what kind?
I believe it is clear that the extreme right, which now controls the national and most state Republican parties and is flush with money, has pushed polarization far, far more than the liberal mildly-left (there is no significant extreme left in the U.S.A.). Let's discuss this. Is it true? How true or false is it? Whose interests are served? How has it been enabled by money and government? These are the core issues.
9
Its hard to read remarks by AG Barr and Patrick Deneen & not conclude that their goal is to drive people who in good conscience can't subscribe to religious beliefs (and in particular Judeo-Christian ones) back into some closet.
What they are in effect saying is that society can't function w/such beliefs as part of the mainstream. They don't want to exterminate secularism, just diminish its influence among most people. Secularists can be tolerated, so long as they keep their views to themselves.
And I suspect they feel this way b/c in their minds, a genuine & open competition btwn Christians & secularists would ultimately lead to the DEFEAT & PERSECUTION of the former, & presumably, all people w/traditional values.
If secularism becomes the norm, as Robert George is quoted here, then "Christians and others who dissent from progressive orthodoxy......are to be treated like the defeated Germans and Japanese after World War II."
I wish I could let Professor George in on a little secret: I don't know if God exists, or whether Jesus is only way to salvation. And because I don't know this, I try to peacefully coexist with believers, as well as atheists, and people with other religious beliefs as well, because it isn't about winning anything.
So far as I know, there is no master plan among secularists to "win a war" & re-educate "Christians and others who dissent."
What if we simply disagree, and neither side is to blame for all of the ills in our society?
6
Many conservatives have been putting "the pursuit of personal appetites at the expense of the common good" for decades.
Just because they vote for the same party or candidates as Christian conservatives doesn't somehow remove them from responsibility for damaging the "traditional moral order" as well.
But also, ideological speeches like that of Attorney General Barr's don't seem to involve much reflection or critical thought about the many problems and contradictions WITHIN the "traditional moral order" that they have been so stridently defending.
So, we have at least three issues here: 1) the scapegoating and blaming of "liberal elites" for all or most current social problems; 2) the lack of rigorous discussion about the multiple causes of those social problems (arguably more of a conservative deficiency than a liberal one); and 3) the unasked questions about the many problems and contradictions that lay within our "traditional moral order" from the start, and how those problems and contradictions have contributed to the unraveling that so many lament today.
And neither I or anyone else can speak for "all liberals", but I for one welcome any and all conservative arguments about what we need to do differently, provided that they actually ARE arguments--with hard evidence, and take multiple factors into account--and are not simply ad hominem attacks on
"secularists."
6
The whole idea of a middle class, and nuclear-family, middle class existence, is a historical aberration that only occurred because of WW I & II, never existed before then, and won't last much longer absent another major war or radical social change.
The fact is that after WWII, when virtually ALL men served together, they were united for a while. Almost all politicians were veterans and brothers in arms. They had less greed and more camaraderie for their shared sacrifice and so that generation passed social welfare legislation including the GI Bill, Social Security, Medicare, etc. that actually built a middle class. Women were so traumatized by fear of their men being killed in war and happy to have them back that they married in droves, at younger ages than they did pre-1950. And the rich had survived an actual existential threat to their continued existence, still feared communism, and were willing to give up (or be shamed into giving up) some of their riches for the social good.
As soon as the Boomers who didn't all collectively fight in the World Wars took political power, they tried to dismantle the social welfare state.
Prior to the 20th century, there was no middle class. People lived on family farms, there was TONS of prostitution, less marriage, and in the cities you were either a domestic servant or you were rich.
TV began during the brief "golden age" and made people think a middle class nuclear family was the default. But it was an anomaly.
11
The rise of single parent households also has a lot to do with the fact that we've locked up millions of parents over the past few decades. This is often forgotten in these discussions over the quality of family life, which place way too much emphasis on changes in prevailing ideology. We forget that we've incarcerated a huge percentage of our population, much larger than any other country, and then we sit around and do armchair psychology to try and figure out why all these families are split up and traumatized.
7
I love what are called the pre-code movies produced between 1929 and 1932. They bring to life a realistic view of American morality that ended once the Catholic League and other religious conservatives had the final say in America's screen plays. Turns out the cliche' is true. The more things change the more they remain the same.
4
“Pew, a liberal think tank, reported that the percentage of children under 18 living with two parents in their first marriage fell from 73 percent in 1960 to 46 percent in 2014”
It is my understanding that Pew is non-partisan.
I am not sure what conclusions one can reach from this drop. One would be that simply living with two parents did not stop us from getting into the mess we are now in. It is always hard to determine cause and effect.
4
"How could Barr possibly fail to recognize that there is no better example of a man in unbridled pursuit of his own appetites than his boss?"
It's well known that people doing bad things often attribute to their opponents the exact behaviors that they themselves are guilty of doing.
10
What both liberalism and conservatism prop up is mythology. In reality, the American family is a vile, repulsive, and depraved institution whose significance is about power, and has nothing to do with bonding.
I do not mean to be uncivil. This is simply what I think, what I have seen, and what I know from experience. Liberals would not touch eliminating it. The American family is sacred. Contending that the American family is evil is dangerous.
In this context, the American family has all the liabilities as religion. Conservatism protects the idea of the American family versus what. Versus genetic engineering where chromosomes are calculated and birth parents will in the near future be ephemeral.
We will be able to design our own children, and we won't have to endure birth. In fact, we can do some of this now. It isn't liberals conservatives fear. It's science.
The American family produces children who become depressive, suicidal, diseased, divorced, emotionally dissociative, and the coincidental paradigm called the "foster" family is another failed cultural replacement. You cannot replace parents with social workers who have over a hundred case files.
The American family has collapsed. It is an insolvency that both liberals and conservatives reinforce with impunity. One in four boys has been sexually abused. The numbers for females is slightly higher. The American family has not saved them, but has exploited them. Designations such as right and left are inapplicable.
1
Things were much worse for females prior to feminism. (Ask your mother and grandmother if you don’t believe me.) Going back to the bad old days would inflict suffering. The argument that denying half the people in the family structure their freedom and personal autonomy somehow is gods for the family makes no sense.
14
Barr is quite wrong about the founders. A majority were deists. They stressed rationality over dogma, and were the liberals of their day. Thomas Paine called christianity nothing more than a fable. As is anything that comes out of Barr's mouth these days.
17
What Mr. Edsall calls "this preposterous idea" did not leap to the forefront, it´s been there since the Enlightenment. In the ongoing battle against rationalism, the family is always a synecdoche that stands for society. The rationalists, then the liberals, then the Revolution will tear the family asunder and the wreckage of society will lay at our feet. It´s a trope, it´s not new and it won´t go away because for conservatives it has its uses and has had for some three centuries.
4
I am a liberal. Every day I try to convince patients not to get into a relationship unless their lives are stable and _never_ to have children unless thier relationship is stable.
24
Edsall writes,
In a 2015 study, Pew, a liberal think tank, reported that the percentage of children under 18 living with two parents in their first marriage fell from 73 percent in 1960 to 46 percent in 2014.
This is FACTUALLY incorrect; they are a non-partisan think tank that provides FACTUAL information on issues of public policy. This is a very basic fact...if the author is incapable of getting this fact correct, how much confidence should I have in the rest of this op-ed?
5
Perhaps Mr. Edsall’s referencing Pew as liberal is just reflecting Stephen Colbert’s observation that reality has a strong liberal bias. Are there any conservative “think tanks” that collect and report high-quality data that really tests their policy positions?
1
Pew has a left wing bias. The things say are those that
come from the left. They could be "literally" non-partisan, i.e. not endorsing candidates of one-part supported laws, and still be as left wing as they are. In fact they really are left wing.
A true non-partisan organization would endose equal percentages of programs supported by Democrats and Republicans ... after all, about half Congress is either party, and that determines the center.
3
Having liberals, political haters who never vote, Trump voting conservative Evangelical christians (one a minister) in my family, I think that over all our getting along and caring about one another gives the lie, in this small part, that only conservative Christians live a good life.
It has always bothered me deeply that there are those who think that their faith, along with the color of their pigmentation, is superior to others.
Rodney King had it right with his "can't we all just get along" because if we don't, like the house that is divided and cannot stand, we and our Country will regret it.
7
Great piece, Mr. Edsall! Thanks for pointing out the weaknesses in the highly specious conservative claims that secularism is ruining the U.S. It’s hard to believe that anyone, however politically motivated, can actually believe this kind of baloney. What’s next, blaming the deterioration of the white working class on WITCHCRAFT? Oh, wait, forget that I mentioned it. That witchcraft thing has been tried in the past, and people believed that, too; tens of thousands died as a result. Ridiculous to think anything like that could happen again? I hope so, but stranger things have happened.
3
That's a terrible headline, far too defensive, and it essentially concedes the criticism is grounded in either good faith or reality when it is neither.
2
The article is a challenge to unpack. Liberal and conservative aren't defined. The lead is general - liberals, family, society, conservative thinking . . . but the immediate focus is"Barr’s hypocrisy" and Trump's "unbridled pursuit of his own appetites." One needs a site map to disentangle the material. Please - do better.
2
The progressives may not want to destroy the family but they are altering it in different ways. Family dynamics have changed over the years. Some children have two moms or two dads. Others have extended families with children of divorce sharing with step brothers and step sisters. Single families have become common for many due to divorce or never married men and women. Will this destroy the family fabric? For some yes and some no. I guess it depends on the strength of the parties involved. Time will tell.
5
There is no such thing as “the family.” There are only families. The vast majority of them are trying to love and take care of each other the best they can no matter what their makeup.
12
Barr wrote: "in the Framers’ view, free government was only suitable and sustainable for a religious people . . ."
Perhaps that is what the Framers' thought, but we now know it is manifestly untrue. The least religious nations in Europe, plus Japan, have free governments and personal freedom. Also, less crime, better education, better health care, and so on. U.S. states with fewer religious people tend to have more wealth, less crime and so on. Religion may not cause misery, but misery promotes religion.
6
I think it's abundantly clear that there are immoral, uncaring, sexually wanton people at all levels of society. Sadly, for the rest of us, the ones at the top have a habit of blaming the existence of those at the bottom on rest of us who are just trying to muddle through.
Maybe Barr should sit back at the next Cabinet meeting and total up the collective alimony obligation sitting at the table.
10
In answer to the articles first question:
Barr apparently never absorbed the enlightenment. His Notre Dame speech reveals him as a member of the counter reformation.
For him, the chief executive is above the law, and likely also above the societal norms Barr wishes to reimpose. Just like in the days of absolute monarchs (the very Catholic French Kings did all sorts of kinky stuff).
So, Trump's personal behavior bothers him not a wit.
10
"America First" was a slogan first used by Nazi-sympathizers in the 1930s. This was explained to Donald Trump repeatedly; he was asked not to use it for that reason, but he didn't care and used it anyway. The Republican Party just last year had half a dozen neo-Nazis or outright white supremacists either running for office, in office or using anti-Semitic propaganda as part of their campaigns (as Trump did); or rallying waving Trump flags and swastikas at the same time; or holding rallies where they chanted "Hail Trump" and used Nazi-era slogans including "lugenpresse" i.e. the Nazi-era version of Trump catchphrase "fake news."
The two worst massacres of the past year were committed by people who used Donald Trump and the Republicans' rhetoric verbatim as their rationale. Several other mass murder plots were thwarted before the exact same kind of right-wing perpetrators could to carry out their plans.
Yeah, let's take it seriously when these people tell us who is "destroying the family."
17
After being pointed out a thousand times, apparently it still must be pointed out that children of wealthy divorced/single/"broken" homes apparently have no particular problems getting through school without any collisions with the law (on the record, at least), getting into elite colleges, and finding lucrative respected employment; in fact, they seem to do so more reliably than children of traditional two-parent stable families who happen to live in poverty.
Hmmmm.
10
Robert George: "Christians and others who dissent from progressive orthodoxy can expect “the hard line approach.” We are to be treated like the defeated Germans and Japanese after World War II."
What an interesting choice of analogy. In WW2, Germany and Japan were ruled by fascist, militarist dictatorships that inflicted horrific suffering on many millions of foreigners and invited death and destruction upon their own people. We overthrew those vile regimes and replaced them with progressive democracies. Today, Germany and Japan are two of the richest, freest, most technologically advanced countries in the world; their people are at peace with their neighbors and enjoy prosperity, liberty, and some of the highest standards of living anywhere.
Is Professor George insinuating that... this is a bad thing? That the Germans and Japanese would be better off going back to the Hitler/Tojo days? I'm confused.
8
I'm still waiting to learn what was so great about the good ol' days of "conservative" times, aside from assumed and actual white male advantages in law, society, business and the economy?
13
@SLB
The good old days for the middle class in California began in the late part of the 19th century and lasted until about 1965. What was good? Homes were affordable, one salary would support a family of five, including university [tuition at university was zero, and had been zero for a hundred years], and good jobs were available for all.
12
@Eric
California appears to have been a utopia.
Unfortunately, in the rest of the country women and minorities didn't have those "good" jobs, easy access to university or home ownership.
4
@SLB
Really? I met many women who had attended university in the 1950s and got good jobs at AT&T, Allied Chemical, etc. Would be instructive to get some facts.
3
"How did this preposterous idea leap to the forefront of conservative thinking?"
Why preposterous? It has become impossible to for a middle class family to buy a home and afford university for three children on one salary
It didn't leap . . . it evolved as more of us looked into the consequences of liberal policies, especially those of the LBJ administration.
Example – student loans [LBJ administration]. Colleges raised tuition, students graduated with debt they can't pay off . . . Why doesn't Australia have a student loan crisis?
Example – War on Poverty has increased number on welfare, created the poverty industry
Example - medicare - robbed the middle class, diminished the quality of health care, opened the way for massive fraud
Example - LBJ's HUD act. See "A Dream of Homeownership, Undermined" by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor.
Example – Financial crisis (Government purchase/insurance of subprime loans; regs to force lending) demolished middle class finances.
Example - Hart-Celler, Simpson Mazzoli, de facto amnesty: increased welfare and prison costs, increased the prices of rent and of homes, increased (indirectly) the price of tuition at State universities, increased crime, killed hundreds, enabled increased profits for corporations, increased votes for Democrats,
4
Fear. No matter how bad your medical surprise billing, you layoff with no notice, or the fact that you can't even afford Community College for the kid without five figure loans, at least you aren't a liberal.
This is the exact same scare tactic used to keep poor whites down in the South...at least you aren't ........
14
Like many who have commented here, from the outside I look like the perfect Republican, except that I'm not. Married for almost 30 years 3 kids, stay at home mom, we have our own business. What imagined past do these idiots want to return to? If my mother had been raised just by her mom she would have been much better off, her father came home from the war in the pacific when my mother was 3 and commenced molesting her until she moved out at 16. My favorite grandmother on my fathers side stayed in a loveless marriage because of her Christian principals and got severe ulcers. Life is difficult enough without being trapped in something you can't get out of. I don't hate Christians, there is no war against Christians, I just want them to leave me alone!
22
Democrats are the pro-family party in a physical sense.
They want all families to have affordable quality healthcare, adequate nutrition, good schools, and safe places to live and work.
Furthermore, they're willing to pay for it.
Conservatives are the pro-family party in an intellectual sense.
Conservatives want all families to share traditional values.
Values are free. They require no tax expenditures.
17
In my extended family there are some conservatives who proudly voted for Trump. The take-away from my last visits with them is, they are not extremely curious. They're not inclined to nose around and get second opinions on their political leanings.
They tend to get an opinion about an issue and then ignore any contradictory information. One opinion I've picked up on is that the road to hell is paved with liberal ideas. The politicians and pundits they listen to do everything they can to reinforce the idea that evil and liberalism are synonymous.
6
So let me get this straight.
There's Obama, a Christian, who has been married once and ate dinner with his family every night at the White House. He gives away more than 5% of his income. Was able to sing "Amazing Grace" at the funeral in South Carolina (without a teleprompter or notes). And even Obama's critics said that he ran a scandal-free presidency.
Then there's Trump - married several times, a serial philanderer, bankruptcy king, racist birtherite, incompetent scripture citer. His foundation was shut down for self-dealing. He recently referred to this fifth child as Melania's son.
And somehow Barr thinks that Obama/Democrats/liberals are the problem? Yikes.
39
Liberals telling you how socialism is good for you, is like crocodiles telling the zebra her sacrifice is a good thing.
Open borders, 65% taxes, a salary guaranteed for refusing to work, free medicare for illegals, abortions, etc.
I cannot see how any of this is something that I want, or that we can even afford.
But that’s what Liberals want.
9
@AutumnLeaf
If what you posted was true, I'd join you in fierce opposition to it.
But its not.
16
@AutumnLeaf
Let us know when the Republican Party stops attracting neo-Nazis and white supremacists like flies to garbage.
I'd say, "we'll wait," but there's no need, because we all know they'll never stop.
15
The U.S. has never had any virtue. The first settlers were bought and sold young, poor, white European cast off flotsame expendanles. The Puritans and Quakers were hideous genuflectors to the English caste system and patriarchy that is a mirror image of The Handmaid's Tale Gilead.
The U.S. crime rate (i.e. young deviant males) spiked in the early 1960s, the result of endemic poverty brought on by the prior century of massive levels of immigration by the undereducted and unskilled, coupled to a Depression and two world wars. Had the immigration spigot not been turned off in 1930, the ever increasing crime rate 25+ years later would've been higher.
The 1950s brought prosperity to some but hardly all - especially to half the country that was female, who lost their well-paying jobs and independence when young males exited the military. Young women were little but indentured servants and mail order bride breeding livestock since the 1600s. We remain stuck in the patina of religion that never produced a healthy citizenry.
The destruction of the black family began in the post-war 1950s with the absolute refusal of black men to marry and not concern themselves with their many illegitimate offspring, a rate that was 25% in the '50s and 50% within another decade. Poor white poverty and illegitmate births were only slightly lower.
Perhaps we can finally address quality of life for all, instead of bible banger quantity of breeding and corresonding generational criminal production.
6
@Maggie
The US is like Churchill's take of democracy:
"Democracy is the worst political system, except for all the others".
Yes. One can list a litany of bad things that have occurred in the US, but NO nation, over the entire course of its history, is without sin. I suggest you read some Russian, Mexican or Spanish history.
What makes the US important and different are the values we set out. They have not been completely met, but until Reagan, we were working on them. Much of what you listed has been changed from hard work and political action.
Total negativity will not bring the new improvements we must have now.
6
Barr wants to return to a time when women did not have to work in order to support the family. But one paycheck will not sustain the family. He wants to return to barefoot and pregnant. We are a secular nation and he is trying to impose his religion on the rest of use. We might as well live in Nazi Germany where the other is scorned and driven out. The fact that Barr works for one of the most immoral men on the planet yet feels he can tell women how to live their lives sickens me. That that is his Catholic upbringing. I left the religion decades ago and am happy I did. No more guilt for something I am not guilty of. Bless me father for I have sinned but not as much as you do.
8
If liberals are destroying America through their sexual appetites, conservatives are destroying it through their monetary greed.
8
Nothing highlights the incoherent social conservative argument better than having a writer as erudite as Mr Edsall sum it all up as "hogwash." Sometimes you just have to call it what it is.
The William Barr's of the ultra conservative faction have abandoned all pretense of logic and intelligent argument, as they struggle to maintain their position of power by appealing to the basest instincts and fears of their support base. They now unabashedly resort to blaming the same old tropes we've been hearing for years from street corner preachers --- The End Is Near, All Is Lost, We're All Going To Hell In A Handbasket.
Too much "free sex", not enough church and religion. Too many black women having too many children with too many different fathers --- not explicitly mentioned, but definitely lurking in the background. Too many women who don't know their place, who want jobs and careers instead of staying home raising their children. Too many people trying to live lives that are fulfilling and worthwhile, not enough people willing to roll a rock up a hill for... wait for it... the William Barr's of the world.
No surprises here. When wealthy, powerful white men start complaining about the demise of the social fabric it's best to look at whether and how their precarious perch atop the hill is threatened. It's also a good idea to look closely at their own practice of those cherished "traditional values". Such as telling the truth.
10
@Jim
Given Barr's societal critique, is it any wonder that he thinks US Presidents should be like Kings?
7
We have passed the point at which republican legislative placeholders even pretend to care about this country; rather than patriotism, they are a part of the governmental-republican-corrupt-oligarchic appartchik destined to destroy the last shreds of our democratic experiment. But what remains inexplicable is their defense of a corrupt human being who will continue to use them until whatever their usefulness to him is sucked dry. Their time has finally come: The country wants him sacked; with only a relatively minor group movement (and, oddly, with the Constitution on their side, as well as facts, the law, and simple decency), they can rid themselves -- and their unholy, self-dealing "party" of this unprecedented malignancy, simply by voting with the evidence and ousting what is destroying America, and what will destroy their "party." The sacking of Trump may not eliminate the corruption, the lies, the stupidity. But it will be a start. The option will lead to either destruction of the republican "party" (at the polls), or the complete and utter destruction of this country. We have never been at more peril in the last 160 years.
2
Edsall does well with a topic heavily suppressed in academe and news media by political correctness which demands we celebrate "family diversity" and that there are no differences in outcomes for children by family type or structure. Married v. non-married is becoming a new inequality fault line. Edsall is quite correct in citing economic explanations for problems with the marriage market--millions of men lost well-paid blue collar jobs that made them "marriage material" in their own eyes as well as those of potential spouses. Interesting that this essay is published on the day when an adjacent NYT article heralds that the birthrate has fallen to an all-time low.
4
I'm always amazed at how god like these academics are. Yet they continually fail to acknowledge some scientific facts attempting to assert others.
There's a reason why the "traditional" family exists. That is the mating and bonding behavior that, over 1,000's or more of generations, that have produced stable as well as growing populations.
And that family is one man and one woman plus offspring. Anything else is an evolutionary dead end.
7
Always employed as a professional divorced twice a white male I find that the idea of marriage is nice until every split means you give up 55% of your net worth. I have unmarried kids and I will be advising them to seriously consider the value of marriage before doing it only to be screwed later. All these scientific factors and not one of them correlated this as a factor?
2
The problem of the increased and insane depravity in the US, is much larger than Trump, and preceeds him. In his amoral ways, Trump's depravity is quaint compared to what happens on Craigslist every single day, millions of people seeking various sick sexual encounters and at least 16 combinations of group sex. Overall, the liberals are more permissive and moral realativist than conservatives, but both camps are deeply affected.
2
@European in NY
Did it ever occur to you that Craigslist represents a very tiny portion of the population as a whole? Or that wacky sexual activity has been with us since ancient times?
I suggest your reaction is based on the fact that it is no longer hidden in the demimonde, and easily seen on the internet.
Ever see the Personals of the Village Voice back in the day?
4
The following child-rearing tips are quoted from today's NYTs obituary of 87 year old Japanese internment camp survivor Mary Previte:
"...by creating a daily routine, insisting on good manners and mutual respect and teaching them that bad behavior had unwelcome consequences.
Granting children too much freedom, she believed, would lead only to disaster, while rules, expectations and encouragement were more likely to bring success."
To which we could expect the following reply from Gen Z:
"OK, Boomer."
Family is the defining unit of a culture. Family sets the rules for living in society. You learn from your parents.
Once Liberals with a capital L proclaimed that the family unit was unnecessary, that "it takes a village," then responsibility is passed to others, to other relatives, to the community, to law enforcement, to the state to become in effect "in loco parentis."
Darwin understood this. Science understands the role of parents. Nature provides us overwhelmingly evidence.
So when Liberals make claims in contrast to what science confirms - that a stable, two-parent household is best for raising children - then yes, those capital L proponents are actively working against the best interests of our children and culture.
5
@JohnBarleycorn
I seemed to have missed that memo, or maybe I misread it.
When I grew up, all parents in the neighborhood looked out for each other's kids. That wasn't what 'it takes a village' meant?
12
@JohnBarleycorn
Oh my goodness. The book, "It Takes a Village" is NOT anti-family, nor does it advocate group rearing of children. Its point was that the entire society- schools,
political leaders, youth groups, extended family, are part of a child's upbringing.
Please read a book before lambasting it.
In the meantime, you're tilting at windmills. NO ONE is advocating the replacing parents in the upbringing of children. Where did you even get that idea?
14
@JohnBarleycorn You've posited a false opposition. Nobody among traditional liberals argues that the 'stable 2-parent' households are be best for children; however, that very same household is EXPANDED by the village, not cancelled or contradicted by it, as you infer.
By the way, beside 'stable', where is 'loving and respectful' in your list'; and does stable mean what Donald J. thinks it means? and where is 'law-abiding', esp. as it relates to physical violence and trauma against children?
4
Probably already a comment in here about the effect of mass incarceration and what that did to separate parents from their children, and to create a status quo of single parent families. Surprised to see that glaring omission from this article. Its not a "liberal values" thing when the system is contrived to ensure that young black and brown men are behind bars.
Happy Solstice Season everyone!! ;)
4
Society shows signs of disintegration when it is afflicted by extreme income inequality and there is a failure to provide meaningful jobs for its workforce. Moral relativism claims are specious, so it is no surprise that the unethical challenged William Barr castigates liberals and people who believe in the checks and balances provided by our constitution as immoral.
4
How? Easy. The public educational system has morphed into a system of social indoctrination, particularly the K-12 system. One example is as follows: What was once considered aberrant social behavior (LBGTQ) is now taught as a social norm. The notion that the teacher and/or school system has the authority to dictate moral norms is clearly an attempt by the liberal community to interject itself between parent and child. Another issue is liberal political thought is dictated on a daily basis by school systems that limit political expression. Think not? How many times have you seen a school system issue arise concerning a student wearing a "Trump 2020" t-shirt or MAGA hat? Oh, we want to be all inclusive by excluding expression(s) that are protected by the 1A? Yes, liberal thought control funded by taxpayers dollars. Right out of Clockwork Orange (which should be mandatory viewing by all high school seniors). "Goodness comes from within. Goodness is chosen. When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man."
6
I firmly believe in gathering, as best as is possible, objective information to have a discussion about and propose solutions to the decay of "the American family". But for the people you talk about (and me to some extent), this isn't an intellectual excercise. It's emotional, visceral. People want action, not another 3 years of debate and the following congressional or state gridlock. Also, based on my own experience, why is everyone panicked about divorce? Half the relationships in the "old days" were significantly disfunctional and controlled primarily by males. I find the increase no surprise.
Just food for thought.
5
Hyperbole exists on the both sides.
4
Liberals may not want to destroy the family, but as the research and experience demonstrates, that's what's happening. They alway dismiss conservative warnings as nothing more than reactionary static. They ignore these warnings because they arrogantly believe they are smarter than everyone else.
Feminism was supposed to free women, not marginalize men. Globalization was supposed to open new markets to American made products, not close down American factories and move jobs overseas. The sexual revolution was supposed to free, not enslave us to porn. Tech progressives promised to make us healthier, smarter, and more productive, not rewire our brains, invade our privacy, and chain us to our screens.
To quote William F Buckley, the purpose of conservatism is to stand athwart the world yelling "STOP". Liberals might do well to listen every once in a while.
9
@Patrick Talley So the sexual revolution (read: 1970s) gave birth to pornography, did it?
Pornography is still visible on cave walls, inscribed on Roman architecture, and, rather convincingly, depicted on Egyptian papyrus, Babylonian and ancient Greek amphoras and friezes. Had the Babylonians invented social media in time, you'd be getting angry claims for credit from them today, for inventing an art form.
2
The idea is not preposterous. The left believes in a society with many fewer standards than does the center or right. It believes that a single parent can raise a child just as well as a two-parent household. It believes that there is no reason for society to favor explicitly marriage between two people. It believes that a life without religion is as likely to lead to good societal conduct as a life with religion, despite our prisons being filled with people wholly secular when they did their crimes. It believes in policies that reduce social capital, such as unplanned and essentially unbridled immigration (what immigration restriction does the NYT support?). It believes that there are essentially an unlimited number of genders, and that children in 1st grade should have gender dysphoria affirmed. Welcome to the left...and to the destruction of the family. It has already happened in general in the African-American community.
48
Prisons are also plenty full of criminals who were wholly religious when they committed their crimes, you know.
49
@Snowball I suspect that you don't even know anyone who is "left". They have regular families and some have a commitment to a religion while others don't. Divorce isn't practiced solely by the left but is also takes place in families that are on the right side.
You preach that children should only be between a nuclear family, yet I suspect that you totally agree with the current immigration policy that separates families from their children.
I really think you need to get to know someone who is on the left. You don't know me at all. Just one point, I am very much a liberal, but I don't believe in open borders. I just don't believe that black/brown people are inherently evil and should be barred from immigration based on their skin color alone.
67
@Snowball
Every claim made can be tested against the facts.
So tested every Claim made is wrong.
Liberals founded the United States of America. Benjamin Franklin got around as they say.
Liberals lead conservative lives. Bible thumpers lives are a mess. If, we are going to group up some Americans as suits are biased purposes and then compare one group to another for who leads a
Moral life.
As snowball does.
24
This piece does a terrific job of explaining and repudiating Conservative dogma. If the Dems simply reject the "Liberal" label in favor of "Progressive" then the entirely warped, hypocritical, divisive conservative narrative with its one core strategy to vilify liberals and stir up division vividly reveals the truth. Conservatives represent nothing of value or virtue only what is anti-progress: no progress to make healthcare more accessible and affordable, no progress on the climate, no progress on gun legislation, no progress on income inequality, no progress on infrastructure, no progress in reducing money's influence on politics, I could go on and on. The world has changed only a progressive approach enables a brighter future.
8
Barr is a nothing burger.
Identity politics, on the other hand, are the most divisive force in the political sphere. Solidarity and common purpose unite people. Encouragement and embracement of multiple splinter groups does the opposite.
If you want the perfect example, look at the Weimar Republic, with a Parliament so riven by strife among the center and left that the right was able to establish power, through legal device, not majority vote.
2
It has always driven me completely bananas that I get blamed for other people's choices by the "party of personal responsibility."
Sorry, folks. The "liberal elite" didn't make you start having sex in your teens. We didn't decide you weren't going to use a condom. We didn't make you cheat on your spouse, and we're not responsible for your divorces or your deadbeat husband's unpaid child support.
I guess the idea is that if "the cultural/media elite" were more judgmental and less accepting of those choices, rank and file Republicans wouldn't make them? But then... those same rank and file Republicans very loudly hate our guts, very loudly reject our values, think everything we say or read is lies, and have erected media and cultural bubbles to isolate themselves from our influence... Plus, if we say they are a basket of deplorables or clinging to their guns, we get read the riot act for elitism and looking down on people.
Must be fun to be a conservative. You can have bad personal morals, be super judgmental about everyone else, proclaim yourself the holiest and best and most salt-of-the-earth, and blame everyone else for your choices. You get to do whatever you want AND feel great about yourself. Apart from completely destroying a prosperous modern democracy, it doesn't sound like there are a lot of downsides.
13
Barr probably feels the same hostility toward the Pope as he does toward liberals. And speaking of pagans, I wonder how Robert George feels about trump being "the chosen one" sent by God.
2
Conservatives have been doing this for decades. Claiming progressives/liberals/Democrats are socialists; claiming we want "forced abortion" or "abortion on demand" or "abortion at birth;" claiming we "killed the nuclear family" which only came into existence after WWII; claiming we'll be confiscating guns, or children, or lightbulbs; claiming we'll be "forcing" children to become vegans or vegetarians or eat healthy; claiming we believe in unfettered sex with children and animals because we support gay rights; claiming we're trying to emasculate men and masculinize women because we support gender equality; claiming rights for transgender children will lead to "men in women's bathrooms raping innocent [white blonde virginal] girls;" and on and on and on and on. the only thing I can figure is they are afraid: afraid of losing their privilege, because they see rights and privileges as a pie, where there's only so much to go around. Afraid of their own thoughts, afraid of being seen as perverse because they're actually gay or transgender or misogynistic. And above all, afraid of *someone else* gaining individual autonomy and power. They're always "US" and we're always "The Other." A truly tribal mindset. I'd say they're to be pitied, but at this point in our history, they can apparently tamp us out of existence, legislatively or otherwise - or believe they are allowed to do so. At the risk of sounding all Godwinish, hasn't that been tried before?
9
On economic decline, teaching used to be a middle class job for the college and grad school educated. Come to the Midwest and the South to see what a teacher is paid. A working class salary that is far less than many workers with only high school educations.
2
We might try using scientific process. Begin by definitions, please. What is "liberalism"? What is "secularism" and "secular liberalism"? Well, ii happens that doctrinal liberalism is inherent in much of Christ's message: "And Jesus said: the first of all these commandments is Charity." Where does that let in Prosperity Gospel, or supporting dirty political funds? etc. etc.
The USA may be a bible-thumping and superstitious pool of population; but it's by definition a secular state. So is Barr an official theocrat and overthrower of the Constitution? Liberalism has many meanings; however, in the context of Barr's thinking, liberalism would mean deploying something very specific: cognitive science, deployed in the rearing of children, as opposed to coercion, or voklische rules of hierarchy and tradition. The Doctor Seuss versus the Doctor Mengele. Is this what Monsignor Barr means to warn us against?
The word liberal (in the US only) is the FoxNews portemanteau for Tyranny, practiced by a communistic regime, that preaches evolutionary and climate science, and seizes the excess income of people who earn above $30,000 per year. Is that the real target of Philosopher-King Barr's Epistle?
Finally, it's true that identity politics has changed child-rearing attitudes; but that's not really what Barr has on his mind, because he will never read a scientific study of that.
4
"In 2002, Sara McLanahan, a professor of sociology at Princeton, wrote “Life without Father: What Happens to the Children?” and found that:
They are more likely to drop out of high school, … Girls from father-absent families are more likely to become sexually active at a younger age and to have a child outside of marriage. Boys who grow up without their fathers are more likely to have trouble finding (and keeping) a job in young adulthood. Young adult men and women from one-parent families tend to work at low-paying jobs.
In a 2015 study, Pew … reported that the percentage of children under 18 living with two parents in their first marriage fell to 46 percent in 2014.”
These children and young adults might be more susceptible to on-line communities, like Neo Nazis, who try to provide them with a sense of identity and belonging.
Why would anyone take anything Barr has to say about "moral decay" seriously, given his job and employer?
It's like a pornographer who gives lectures on the importance of traditional Christian sexual morality on his days off.
7
Yes, but then again, we've long been aware that the Republicans have been peddling toxic twaddle to the working class, and even more obvious that the republicans' incentive for demonizing liberalism differs little in strategy from what the Third Reich said about the jews: not merely that they were evil, but that were the cause of all social and economic woes. The question here is simple: what are liberals, and specifically democrats, doing to undermine and disrupt this idiotic right wing narrative? Not nearly enough, in my humble opinion.
6
This caught my eye.
"While five decades ago, many on the left denounced the 1965 Moynihan Report, “The Negro Family: The Case For National Action” for “blaming the victim” because of its description of rising numbers of nonmarital births in the black community, there has been a striking reversal in favor of the report in the academic and liberal policymaking community."
Is it possible that the RIght was actually right?
2
Conservatives, even the ones who claim to be Christian, haven't worshiped anything but the false idols of money or the Nation since at least 1980. They have nothing to teach us about transcendent value.
3
It's all liberalism's fault, says Barr, chief defender and enabler of arguably the most decadent, undisciplined and corrupt president in U.S. history.
3
@RJ Steele We can add "amoral" to your adjectives.
2
Both the left and right are guilty of letting their machinations for the social order dictate their read of reality. It is more interesting, we would likely all agree, to attribute negative outcomes to your political enemies and positive to your own success. Everyone seems to do this on an emotional level, even those who understand that is an incomplete picture.
It is a cliche that may be unwelcome by the NYT reader, but often what the left and right say are both true and it is through some mix that we might find the right balance. Unfortunately we seem incapable of conceding these things, so we are forced to find balance only by the teetering back and forth of political power. This works better for some issues than others.
2
Well, maybe they don't WANT to, but what are the results?
4
I'm a moderate Democrat. Although I do not agree with a number of liberal policies, I have always thought it odd that conservatives like William Barr seem to think that certain ways of life only exist because of Democrats.
Do only Democrats have gay children? (Dick Cheney has a gay daughter who is married with children. Is she ruining the moral order of the universe?)
Do only Democrats' gay children want to get married and adopt children? Does gender confusion (which I confess I find bewildering) only happen to Democrats?
Do only Democrats have student loans or children with student loans that are killing them?
While I don't believe that the loans should be entirely forgiven, do only Democrats believe that the terms of the loans need to be re-worked?
Do only Democrats have family or friends who work more than one job because the minimum wage isn't a living wage?
Are the uninsured all Democrats?
I can say for sure that plenty of Democrats are Christians.
And Jews. And other religions.
Do only Democrats have relatives who were sexually abused by priests or ministers - with the result that the family may no longer go to church?
How can Attorney General Barr believe his own words?
The so-called culture wars have become so bitterly partisan because people like Barr believe they have nothing in common with the rest of humanity.
8
I hate to follow up such a well-argued piece with this comment, but, here it is: the logic and factual basis of this argument are exquisitely constructed. However, at this moment, logic, facts, and argument have no bearing on most conservative politicians in America. The recent public impeachment hearings are exhibit A for this case. Although progressive voices like Congressman Schiff, President Obama, and Thomas Edsall have argued well for their policies, I fear that well-constructed arguments are only expected from one side of the current debate in this country.
5
What is a human family? An assemblage of people who are usually related biologically and who have some goals in common. Today, the Times reported that families are having fewer children (down 15 per cent since 2007) and that young people are dying at higher rates than in the recent past. These facts point to the decline of the family at least in the short run. Hillary Clinton wrote a book with the title "It Takes a Village". She meant, I think, that families flourish in strong communities, where kids are looked after by neighbors as well as parents, where schools teach kids how to be engaged citizens as well as math and reading.
Liberals often support strong communities, and shun extreme individualism. They are "other-directed" in the words of sociologist David Riesman. They support families.
9
Conservatives & Liberals failed when women entered the workforce without adequate childcare.
2
I don't think that a reasoned response to Barr's diatribe is terribly useful. He either knows full well that what he is saying is nonsense, but he has a purely political purpose in saying it, or he really believes it. In other words he is either stupid or a liar. Unfortunately, for us, the Trump administration is full of such.
4
Things are pretty twisted around today. Both the left and right for some reason have to prove they are more moral than the other. Those against teaching religion in public schools are perfectly fine the "new morality" of the secular humanist or atheist being taught in the schools. Those of us who have trouble with both are left out in the cold.
You risk being called a Nazi if you aren't for open borders. However, when someone is for euthanasia or infanticide (as it's spun today, a woman's right to choose a late term abortion), no one will ever dream of calling them a Nazi. Which is more accurate? If I'm not being clear enough, isn't the state sanctioned killing of babies, the elderly and both the mentally and physically ill what the Nazi's condoned?
Is there a conspiracy when the new Bat Woman TV series features a lesbian Bat Woman or when beer adds try to teach us not to look at a woman as woman? Is it only to make money or create a new society? Does it really matter who is trying to tell you how to live when they are telling you how to live?
4
@JoeG
There is no movement for 'euthanasia', but rather for humane medical assistance in dying for those who would prefer to die with dignity - and who are already afflicted with terminal illness. You can avail yourself to any life extending technologies you wish - but don't try to force these views on others.
2
@Cal
Sorry I disagree with you. I understand there is no rush for euthanasia. I was painting a picture in very broad strokes with fears of a dystopian future.
If you consider that many people who would choose euthanasia do so because the pain experienced by them is not under control. They are being forced not by government orders but by medical protocols. Just one example but I'm sure you can think of more.
"...a professor of jurisprudence... declared in a speech at the Catholic Information Center’s annual dinner on Oct. 23...We are to be treated like the defeated Germans and Japanese after World War II." Ironic coming from the Catholic Church, considering their institutionalized defense of priestly perversions. Hardly a large Catholic family I know hasn't had at least one son molested by a priest.
4
Liberal is a dirty word described by Republican Conservatives, a word similar to vermin.
What do liberals care for:
A living wage and a decent workplace
Healthcare accessibility for all that contribute to a well family
Education for all that accomplishes recognized standards
Availability of decent housing
Availability to abortion, to choose when and with whom to raise children, who will become good citizens
Freedom from religion and religious dogma
Freedom from racial bigotry
This is a small list, there is probably many more, how is being liberal dangerous for society?
Who decided that liberal values are treasonous and why?
6
Isn’t it easier to say Trump’s personal attorney Bill Barr is a shameless liar?
5
What I see is hesitant but definite steps on the left to look at where they made mistakes and where adjustome t is needed. And not a single attempt on the right to look in the mirror and blame everything on someone other than themselves.
2
So, if the Observant Catholic and Evangelical communities can impose their brand of spiritual morality upon the rest of the nation, harmony and familial function will return to America?
Hmmm. How is that working for Afghans with the religiously conservative Taliban? Or the Imams in Iran whose religious thumbs press down upon the masses? How about the Jewish settlers in the West Bank, whose belief that God gave them the Promised Land denies millions of Palestinians the right to the same land that has been in their families for thousands of years.
Religion can be a comforting and moral salve upon our individual lives. Until, that is, religious zealots like Barr and Pompeo engineer and impose their particular beliefs into the broader society. That went really well with Prohibition, didn’t it?
The fallacy of conservativism is that we can return America to a facsimile of The Donna Reed Show, with evening dinners together, Sunday church outings, and Mom at home cleaning the house and having dinner ready for Dad when he gets home from work.
The Human Experience must be adaptive and flexible to changing times. The Republicans have become like the Taliban, sans the killing. They will impose their anachronistic version of how life should be in America and will stop at nothing to do so - including destroying our institutions and democratic principles to achieve their social goals. And as their moral standard bearer they have chosen Donald Trump.
How sick is THAT?
11
"Relentless pressure to maintain the urgency of that threat is crucial to Trump’s political survival."
One might have said so in the first place. The article is a hard slog through undefined push buttons.
What, exactly, is meant by "the sexual revolution"? Women asserting their rights? What does welfare and medicaid have to do with that? No, it's fairly obvious that they're just whipping up white evangelicals with hate and fear propaganda.
4
I don’t even know where to begin.
Perhaps suggesting you cite sources for your amazing claims.
Prisons are full of criminals who were secular at the time they committed their crimes?
Please tell us where you found information on the religious practices of incarcerated Americans and any statistics proving they were mostly secular people.
3
The West was originally pagan. We had the Olympian gods. The Native Americans had their spirituality. Europe had the Druids and the Norse and Germanic gods, eh? Christianity is a Middle-Eastern religion. It's not native to the West.
4
I wish we would return to a more simpler time in America before we had these progressive movements. I grew up in 1950s Boston (Belmont) when people went to Church on Sundays and families gathered around the dinner table almost every evening. Couples did not live together or have babies before marriage. There was not talk of abortion, contraception, gay marriage, or transgender lifestyles. It was really a very pleasant and happy time in our lives.
It seems that today we hear constantly about liberal policies that people only want to make even more so. We have had 60 million babies aborted and now we hear our Democrat politicians proposing abortion up until birth. We have people who want transgender restrooms with no limits. Business owners must provide marriage services to gay couples even if it goes against their religious beliefs. Premarital sex is the norm and out of wedlock births have skyrocketed for people of all socioeconomic levels. This cannot be good for our children as they deserve better.
We have become a selfish society where anything goes. If it feels good, do it. We are now an entitled America where me me me is accepted. We had better wake up and change before it is too late. Sadly, it may have happened already. This is very depressing.
5
@KMW There was plenty of dysfunction in those 'happy days', but you're right about one thing - there wasn't any 'talk' about it.
It wasn't a pleasant or happy time for plenty of people - non whites, non christians, the legions of people trapped in miserable marriages, abused children, LGBTQ folks...
7
@KMW If it truly was such a happy time I don’t think there would have been such progressive movements.
2
The Pew Research Center is nonpartisan, not a liberal think tank.
3
Conservative thinking is Old Testament, the crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus, and not any of the teachings of Jesus. It's all about "go and make disciples..." not loving one another with our hands and feet. I see this in my college pals of 30+ years who are Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod. I am a member of the ELCA, the liberal heathen for whom they pray, yet I am more in touch w/ Anchorage's homeless (Native Alaskans and not) and helping be the common good for them to get a meal, shelter and clothing. I hear zip from them about the super-rich who are untaxed, injustices of the poor, the working poor or those with mental health issues. Their response is " we'll pray about it". Democrats and left Republicans work towards solutions. Right and the Religious Right do not - their prosperity gospel keeps them dumb.
1
The two main problems in our country are racism and right-wing Libaughisms. Subtle and blatant racism keeps Black Americans down. Even with it Black Americans have made great strides economically, but they still suffer overall. If you don't have a marketable skill, it is difficult to maintain a steady income. If you do not have a steady income, it is very difficult to marry or keep a family together. When a large section of a nation's people are struggling, we all suffer in other ways for it. It is obvious, but needs to be said, if the boss looking to hire is biased against blacks,they will not hire them. You can't hide the color of your skin. The right-wing fantasy machine is to blame for a lot of these mistaken views. They say it over and over, the US government is evil and therefore does terrible things. Who is going to trust an evil government? So, we are fighting against any government program that might make improvements. In the Trump administration they see this fallacy realized, now our government is truly evil.
Blue wave 2020 !
2
Barr, like so many of the conservative religious right, is espousing a familiar-strategy that is simultaneously, “blaming the victim” and purposely inverting the timeline of events.
Secularism, feminism, the first Civil Rights movement of the 50’s and 60’s till today (African Americans), second Civil Rights Movement from 80’s till today (LGBTQI) all arose out of both an abject failure of these “moral” institutions in general, and the reality that these institutions were inherently designed and maintained to protect & serve dominant identities & cultures at the expense of everyone else.
At the slightest budge of the scales, the dominant identities in the US started to protest, getting louder by the decade, culminating with the present Trump era.
Having power taken from you never feels good, even in tiny amounts, even for a good cause (social justice), and has driven a backlash from White, het, males including mass shootings.
When can the equality train stop? = how about when 35% of leadership positions in business (from team lead to the boardroom) and 35% of leadership positions in gov (from local to federal) are taken up by non (White het males).
Studying the demographics of the above reveals that White, het males still get the lion’s share of everything everywhere in the US today, and that we are nowhere near the above, very generous goal.
So, gentlemen? Settle & strap-in in because we still have a LONG way to go…..
.
2
"Liberals" may not WANT to destroy the family... but inadvertently everything they have been pushing for the last decade has done just that...
4
“licentiousness — the unbridled pursuit of personal appetites at the expense of the common good,”--Is there a better example of this than the philosophy of Ayn Rand?
1
Faith & Reason Institute. That's pretty funny.
2
According to Fox and Trump liberals have now started a war against Thanksgiving too. I thought the left was filled with shiftless, lazy takers? When do they have time to wage all these "wars"?
Beyond wagging their fingers at horny teens and advising couples to seek comfort and guidance from a 2000 year old document full of contradictions, what exactly have Republicans done to support the American family over the last several decades? For every potential policy option that might actually benefit American families, Republicans have been there to ensure it dies a humiliating death. Paid family leave? "Completely unaffordable." Higher wages or shorter work weeks? "Job and productivity-killing nonsense." More affordable day care options? "How about a free pony, too, moocher?"
Most conservatives don't have any real interest in strengthening American families. If the family unit wasn't collapsing, they wouldn't be able to gleefully stand in judgement of at lazy black men, or immoral homosexuals, or society-destroying feminists, or godless liberals. And that's what it's always been about, really.
7
No, most mainstream liberals do not want to destroy the family; they want common sense regulations, social protections, and living wages that rather strengthen the family.
But a lot of progressives on the far corners of the left DO have an open contempt for family. Calls to "destroy the binary", labeling marriage as "patriarchy", making excuses for single motherhood, referring to parents as "breeders" who are destroying the planet, and openly weaponizing the state against parents who disagree with certain aspects of identity politics (for example using DCF and public schools to undermine parents who want to get real help for teenagers who claim to be "transgender" instead of just "affirming" their desire to poison and mutilate themselves) comes very much from a position of being "anti-family."
Overall, an anti-male and anti- stay at home mother attitude on the left also affects the kinds of economic and cultural policies they would impose on the family. While most women want to develop their skills and work, most mothers want to be part time or stay at home. For this they need a husband who makes good money. They also need to cut back on their own careers. Any policy that tries to muscle absolute "equal" pay for unequal work ends up hurting husbands, which ends up hurting their wives.
Marxist societies have always sought to use the state to undermine families, the authority of parents, and the dignity of marriage and sexual difference. Our Marxists are no different.
2
I'm sure I'm echoing other comments, but seriously? Barr speaking at Notre Dame and Robert George speaking at a dinner for the Catholic Information Center are talking about secular liberalism causing sexual recklessness?
How many pedophiles have been revealed so far in the Church, after decades of protection? How many prominent Protestant pastors, rabbis and other conservative religious leaders also been found to be acting worse than those who may have relations with other consenting adults?
3
The author opines that libs don't want to destroy the family. Of course they don't, they have already accomplished that feat. Now they are about increasing that destruction throughout American society and if they happen to win the next election they will push their ideology throughout the world. Hopefully common sense will dictate serious changes after 11/20.
And Trump is somehow the standard-bearer for the forces against social disorder? Thrice-married Trump? Adulterer Trump? Barr and company live in bizarro world.
2
Two Points: First, nobody is going to destroy your family but you. Just because divorce is easier doesn't mean you have to get one. And nobody is making you sleep with anyone. And Trump was not forced to have sex with Stormy.
Second, is it just me or do Conservatives/Republicans/Evangelicals conveniently leave out one of the seven deadly sins when moralizing. GREED!
4
The problem is with Christianity itself. It is a fine religion for children, but not good enough anymore for adults. Indeed any adult who wallows in it - treating the Bible as the literal and unerring "Word of God" - becomes a blasphemous idolater.
An educated and wise shepherd might lead his flock in the "spirit" of the teachings of Jesus. That would be fine - and better if informed by the Buddha. But this is not what is happening.
The shepherds of Christianity lead their sheep wither they would go - down into the inequity of a self-righteous, idolatrous religion that has lead America into unending wars that have killed millions of poor people for no good reason.
They have stuffed our jails so that America incarcerates more people than any other country. They have forced us all into the a fascist economics that shovels wealth to the wealthy and blames the poor for their poverty. They have, in their collusion with the GOP, created a dog-eat-dog world awash in guns.
It is the Christians who have destroyed the American Dream.
3
I understand that the rate of divorce has declined quite a bit over the last twenty years, and I think the sexual revolution has a lot to do with it. With less taboo against sex outside of marriage, and less taboo against cohabitation, people are delaying marriage until they have enough life experience to choose a partner wisely. When people delay having children until they've completed their education, have a viable means of support and have the inner stability that comes with age, they're more likely to choose a suitable partner, and thus less likely to get divorced. Notice that the highest rate of divorce is in the bible belt. People in those areas also get married younger, often because their faith group tells them they have to get married to have sex. Then they proceed to have children at a young age because of their taboo against birth control. This results in more broken families than in other parts of the country. Not only is William Barr misinformed about the results of the sexual revolution, he doesn't seem to understand that our constitution guarantees a separation of church and state. He has no business making these comments at all in his official capacity and should be censured.
5
When I think about televangelists preaching the “prosperity gospel” while enriching nobody but themselves, all in the name of “family values” and “Christian conservatism” it makes my blood boil. They support a president whose lives values diametrically oppose those they profess. They support libertarian, small government policies that would rip the social safety net out from under vulnerable populations: the poor, elderly, disabled, refugees. And then they dare to quote scripture. My favorite verse is from Matthew: Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.
6
Edsall writes, “scholars on the left now acknowledge that the sexual revolution and the personal autonomy movement had significant costs as well as notable gains.” Edsall points out the significant costs the late 20th and early 21st centuries' progressive agenda, but are its “notable gains”? How has American society truly benefited from the liberal agenda? How has it made American society better? I welcome answers from the high educated readership of the New York Times. But as far as I am concerned there are no gains, only chaos. Thank you.
2
Why would any thinking person devote even a second of his/her time responding to a nonsensical request from someone whose own “thinking” is of the resolutely closed-mind variety? Trumpsters, they’re out there folks.
3
The conservative critique that attributes family decay to liberalism seems dated enough that I was surprised to see it taken up here. The assault on the family is from a winner-take-all capitalist system where politicians work hand in hand with business leaders to deregulate and cut taxes. Wage stagnation; increased time demands from work; and the stark rise in health, housing, and education costs all lead to people working more, with less time for their families, and coping with stress, depression, etc. by drinking, taking drugs, etc. That the right continues to blame the 1960s makes sense given that it diverts from the much more real political and economic reasons for fractured family life, but I wonder how powerful their theory will be the farther away we get from that era. (And as Edsall points out, there are no shortage of members in the elite right-wing that live the kind of lifestyle they claim to deplore).
2
Barr is a simply horrible man who has decided to ignore the top line of his job description--to uphold the law for the benefit of the citizens of this country, not his buddy in the WH.
If your vision of the perfect family is Leave it to Beaver, Ozzie and Harriet, and Lassie, it's easy to demonize those who are open to the undeniable truth that society changes and must accommodate itself to those changes to continue to move forward. Or there is the totalitarian route, I guess, which appears to be the core of MAGA, and why Trumpism is so appealing to evangelicals.
It isn't liberalism that has derailed a return to the 1950's, it's growing tolerance for people who were treated as inferior in that era. It's incomprehensible that those who profess to be Christian believe marginalization and intolerance is the ticket to a better society, but if you can believe that God put Trump in the WH, you can believe anything.
4
Barr’s rant sounds a lot like what the various rulers of Germany from the 1890s through 1945 said, “A woman’s world should be restricted to ‘Küche, Kirch, und Kinder’ {Kitchen, Church, and Children}.” Sometimes they even threw in “Kammer” {chamber, or home}. Not quite an American tradition.
Stephanie Coonts, in her book “Marriage: A History - How Love Conquered Marriage” points out that prior to Victorian times, love was something that developed after marriage. Marriages were arranged, mostly for economic reasons. Even in small villages, the village could have the right of refusal towards a marriage if they thought the marriage would disrupt how common lands were managed.
She titles one of her later chapters, “The Era of Ozzie and Harriet: The Long Decade of the “Traditional” Marriage.” Humm... “Long Decade”.... The conservative view of marriage and family isn’t harking back to the founding of our country. How marriages were made and kept in the North were significantly affected by the opening of the Ohio Territory in the 1780’s, with so many young men heading west to make their fortune. In the South, slavery significantly affected marriage in different ways, e.g. the wife was not supposed to notice how many light skinned babies were born to their slaves (Hmmm... Sally Hemings...).
The history of marriage is not quite what Barr seems to think it is. And it is way too late to put that genie back in the bottle without our country losing its Democracy.
6
@ASPruyn
Exactly. Even the 'Marriage license' is a late 19th century invention. Prior to that couples simply proclaimed that they were married by having some sort of ceremony and a celebration afterward.
1
The clues are scattered all throughout the article. They all point to how the white male majority cannot tolerate any minority group carrying out their humanity and equality ... not women, not people of any other color than white, not people of any other sexual orientation than straight, not any other form of spiritual belief, and not anything else besides wealth/extreme wealth. They cannot comprehend of becoming equal. They only see themselves becoming irrelevant (as well as having their corruptions revealed and possibly punished) and it terrifies them. To keep it all tamped down and allay their deep fears of somehow becoming irrelevant in cosmic history they must scream to the rooftops that "the others" are destructive and evil.
9
I appreciate Edsall's effort to apply rational thought and evidence to our national circumstances and divisions. Unfortunately any analysis based on 'right' vs 'left' or 'Conservative' vs 'Liberal' usually misses the reality that both are necessary, and must complement each other, for any society to flourish and succeed. We fail to realize and accept the stark reality that our national history is nearly 400 years of 'built in' repression, by the unlimited wealth and power of white male self-interest over the needs of others. There has been no 'truth and reconciliation' for the evils of native genocide and slavery ... and the division that only foreign war has diminished.
Likewise, the arguments that our ever-growing problems of social and family well-being are the result of having the wrong 'faith' and rules (Barr), or the misuse of contraceptives ... miss the point. We can't even effectively respond to population growth and the reality of climate change and destruction of life on this planet.
We need both real and effective conservative actions and values, and effective progressive/restorative actions and changes. To survive, we must depend on actual truth and mutual respect that is strong enough to reconcile across difference. The need for real change is overwhelming but must occur. Failure is doom.
3
I enjoy reading Edsall's columns, and the stats and quotes he uses are always interesting and intelligently compelling, even if I sometimes disagree. The people who need to read a column like this will never read it however, and therein lies the rub. The promoters of the conservative narrative about liberals and secular America have an agenda: destroy their political enemies at any cost, with any weapon at hand. That includes the use of media giants like Fox, institutions like the Federalist Society and Opus Dei, evangelical allies like Liberty University and conservative megachurches, and now, the White House. It can feel overwhelming if you're a progressive person in America, knowing that the right has made you not an equal political opponent, but a monster, an eternally immoral foe. How do we ever get back to sanity when at least one side will never come a step nearer to your position on anything, let alone half way? This is why many of us on the left have given up trying to reach out and have a real dialogue with the other side: dialogue is out, war is in. Goddess help us all.
6
I am surprised why you'd censor my post. This is what I have written:
I am not a conservative and/or a Republican but would like to identify myself as a humanist--Buddhistic in philosophical inclination. In my view, given contemporary moral decay (relations among multiple people--indicative of wild abandon) and expectation of "politically correctness" in every sentence we utter and every observation we make, I feel like we are under the hegemony of what I call "liberal fascism." It is so true that contemporary society has turned into “licentiousness — the unbridled pursuit of personal appetites at the expense of the common good.”
1
Bottom line — conservative’s hate certain things and certain people. They manufacture reasons and then they hid their Playboy magazines and hide their entries onto porn sites. To be fair, liberals also have false narratives, but at least liberals blush when they get caught.
4
Conservatives are far more anti-family than liberals. Conservatives supported the ban on gay marriage and adoption, mass incarceration that separates families, and putting people in immigration limbo for years if they want to marry and start a family with someone from a different country. Before that, they were against interracial marriage and negative attitudes towards interracial marriage still limit the dating pool for minorities today.
By contrast, I cannot think of a single liberal policy that directly prevents family formation by consenting adults or splits up families formed by consenting adults.
Of course people shouldn’t be coerced into having families if they don’t want to. But opposing such coercion is no more anti-family than opposing the slave trade is anti-immigration. Being pro-family means minimizing government-created obstacles to marriage and family formation by consenting adults. That’s what I support and what most liberals seem to support.
7
Conservative, religious fanatic William Barr is intellectually dishonest? I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked!
4
I remember a time, not long ago, perhaps the '60's when divorce was practically impossible for women. Divorce rates are way up because we can, finally, GET OUT. Back when I grew up the majority of women stayed home, there was no such thing as child support and here in Canada you had to go to court and prove either abuse (with pictures and not including mental abuse) or adultery, again with pictures, to get a divorce. We had no way of making a living or supporting our children so we stayed in horrible marriages. The police failed to address domestic abuse calling it a "family matter" and stayed out of it. Rape of a wife was not illegal until the '70's. No wonder divorce rates were low. We are only now able to get out and make a living to support our children without having to endure a hellish marriage. Don't blame the liberal left for the increased divorce rate. Blame the men who want the status quo of "barefoot and pregnant" with no where to go. We can now finally go if we choose, thus the increase in divorce. I say, hooray, at last! PS I am in a wonderful 44 year marriage but still saw the hell my mother's friends went through in abusive marriages when I was growing up.It's not that they didn't want to divorce, but they could not and there is the difference.
351
@joan williams note that marriages historically ended due to deaths in childbirth or by illnesses and accidents at rates comparable to those now ending in divorce. The pent up demand began when people stopped dying so frequently, but prohibitions were still in place and marriage took place at very young ages. When divorce laws liberalized, that dam burst.
26
@joan williams
I too watched my mother try (twice) to leave an abusive husband back in the 60s. There were no support mechanisms, and my mother's family were all very 'religious' and conservative and refused to help her one bit.
I have always applauded that women have much more control over their lives now than ever before. I'm sorry for those conservatives out there, but sometimes things have to break in order to make the better.
Psychology teaches us that no system improves unless people are shocked out of their comfort zones, and we're taught that individuals empowered and rewarded by a system (especially an unfair one) never think there's anything wrong wit hit. Conservatives like to claim there was nothing wrong with the old system, precisely because they were the ones rewarded by it. They literally have no ability to see that the previous system was unfair to far too many people. Yes, there are some growing pains now, but the system is finally changing. Conservatives will have a choice - either learn not to fear change or be overrun by it. The Ancient Egyptians chose not to change despite obvious evidence that it was, and we all know what happened to that civilization.
We will go the same way if we don't grow up, respect one another FOR our differences, and learn to move forward.
53
@joan williams "Blame the men who want the status quo of "barefoot and pregnant""
Bingo. That would be white evangelicals.
63
Mr. Edsel is always on point. In my humble opinion I just would like to point out that liberalism is not the Bernie/ Warren woke crowds, it’s not the Colin Kapernik ppl, nor are the fainting couch feminists who will take a guy to HR for being asked to lunch. It’s not kids needing trigger free zones for different ideas. This is a caricature of what liberalism is, the left hysteria has done it to itself. Their sensitivity and orthodoxy prevents them from dealing with real problems, bc taking about them may offend someone. Trust me, at the table I’ll take a conservative any day over some woke Warren supporter.
I’m socially liberal, I believe in freedom of choice, that sexual preference is irrelevant when you love a child, that everyone should have the same rights, everyone including churches should be taxed. I do think that poor black/white are falling apart but all the pseudo sensitivity will prevent people from discussing it directly. Same goes for the people dying from meth in Appalachia - what we don’t discuss is that their values are screwed up, it’s not the coal or the jobs, it’s the fact that them as opposed up city people are the ones waiting for a government handout. If we don’t take these mega churches to task, they will continue set the tone, yet those millionaire pastors are no moral beacon o virtue.
There is a middle way, Mr. Edsall always talks about it, we as the center must silence the hysterical voices of the left & right hysteria to guide the country.
2
Interesting article with some good data. To dig deeper, studies show conservatives are more sensitive to worry and anxiety about perceived threats than liberals. Hence their stronger support for the military and police. People also like to blame others for their problems in an effort to find a simple solution without reflecting on the real underlying causes.
With the one constant in life being change, comforting traditions tend to fall by the wayside as science disproves old myths, automation eliminates jobs and the world gets faster and more complicated. So many blame it all on strangers and those who attack our comforting traditions like the gods and guns that protect us. The nervous also lash out about the imperfection of human behavior as we learn there are spectrums of sexuality, etc.
So while liberals try to help the various suppressed minorities and fight big challenges like global warming, this all drives conservatives further into worry and overload, which they deal with by denial and demonizing others. This trend is happening around the world and there is no easy solution. We need to unite and solve the world's problems, but when one side just blames the other side it won't be easy. Now more that ever we need a great leader who can unite us so we can work together to tackle our challenges...
1
Liberals, through the sexual revolution and other movements, demand equality for women, minorities and LGBTQ community in all aspects of life. There is a straight line from those formerly underprivileged groups gaining equal power to the formerly privileged groups, often short-handed as white men, losing relative power.
I don't think the question posed by the article is any more difficult than that. Conservatives find themselves slipping from the front of the pack to a merely equal rank and they fight like hell to keep their status, using every argument real or imagined that finds traction.
3
How did this preposterous idea leap to the forefront of conservative thinking?
First error: These GOP persons (& Dems & Independents that voted for Trump) aren't conservatives, big "C" or even little "c".
They're convinced they're marginalized, a smaller group/tribe of persons that are mad as hell & aren't going to take it anymore. Thusly, Trump.
The GOP isn't Conservative anymore--it's a corrupt connotation of the word, meaning, "conserve ALL of America for US-WHITE-GUYS only.
There, continue with your excellent columns.
3
I was born in ultra conservative Catholic sectarian Quebec. To day I live in Secular Humanist Quebec. Without a belief in a deity and a set of values handed down from above we have what is arguably the most moral society in North America. Last week our local University which runs our health ,education and welfare declared students and staff will henceforth pick their own first names, their names and their gender. Marriage has been mainly a civil contract for decades.
We have problems but we are happy , optimistic and above all moral in our dealings with our fellow citizens. We have our share of thieves, fraudsters and hatemongers but at our core our values are common to all mankind. Our bans on hijabs, skullcaps, turbans and crucifixes for public employees are a declaration we serve our fellow citizens not a faroff deity.
As a first hand observer of both Catholic and Humanist Quebec I would say a Humanist society as envisioned by America's founders is at least as moral as that envisioned by America's theocrats.
My father taught me all the pious are thieves, I disagree with my father's harsh judgement but morality and religion are not correlated. America's conservatives are ideological and judgemental and many of them may be moral but they are moral despite their cult not because of it.
3
Great piece. It may be summed up as follows:
Barr and his associated culture warriors on the right are not only wrong in their diagnoses and prescriptions for the ills of modern society; they are part of the cause of the problems they bemoan. Sincerely yours, Science.
5
"A family dinner at a Manhattan restaurant in 1958."
Notice who's at the head of the table -- as it should be.
Argue all you want about how single-moms are the heroes in the fight against the patriarchy, unless the Democratic nominee abandons intersectionality, third wave feminism, and identity politics, we're going to have Trump for four more years.
3
World class public education, universal health coverage, a fair wage for a fair days' work, clean air and water, a tax system that doesn't punish income from labor, income security during retirement, equality under the law, workplace safety, collective bargaining, a woman's right to control her own body.
All those public policy objectives strengthen the family. And all those are public policy objectives at the core of the Democratic Party.
Ripping young children from their mothers' arms and locking them in chain-link cages to sleep in their own urine and feces on concrete floors is a Republican policy objective.
15
As the culture war volleys flair back and forth, there is one point that seems beyond reasonable dispute. With very few exceptions, housing costs are almost always significantly higher in blue states and in blue areas of red states than in red areas. Although there are of course multiple reasons for this, there obviously remains a desire to live in such areas.
2
"...And, as the explicit discrimination minorities faced in the workplace has diminished, so has the advantage that it had given the white working class."
Can we *please* dispense with these false narratives that racial equality is somehow a zero-sum game - that by definition there has to be 'winners' and 'losers'??
The only people this canard benefits are those in the 1% who get to watch everyone bicker among themselves for the crumbs from the table, while they have seen their incomes and wealth steadily rise for decades while the rest of us haven't had a raise since 1980.
2
Have you seen the statistics for America’s overall birthrate?
Have you seen the statistics for out-of-wedlock pregnancies or teen births?
Maybe not, or you wouldn’t accuse anybody of favoring what you call “irresponsible choices.”
Both are down.
Love, marriage and baby carriage ditties aside, figuring out solutions for unplanned and unwanted pregnancies, and helping young people get a good education, find decent employment and affordable housing so they can marry and raise a family without strangling on student debt, healthcare or childcare costs is actually a bipartisan problem.
4
@Joanna Stasia
And a problem that only one party is even trying to address.
William Barr is a member of Opus Dei (a right-wing Catholic society) and has only 3 children. My great grandmother had 13 children, my grandmother, 7 and my mother 5. I have 2. Not a divorce among us. Like my mother, I was out of the paid workforce for a while when my children were young. (I was laid off and then returned 10 years later). Why does William Barr have only 3 children if he proclaims to be a religious Catholic concerned about secularism?
6
This was an interesting article, but no need for the left/right contrast. Why not just lay out the views of different observers. They made some telling points. But it's not about left/right it's about how a society hangs together. The family is central to society and to nurturing the next generation. Traditional folk worry about disruptions to family life. So promiscuity, untrammeled abortion, out of wedlock births, curious takes on marriage, weird science (three genders?, five genders?, twelve genders?, your grandson wants to be known as they?), a whole litany of crackpot lifestyles posturing as authentic when in fact they are sadly imitative, needy, and intellectually sleepy rather than woke. Both left and right should find this disturbing.
5
Isn't it a little odd for AG Barr to be complaining about the so-called breakdown of families at a Catholic University? How many children have been molested by the representatives of that faith?
As for the white working class, they had all the world's manufacturing jobs to themselves in the Post-WWII period until the USA rebuilt the infrastructure of Europe and Asia. That is all gone now and is not coming back. So they are being tossed aside by the very politicians they think are going to make them "great" again. Will they figure that out? I doubt it. Under a more enlightened government they could have been helped by restricting the movement of jobs overseas but not the crew that is in DC now.
8
It's pretty simple. People are bad, bad, bad. They need to submit to a higher authority. But, they need guidance, maybe even coercion, to succeed. It's a dirty job, but I'll do it.
4
The funny thing is - if there is an argument for moral absolutism, it’s with exactly the characteristics Barr and conservatives DONT support: lovingkindness for all, support for the less fortunate, acceptance of others - the ACTUAL messages of religion.
The moral absolutism he puts forth (under the guise of judeo-Christian religion) is just a guise for white straight male control - strict criminal justice, lack of social support, anti-gay. I would like to see this another way but I don’t know how else one could see it.
7
You can’t see this any other way, because at the root of all the bluster about the decay of human values (harumph,) Barr and his (White) Christian brethren who feel they have a monopoly on morality, threatened by the evolution of human culture into a more tolerant and diverse society, feel marginalized and and are trying desperately to maintain control. It’s a fool’s errand, as diversity in all respects is the coming thing. And diversity breeds suspicion in the old guard, but in the end thankfully, these folks will die off and basic human kindness, compassion and a political system that reflects those true Christian (and most religious) values will take form. It’s inevitable, although those stuck in old paradigms will undoubtedly be dragged kicking and screaming into a kinder future.and no, it doesn’t mean handouts and socialism. Time to start thinking outside the black and white limited modes of thinking- there is a middle ground.
2
It is Thanksgiving and to many people have no place to go except to a shelter. The conservatives and especially Barr have spent a year destroying all cultures in this county. Their hate and passage of bills of anything that is different from them.
This country is the land of the free and the home of the brave for everyone. No one needs to explain who they are to anyone else. The conservatives do not have the pipe line to God but they do have the pipe line for hate and bigotry masked in a Brooks brothers suite as fake concern for the country. their actions show that they don not care for the country only for power and their bank accounts.
The scam is finally up Barr, Pence and the rest of you pretend religious zealots, this is a country of thinking people not cult followers. We should all be doing out best tomorrow to give love and strength to our fellow human beings. these dark times of wedge issues will be over with the next election
7
Love that photo...Quintessential American family in New York City...Could’ve come straight from anybody’s scrap book...
"When Attorney General William Barr warned in a speech at Notre Dame on Oct. 11 that secular liberalism had unleashed “licentiousness — the unbridled pursuit of personal appetites at the expense of the common good,” there was a glaring incongruity.
How could Barr possibly fail to recognize that there is no better example of a man in unbridled pursuit of his own appetites than his boss?"
How could Barr possibly fail to recognize there is no better example of a man in unbridled pursuit of his own appetites than Barr himself?
Or anyone else in the Trump administration, for that matter, or the GOP.
6
Welcome to the Hypococalypse. As long as the evangelicals can get the legislation they need, they are quite comfortable in making a deal with the devil and giving him their votes. And Trump epitomizes the devil: a conman, a betrayer, a deceiver, a profligate, pathological liar, cheat, all thinly disguised as a Christian. Is there anyone who can’t see thru the veneer? What veneer? - this emperor has no clothes. They know, but hold their collective noses and vote for him anyway.
1
I believe people do have the perception that the left has not addressed the decline of the family, or if it does, to only say poverty and lack of opportunity are the entire cause.
The first two works Mr Edsel cites (by Sawhill and McLanahan) take the more ‘right wing’ approach that people should be nudged into planning and delaying childbirth to pull them out of poverty; that family dysfunction can cause poverty. Other thinkers he cites make acknowledgements untypical of, or new to the left (in my view) including giving credence to Moynihan’s ideas.
In 2012, The New York Times published a review that attacked ideas that Mr. Edsel now calls 'left' as ‘blaming the poor for their condition.’ https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/opinion/sunday/when-poverty-was-white.html
In 2017, NYT’s Upshot--typically a more conservative, data driven site--featured an article that suggested early childbirth and lack of marriage hurt poor people and caused poverty. The NYT comment section went pretty much nuts as could be anticipated, calling the ideas right-wing ‘attack the victim’ screed. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/25/upshot/how-did-marriage-become-a-mark-of-privilege.html
If left wing thought has changed, it’s a sea change. Mr. Edsel’s tone is disingenuous in not acknowledging how these new thoughts differ from past left-wing thought, and he’s wrong to blame voters for not knowing about it.
7
"in the Framers’ view, free government was only suitable and sustainable for a religious people”
This is a pretty distorted reading of the Framers’ view, but Barr’s real distortion is that he blames everyone except himself and those who think like him. Yet the cynicism we find across party lines is due to the lies and self-justifications we find among politicians across those same party lines. Barr is a religious Catholic, apparently. What does he have to say about the rampant pedophilia among the priesthood? About as much as he has to say about working in the service of a narcissistic agent of chaos who cares nothing for the Constitution. One wonders whether Barr’s faith is really in God, or in the power of the church to impose some kind of moral order?
But the most disturbing-- and frightening part of the quote above by Barr is the implication that the “religious” need to rule the “non-religious.” That those who are not religious, or who have found neither comfort nor inspiration in what passes for religion today, are not “suitable” to live under a “free government”. Barr sounds like a man gearing up to justify the moral imperative of tyranny. God protect us from the self-righteous who are blind to “the beams in their own eyes."
4
Greed is driving all of it. It drives the right's politics as well as the left's. It won't change until we end capitalism, respect all life on this small planet and get back to Nature and the love of Nature. Until then, we will lie, cheat, steal, betray, etc...because our focus is money.
2
Given that every talking point of the conservatives is exactly what they themselves are doing perhaps the question is "Why do conservatives want to destroy the family?" Evidence? The war on drugs destroyed millions of families. Mostly black and Hispanic.The war on terror did such a great job of destroying families it did it on 3 continents. We're breaking up families daily on our southern border. I think given the rampant racism of conservatives that we can clearly see that when they say liberals are destroying the family what we really see is Conservatives destroying every family that isn't white. Conservatives have adopted the Pee Wee Herman offense. "I know you are but what am I?" whenever you accuse them of anything at all. Just in case you were wondering, Neoliberal democrats are conservatives. We're seeing some candidates behave like conservatives in the Democratic primary. This history could not have been written, this reality not possible, without Neoliberal Democrat enablers.
General Barr's speech at Norte Dame commits several logical fallacies, just to mention a few:
1. Confirmation bias.
2. Post hoc ergo propter hoc (Latin: "after this, therefore because of this") is an informal fallacy that states: "Since event Y followed event X, event Y must have been caused by event X." It is often shortened simply to post hoc fallacy.
3. Cherry-picking.
4. False analogy
His speech, however, was nonetheless well-written, erudite, and long, extremely long.
I would hope that Mr. Barr would read this op-ed, but even if he did, I have little hope that he could be moved. Facts and logic move few of us anymore. (I myself am a common frequenter in that dangerous group.)
And this is yet another well-researched, well-written op-ed by Mr. Edsall. This man is objective, patient, clear-headed, and hard-working. Thanks for hiring and printing his works, NYTimes.
4
How did it come about? We have a President and his followers that fib , and I am being gentle using the word fib.
2
What conservatives and Republicans do is take everything that is sacred....family, faith, truth, etc., and weaponize them.
2
Conservative thinking. How did this preposterous oxymoron ever leap to the opening of a New York Times editorial.
The whole point of American “conservatism” is that you don’t have to think. There’s always someone higher up the ladder to inform you of your opinion. At the top there’s God, and people who claim to talk with God. Who can possibly argue with them?
This has nothing to do with “white privilege”. Religious fanatics direct their greatest animosity towards the group that most threatens their ordered little universe, which means educated people of all colors, but (as a result of America’s unequal education system), mostly white.
1
In short, the word for these untrue claims is demonization. And demonization is what demagogues, fascists and autocrats do.
Rich. Barr feeding us this apocalyptic hogwash. His own father anonymously wrote pornographic novels. His own president, whom he slavishly serves in defiance of the longstanding DOJ tradition of nonpartisan independence--his own president is mendacity and licentiousness personified.
2
Last time I checked Liberals didn’t force the Catholic Church to protect pedophile priests or Evangelicals to become selfish intolerant bigots who would sooner give a preacher a lavish megachurch and a private jet than help the poor. L
This reflexive desire to blame liberals for everything is indicative of conservatives’ inability to take responsibility for their own actions.
Conservatism became of a movement of racism, homophobia, misogyny and religious intolerance due to the actions of conservatives not liberals.
Conservatives are the ones who walked away from the concept of “All Men Are Created Equal” because they couldn’t stomach the idea of anyone besides white people having power.
4
In "The Road to Unfreedom", Timothy Snyder details the new Russian "Christian fascist" ideology adopted by Putin (based on the 1930s philosophy of Ivan Ilyin), which portrays Western liberal values as favouring homosexuality aimed at depopulating and weakening Russia.
William Barr's speech is hinting at a right wing ideological drift along those lines - this time with religious American whites as the "victims" of the same liberal values. Just one more voice in the choir of Russian propaganda singing loudly at the highest levels of this administration.
2
@SA Yeah, and there's no liberal anywhere who thinks that anyone is being made gay against their will. That's a right-wing fantasy. We don't think you can make gay people straight against their will, and we certainly don't think you can make straight people gay.
If the birthrate is dropping, and it is, the cause must be something else. Poverty, perhaps. Or the fact that young women won't marry men who support Trump.
1
Conservatives don't actually believe this idea, that liberals want to destroy the family. They simply use it as a wedge issue, like abortion. Families are families and government policies affect all families. The racists and sexists among conservatives want women to stay home and white men to be in charge outside the home, thus limiting opportunities for people of color. That's what's behind the pearl clutching behind "family values."
1
Mr. Barr, like his boss, is full of Turkey stuffing. Morality was/is a creation of mankind. While most of the western world considers the "Ten Commandments" to be the basis of all morality, the bible itself commands man to fight and kill those who do not obey the law of God.
Jump from Exodus to Deuteronomy 2- 1-20. Here the "Lord" commands that men be killed, women and children raped or taken into slavery.
Just to be fair, the 9th Surah (also known as the Surah of the sword) of the Quran far out does good old Deuteronomy.
So, there is a biblical record of man's evolving sense of morality.
What "Liberals" are doing is embracing and extending the idea that mankind has evolving norms of morality and the description of the word "family".
I personally have no reason to believe Mr. Barr, in any context. He is a washed-up old lawyer without ethics and apparently so needy for both attention and money that he is willing to sell his services to the highest bidder. As for Notre Dame inviting him to speak, the school may want to work on eliminating the pedophilic disposition of their leaders.
1
I grew up in a 'model American family' like the ones I saw on TV. Middle class, church-on-Sunday where I sang in the choir starting at 14, etc. Then I worked in science for 40 years, intensely involved in the proper application of statistics to experimental design. Thus, I loathe the misuse of statistics.
For example, McLanahan's diatribe on 'Children raised apart' may be resummarized as 'Children from dysfunctional families tend to fare worse.' Duh! No need to blame liberals, unless somehow the study was designed to test for such variables, which is unlikely.
Or take “How the Sexual Revolution Created Identity Politics.” The SR is typically dated from the mid-'60s and the introduction of The Pill. Identity Politics? What about the 1800's nativist "Know-Nothings, or the KKK, or the American Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden? If your data base excludes long-existing causes, that distorts your results. It is hard to explain recent climate change if we only look at CO2 levels over the last 10 years instead of the 40% increase since 1750. It is hard to assign consequences of the sexual revolution if we pretend that what went before was so perfect as to require no acknowledgement. (Birth Control methods were there long before The Pill.)
G.I.G.O., Mr. Barr.
4
Liberals give these ideas because we confuse people. I got an invitation to an event, yesterday, at the school, for “girls and non-binary”, what the heck is that?!
2
@Common Sense Guy If it applied to you, you'd know.
1
Comprehensive and germane. Barr of course neglected to mention that his father hired Jeffrey Epstein at the elite prep school Dalton, where Epstein was known for his own type of licentiousness among female students.
3
Read this article about the trans lobby and tell me the radical left isn’t trying to destroy the family and natural order: https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2019/12/09/the-tragedy-of-the-trans-child/
2
It boils down to evangelical Christians thinking anyone who is pro choice is an immoral murderer. The irony is pro choice positions result in fewer abortions.
1
It is a not so subtle attack on homosexuality.
1
That's a lot of words when really one would suffice: racism.
1
don't tell these readers...they know it
tell the listeners of Foxx news
tell the hard working americans who voted for Trump in the mis-guided hope they he had their back.
they are the ones who listen to all the conspiracy theories about how the White Race is heading to extention.
they are the ones who matter..
1
Having observed the destruction of the Catholic Church by way of priests and other higher ups that participated in or condoned the practice of sodomizing or otherwise sexually abusing the children entrusted to their care A by product of this behavior is the scorn accorded to all women and the LBGTQ folks. Well over half of the entire population of this country trod upon by the religious bigotry of the Catholic Church and so called Christian Fundamentalists that also refuse to accept anyone other than white Christian males as a peer group and similarly treat women and children as prey rather than fellow parishioners and peers
Don the Con knows nothing of religion but the Master of the Scam knows exactly where his bread is buttered and toadies up to his fellow scammers in the fundamentalist communities by appointing appallingly unqualified people to the Supreme and lower courts that will trod upon the rights of women and others not worthy of their consideration
That the Catholics and Fundamentalists actually exclude well over half of our citizens by hiding behind the Bible is bad enough But the true and overwhelming hypocrisy is , of course , the fact that Falwell , Barr , Pompeo and on ad nauseam , accept and condone the behavior of the three year old Tangerine Temper Tantrum currently ensconced in the Oval Office
No decent citizen would , or should , condone Trump's megalomaniacal , petty , racist, and ignorant behavior
But the Bible folks do. Who is scamming whom here ?
2
Liberals pioneered the merits of the single parent home. Just remember the thunderous liberal blowback Dan Quayle got over his Murphy Brown comments. The fact is that liberalism by and large owns today disappearing two parent family, which by any measure makes society worse off.
2
Totally missed the point. Liberals destroy the family as an unintended consequence of their social policies. They mean well. Just ask Moynihan how welfare destroyed the black family. Or read “Please Stop Helping Us”. The sin of the liberals is that they don’t change their policies when faced with these facts. They just double down. Thats unconscionable and sickening.
Like, “socialism has always failed...but this time we will do it right!”
Uh huh.
3
@Ari Weitzner
Let us know when Donald Trump and the Republicans stop soliciting the support of white supremacists, neo-Nazis, the kind of people who marched in Charlottesville with tiki-torches changing "Jews will not replace us!!" and massacred dozens in a Pittsburgh synagogue, a Charleston church and an El Paso Walmart. Oh yeah, and supporting a guy who has been married three times and cheated on all three wives--one with a porn star, and mocks disabled people.
Then maybe conservative pontificating about liberals "destroying" families will be worth listening to.
1
Once upon a time folks, liberal was just a word one associated with brash good looking candidates in 70s haircuts ( Beatle long circa 1963) and flailed suits. Non threatening, often milktoast. It was just one way to consider voting. The other candidates looked more like dad. I later found out they were things called conservative, but those words, liberal and conservative weren’t thrown around much in those days unless you watch Buckley’s snoozfest on PBS. Then this ex rock and roll DJ, who it turns out was also a drug and junk food addict , took on a dying medium called FM, and began warning the populous about this cockroach infestation of liberals. They were everywhere folks and they wanted to take your tax money and give it to the late ho chi min. This man also hated and insulted women while selling ointments that might attract them to one at a nightclub. Here we are... the worst version of a Disney nightmare.
1
Oh yes, religiosity creates perfect societies and liberalism ruins everything. One need only look around to see the nirvana that is Saudi Arabia and the hellscape that is Massachusetts. Oh wait maybe not. Liberal Massachusetts has the lowest divorce rate in the nation. As usual right wingers ignore facts in promotion of their spurious positions.
3
How, you ask? Fox News and the lack of investment in education in this country.
2
Cosi fan tutti.
Q: Liberals Do Not Want to Destroy the Family, Or society, for that matter. How did this preposterous idea leap to the forefront of conservative thinking?
A: What is...Fox News
2
This lib'rul has no interest in destroying the family, but is pretty tired of "family" (much like "neighborhood") being unctuously tacked on to all manner of programs, proposals and perks as a kind of civic Teflon® against criticism. I can't help but admire the fortitude of the familial, but it is a state entered into voluntarily based on a personal decision and should not automatically signal exceptional virtue or bring civic entitlements.
1
Are the worsening economic conditions of the 'working class' the driver of divorce and single parenting?
One way to answer this question is to look at two periods of economic decline- say, the Great Depression and the Great Recession.
In the 1930's, did massive unemployment lead to the destruction of the family and out of wedlock births? if not, then what was different about the economic downturns of the 2000's, where economic downturn did exacerbate the rise of out-of-wedlock children and single parents (mostly single moms).
What was different about the social context of the 1930s that meant families stayed together during bad times; while in the 2000s families disintegrated during bad times? Were there changes in the sexual mores, ideals of 'personal fulfillment' acceptability of divorce, lack of stigma around single parents (or abandoning children to live with one parent), or changing ideas about the desirability of marriage as opposed to cohabiting sexual partners?
It is one thing to recognize and decry the outcomes, and to even choose a different path as a wealthy liberal- one of marriage and stability.- but Edsell cannot see the overall values context for what it is- permissive of behavior that is harmful to families, individuals, and society as a whole. And that cultural context is direct result of the cultural shifts of the 1960s.
2
@Shoshon
In the 1930's women couldn't obtain credit or own property in their own names. Divorcing was extremely difficult, expensive and considered shameful. According to my grandmother, the unmarried women she knew had to live with relatives.
That anyone would think those were better times horrifies me.
What it boils down to is that liberals don't preach what they practice. What they practice works great: first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the baby in the baby carriage. They know this is extremely helpful for success in this country, almost essential. They just can't bring themselves to admit that failure to follow this practice is a huge reason why many people in this country struggle so mightily.
Look, I'm all for social programs, but family is paramount and largely boils down to personal choices.
1
@Dave Except that it doesn't, especially for women. Lots of women think they're on one track, and then hey presto their man does something (or has something done to him) and suddenly they're on another. Recognizing that fact and trying to mitigate the consequences isn't the same as actively trying to bring it about.
Look at who's doing stuff to the men, though. Black families broke up when jobs disappeared in the 70s. White families broke up when jobs disappeared in the 00s.
1
Thank you, Mr. Edsall, for another extraordinary essay.
I would like to go beyond the "born good" and "inherently flawed" paradigms of humans. There is also the idea that humans are malleable. (That is from my senior paper in political science, from more than 40 years ago.)
Humans are malleable; humans learn. What we regard as self-evident was far from self-evident not long ago, and what long-ago humans regarded as self-evident is not considered so today.
We need to watch what we teach, and not just in the schools.
The problem is that whenever a family comprised of a man and woman, who decide to marry and have children, a small but loud Left yells with defensive anger that this choice is somehow against some other choice. The loud Right does the same with anything that doesn't fit that traditional mold.
The reality is that the great majority of people support a family, in all its forms, that provides a healthy caring environment. What people need to do and realize is that these fringe attitudes are what damages us all, and social media gives them a huge platform.
Be respectful, honest, kind, educated - and do the hard work necessary to raise children (if you decide to do so) that reflect those traits. That means starting with the assumption that politicians and others seeking power and the ones destroying our society.
At some point - probably around puberty, a time when unseen biological forces intersect with the child intellectual movement from internal and imaginative to external and performative, a moment occurs that means everything. A developmental fork in the road.
The individual assesses its value and worth in relation to society's pecking order. Self-loathing or self-love kicks in. Easy to develop a sense of privilege/pride where you are born into a successful subculture.
At some point, the older child reasonably buys-in to its subculture. The opportunity to develop an attitude growth as opposed to stasis is brief. Think of what has to be rejected to embrace hope - and to believe yourself able to grow.
The tension between loving your family and subculture and a loathing for all that keeps you stuck there if its not externally "admirable" causes dissonance.
The point of this is that whatever external subculture promotes self-esteem and a sense of believe in the potential of the individual will likely create a healthy human.
Stop the culture wars and figure out how to intervene in the early years to mitigate the development of a limited life. Its not that hard: build institutions that promote love - of the self and everything we are.
1
I am a non-religious, feminist, politically moderate woman, and in my case it was my religious, Trump-loving, Trudeau-hating, conservative husband whose behaviour broke up our 25 yr marriage. This evil, baby-eating feminist was willing to work on our issues, primarily for the welfare of our child, but in my husband's case, it was his way or the highway.
8
Mr. Barr stated secular liberalism had unleashed “licentiousness — the unbridled pursuit of personal appetites at the expense of the common good,”. Well this in very interesting coming from a member of the Catholic Church -which for decades shielded priests and others who pursued their "personal appetites" at the expense of mostly children, but women as well, through institutionalized sexual abuse. In fact if you look back at the long history of the Catholic Church, one could argue that this religious institution put the enrichment and status of itself above the "common good" as a matter of policy. Therefore, don't preach to me that secularism is the root of all societal problems. A Religious institution's main function was to keep people in line with the values of that institution - and there was (and is) a strict hierarchy that placed men at the top of the economic and social heap. The hypocrisy of Mr. Barr is pretty astounding. Liberals tend to be the ones advocating for policies to make lives better -accessible and affordable health care, living wages, environmental regulation so we don't get sick, occupational safety regulations, funding for public education, eliminating discrimination in our justice system. Less economic distress means more cohesive family units. As economic inequality has increased, so have the societal problems noted.
7
@dairyfarmersdaughter
As you say. Rich. These untruthful demonizations, falling out of Barr's mouth. His own Catholic Church covered up and facilitated the monstrous abuse of hundreds of thousands if not millions of children. His own father, who was a high school headmaster, secretly wrote pornographic novels. His own president, whom he slavishly serves, is mendacity and licentiousness personified.
4
This is yet another article knocking down straw men.
Both sides do this regularly. They find the most extreme soundbites spoken or written by those that disagree with them, then proceed to tear that argument to shreds, which of course is easy to do. This is not a debate; it is posturing.
The right makes legitimate points. Young men are told to not be aggressive, to sit quietly and do as they're told, to go to university and get a degree. Today's data show that 75-80% of young men will fail to follow this path to success, which will yield economic self-sufficiency, marriage and a family. There is every reason to believe that this statistic will not change. 60-70% of young women will also fail to find success on this path.
Where is the training in useful skills? Where are the societal structures and rules to teach them the self-discipline and conscientiousness necessary for personal success? Schools and churches used to have this role. Schools now only teach university-prep and political correctness labelled as "tolerance". Young men who behave like young men are not taught discipline; they are suspended repeatedly until they are allowed to drop out.
So don't give me Barr and his pointless pontifications on why life was better back in the olden days. Address some of the real problems with today's society, in particular that in abandoning the sexist paternalist systems of the past, our open, liberal society currently raises far too many men who fail at life.
4
In liberal Portland there are kids everywhere, very involved dads, the largest library use in the country, everyone I know volunteers, most are taking care of aging parents or kids or both, they all have jobs or multiple ones (many are self employed), most drive old cars, brew their own beer, make their own cheese, grow their own food...I could go on.
Seems pretty wholesome to me. Conservatives should really consider getting in on the act.
10
A lot of men are angry because
1. Many women who find themselves in an abusive relationship now have their own money and can leave
2. Women who cannot find a suitable husband no longer feel compelled to settle for a jerk, since they can make a living on their own.
I am a member of the first generation to have those options, so I saw what happened among the older generation.
I wonder if those men who are nostalgic for the days when women just "put up and shut up" ever sat in on a gathering of married women in which they expressed their envy of a friend who was widowed and was now "free" and "didn't have to put up with being bossed around anymore." I wonder if they know how many "happy homemakers" in the old days were addicted to prescription drugs..
14
@Pdxtran Also, even the people who end up fine in this economy seldom get that status as early as people used to. I'm Generation X, and I know that most of my peers (male and female alike) did not have spouses, kids, and primary breadwinner type jobs at 25. Many did have those things by their early 30s.
Except that some of the men ended up permanently embittered by the wait, which made them terrible partners and in many cases pretty bad employees. The women seemed to be able to roll with it better in terms of their own psychological resilience, but a fair number ended up without partners. They're either single parents or childless not entirely by choice.
And this is among the educated middle class. A lot of people have it worse.
We lock up tons of black men, and see the number of single black mothers rise. We blame liberalism for ills like a rise in teen pregnancy, but find the highest rates in the most conservative states. We fret over the left's philosophy of relativism (i.e. there's no absolute truth) but find that rightists are the ones that reject empirical knowledge (e.g. evolution and climate science).
It seems like the only thing wrong with most conservative arguments is that they're inaccurate.
8
Factors affecting our nation negatively include intolerance and self-righteousness. They're ripe for a manipulation that relies on emotional responses ignoring whether or not there's a basis in truth. Until people are willing to consider an issue objectively, setting their emotions aside while doing so, they'll be vulnerable to emotional manipulation serving someone else's agenda. Manipulators seek power from us to "follow, donate, and support" to them through false messaging. The endless attacks on education and credible media are a clear indicator of what they don't want us to know ... facts and truth. They believe that We the People ... aren't capable of seeing through those falsehoods. Are they right? We can show them they are not by rejecting their premises for what they are ... almost always false. We need to work together to insist our politicians provide accurate information and fact-check them to ensure that we and they are doing what's right for the nation and ourselves. Now, more than ever, that's undeniably in OUR best interest.
1
I have followed Mr Edsall over the last several years and read numerous enlightening articles, but this is the best! It is overwhelmingly damning of a reactionary anti-facts right-wing ideology which is determined to destroy the United States and all the good that it stands for. I only wish that Bill Barr would be obliged to read out loud this article in public and then explain his opinions. My God indeed!
3
Since there are now many fewer middle class jobs for those with less than a college degree, why are we allowing illegal migrants to take any of them? Researchers at Yale and MIT estimated, in 2016, that there were 22.1 million people living here illegally. Many more have come since then.
The vast majority are from Mexico and Central America where levels of education are quite low. They work for less than our own citizens, many work “under the table” so their employers can pay lower taxes, and most do not complain about poor working conditions. They are analogous to “scab workers” who are hired when unionized workers go on strike for better wages and working conditions. The areas in which they dominate, such as meat packing and construction, have seen an erosion in wages. Citizens who recently worked in meat packing plants, say workers are now expected to work with rarely sharpened knives at fast moving belts while standing on greasy floors. They also claim that that injuries are underreported.
Illegal migrants and their families receive free care at public clinics and hospitals.
They compete for affordable housing, seats on mass transit, and social services with our own citizens.
Their many children, as is common of children of parents with little education, need extra time from teachers and additional school resources to learn academics.
Illegal migrants are in competition with our own citizens for jobs, housing, school resources, and so on.
1
Illegal immigrants are not taking “middle class jobs.” At least I’ve seen no evidence of this. Nor have you cited any.
1
@David Schatsky
Meat packing and construction used to pay middle class wages, as did other areas of work now dominated by illegal migrants.
In addition to what were once middle class jobs, are jobs that traditionally paid little. The latter would be paying higher wages now if the citizens who once held them did not have to compete for them with an endless number of illegal migrants.
You might be able to see things through the eyes of our citizens with less than a college degree, if you had to compete for the same kinds of jobs or if you had to send your own children to schools whose classrooms are bursting with children who cannot speak English and whose parents have little education or understanding of its importance.
Many college-educated people willingly hire illegal migrants, but they do not want illegal migrants living in their own neighborhoods, crowding their own neighborhood schools, parks, or roads. But, it is fine with college-educated employers if their illegal migrants employees compete with citizens who lack a college degree and with their families.
1
@ann But illegal immigrants and liberals tend to live in the same places, namely the ones where jobs are abundant. Not always in the exact same neighborhoods, but in the same school districts for sure.
Whereas the right-wingers tend to live far away.
As for wages, could several generations of union-busting have had anything to do with that?
Well, then it’s a good thing that we have a model President showing America the way family is done, right Mr. Barr? It’s all about those proper old fashioned conservative values.
9
Sorry Mr. Edsall, liberals have succeeded in destroying the family.
Their devotion to anti-elitist ideals (every personal choice is equally worthy and meritorious, and deserves judgement-free subsidy from the collective) has killed off the family. All choices about family - they regard - are equally good, and equally meritorious. All privileges, no responsibilities.
The right wing has successfully weaponized this, and profited from the anti-elite, post-modern, post-truth environment liberals have created. Their motivation is cynical, and about controlling others - and therefore unforgivable. Regardless, liberals must take the responsibility for something we have created by surrender to moral, ethical, intellectual and cultural relativism.
2
Could you expand this further with some concrete examples and times that “liberals” have said these things? I’m not really sure I understand what you mean. What are the improper ways of life that liberals are promoting? Same-sex marriage? Using contraception? Without any evidence, you’re just repeating a claim this article refuted numerous times over.
3
It was arch-conservative economic measures that laid a draconian burden on the working classes, like allowing manufacturers to ship jobs off-shore, primarily to China, like breaking up the unions, and that caused basic family structures to break down, they are, as usual, denying reality, denying their responsibility, and, instead blame the vert liberal ideals our nation was founded on.
In short, you robbed 'em of income, you robbed 'em of occupations, you robbed 'em of education, and when the family structures broke down as a result, you blamed somebody else with made-up, invented, unsupported assertions.
I've been a liberal Progressive all my life as are my siblings. Many of our children don't have their "biological father" but that doesn't mean they don't have a father. There is not one iota of difference between my sons in the ways that matter. One carries our DNA, the other doesn't, being adopted. Both of my siblings have children they fathered and raised, but don't have their DNA.
It's one of those sick, racist, bigoted ideas that fatherhood is based on DNA and marriage, not presence and commitment to raise one's child as best one can.
To add to the irony and hypocrisy of people like Barr, they have long argued that instead of aborting a pregnancy, a woman should put the child up for adoption...and then they say the child is likely doomed because she/he doesn't have their "biological father"! Can't have it both ways, folk.
7
Because it really comes down to religious and racial prejudice, and denying that when you destroy people's economic security, deliberately, you undermine their values. "Why should I live this way if it means I must live without hope of things ever getting better?"
'"The Family" is what destroyed the family. Patriarchal power. Homophobic panic. The subjugation of children. The guilt laden interactions. The misogyny both soft core and virulent. The need to dominate and control. The fear of freedom. Just to name a few.
8
The erroneous myth of liberal moral decay fits in well with the other lies and distortions of the conspiracy theorists from the Right wing. When you don't have a platform to stand on, it becomes necessarily to sow seeds of distrust in your supporters to assure they will view your opponents as the enemy. This distracts them from realizing that you are actually their enemy.
Fast and loose with morals -- hmm.. this sounds a little bit more like our prevaricating president, the money-worshipping conservatives who hang out on Wall St., and even certain members of the Catholic Church. Last I checked they weren't voting for the Democratic ticket.
6
Feminism doesn't destroy families. What destroys families is men's sense of privilege, the sort that leads to demanding service from wives, sleeping around with other women, "disciplining" the children with whippings and other forms of cruelty, wife-beating, substance abuse. That same sense privilege sees any kind of independence as an insult. There are plenty of men, one of them in the WH, who take and never give, and when their wives just can't stand it any more, see themselves as the injured party, and get even angrier. Then they gather together in the Republican Party, and try to force their self-serving cruelties upon the rest of us.
11
Well argued but the whole point of all this religious moral outrage is to undermine and undo the moral laws we used to have that controlled for the human tendency to engage in money making vices which Mr Barr et all are perfectly fine with. You've taken the distraction bait Mr Edsal.
To my eye the glaring incongruity is that it has been the hyper Christian republicans whom have been doing this for 50 years and using religion as the tool to get away with it. The method, for those not old enough to have watched reagan use it, is to speak in the general ambiguous way Barr did, then use the whipped up emotions to point people at things you want them angry about. How reagan repubs used it; The regulations that used make a corp prove a new thing was safe before selling it to the public was a "liberal elite" imposing assumption of guilt because we all know good Christian corporations would never do anything "they knew to be wrong". How about the rise of "research" that allows the sale of suspect items since de-regulation by agencies set up by the people selling them while hiding that fact? Where is the morality in that? Exactly.
The false premise of this very insidious strategy is to speak from and encourage the assumption that the Christian faith is the only source of "moral order", anyone trying to make money is automatically moral and that anything not Christian is morally depraved and probably evil.
Barr is just carrying the anti government ball for the GOP further downfield.
3
I hate to do this, but, Barr is not 100% wrong. I'm reminded of Jair Bolsonaro's quite reasonable reaction to a public display of depravity at a festival in Brazil. A man was urinating on another man in front of thousands of people, and Bolsonaro pointed out how gross that was. He was vilified because the two were gay. The left is so desperate to excuse bizarre sexual/cultural behavior in the name of liberalism.
However, Barr is incorrect that the source of disorganized shamelessness is secularism. We do not need set in stone gospel in order to behave and to treat each other properly. But we do need a resurgence of a strong family unit. Starting with a living wage, that may allow young people to marry and have children they can provide for, would be a great start. How about affordable health care? Conservatives do not seem very concerned with the sanctity of the family when it comes to allowing them basic access to necessities.
8
Though Burke was undoubtedly correct that we humans need to "put chains" upon our appetites, the problem is that, in the past, we did so through repression and denial of those appetites. Consequently, hypocrisy reigned and all sorts of nastiness, dysfunction and neuroses occurred behind closed doors. What we now need to do is better understand our appetites so that we can better confront and harness them. That, though, as Carl Jung so thoughtfully explained, is a very tall order indeed.
4
As always Mr. Edsall states his case with well-formulated and supported arguments, which makes reading his columns a pleasure. There are several other perspectives on this that I would add. First, the focus of the article only obliquely touches upon the effects that welfare policies had on African-American families when he mentions the Moynihan Report without identifying the central theme of the report. Moynihan saw the family-negative effects of these liberal policies in the mid-1960s, although welfare always had buy-in from all sides in spite of grousing from working-class whites about welfare queens driving expensive cars and eating lobster for dinner. A second factor is the aging U.S. population resulting in decreasing political power for the child-bearing age demographic. In particular, expensive health-care schemes such as the one proposed by Sen. Warren would benefit them the least and the bill would hit them the hardest unless you believe in mathematically impossible fantasies. Increasing financial pressure makes it harder to afford to raise a family and increases stress that can break families apart. This in turn exacerbates the demographic trend of an aging population which can lead to a self-reinforcing cycle. Government policies don't make society but they can magnify factors that affect it.
Ok, Mr. Edsall, it would have been great to have engaged the writers you don't like, as well. You cite plenty of sources you contacted, all to refute those you didn't contact. And don't think for a moment that a Conservative's concern for society is unique to Trump's time, it goes back for decades. Trump is a jerk and I hope an aberration. But you seem to make only economic arguments, and that's where I most find fault with your analysis.
We are not statistics or numbers to be measured. We are made for more than that. And that's what you miss.The concern for society will long outlast Trump.
4
i’m not sure that working class whites reject/rejected the cultural revolutions of the 60/70/80s. the working class embraced women entering the workforce, availability of divorce, sexual autonomy, etc. but these changes didn’t work out for them due to stagnating wages, lack of safety net and globalization....as well as their lack of education and worldview. the white working class certainly grabbed the easy parts of the revolution (sex, individualism, etc.) but now, 40 years out, there’s a conservative backlash among working class whites because the “liberal ways” seems to have not worked out for them. most families are 3 generations into divorces, with no identifiable family tree, and economic insecurity is everywhere. so, especially the under-employed mfg men, have recently turned and blame liberalism. thus, we are now reading working class whites as conservative, but are they....or are they all? they want stable families and economic security (who doesn’t?), but i’m not convinced this makes them truly conservative.
5
Defying logic and evidence appears to be a peculiarly ‘conservative’ trait.
Maybe the emphasis on the so-called hedonism and amorality of liberals is misplaced.
The focus should be on the abundant mendacity and disgust of their fellow human beings displayed by conservatives when we discuss what is wrong with American society.
A more relevant question would be: ‘what is it in the conservative mind that compels such asocial thinking?’
5
Stoking fear and hate is a cornerstone of modern Republican philosophy. Along with voter suppression and dumbing down the population, it's the only way they can remain viable...
7
Not to disparage black families of today, but the seeds of social dislocation and unstable families in that segment of the population were planted during hundreds of years of slavery when involuntary African immigrants were treated and bred like farm animals rather than being able to form and sustain their own families. Ask Barr about the concept of original sin and you will get some mumbo jumbo about sex, but it is slavery that is our original sin and we have yet to overcome it. PS, there’s no dispensation coming from on high.
Only when a segment of the white population notably suffers from widespread family breakdowns, violence, drug use, etc. does it get called a crisis.
5
Of course they don't. It's simple projection. Whenever the right wing accuses someone of something, it is actually just what they are doing themselves. They are great at this game; they've been doing it a long time - because it works, and I guess they just can't help themselves. It is easier to think of conservatives as simply hypocrites. They don't only destroy families....they seek to destroy life itself - because if they don't have it, they don't want anyone else to either.
6
There are indeed legitimate social problems that need to be addressed for all of the reasons stated in this piece. But, pious hypocrites are never in short supply. They are the modern day Pharisees defending a vague orthodoxy, mainly because it gives them power. Evidently, they missed what Jesus said about removing the plank from their own eye before removing the speck from their brother's eye.
3
"How could Barr possibly fail to recognize that there is no better example of a man in unbridled pursuit of his own appetites than his boss?"
Barr obviously recognizes this, but he also knows he's good for two out of three on, "You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time."
3
Barr gave one of his speeches attacking "liberalism" at Notre Dame, an institution affiliated with Barr's Catholic church. Which would be the same church that sheltered pedophile priests for decades. There is no hypocrite like a self-styled religious hypocrite.
I really think it's time for us "liberals" to allow these "conservatives" to create their own version of utopia, strictly of and for themselves, separate and far apart from the rest of us. I for one want no part of it, or them. And I'm glad that the feeling is certainly mutual. There is simply no reconciling this, not at this point.
5
For the same reaosn conservatives say the climate isn't dangerously changing, or that Ukraine not Russia interfered in our 2016 elections, or that white folks are the real victims of discrimination.
The modern GOP is no longer based in reality world, either as a deliberate political ploy, or they have gone collectively insane.
4
It has nothing whatever to do with the "sexual revolution" or the success rate of marriages (those that do not end in decoupling). At heart the problem is the embrace of and attempt to carry out Marxism in America, knowingly or not. It is more than an inconvenience or annoying or stupid. It's a death sentence.
2
@Percy41 Your pessimism about socialism depends, I think, on selective ignorance of successful socialist regimes, like the New Deal or postwar Scandinavia. But maybe it's identifying socialism with Marxism, which I would agree has been a very unsuccessful socialism and a murderous one.
1
Let us remember Paul Krugman's words regarding our Attorney General: Barr “is sounding remarkably like America’s most unhinged religious zealots, the kind of people who insist that we keep experiencing mass murder because schools teach the theory of evolution." William Barr believes in the "Rapture", which is what extremely conservative religious folks aniticpate will happen at the end of the world--good people--the chosen--will float up to meet Christ, who will float down from Heaven, I guess, to greet them.
Barr and his cohorts are insidiously trying to overturn our Constitution's cautions about the absolute necessity of separating Church and State. In fact our country was built upon this concept by people fleeing coercive religions that wanted to rule all people in all their daily activities.
To quote "Rewire.News", we should all be concerned when a fundamental principle like church-state separation is under attack from the head of the Justice Department.
5
@Elizabeth Bennett If "our country was built upon this concept by people fleeing coercive religions that wanted to rule all people in all their daily activities." where would that put the Puritans of New England?
That was exactly the point: the Pilgrims fled England because of religious intolerance... so that they could establish their own intolerance in a new place, with themselves on top and not on the bottom, of course. That’s the basics of religion: if you believe passionately based on faith alone, everyone else is a doomed sinner infidel who must be forced to accept your beliefs and give up their own, or put to death.
3
@William Everdell The Pilgrims and Puritans came to America to practice religious freedom--which they were no longer able to enjoy in the England of the 1600's.
1
How? Simple.
Someone wants to win power at all cost. That person faces a crowd of adoring gullible supporters. A few "harmless" words about family would send them roaring. And so it began.
Once others saw how those few words could galvanize a mindless crowd of drones eager to swallow any such "politically incorrect truths", the so-called "conservative belief" is now a core principal.
Today, lies are truths, facts are fake, anything goes. It is the New Dark Age. 40% of us believe in this nonsense.
3
The Right has wanted to 'win' at all costs since the 1970s. There must be some archives of early radio shows dedicated to demonizing the Left that show how those people informed today's social media forces still pushing the idea that the Left is evil and wants to destroy the USA. What did the Left do? We fought a war to free the slaves. We freed them, and Lincoln was murdered as a result. We insisted on treating blacks like human beings which was opposed by those enacting Jim Crow. Worse, we backed up freeing blacks with Civil Rights legislation. Even worse, civil rights ideas spread to include women, Native Americans, immigrants, the disabled, and LGBTQ folks. We upset white slave society's applecart. They will not forgive us for this or they will begin to understand why their totalitarian society should have been destroyed. That is what the Left destroyed, not what the USA will be once the stain of slaver sins is washed away by their enlightenment. I pray that day arrives.
Just curious why those that want to scream conservative values and denounce "liberalism" will go to universities that are founded and funded by an institution that has condoned sexual abuse of children since the church was founded. What is more liberal than that?
3
As a board member of the ultra-conservative Opus Dei, William Barr is presumably including Pope Francis in the ranks of today's "moral relativists." Opus Dei believes the organization adheres to a higher, better moral code than Pope Francis's. They seem to prefer Donald Trump's.
4
From Phyllis Shafely to Newt Gingrich, and the message handlers behind Reagan and then Bush, conservatives have proclaimed themselves the "moral majority" and the Freedom Caucus and the defenders of "family values". Generally from hucksters like Gingrich, and culminating in Trump, whose lives have been the antitheses of family values or moral virtue. Throw in Rush and Alex Jones and Hannity and numerous others in the media, and you develop a perfect storm. Propaganda pure and simple - and the more fascist leaning in the GOP right learned well how to deploy it, and it helped them realize how ignorant a good proportion of the GOP base is. So they ramp up the attack another notch, and another. But when some smuck with a firearm or van and pipe bombs decides to quell the threat himself, the Right immediately disavows any responsibility for their rhetoric. This is the party who continually lets to genie out of the bottle, but never bothers to try to shove it back in.
2
Thank you for citing Autor !!!!
"There is clear evidence, however, Autor writes,
that sharp declines in the availability of middle class jobs for non-college workers (esp. men) — for example, when China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001 and U.S. manufacturing employment fell by 20 percent in seven years — causes exactly these maladies on which these commentators are focused: a drop in labor force participation, a decline in marriage rates, a rise in the fraction of children born out of wedlock, an increase in mother-headed households, a rise in child poverty, and a spike in ‘deaths of despair’ among young adults, particularly men, "
BUT WHO BROUGHT THIS ON ?
Liberals, with NAFTA and WTO
Here is what Paul Krugman, The Conscience of a Liberal , wrote when laid off middle class American workers wrote him letters about what happened to them
" I guess I should have expected that this comment would generate letters along the lines of,
"“Well, if you lose your comfortable position as an American professor you can always find another job–as long as you are 12 years old and willing to work for 40 cents an hour.”
Such moral outrage is common among the opponents of globalization–of the transfer of technology and capital from high-wage to low-wage countries and the resulting growth of labor-intensive Third World exports"
Paul Krugman In Praise of Cheap Labor
Zero sympathy for laid of US workers, instead accusation of moral outrage
2
Congratulations. You discovered that it was transnational capitalism that destroyed society while hypnotizing social conservatives; in the meantime, leftists distracted us from what was happening (and likely gave license to their rich donors) by playing personal autonomy and identity politics on the fiddle.
Here's a cookie. Now go vote for Bernie Sanders before your sexually libertine, financially parasitical and mentally unmoored oligarchs destroy us all.
2
At last night's rally, Donald claimed that liberals have now declared "war on Thanksgiving". That seems like a bit of a reach, but I guess any holiday is now an excuse to open a new front in the never-ending war against the demonic hordes...
1
I have no doubt that liberals do not WANT to destroy the family. But many of their actions have had that consequence.
The heroes of the liberals are single mothers and not two parent families.
3
I have no data or sociological expertise, but I think these changes in families and society have nothing to do with the liberal vs conservative dividing line.
Conservatives just use this as a wedge issue. In the 1950s, which republicans seem to think were golden years, there was plenty of “dysfunction” but society kept it suppressed. An abused spouse had few options but to stay married, for example.
Irony is beyond dead in these people. Barr and Pompeo go to “bible studies” but worship authoritarianism and an idolatrous vulgarian who pays off porn stars.
Conservatives just want to scapegoat unmarried pregnant women, while praising men who impregnated them as super virile. They want gay people back in the closet, and blacks and Hispanics in menial jobs where they call white men “sir.”
5
I would never want to make the nuclear family illegal. Just one of many options cfor people to have
In their eternal quest to pretend our nation’s founders desired this place to be theocratic evangelicals pervert the Constitution and our history in the name of a higher purpose. That argument was of course the Christian defense of slavery that drove Lincoln to distrust if not despise loud-mouthed hypocrites like Barr and his mentor in hypocrisy Justice Scalia, men who mistakenly draw a direct line from their idea of Godly morality to the common good bypassing their bridge of human ethics as Aristotle, for one, viewed the common good. Whether it is Barr or Billy Graham or Jerry Falwell et al they never met a war against the rest of us they didn’t like. For Barr to utter out of the same mouth his devotion to morals and to Trump should be sufficient that if God exists God would strike him dead. Such zealotry as Rick Perry’s remark likening Trump to David the King who smote his enemies and made those grovel in dust whom he didn’t cut the foreskins from (read Psalms) is to risk Old Testament wrath in Texas. David wasn’t a sinner by Christian mythology but a man who kept a covenant with God and when he didn’t paid a heavy price. In my seventy years I have learned that those who wrap themselves in religion or patriotism are usually rotten at the core. This was and is a secular nation so that so-called religious freedom is a dog whistle for domination by bigots over my civil rights. If Trump is the messiah it’s time for another crucifixion. Yea though I walk....
2
“secular liberalism had unleashed “licentiousness — the unbridled pursuit of personal appetites at the expense of the common good,” Wow! Now that’s the very definition of Reagan capitalism.
4
"Conservatives" basically are just angry white people disguising their fear of losing control on all levels of society and government by blaming the victims, accusing the victims or not working hard enough to achieve anything financially, of "loose" morals, and wanting to leech off of government programs (looking at you, Mr. 47%) while simultaneously ignoring the decades long assault on good paying jobs, off shoring of said good paying jobs for more profit and less tax burden, less money for social safety nets, and a non-stop assault on women's reproductive rights and sexual education.
This quote sums it all up: "This theme underpins the new book by Mary Eberstadt, a senior research fellow at the Faith & Reason Institute, 'Primal Screams: How the Sexual Revolution Created Identity Politics.' The alterations of traditional family structure and the social order brought forth by the sexual revolution, Eberstadt writes, 'have simultaneously rained down destruction on the natural habitat of the human animal, with radical results we are only beginning to understand.'” Did she ever bother to read Alfred Kinsey's books - "Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953)?" Written well BEFORE the sexual revolution and the birth control pill.
These faux moralists make me sick to my stomach at their total lack of objective scientific methods, preaching the gospel of Christian Nationalism, and avoiding any blame for causing these problems.
4
Sometimes I wonder who hates America more, Donald Trump or William Barr. Intolerant, divisive hypocrites. The press is not the enemy of the people... that label would apply to them.
5
Perhaps liberalism hasnt directly attacked the family unit, but they have very much done so indirectly. Years ago, the family unit was held together by certain morals, traditions, laws, personal responsibility and yes, even shame.
It wasnt that long ago that young single adults needed to be careful as to whom you chose to have sex with. If the girl got pregnant, that set off a lot of customs that are now all out of touch, and sneered at. First off, want to fool around? Then if you get pregnant, its your responsibility to pay for it, not mine. Liberals claim conservatives deny access to contraception simply because it isnt being paid for by someone else. Just walk down to your local drug store. Theres one on every corner. They should also get married. Years ago, being a single other often carried a bit of shame. Now, liberals cheer single mothers. Getting married involves living on your own, paying for your own stuff, including healthcare. Liberals want to make it easier to exist without even working. Doing drugs was always a detriment to achieving success and a little personal responsibility. Liberals want to legalize pot, which decimates ambition. Liberals also want to legalize prostitution. Going to church every Sunday kept a lot of folks in line. Liberals sneer at religion, and attack the Catholic church every chance they get. The bottom line? Liberals hate tradition. They cant stand it. Whenever they are successful in dissolving any tradition, they call it "progress".
4
Notice that “tradition” is whatever shames, blames, and places responsibility on the female role in these scenarios? Just saying.
3
When the Party that willfully and almost gleefully separates small children, keeping them apart in indefinite detention slams liberals as anti-family, we should know that hypocrisy has descended into dark, mirthless slapstick.
4
Umm- hasn’t Bill Barr ever picked up a history book? It’s religion that’s been the root of so much human conflict— bringing with it in his words, “immerse suffering, wreckage, and misery”
1
@ Me, should you wish to empirically test your belief that conservatives are as aggressive as the liberal elite, then I would suggest you wear a MAGA hat in public and see the reaction. You’ll shortly receive the response your looking for. I doubt it will be one of tolerance.
If Trump & his petty, corrupt, vindictive administration is the example of what Conservatives want, America heartily says No Thank You!
3
On second reading this column seems like it’s coming from a man who sees what liberalism has wrought and is now trying to weasel his way out from under. At least blame Bill Clinton and George W. Bush for allowing China into the WTO which destroyed our middle class, as one scholar quoted points out.
2
It’s not that liberals want to destroy the family it’s that liberals have destroyed the family. Virtually every city in America with a high percentage of single parent households is lead by a liberal. The highest being Rochester, Birmingham, Detroit, Cleveland, Springfield, Hartford........the list goes on. All with liberal Democrat mayors. They may not want to destroy the family but they ultimately do.
2
It is Trump who is cruelly separating families at our southern border. The man is a tyrant with no conscience. He stole the presidency with the help of Russia and he has the gall to ask for help from Putin, again...The Democrats should be shouting "FOUL!!!" for the whole world to hear!
1
William Barr is the last person to be talking about licentiousness given the way he is performing as AG of our country...
1
huh.... so misogyny and homophobia parading as religion and "family values" doesn't yield the social results as advertised? Whoda thunk it?
3
Barr is the last person who should rail about morals.
He has enabled the most immoral man in America.
3
Roy Cohn's dirty tricks playbook (which is also that of Trump and McCarthy) have been memorized by many criminals and politicians. Aside from the obvious "lie, lie and lie more. Eventually people will begin to believe you", his perverted mind advocated demonization of anyone who would challenge you - find, or invent, dirt and repugnant lies and spread liberally.
Here we have just such a case - Republicans desperately trying to demonize "liberals", having placed everyone not them in that category. They are using scare tactics via Fox to keep their flock angry and captive. They never want them to hear, see or know truth - and many of their ilk fall for this.
The genocidal war in Yugoslavia began like that, and we know what happened there - or at least I do. Life-long neighbors and friends killed each other for perceived, fake differences - all false.
This is Trump's goal and his legacy. Is this what YOU want?
3
Of course we liberals want to destroy the family. That is because "family" is a shadow, an illusion, used to defame and exile anyone who dares to live a sexual life that is free and enjoyable. You know, like gays and women. How dare we be happy and not live within the bleak walls of ideological demands that we father and mother myriad children. This whole "family" movement and that means the anti-abortion groups, too, are dedicated to imposing sexual fascism on us all. Is that what you want? Not me.
3
So much preposterousness. So much taunting and obfuscation. So many outrages. So many lies.
So many lies and so many people who believe them. And so many people who repeat them without ever thinking.
Too many of these lies originate, or are disseminated by networks funded by idiot elite oligarchs and their PR firms, lobbyists, executives, university departments, media, pocket politicians and zombie judges.
So many lies because a tiny elite (0.1%) cannot dominate and enervate the 85% without them and a professional caste of liars who unceasingly lie for them.
We need a distributionary income tax and a wealth tax to disseminate the concentrated wealth that stifles investment, development, and prosperity. So much seed money and infrastructure for meaningful economic development arises from tax payer funding already.
We need to make for-profit corporations more accountable to workers, consumers, communities and different levels of government. This is not statism. This is checks and balances and accountability.
We don’t need to nationalize crucial industries such as health care and education. The best models for these are already non profits who have to be more accountable to different constituencies and stakeholders. This model can be applied to health insurance, which is now an industry of profit sucking vampires draining the vitality out of our healthcare system which has NOT been the best in the world for a long time now.
We need to wake up.
1
From the article: "The assault on liberal elites also dominates “Why Liberalism Failed” by Patrick Deneen.... "the cultivation of virtue requires the thick presence of virtue-forming and virtue-supporting institutions...."
By "virtue-supporting institutions" I assume Deneen means the Catholic church which is riddled with child abusers, or perhaps the evangelical churches that steal from their constituents every Sunday in order to buy their next private jet? You mean those "virtue-supporting" organizations?
2
It is liberals who have pushed gay marriage, transgender lifestyles and abortion on our society. They certainly have not helped our culture and have drastically changed our way of life. We are seeing more alternative ways of living and it is bound to affect America. And I do not think it is for the better.
2
I grew up in a family with two parents who stayed together "for the children." It was terrible. My childhood would have been much better with ONE of the parents, either one. I believe the change in women's roles made it possible for women to seek divorce when in a terrible situation--and that was good for everyone. Having said that, OF COURSE as a liberal--as a person!--I believe in the importance of family. I just don't accept the myth that two parents are better than one in all cases.
3
The right and left in America seem to be stuck in a bad marriage. Like a bad marriage, these partners aren't really interested in seeking compromises that might strengthen or save the marriage. What they really want is to shame their spouse for their misdeeds and/or to get others to agree that their spouse is awful. This fuels animosity, when understanding is needed. This bad marriage is likely to get worse and divorce lowers the quality of life for everyone (if divorce is even an option).
Anyone have any ideas on how to help? Is there any way we can trick the right and left into going on few dates with each other, like they did when they first fell in love? Maybe manufacture another Cold War and remind them how they need each other?
5
If the digital revolution continues unabated, the 'conservative' of today will be looked back upon as liberal. The tendency in one's older years is to look back on youth fondly, but giving short shrift to the broadness of intellect & mindfulness of those early years.
Advice to youth-- save your first scraps of attempts at creativity. It will give you a much more real vision of yourself than memory alone can conjure as romance fades with the years. Not only that, it'll give you hope for the future of your country & the world.
Souvenirs cannot be digitized.
I guess the argument is that today's liberal sociologist has now proven what conservatives were arguing years ago, only the liberals of the day were promoting the things that we now know to be problems. We had to break it to understand it; now we have to fix what has been broken. What are today's liberals supporting that will eventually be understood to be a problem and will need to be fixed?
4
Are there any more "conservatives" (and/or Trump supporters) who have any moral authority left to claim that THEY are the custodians of "family values"? The suggestion itself is hilarious at so many levels.
5
The tagline to Mr. Edsall's essay includes this question, "How did this preposterous idea leap to the forefront of conservative thinking?", the answer to which I believe is quite simple. This preposterous idea sells, and is bought into primarily by the white working class that chooses to live exclusively in that echo chamber of conservative "thought": Fox News. It's easy to lie to people who listen only to one voice.
2
The so-called traditional ideal of the nuclear family so lauded by conservatives is actually a relatively recent phenomenon. Up until the advent of industrial capitalism, most humans lived in communal villages, where child-rearing and family life was seen as collective work. As the shift to the capitalist paradigm required relocating male workers to urban factories en masse, the concept of the nuclear family rose in tandem. This wasn't a coincidence, but rather an intentional push by capitalists and the aristocracy to destroy collective life, community relationships, and confine women to the domestic sphere to breed as many factory workers and soldiers as possible (read the excellent book Caliban and the Witch which is all about this).
This legacy continues today. People who push for "traditional values" always use that as a backdoor to push for the status quo, for male dominance, for alienation and isolation of families from their communities. If you want a stable family with a spouse and children, go ahead, no one is stopping you. But don't pretend that when politicians try to create policies that push for "traditional values", when they demonize those who live outside those values, that it isn't really about preserving power and the status quo.
6
The outrage and alarm coming from conservatives over the "destruction of the family" is, at its base level, anger over their loss of power, control, and privilege.
Conservatives are furious that women are gaining equality and autonomy - socially, economically, and over their very bodies. Conservatives are outraged that long-marginalized and stifled groups- LGBTQ+ Americans- are finally living open lives, free to live in harmony with their true selves. At its base level, American conservativism is about control and obedience, with a rigid hierarchy, steeped in misogyny, bigotry, and homophobia, that places straight, white men at its apex. I'm sure it seems ideal to those favored in that arrangement, but it's oppressive and repressive for everyone else.
If we want to address sociological inequality, we have to address the structural and economic inequality at its root. It's not the decline of a singularly-defined family unit that causes sociological problems. It's income and wealth inequality, including exploitative employment practices and soaring costs of living, that makes independent parenting nearly impossible. It's a lack of investment in education, child care, and health care that causes children to struggle. Instead of trying to sabotage progress and equality, while suffocating a diverse population with retrograde ideology, we should expand equality and opportunity, through robust investment in our social safety net and infrastructure without bigoted preconditions.
7
The next time a conservative moralist complains to you about the "unremitting assault on religion and traditional values." (Barr's words), ask him/her to date the start of said assault; ask when was the Golden Age of religious and traditional values in America and when did the decline begin.
Unless they date the birth of decline to the 17th century there will always be an earlier period in our history in which their "religious and traditional values" were more strictly enforced. In fact, the very term "traditional values" has, by definition, no starting point. America's first white settlers came here objecting to the same kind of decline Barr now attacks.
Whatever date Barr might pick for his golden age to which he would drag us all back, would be arbitrary, and being arbitrary would be merely a personal prejudice.
And personal prejudices are precisely what each of us wishes to exercise as we live our lives in our supposedly freedom-loving country.
4
Social conservatism is ultimately based on fear and ignorance. Nothing good ultimately comes from it, even if it masks problems for a period. All change brings an ebb and flow of social positives and negatives that are the consequence of need for adjustment as a function of learning, rather than going back to old ideas based on ignorance.
The numbers overwhelmingly indicate that the educated have fewer social ills. They also tend to be far less religious, and parochial in their thinking and approach to life.
Facts work. Science works. Education works. Myth just scares people into conformity.
7
Because I read in this very newspaper an Op-Ed by a woman who proclaimed she wanted exactly that. It was absolutely chilling to read. She imagined a genderless future.
4
I think that was a man.
Farhad Manjoo “Call Me They”.
Though, if he really wants to be, “they”, I’m not sure what the noun is- if not man or woman, “it”?
That seems rude.
I don't believe that we conservatives think that left wingers want to destroy the family.
They merely want policies that tend to do that. For example, until Clinton essentially all forms of welfare were conditioned on having a disfunctional family. Clinton, of course, moved part of the money from AFDC (which requires a destroyes family) into direct money giveaways in the form of "negative taxes" to very very low (but positive) income families.
But they certainly do not use their very considerable (i.e. their captive so-called "mainstream press") jawboning power to encourage intact families and actively discourage broken ones. I don't believe that we conservatives think that left wingers want to destroy the family.
They merely want policies that tend to do that. For example, until Clinton essentially all forms of welfare were conditioned on having a disfunctional family. Clinton, of course, moved part of the money from AFDC (which requires a destroyes family) into direct money giveaways in the form of "negative taxes" to very very low (but positive) income families.
But they certainly do not use their very considerable (i.e. their captive so-called "mainstream press") jawboning power to encourage intact families and actively discourage broken ones. This is THE problem! They spend their limited attention-getting power on such extremely silly things as excouraging forced use of abnormal pronouns such as "zhe".
5
The preposterousness of the idea that liberals are destroying society has been brought to the forefront of right wing discourse because the GOP and its propagandists believe that liberals have no legitimate right to govern.
With this mind set in place, we have one party which no longer accepts that the other party has any legitimacy whatsoever.
The problem with this, is that the fundamentals of the democratic-Constitutional-republic are undermined when the opportunity for rancor, debate and compromise are no longer guiding principles of the people or their elected representatives.
We have a serious problem — our posterity may never know the blessings of liberty that our constitution states as being one of the 5 mandates of our people’s government.
“...to form a more perfect union, (1) establish justice, (2) insure domestic tranquility, (3) provide for the common defense, (4) promote the general welfare, and (5) secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity..."
2
Conservatives run on fear--it's the way they control and manipulate their gullible base. I am a retired, white, working class female. I was married to the same good man until death parted us, had three planned children and never practiced "licentious" behavior. I refuse to support the idea that liberals or progressives are harming our society. I have never voted for a Republican and never will. My three well-educated daughters never will either. I refuse to allow hateful ideologues like Bill Barr have any sway. And his support of Trump believes any morality or decency in his character.
15
Republicans make up fake headlines out of thin air to stir their base. Democrats then spends hours and hours with proven research to rebuttal their false claims.
Then Republicans make up other false headlines in seconds with other topics (with help from Facebook). Democrats spend more hours to rebuttal more false claims, but by the time this happens, the Republicans will have made 10x more false claims.
This is why Trump will win another 4 years.
7
Liberals aren’t destroying family. Families in red states (and everywhere) have been decimated by the brutality of late-stage capitalism, but because they’re ideologically married to capitalism as the only viable alternative to the evils of socialism, they need another scapegoat: Liberals!
The problem with that thinking is that it doesn’t reflect reality. My liberal community here in New York is thriving - parents make time to be involved in their school communities, we know our neighbors and interact with them daily, and the number of divorces is well below the national average. Maybe the problem of conservative communities breaking down isn’t the fault of coastal elites, but stems from local and/or personal problems that have been left to fester? Perhaps voting against your economic and community interests in favor of politicians who claim to “love” guns and hate abortion and socialism is actually hurting you and your families?
13
The religious right is conformist by nature. They believe the spoon-feeding of their church without question. They believe the spoon-feeding of their second Church, FOX news. They also believe in the spoon-feedings of Trump and his GOP.
It seems they can't think for themselves, and that's just where the GOP wants them.
12
The white working and middle class malaise can be traced to three trends in America - extreme economic inequality coupled to the spread of social Darwinist rationales promoted by economic oligarchs and the rise of radio and TV hate media that heap blame on minorities immigrants and liberal progressives for the loss of white privilege and their own failures. Based on the false premise that in America talent and hard work equal social mobility and tinged with Christian prosperity dogma, the Darwinists shame the lower classes whose decline, they claim, is caused by moral failure. Utterly humiliated and resentful it is little wonder they are easily susceptible to the hate spewed by FOX et al and that they see Trump as their agent of disruption.
5
This is all a side show.
Conservatives don’t want to have to pay taxes, want unfettered access to free markets and believe “the individual “ is on their own...good luck!
And if you and your family are struggling in any way it is, in all likelihood your own fault and that THAT is the cornerstone of individual liberty embodied in the Constitution.
6
"Secular liberalism unleashes licentiousness" is catchy, I admit. Slick alliteration. And wrong.
If Barr is in search of real culprits, it's understandable he'd avoid the one that implicates his team: the GOP and the religious right. That is, the overweening greed, the pursuit of wealth to the extreme, the dislocation of resources in American society that victimizes all but the 1%. Nowhere is it more visible than among the swamp creatures that inhabit the Trump administration and so-called evangelicals. Pay for Play in D.C.
This is not an argument answered by the other GOP boogeyman: "Socialist!" But it is recognizing a profound mal-distribution of resources lies at the heart of many other problems. We now know enough of the results of the Trump tax plan to realize it had little effect other than to make the rich richer.
Barr and his sponsors, let's call them co-conspirators, like any dealer in a game of three-card monte, would prefer people not see that. Like he did with the Mueller Report. Barr: The Minister for Mis-Direction.
5
I think Occam's Razor would suggest the answer is, those espousing this stuff do not, in fact, believe it. They're simply throwing raw meat to their audience, dehumanizing their opposition -- in short, playing to the rubes. Everything now being pushed on Fox "News" and the like these days fits snugly into the idea that they're just working the con game, over and over again. Why would they stop, when it works so well?
3
This article makes good points, but when liberalism as represented by the Democratic Party tries to use laws such as Title IX to allow students into sexually segregated facilities based on simply their identity, and not their biological sex, it leaves them open to these attacks. That sort of thinking demonstrates to many that the regulatory arm of the federal government as exercised by a Democratic administration is unable to understand the line between theory and reality. In rushing to force their vision of a perfect non-discriminatory society upon everyone therefore, they end up destroying its vital components, i.e., the family. It is liberalism that has shown an inability to say 'no', and to protect themselves from accusations of being anti-family, they need to learn that.
5
Certainly feminism has caused changes in societal structure. Ongoing discord occurs because of the uneven racial gains of that feminism and the lack of systemic adaptation to feminism. The system continues to force people into a post industrial revolution model that was only sustainable when one person stayed home and did all the home life for free and which was never a model (one person staying at home) open to women of color and other poor classes. Support for working parents through flexibility in work schedules, affordable child care, and more does not exist.
Now that some women have the ability to choose not to remain at home and be homemakers, the system is collapsing and must change. But this then is used to shame those who enter the workforce through victim blaming (the old 'we wouldn't have these problems if you had just stayed in your place so it is all your fault' argument).
The push to allow different sexualities to express themselves as they are has also resulted in systemic changes which are supported by liberals to allow people to grow healthy and whole. In addition, many same sex couples aspire to marriage and adoption/child rearing which would seem to be the very ideals that Republicans are supposedly fighting for.
Also as a note: please quit reciting the absurd 'liberal elites'. The Republican party is the party of big businesses and billionaires. More CEOs, more of the wealthiest families, etc are all REPUBLICAN.
3
So the people who hunger for more virtue line up behind trump? Just proves they don't actually mean what they say.
4
What so called conservative republicans are really worked up about is the loss of credibility to their hypocrisy. There were children born out of wedlock in the 40's, before the "sexual revolution", I know I was one of them. And my biological mother was from a well to do family who sent her to Denver to hide her condition.
Loss of power for the white male patriarchal system is surely at the heart of their grievances. Without the social warfare they construct and promote the republican party could not get anyone outside of a boardroom to vote for their policies. So they dress those grievances up in the Bible and the flag and accuse the "liberal elites" of all the Nation's sins.
This polarization might not be so rampant if pundits like Mr. Edsall would not gratuitously using terms like "liberal elite". I know plenty of liberals who are not in the "elite" class, social standing wise.
6
And again we have to answer an attack from a man who embraces superstition and alleges that our rejection of his credo makes us dangerous.
I, on the other hand, tremble daily that those who are tasked with shepherding our economy and keeping us safe talk to the sky.
When mega-Christians go after mega-Muslims, I know that at root it's just a turf war for the attention of the voluntarily deluded, for what are the odds that someone deeply committed to fantasy over reality would choose reality over a slightly modified fantasy?
Here's the thing, though: Although religion teaches that people are fallible, these days it seems that more atheists believe that tenet than the adherents themselves. Witness noted intellectual and Energy Secretary Rick Perry who has invoked the Divine Right of Presidents.
Whether it's Barr or Perry or DeVos or Pence, though, one quality stands out: These are all people who are individually humble but part of the greatest army of all time; they are people who are kind and scrupulous but must smear non-believers as part of their duties to their lord. In short, their egos are so inflated by their presumed relationship with the creator of the universe that they can behave badly while claiming virtue. Sort of like Torquemada (the Early Years).
No, many of us non-believers don't need an intermediary to understand charity and cruelty, like putting kids in cages, which is prescribed in exactly what Biblical passage?
5
Two thoughts
First- Ever since Emperor Constantine enshrined the Nicene Creed as the official doctrine of the Holy Roman Empire religion has been a tool for command and control of the populace.
People like Barr do not trust individuals to make decisions for ourselves. They believe an external locus of control must exist and, of course, he and people like him must man the controls.
Second- Observance of religious rights and practices has long served as a form of virtue signaling. It is likely that people like Barr are far more concerned that there are fewer people out there that display the banners of his tribe than he is concerned about the welfare of the population at large.
2
The libertinism, radical selfishness and other liberal values which inevitably result in social-familial decay, have long been resisted by educated, intact, white liberal families with means. They could not have remained intact, educated and with means for long if they practiced what they preached. They live and thrive often as a result of the very traditional institutions and values liberalism denounces as the source of the problem with the world.
The counter culture gave our upper and lower classes the flu. It gave our lower classes pneumonia. The elites’ relentless assault on bourgeois values removed their inoculant.
It is no wonder then, that a few generations into this social experiment, as we continue to sort into well educated, well-off liberal white camps and blue collar, struggling conservative camps, we now find a lot of the social decay among poor conservatives which they denounce.
3
The biggest conservative fallacy might be that the people who call them conservatives are actually quite radical.
Is it just me, or does the phrase "radical conservative" sound like an oxymoron?
Barr has expressed his views clearly without any factual or even theoretical foundation. So from where does Barr get these ideas, and indeed, are they his ideas at all, but rather, a means to rabble rouse the “base” that is the only political support for the GOP and the Trump mindset.
In fact, although there are statistics to show all is not well, the pint and purpose of Barr and the billionaire backers of Fox, Hannity, Limbaugh, etc, the supporters of an unprecedented many-tentacled propaganda machine, is to destroy democracy as we know it and impose an Oligarchy of demented, wealthy demigods.
1
The right-wing uses whatever emotional appeal works; it really has nothing to do with reality. Take all the guns away? Unrestricted border crossings? Unrestricted abortions? Lies, lies, lies.
The conservatives now have the lying-most President of all-time. They win in the lying category. He's a Christian? He's a patriot? He's a moral leader?
What a terrible waste of a country we've become, and yes, the Republicans have led the way. Who else would say that global warming is a hoax and we should burn more coal and gas? They're destroying God's holy creation and denying it. Shameless. Sinful.
Who else but Republicans would talk about smaller government and then cut taxes for the rich and corporations, filling their own elite pockets? Jesus was poor but somehow being rich is a Christian 'value'? I don't see it.
Trump's the worst; let him burn slowly in his own lies and all his henchmen's lies. We must move forward as compassionate and educated citizens, trying our best to face all the issues of the day (never easy). We can be better people, promoting the common good, learning how to love more completely and creating the more perfect Union. And, we must.
3
Can I just give this column a big hug?
Somehow, not forcing people into one narrow definition of family has come to be seen as "destroying the family" and it's ridiculous and insulting. (Not to mention horribly unpragmatic and damaging)
1
This terror appears in every society when women gain independence or are seen to be agitating for independence, freedom of movement and thought, and agency. "Licentiousness," destruction of the "family" and even individual choice -- all these are red flags to men, especially men in power or men angry because they are not powerful. Happened in the US, the UK, Italy, Morocco, Egypt, South Africa, Central America -- you name it. It's about women escaping their cages.
3
"Destroying the family" is conservative speak for "destroying white male privilege." They don't care about families; they care about maintaining power and privilege over women, children, minorities, etc.
7
Tяцmp is a natural authoritarian. Evangelical religion of whatever stripe is, by its fundamental nature, highly authoritarian. See the connection?
2
White working class people need help! This article accurately highlights the economic woes and the breakdown of the family unit that is plaguing that community. The white working class do not have the education to intelligently articulate their suffering or the help that they require. Instead, they do what all ignorant people do in times of fear, they resort to bigotry and anger. Almost all mass shooters are white. Trump’s rallies are filled with a sea of angry white faces. The white working class have unleashed a monster in the White House as an expression of their rage.
I am sick and tired of progressives casting the white working class as privileged. These people are clearly not privileged and they are suffering. You want Trump out of the White House? Start addressing that suffering. If you don’t, I fear things will only get worse in this country. I am voting for Joe Biden because he has a proven track record of being able to communicate with the white working class. You should vote for him too. 
Remember the hyperbolic attacks Obama received from his bibles and guns” comment? Barr’s speech is openly incendiary and almost amounts to a declaration of war against democrats, yet the “liberal media elite” is mostly silent. Where is the outrage? If Eric Holder had said these things about conservatives, the Right would be calling for his immediate resignation.
4
Mr. Edsall is too easy on liberals
The decay of the American family described by Autor was brought about by liberal economists
My wife’s family is from Syracuse. Her father worked for Lenox Heating and Air conditioning. Her Uncle for the GM Fisher Plant. Her cousin for Carrier.
All lost their jobs after NAFTA was signed and all fell from middle class into a paycheck to paycheck existence.
It was liberal economists who praised NAFTA and furnished the justifications for politicians to pass it
Let me cite the NY Times from 1993
"Paul Krugman, a trade economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said that for the United States, the agreement is "economically trivial." Professor Krugman sums up the war of words this way: "The anti-Nafta people are telling malicious whoppers. “
They were far from trivial. Syracuse fell from a solid middle class town into a spiral of ever increasing poverty
Let me cite Edsall NYT April 19, 2018
"in the struggling Syracuse metropolitan area , families moving in between 2005 and 2016 had median household incomes of $35,219 — $7,229 less than the median income of the families moving out of the region, $42,448."
2
An amazing tossed salad of tenured academics--M. Edsall must have been burning up the web to "reach out" to so many academics, so many buzz-words, so much neo-Marxism. Whew!
The article is, essentially, a very long straw man exercise: "social conservatives" as a typical progressive-targeted tribe, without bothering to actually define the wide range of thought encapsulated in that rather convenient term. Set 'em up, knock 'em down.
How Edsall can capture the opinions of the so-called right without mentioning the work of public intellectuals (as opposed to denizens of the halls of ivy--and we know what THAT world is like these days), thinkers like Williamson, Shapiro, Rubin and, yes, Peterson...well, odd omissions, wouldn't you say?
1
You are overthinking this Mr. Edsall. Conservatives aren’t defending virtue or social values, or anything like that. They are defending their money and power.
Liberal ideals call for sharing of power so all have a voice; they see inequality as a bad thing and a sign that society is not working for everyone.
Conservatives see the world as a zero sum game. For every winner there must be a loser. When they talk about Liberals wanting to overturn everything, they are really saying “Don’t touch my stuff! I earned it and “those people” (fill in the blank) don’t deserve it.”
And that’s the ‘good’ Conservatives; the real sociopaths among them have no compunction about lying and steal to get ever more wealth and power.
When they talk about values and virtue, they’re just giving themselves cover for their real agenda.
4
It should be recalled that, in the early 1960s, a young worker might not be hired at all if ... he wore a beard. It was a sign of bohemian indifference to cleanliness, stability, and readiness for military duty or child raising in a lawful couple. Also, being married at a church before age 30 was a condition of employment. So that was the gasseous Barr Talking Point of the early 1960s, and it was as stupid then as Barr nattering belch is now. Oh and who wrote the text he read??
There is, however, a study to be done on the impact of sexual identity politics on child-rearing and social stability. Nothing in this article even goes near the target populations who be prime subjects; perhaps, because it's political fraught.
1
Thank you for this editorial!
Conservatives like Barr take our sudden societal reordering, which is solely the effect of neoliberal economic policy (which they promote), and blame it on the growing secular portion of society. It’s like eating a bag of candy and blaming your stomach ache on the kid down the street.
All this is is a paranoid power-grab by religionists. The framers for sure knew this would happen.
1
Liberals have good ideas that benefit ordinary Americans. THAT is why the right wing lies and disparages the left on a daily basis.
4
Claiming that the family is in danger from Democrats: partly true, mostly not. Yes, gay marriage is not family values exactly. Divorce destroys families but conservatives divorce more often than progressives. Marital infidelity is rife in all groups. Abortion can destroy or save a family. The GOP lies to pander to the evangelical crowd which thinks it has the answer to everything, even if it doesn't really understand much about the origins and the meanings of the bible itself. The Fascists in Europe also claimed to defend the family: not Jewish families, of course.
Barr's rant at Notre Dame was typical conservative-religious nonsense informed by circular reasoning. The thing he doesn't like must be the cause of the world's ills because it gives him an explanation for why he doesn't like it.
When you begin with your conclusion and then fabricate evidence, you can build a case for anything. That's where the argument that lesbians cause hurricanes came from, and that's where the idea that female autonomy destroys society came from.
3
Edsal’s first mistake was attributing evil propaganda by Republicans against Democrats as being thought-based, not hate- and greed-based. Newt Gingrich didn’t invent the lie-based hate machine that is the Republican Party, he just jumped on the bandwagon in 1994 with his list of nasty epithets for right wing candidates to hurl at their Democratic opponents. Demonization of Democrats as un-American, communist, out of touch, etc. has been a tactic of the Republican Party for decades. Demonizing others to dupe the masses and gain power is an age old tactic that, unfortunately, works. It is how Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao and Pol Pot gained and retained power to devastating effect and at the cost of tens of millions of lives. Republican leaders, having proven themselves morals and shame free, use demonization because they have nothing to offer and know it. Hopefully the Republican Party will join past evil movements on the dust heap of history soon.
2
"... the unbridled pursuit of personal appetites at the expense of the common good" Ag Barr warns. He claims he is taking about secular liberals. A wise man long ago said better not to criticize your neighbor for the speck in their eye when you have a log in your eye. Who infamously today bragged about the joys of sexual assault, befriended child molesters and even promoted one for public office, who divorced twice and at the same time enjoyed paramours, and who used his "charity" as a personal piggybank and not as a source for public philanthropy? It is the person you claim cannot be indicted nor investigated, 45.
4
Studies? Look around, what do you see for yourself? Depends on where you look or where you turn your head the other way.
As usual, it's the total inversion of what is going on in the minds of Republicans. It would be closer to the truth to say that THEY want to destroy anything that is not their candy-coated idea of family life - Mom and Dad and 2 straight, white kids.
1
@ John Holland What I have stated is what I have personally seen. Statements of fact cannot be plagiarized as they are what they are. HRC lost the election. Have I plagiarized anyone or made a statement of fact? Liberals have assaulted individuals wearing MAGA hats.
Again a statement of fact. Accept the reality of it.
1
Ronald Reagan followed by "he's a card-carrying liberal!" Bush. Add in the onset of Fox News and Limbaugh, and here we are.
1
I would argue most of our problems are issues of income inequality and have little to do with morality as defined by Christians. Bill Barr defends our liar in chief and then lectures the rest of us on morality, it's simply nauseating. I would argue we need to look outward and not inward. I recently spent a week in Bangkok. Did you know they sell Viagra and dildo's on the street in Bangkok? Prostitution (not condoning) is rampant and transgender people live out in the open with little threat of being assaulted. Muslims, Hindu's, and Buddhists coexist fairly peacefully. Religious shrines on every corner. What you do not see in Bangkok are mentally ill people and drug addicts sleeping in the street. Thailand has a booming economy where everyone seems to be working. Food is healthy and cheap. You do not see McDonald's and Wendy's. You see little grandma's with carts making home food. There is almost no obesity. Bangkok as opposed to Los Angeles is building housing everywhere. Why can't we do that in L.A.? Yes I understand Thailand is virtually a police state but I would argue their cultural is much more sexually permissive with zero of the problems we have in the United States. Oh and on the street of Bangkok no liquor laws. People set up card table bars on the corner and will mix you a drink. So spare me your moral lecture Mr. Barr. I don't want nor need your 'family values", I've heard that pitch for a long time and it hasn't worked.
2
Liberals may not have wanted to destroy the family but that is what they did.
Shattered families lie all over the inner cities.
1
So basically, both sides agree that marriage and family stability have decreased since the sexual revolution for virtually everybody except maybe well educated liberal couples. The difference in opinion is in how to solve the problem. For conservatives, going back to the time when wives obeyed their husbands, when women were forced to have children they did not want, and when the white male's economic status was protected by discriminatory policies is the way to go. But liberals have a different solution. If white men educated themselves for the jobs that existed rather than for the ones that used to exist, just as their female counterparts have done, and if men made themselves useful to their families by sharing some of the non-economic workload with their female counterparts, then white men could once again make themselves necessary to society, to women, and to their families.
406
@Molora Vadnais:
You are correct in many ways and would boil down the blue-collar problem and solution to this:
Both your problem and solution are staring at you in the mirror.
Rectifying this perceived inequity starts with the first person, not blaming a third for your problems; re-invent yourself as if your life depended on it.
28
@Molora Vadnais
It's not really easy for middle aged men burdened by debt and family to just go back to school. And your average ex-coal miner turned coder will have to compete against twenty-somethings in a field rife with age discrimination.
Also, what happens when the tech employment bubble collapses? Low-level coding very well might be one of the first job fields to be automated.
24
@T. Warren there are possibilities for learning trades - but that means having to move to those blue state places with strong economies.
25
Moral foundations as proposed by the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt might provide a common language of understanding. His book was published in 2012 and I find it even more relevant today: "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided By Politics And Religion." Globally, roots of social chaos and harmony can be found in how humans value and express Care, Liberty, Fairness, Loyalty, Authority, and Sanctity. Understanding how these moral foundations come into play can diminish the confusion and bewilderment and hatred we're all experiencing.
Look no further than the national character of gross materialism in the form of consumer capitalism, fueled by a dissociation from a new land and mobility. It’s not the nuclear family that has been directly undermined; the extended family with all members living in one place has fallen appart in the last several generations thanks to socioeconomic pressures and a new large land.
Liberal attitudes are a result of that breakdown, not its cause. We must clearly and continually push back against this fallacy.
1
A really appropriate article for Thanksgiving discussions! Especially after a few glasses of something alcoholic!
More seriously, it seems to me that the uncertainty in job security, retirement, and health insurance must play a very large role in the family relationship. Two younger persons alone would have to be very adventurous to have children without a great deal of security. Since 1980, many manufacturing jobs have gone to China, and what remains are, for some, long hours and lower wages. This is not a liberal evil, but could be put at the door of Reaganomics.
The cure? more specialization and more education. This is easy to say, difficult to do without years of preparation. Around the Thanksgiving table, a discussion should center on what to do, how to do it and who to help out in this age of change and uncertainty.
1
No, I think they do. And if they don't then their policy goals sure seem to have that effect.
@James
You don't don't even know the goals of liberals. We want a social fabric that is strong for everyone, inc. the minorities. We want education which the liberal states have, unlike conservative states that have the worst schools. The most poverty is in red states, the worst healthcare is in red states.
Blue states support the red states with our taxes, which red states greedily accept the hand out from the richer blue states. In every category, liberal states do far better than any red state.
But I notice that red states have no problem taking our money while lying and hating us.
That minorities have rights is what conservatives hate, for minorities to share the same rights as them. That is what destroys us.
3
William Barr indicts “moral relativism” as one of the scourges of liberalism to be found in higher education. As his buddy Trump would say, “How sad.” As a working class girl whose mind was blown open by a Harvard education, I am appalled when privileged white men with advanced degrees from higher institutions vilify their educations in order to close the gates of privilege behind them. For shame! Hypocrisy plays a role too, for they are often the ones deploying the most destructive form of “moral relativism.” For example? Remember when our first black president nominated a Supreme Court justice, and Republican senators defied the rule of law and duty? This is the darkest side of moral relativism: white nationalism, and discrimination in all its forms. Barr drips contempt for those who do not embrace his contempt for our mutual rights. Kavanaugh sneers and rants and threatens. Judge Thomas accepts huge sums from his wife’s pet associations. Roberts won’t recuse himself from arbitration cases he helped author long before he was on the court. These are the most privileged men on the planet, and they want to monitor the bodies of women and LGBTQ citizens! Prevent blacks from voting! Lock up brown children! Execute men on death row! Abandon our allies! Talk about moral relativism gone rogue. Stupid, cruel, benighted. Of course they despise the family if it is not THEIRS, made in their mold. How very sad.
453
@Elizabeth
So basically you're saying "Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could all be educated at Harvard, like me?" This "let them eat cake" argument is a big part of the problem with the left. 60% of our youth enter university, but only 30% end up with a degree, and perhaps 20-25% end up with a job using that degree. A university degree isn't needed for most jobs, nor is it likely to be in the future. Studies have shown that a 4 year non-professional degree confers few, if any, measureable skills for the job market. Yet 'university for all' and 'more education' remains the only solution offered by the left to the problems of the working class. In reality, we need a substantially reformed education system devoted to teaching useful skills rather than 'university for all'. Teachers unions, and therefore the Democratic party, oppose all reform of education.
If young men were taught useful skills, and also taught self-discipline and conscientiousness, there would be more marriageable young men, more marriages, and fewer single parent families.
The path that took you to Harvard is not a path to success for most of the American working class, because 99.9% will fail along the way. We need to stop pushing a 'university for all' education system where everyone who fails to get to Harvard has, in a very real sense, failed, and will suffer the economic consequences.
10
@Tom Meadowcroft Wow Tom, I think you majored in missing the point. However, there is an important point made. Insecurity breeds hostility. I didn't go to Harvard either. I did get through a state university, paying my own way working summers with the Iron Workers and Carpenters, where young men and women are taught skills for a lifetime. Coming from what they used to call lower-middle class, or the working poor, from the factory towns of the Northeast, I totally understand Elizabeth's point. Failed is fearing information, fearing change and fearing critical thought. That is when you will suffer economic consequences!
65
@j24
What happened inside the universities was as important (and as sad) as the social context in which it happened. Education is MUCH more than science and Math (or, more recently, computer science). The "liberal education" used to begin with a well rounded education in the human context, The Arts, Literature, History, Psychology, etc. Specialization was next. I spent many years in higher education and saw the change. There isn't just educated and uneducated. There is also the broad grounding in what it means to be a human in an interdependent society. So people with "Good" educations can jump easily into the basket with the rest of the "deplorables".
14
The Republican Party, for the most part, doesn't believe this. But it's another effective, fear-mongering talking point to draw potential voters and cement their base.
1
a man slips and falls on an icy sidewalk. He breaks his hip.
What caused his broken hip? Was it the ice on the path? The lack of a hand rail? Improper footwear? A weak knee that throws his balance off?
Any one of these could have caused his fall. Or, what's most likely, all of them working in synchrony were the cause.
It's a major error in judgement to believe that any sociological phenomenon is only caused by a single factor. The breakdown of stable families is likely attributed to the lack of manufacturing jobs, among other economic factors, AND the sexual revolution, which divorced sex from marriage, and sex from children.
When you separate sex and children and marriage, you see adultery rates go up, rates of childbirth outside of stable marriages increase, and appalling rates of objectification of women. We see all of these things.
Time to start addressing the myriad of factors before we take that hard fall on the icy path.
3
The religious right believes that they have a monopoly on morality because they believe only the morality prescribed by their religion is correct. They don’t realize that their morality is designed primarily to preserve and propagate their religion rather than to differentiate between right and wrong. They are too small minded to understand that there are other ways to arrive at the sort of morality that civilized society requires to exist. I don’t need to listen to hours of religious propaganda every week to know the importance of family, it’s crystal clear to me simply from the love I have for my own.
7
If you google Divorce rates by state, you will see that blue states have lower divorce rates. If we are so godless and hell bent on ruining the family, why is this so?
9
@Maureen - A few years ago James Dobson's Focus on the Family magazine printed a Barna study that ranked the various denominations by divorce rate. In first place, with the most divorces, were evangelical christians. Tied for last place, with the fewest divorces, were Lutherans and atheists. All Dobson had to say was, "We have more work to do."
6
Actually conservatives keep supporting the actual force driving the things they are horrified by: capitalism.
4
Yet, neoliberalism with its central tenet being, "whatever's good for the free market is good for society" might be the most destructive force that families face. What's right is always pitted against what's profitable. Clean air, clean water, labor rights, time off, affordable education, affordable cost of living and so forth is always pitted against what is profitable.
8
The key factor adversely affecting the most families identified in this article are the trade deals that offshored jobs of non-college educated manufacturing workers. And those deals were conceived by Conservatives in the Republican Party, led by George H.W. Bush, whose Attorney General was Bill Barr.
As with the Ukrainian mess, Republicans are attempting to ignore or shift the blame for what they did.
3
why do we have to keep reading these pieces asking how conservatism has gotten to this point. it's because conservatism consists solely of bad people engaged in bad faith arguments. nothing more, nothing less.
9
The power of storytelling and buzzword phrases that rile up the GOP base is a thread that runs through this piece — facts be damned, the GOP is masterful at this. The Dems seem incapable of finding the words to unite and empower their base, and it is maddening! Young people don’t know what it means to be a Democrat - they don’t have a phrase or a rallying cry that harnesses their emotion. Instead it’s almost like the party expects their vote because it’s the right thing to do — like eating your oatmeal.
3
The GOP leadership is awash in preposterous ideas. This did not begin with Trump, but Trump has removed all barriers to motivated reasoning, demanding from the first day that supporters deny any and all evidence that Trump might be less than the greatest, most successful President in history.
Barr's claims fit right into this madness, especially since Trump himself is the perfect embodiment of the moral decay conservatives seem so concerned about.
6
Good luck selling that title. Did the article mention anything about "it takes a village"? If so I missed it. With each passing decade, the growth of government programs and the taxation to feed them, there is nothing that demonstrates that liberals want or think along any other lines.
1
Taxation is feeding other beasts now, thank you.
1
Excellent column, Mr Edsall! I've always been confused by the association of fundamentalist Christian religion and "traditional family values." If you believe the Bible is infallible, then it's difficult to reconcile authoritarian family dynamics with Jesus' words from Matthew 10, verses 34-37:
"Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn 'a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law -- a man's enemies will be the members of his own household.' Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me."
1
I can't actually believe that these people think that way. I get that that is their position to sell to the rubes, but can they really think this?
5
Fascinating reading. Barr should look at Trump. And after reviewing all the arguments to cleans liberalism of its role in burying the Moynihan Report Mr. Edsall returns to the personal attack. It begins on the personal and ends on the personal. This isn't your usual balance commentary with opinions from a wide variety of sources. Good but tainted with the seeming compulsion to tar and feather
Trump. Why waste an entire valid issue with this political attack?
It's a thing because conservatives tend to be driven by fear of others. So of course your "enemy" wants to "destroy" you and all you cherish.
8
I think my favorite part of this column is when Edsall brings in the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church voicing its opinion on moral decay. Amazing that officials of the Catholic Church find time to comment on moral decay. Isn't most of their time spent figuring out how to protect their child-molesting priests? Re-locating the priests who have been having sex with little boys (and occasionally girls) before they get arrested? And then figuring out how to collect more money from their Catholic parishioners so that they can continue to pay lawyers to defend their child molesters. And, of course, paying off victims. I thank God that we have the Catholic Church to pontificate on matters of morality.
9
Three values that may be the only salvation of the human race:
Conservation, not consumption
Contraception, not over population
Compassion, not contempt
This last one is for all you believers out there who think your mysticism entitles you to libel, and rule, those of the rest of us who think differently.
God bless.
7
There's nothing rational about the Republicans' and evangelicals' characterization of secular liberals. Their defamatory remarks are merely a tactic, a tactic to rile people against whomever to suit their purposes. It's a fascist tactic. Social conservatives are the intended audience of this campaign. Their servile nature and disregard for facts make them easy targets. Now that their sources for news and information have become sufficiently isolated, the effectiveness of this tactic is astonishingly apparent.
9
Blue States have less divorces and out of wedlock children. Red states and the so called religious group have many more divorces and children out of wedlock. Newt Gingrich, spouter of family values, abandoned his wife when she was in hospital with cancer, Sarah Palin, another family value person's, son had a kid out of marriage. Total hypocrisy but the right believes anything and certainly never the facts. Just as Democrats handle money better, Bill Clinton and Governor Jerry Brown both left surpluses that the Republicans quickly squandered. The Media doesn't do a good job sadly. Where are the articles that 50% of cancer patients in the US lose their homes to pay for healthcare issues.
6
I wish columnists would stop using “conservative” to describe today’s Republicans. The openly thing “conservatives” want to conserve is their power. Even calling them Republicans is unfair to Abraham Lincoln. Instead of Res Publica (public things) they only want to conserve Res Donalda.
6
All of this misses the point of comparison.
After WW2, because of the devastation of Europe and Japan, and the Eastern Bloc and China went communist in policies....
AMERICA HAD 5% OF THE WORLD'S POPULATION BUT CONSUMED 25% OF THE WORLD'S RESOURCES.
Now the world has a fully connected global economy which is putting strife on many who do not have the background and opportunity to participate in this new world.
Then charlatans come along and blame outsiders and those not in a certain tribe. This has been the pattern in most of recorded human history. History repeats. We are living in this repeated moment. Hatred is the strongest unifyer of all.
Trump is a charlatan of this ilk. His following of "haters" will still be here when he is gone.
3
"How did this preposterous idea leap to the forefront of 'conservative thinking'?" I'd submit that the only "thinking" involved here, is how to tar liberals as effectively as possible. Of course these people don't believe it. They just want their constutuents to. The purpose of tropes like this is simply to keep the electorate divided.
2
Any road that leads to the gleaming city of hate, exclusion and denigration is the road the conservatives will turn onto and floor it.
"We are to be treated like the defeated Germans and Japanese after World War II."
Is he referring to the Marshall Plan?
1
First - there is no thinking going on in the Republican Party. We are way past thinking there as the gop is now based on tribal identity. It does no good to try to look for a rational point to this decision making process as there is none.
Second- please don’t call these people conservative. Use tribal, racist, fascist, un-American, spendthrift, hypocritical, or unthinking. Conservative is an antonym of the present day gop and using it to describe this party denigrates the word conservative while giving the gop credit for having a philosophy, beyond slavish devotion to a wannabe-king, where none exists.
2
Barr sounds, to me, like George Wallace back in the 1960's; all moral outrage without any common morality.
5
No, liberals do not want to destroy the family.
Unfortunately, many policies advocated by today's "liberals" have that effect. Children need a father and a mother, married and living together. If one dies (or is off in the military), a relative may substitute, but there needs to be a parent (or parent substitute) of each sex.
2
@Jonathan Katz - So what is your recommendation? That government force people to get married, or prohibit divorce? Or perhaps take away the children of unmarried parents?
Face it. The culture has changed. No more do we force an unmarried pregnant woman to hide her pregnancy and, when she gives birth, to give up the baby for adoption. No longer are young people forced to get married if there's an unintended pregnancy (only to end up divorcing a year or two later).
5
I would say it goes even deeper, Mr. Edsall.
I think white conservative evangelicals—despite themselves—DO want to destroy the family.
By embracing a metaphysical principle of “male headship” not found in the Bible.
Jesus turns the world of traditional moral values upside down. “You have heard it said....but I say unto you” he repeats again and again in the Sermon on the Mount.
The gospel of Jesus Christ is an assault on the world of white male prerogative.
Only in true equality is the family preserved, as mainstream Christians know deep in their bones.
3
"Liberal Feminism"
Stanford Encyclopedia of Feminism.
"In addition, liberal feminists hold that the state must not grant preferential treatment to particular family forms.."
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-liberal/
4
Bill Barr's recent rant is the modern day equivalent of the Catholic Church's excommunication of Martin Luther for criticizing the church's corruption. Yet, unlike Barr, “Catholics are now able to hear Luther’s challenge for the Church of today, recognizing him as a ‘witness to the gospel.’”
You are onto it. It is called jealousy. Educated liberals have what so-called conservatives lack. Stronger marriages. Better family ties. More retirement savings. More power in the workplace. More fiscal responsibility in both government and in private. Liberals are everything conservatives claimed to be and they got it without holding down others.
5
What's blowing my mind is that the US AG actually made these comments at all. And that it wasn't even "news".
5
@youngsay You are spot on. Bill Barr is a blowhard. Worse he is a blowhard who is stumping for the incumbent president of the USA, while he holds a public office that We the People pay him to do. Worst of all, he has a political and personal agenda that goes way beyond his service to donald trump. Congress needs to call Barr out for this transgression-- I believe the proper action is "censure." I know we are all exhausted by the escalating corruption in the white house, but really-- an AG giving religious speeches, in which he asserts the moral and cultural superiority of HIS particular brand of religion? How is this okay?
Very liberal dem here, wishing ALL my fellow Americans a Happy Thanksgiving, a holiday I (like 100% of the dems I know) am proud to celebrate!
2
Because conservatives don’t have anything positive or worthwhile to go on anymore?
2
Hmmm, wasn't Robert George charged with shoplifting at a Walmart a few years back?
1
Whenever the conservatives talk about liberals destroying “the family” and the “moral order,” what they mean is the patriarchy. The moral order that they speak of is the one that has only men — the white, wealthy, elite men — firmly entrenched at the top of the hierarchy.
6
There are hypocrites everywhere of course. But the answer to the question of why do conservatives think that liberals want to destroy the family isn't just that conservatives are simple minded cretins who believe that God, Guns and 'Murica are the answer to everything, though certainly some fall into that stereotype.
A PARTIAL answer to that question is that conservatives, especially people who would describe themselves as social conservatives have a wider, and/or a different understanding of moral foundations (Jonathan Haidt) than most liberals do.
Harm/care
Fairness/reciprocity
Ingroup/loyalty
Authority/respect
Purity/sanctity
Liberty/oppression
Liberals tend to put a tremendous emphasis on the first two foundations (harm and fairness) while tending to downplay the others or even deny their existence.
Conservatives put less emphasis on the first two and far more emphasis on the others. Racism, Sexism and all the other "isms" aside, this is going to lead to different moral and political choices.
IOW, liberals can't continuously scream about "heterosexist cisgendered capitalist racist male patriarchy" and agitate to have the state take over functions that were previously performed by families, without running into some hostile backlash from people who may not wish, for example, to have their teen daughters sharing school dressing rooms and showers with biological males.
3
A.G. Barr is just a power-hungry, typical, hypocrite. For decades the "Christian, Evangelical, Moral majority, conservatives" have used their attacks on the liberal left to fight for political power. Their lives are no different than society as a whole. There is divorce, gay relationships, adultery, pornography, rampant greed, criminal behavior, etc. etc. We all know this about the "holier than thou" right-wing. It is ridiculous that Barr, the sycophant for Trump the Corrupt, has the nerve to make a speech to anyone about “licentiousness — the unbridled pursuit of personal appetites at the expense of the common good”.
1
Liberals do not want to destroy "the family," but right-wingers do want to destroy LGBTQ families.
And the families of anyone who dares seek refuge along our southern border.
And a few other families too: ""The other thing with the terrorists is you have to take out their families, when you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families." --Donald J. Trump, December 3, 2015.
Who knew that "kill 'em all" was a conservative family value?
6
"While in absolute terms the white working class … have higher levels of marriage and cohabitation, homeownership and self-reported health ratings than members of the black working class, the trends are downward for whites and upward for African-Americans." -- And, the author might have added, to paraphrase George Bernard Shaw*, they (whites) hate them (blacks) for it.
*Shaw's pithy aphorism: "A pessimist thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it."
1
If you care about the traditional family values please join us at the Republican Party.
We are accused of the doggonedest things! What will the opposition blame on us next?
2
Barr, Pence, Pompeo. Welcome to Handmaids Tale. An angry, punishing dictatorship. Finger pointing and blaming people for the circumstances of their own suffering. Sneering puffery that they deserve their wealth. Pogroms and prisons. And the freedom to shut our mouths and shuffle along with our heads down.Thank you mother.
3
HOW did it happen? It's the creation of the Party of "Family Values," where adultery, theft, prevarication, abuse of children, women, and immigrants, ruination of the soil, water, and air, hording of ill gotten money, human bondage and rape, extortion, and the withholding of the social programs that keep families together, by a Republican regime that claims to be allied with Evangelical Christians. Yeah, let's have some more of those Christian Republican Evangelical "family values" in our government. It's all the Democrats' fault.
2
I really think this piece is an overthinking of the issue. "Conservatives" want one thing which is white heterosexual men in charge. Any movement in society away from that social construct is deemed immoral and dangerous by American "conservatives." The talk is just propaganda to that end.
5
Liberals Do No Want to Destroy the Family.
Conservatives Do Not Want to Destroy the Earth.
If it was up to folks like Barr, women would likely not be allowed to vote! Can you imagine his horror at the likes of 1960s psychologist Betty Friedan? So it goes. These sorts are BELIEVERS and there is not much to be said beyond that.
1
The Trump and Obama families provide perfect illustration of the author’s thesis. And if the Christian Right’s hypocrisy.
4
Where is the study talking about how historically men primarily married for access to sex? Everybody knows aboit the whole "why buy the cow when you're getting the milk for free" trope.
Don't overlook the role of conservative media that has for many years demonized "liberals" and "femi-nazis." If I recall correctly, even Obama tried to caution Republicans on their divisive rhetoric less their own constituents object to any compromises. Barr's misguided attacks are, by comparison not nearly as impactful as unrelenting Fox News "opinions."
1
The hypocrisy is so appalling it is almost hard to see. The same evangelicals who cry about this are the ones who support trump a "man" with the lowest moral standards of any president, ever! The evangelicals and priests who get their high horse and moan about the sexual revolution and loss moral standards molets women and children in back rooms. This article misses the mark on a complex issue.
1
The problem is the is that it's impossible to reason with unreasonable people, make those who refuse to tell the truth face truth and admit lies, and make those who are insane become normal. They will take all the statistics, compelling evidence, and civil discourse that you try to throw at them, turn it upside down and make a fool of you. That has been Donald Trump's modus operandi all along. Everything you do to try to engage with these kind of people in any intelligent way is a fools errand.
1
"The Moon Is Not Made Of Blue Cheese" - is an equally truthful headline. Let's give that airtime also.
1
How could Barr fail to recognize that there is no better example of a man in unbridled pursuit of his own appetites than his boss? Let's count the ways...maybe JFK? His brother Teddy? W? Biden? Hunter? How about Dick Cheney, whose appetites did not end with Halliburton but even now sits on the Strategic Advisory Board for Genie Energy, known for discovering a "massive" oil strata in Syria. Insatiable.
1
Rural voters somehow have the ability to ignore the fact that they would starve and die without the constant flow of federal dollars from us coastal elites to their mud farms.
Our goal is to destroy starving, homeless, poor, sick, and ignorant families by burying then in education, healthcare, housing, food, and jobs.
Until they vote enough libs into office, they'll continue to suffer the miseries of conservatism that they love above all else.
2
“licentiousness — the unbridled pursuit of personal appetites at the expense of the common good,”
Doesn't that define donald trump's entire life?Tha man Barr goes out of his way to protect. How could anyone think otherwise?
3
Of course Liberals do not want to destroy the family. We are regular folk trying to go about our lives and trying to make the world a little better each day.
It is the talking heads and right wing nut whackos that have turned "Liberal" into an insult, intentionally, for they seem to find doing this a.) attracts listers / readers, b.) is immensely profitable and c.) easier than making consensus policy.
That is pretty much the rotten root of it, because before the emergence of hate radio, people were rather more cordial and understanding. At least so it seems ...
1
“Liberal” has become a right wing term of criticism because, over centuries, they wore out the impact of the term “sinner”.
2
This idea leapt to the forefront of conservative thinking because cynical conservative liars like Barr saw the opportunity to energize the perpetually paranoid and already biased among us--and leapt right on it. They and their amplification machine--Fox, fascist talk radio and Internet, etc.--are a cancer on representative democracy. Which they would replace with an oligarchy guide by the likes of Barr, the Kochs, et al. That the University of Notre Dame would sponsor this kind of talk is really troubling. Do they want Catholicism to start sounding like fundamentalist evangelical "Christianity"?
3
In my southern California neighborhood, strong families of all stripes,. Latino, Asian, Muslim, Jewish, white, live side by side, fill the parks on weekends, and are nearly all as liberal as one would imagine.
Angry single incels with oversized trucks and misogamist chips on their shoulders are mostly the ones who spout the intolerant conservative Trump mantra.
4
Barr is a mediocre man of middling intellect and dubious integrity elevated to great heights thanks to his advantageous upbringing and the connections it afforded him. He's is an outstanding example of what people mean when they refer to "white male privilege."
And the fact that we have to take his ideas seriously exposes the dangers of a society where mediocre white men are elevated to positions of power and influence thanks not to merit but to privilege.
2
The use of labels is the current GOP tactic to motivate voters who need a target for their fears and insecurity. It also dehumanizes and makes it easier for some to expound hatred towards others, as a result.
The same propaganda labeling was used against both Hitler and the Jews, but the difference between the two lies in the why and many people, including Americans today, do not understand the "why".
This precisely why organizations, such as "Fox News" should be held to account for the harm to America they have caused.
1
The liberals I know (and I am one) have long marriages and a few we’ll cared for children. The conservatives I know have multiple miserable children and multiple divorces.
2
I want to take an issue with the little phrase added to the title “Or society, for that matter.” By developing his defense against the accusation that liberals destroy the family, Edsall tries to suggest that liberals do not destroy society. I strongly disagree with this suggestion. The op-ed peddles a false narrative that the current upheaval in this country is due to the decline in the position of the white working class. This is simply not true. It is a social upheaval against elite rule. This upheaval is not just an American phenomenon. It is a worldwide phenomenon. The Arab Spring, the Maidan movement in Ukraine, the protests in Hong Kong, the Occupy movement, Brexit, and now what is derogatively called “populism” in this country and elsewhere are not creations of white working class. They involve all segments of the population. They are protests of society against elite rule.
Progressive liberal ideology and practice has its roots in the Enlightenment. Like the Enlightenment tradition, this ideology and practice are elitist. They rely on “enlightened elites” to guide society into a better future. Elitism, whether it is socialist or liberal or progressive liberal, cannot guide society to a better future. Why? Because it is exclusive. Exclusion involves disempowerment. How can exclusion and disempowerment result in a better future? The lack of prospect for a better future affects all aspects of society, including the family.
Liberals have demonstrably harmed the nuclear family, especially black families. Keeping them dependent on taxpayer money has helped push black out-of-wedlock birth rates to 70% or more. Liberal policy ideas that include allowing teens access to abortion without parental knowledge or consent have certainly not helped families. Liberal demonization of masculinity has devalued the idea of a strong father and encouraged a growing movement to & expansion of single-motherhood.
Liberals broadly reject religion. Despite organized religion’s faults (it is run by humans after all...), it promotes traditional family formation and believes that children are best raised with a male & female parent. Liberalism rejects this and instead promotes an ‘anything goes’ approach to family formation.
Liberalism believes government should have an ever-expanding role in rearing & educating children. They dictate school curriculum. They demand that young children be taught that all kinds of behaviors once universally accepted as deviant now be embraced as ‘normal’. They promote gender fluidity & confusion. Their media productions promote everything but traditional families. I could go on & on. The evidence & outcomes though are easy for all to see.
I suspect liberals wonder why the Hallmark Channel’s nonstop Christmas movies so wildly popular. The answer is simple - they promote traditional family values that are rarely found elsewhere in modern media.
2
After a series I wrote on the need for liberals and conservatives to talk, one response from the left was: “Why should we? I don’t see conservatives reaching out to us.”
This would be a good one for conservatives to do so. The very premise of the “anti-family” charge is ridiculous. They should criticize their own.
Part of the problem, and not just here, is the highest priority is the other side must be wrong. On climate change, seen as a liberal issue, “If Gore says it, then, no matter what, it just can’t be true.”
We are starting to see efforts to bring the sides together, and I’ve recently seen less disagreement about the need for it.
One way to try is to ask each side—and it has to be both, to admit to a time they’ve been wrong and then changed their view. Get the onus off of being wrong. I’m pretty sure we’ve all been there.
We have to change the presumption there are simple causes to complex problems, and that truth—a complicated word, is totally owned by one side. Instead, at least for certain issues, each side may actually hold a piece of it. So then, how can we recognize that other piece?
Edsell gives more credit to liberals for being able to recognize the validity of conservatives’ arguments. If so, speaking as a liberal, we’re hardly great at it and can have our own challenges.
I was glad after a Times article on “how to duck politics at T-giving,” it had one recognizing that isn’t good enough. We must learn to talk about these things and it gave us some how-to’s.
As usual, Mr. Edsall treats difficult topics with an appropriate level complexity and seems to get it right. I may have missed it, but the idea I did not see is that the Republican agenda of tax cuts for the rich and safety net cuts for the poor are contributing to the decline in stable two parent families. I'm pretty clearly one of the liberal elite that Republicans disparage. Looking at the children of my friends, and my own, I see lots of stable families raising children and almost no divorce. No children out of wedlock. There is a very high rate of church attendance. I suspect the major reason behind these supposedly "conservative" life styles is that the people involved can afford them. If you want America to look more socially "conservative", expand prosperity.
1
@rawebb1 I live in CA and am similarly financially comfortable, as are my friends and associates. I share your experience of no children out of wedlock and stable famililes and almost no divorce. None of the people I know attend church, it's just not such a "thing" in CA. However, I see no difference between my secular associates and the few church goers I know, in terms of--personal morality, giving to the community, concern for all kids, not just their own, good manners. So I think we fundamentally agree-- the lack of shared prosperity is the wedge between traditional lives and all others. I am pessimistic about seeing any "expansion" thereof.
1
Conservatism – not liberalism - has failed precisely because its institutions have failed to hold society together. It’s a social vision that runs on pure fantasy - a Western Civilization themed Main Street with a church on every corner, and the free-market, guided by an invisible hand, raising all boats into prosperity so that the American Dream brightly illuminates every household.
But we have been under the heel of conservative fiscal policies for decades and the result is vast inequality. Religion has given us hypocrisy, false hope, sexual abuse, and oppression of women.
The free-market, the purest expression of bedrock conservative individualism, has gutted the middle class, transformed our economy from a manufacturing base into a financialized one with short-term goals rather than long-term investment. It has unleashed technology that has divided society and created job-destroying automation with dramatic effect on families.
What the conservatives are worried about is tribal replacement – that their white Christian majority and “Western values” will be replaced by “the other.” It is fear of the disintegration of their way of life and their power base.
Conservatism is an anachronistic and simplistic social paradigm that collapses under the pressures of a complex modernity. It puts its faith in abstract absolutes (God, capitalism, American exceptionalism) hoped to come to society’s rescue. It is a vision built on fantasy and superstition, not material reality.
5
How else can a party that's wrong and against the majority on healthcare, education, the environment, taxes, public works, guns, wages, unions, the minimum wage, Social Security, and now even tariffs and foreign policy keep their power, other than accusing the other party of being anti-American and anti-family? They must demonize others - it's their only hope of desperately holding on to their power.
3
The propaganda that Liberals are the demise of our society is spread daily on right-wing radio and TV talking-head programs. According to one morning program pundit, Liberals sanction the killing of babies, stripping of gender, will take away your guns, will end Thanksgiving and Christmas, fundamentally change America into a Socialist, if not Communist state, go after your hard-earned money, cripple healthcare- to the point where you will be waiting years for life-saving operations and treatment- the list goes on. It's a constant drumbeat of fabrications, outright lies, and, quite honestly, stupidity, that is the real disintegration of this Country.
518
@Dominique
Voters in states that cling to their lifelong Republican party need to find out how their states benefit from being part of the U.S Some of these states receive more dollar value from the federal government than they pay in taxes.
Please be reassured. Your fear of progressives is mislaid. I'm one of millions. None of us are Communists, not even Socialists. But we support social policies that increase the well-being of all of us: health, equity, justice, education, privacy in our sexual lives, and openness to unavoidable change.
Our goal: to live fulfilled lives in peace with our countrymen and the world. And may peace be with you at our multi-holiday season.
63
Yet people fall for it. This is the real legacy of religious “faith” and the basically religious demand that public education must be funded and controlled locally, and not nationally as in most other advanced nations. Who knows, they might teach some Godless doctrines like evolution or climate change science if we don’t get in there and stop them. see also: Texas.
42
@Pottree believing is easier than critical thinking. Which is why the neopharisees are systematically trying to protect their kids from having to learn about critical thinking skills in schools and colleges.
21
The liberal-conservative dichotomy is itself based on a false premise. Liberalism means a commitment to free markets and personal autonomy. Its opposite is totalitarianism, which means a commitment to hyperregulated, command economies and restriction of personal autonomy.
Conservativism is opposed by progressivism, not liberalism. All Americans who believe in the ideals of the Constitution are liberals. Whether we choose to follow those principles by adherence to traditional or religious values, i.e. conservativism, or by advancing further the goals of personal autonomy, i.e. progressivism, is a matter of choice. The two parties used to embody this choice.
But again, anyone who believes in American ideals is liberal, so I would be very wary of following a party that decries liberalism. As mentioned above, that sounds like a party hellbent on totalitarianism.
2
Dear readers,
If by chance one could table your hatred of Trump et al for a moment and consider this article without a built in bias, you would read that there are significant problems with “families” caused by economic forces that have been exacerbated by a dilution of historical values. Some, but not all of the values were bad, and have been misused to hurt others. Ok and they needed to be discarded and many have. But like it or not, virtues that bind a society spring from institutions that are separate from government. Perhaps if we embraced religious and civic organizations a little more, and dialed back our unbridled support of individualism, we’d be better off in the long run.
3
“Manic ambition”
Great article and a fabulous description of what we have in the White House.
Thank You!
1
Conservative thinking is not the same as the hatred and tripe spewed by right wing outlets now. William F Buckley would not stand for the current nattering nabobs of negativism.
120
@Roy and let's credit former NYT columnist and additional exemplar of the sane right William Safire for coining that last phrase.
7
@Roy He was pretty racist, as evidenced by his shocking "Why the South Must Prevail," which argued that black people weren't civilized enough to vote and so on. Here's an account of his debate with James Baldwin from 1965 that gets into some of what he thought and advocated for:
https://www.salon.com/2015/06/07/william_f_buckley_and_national_reviews_vile_race_stance_everything_you_need_to_know_about_conservatives_and_civil_rights/
14
Buckley is a hack, and the entire Conservative movement is a cynical farce.
"the entire philosophical foundation of conservatism is a template for exploitation. William F. Buckley was a rich [expletive] with an affected accent who never had to worry about money a day in his life, and yet he remains a hero of the conservative movement for founding National Review and establishing the credo that the magazine, and the conservative movement as a whole, “stands athwart history, yelling Stop.” It is the stupidest credo ever devised, but it makes perfect sense coming from a man whose life stood to benefit in every way from the preservation of the status quo. And boy, did Buckley benefit. " - The Great Lie of Conservatism, in GQ
27
We don't have to believe what we say we do! Please, please remember that so much that is alleged by such folk has nothing to do with what they really believe, but with with what they are trying to accomplish with the allegations that, as part of the strategy, they must insist are true; so that going after the truth of the matters being asserted (or alleged) is of no consequence either to those making the assertions or to those who hear and embrace them, claiming to believe they are true.
1
The rise of the radical right is also happening in other places in distress, such as Poland and Brazil.
2
The conservatives take on this is misplaced, as is the liberal view and much of the commentary here. This "breakdown" of civic norms and responsibilities stems from the very nature of capitalism itself. With its values that emphasize individualism, ambition, accumulation, self-aggrandizement, aggressive competition etc., the free-market system over time propagated the gradual dissolution of the civic and cultural norms that the conservatives lament. That is why they have always attempted to rein these behaviors back in with appeals to religion and other moralities that pre-date capitalism. There certainly has been a historic swing toward self-centered individualism and away from any kind of social responsibility, but the way forward is not a return to the old moralities, but a public movement toward a new social awareness and collective responsibility for one another. A new commons for a new age that recognizes our current situation, whether we are talking about climate, inequality, family breakdowns, deaths of despair, human migration, et al. We are one people on one planet. We will not survive unless there is a movement to a new civic form of caring for one another.
7
Back in the imaginary yesterday of America the right longs for, most Americans were yeoman farmers or small businesspeople; only a small minority worked for others for wages. That sea change was a product of the Industrial Revolution.
1
As a feminist, I do not want to return to "traditional" ways of being in the world including financial dependence on a husband, no laws against marital rape, and no access to birth control. This article implies that men should earn more money so that they can support women, the underlying premise being that's all they have to offer as partners and that we should be dependent on them. That is not a liberal argument and certainly not a feminist one. I wouldn't call it a humanistic argument either. The Democratic Party and liberals need to embrace feminism. But this article misses (on purpose?) the biggest argument that conservatives have over liberals: The current liberal orthodoxy requires that we agree to the fictional, the notion that men can be women if they say they are, and therefore, there is no such thing as a woman's body and no such thing as women's sports, locker rooms or changing areas. This erasure of women by liberals is the reason why many feminists are fleeing liberalism. The conservatives are on to something. I would like to add that I have now lived in New York City and the San Francisco Bay area and I have concluded these are the two worst places to be a woman despite being the most liberal.
2
Marriage has long been fungible for the poor, with people cohabiting and splitting up as their needs and preferences changed. We have known this for centuries, but we keep pretending that this originates as a moral problem, when it is really based in an economic one. Once entrenched, people figure out how to make it fit a moral framework: the rich decry it and use it to further justify their superiority, while the more practical folks invent "common law marriage."
6
@EB - Missing from any discussion of the breakdown of the family is recognition of how many of our young black and brown men are incarcerated. Yes, that's true to a certain extent of low income young white men as well. How do we expect to have intact families when the father is locked up long term, or locked up repeatedly for shorter terms?
Thank you for this much needed and well argued rebuttal.
Barr’s Notre Dame speech shocked and frightened me. As a secular person, I have been married for 25 years, have worked terelessly to raise ethical children, and am raising a disabled child.
I am far from perfect, but I have values and morals, though different than Barr’s. Barr’s speech sounded like an excuse for physical action against people “like me,” whether jail or violence.
How did we come to a point when our attorney general feels free to threaten hardworking and eithical citizens?
8
The simplicity of the statement, however, is a dog whistle that attacks pro-gay, pro-trans or LGBTQ, pro-choice. It conjures up women working and men losing status. It casts spiritual people who aren't in church every Sunday as people who are faithless. Basically, it takes every single human right of the last few decades and tries to turn back the clock. All these freedoms have unfairly been cast as the end of the family, when the truth is probably the opposite. What could be better than personal freedoms and happiness? But conservatives continue to spin this old narrative, which is nothing more than my way or the highway.
6
My conservative acquaintances argue that they don't support spending on "liberal" ideas like healthcare, welfare and education because they think national defense is more important. Of course, these are the same people who swear up and down that Russian interference is a hoax.
In general, conservative "ideals" are whatever deflection is necessary to justify racism, homophobia, misogyny and hatred and intolerance in general. Modern conservatism is anti-Christian.
15
Don't over think this. What conservatives are threatened by is not actually the dissolution of traditional family structures. Rather, what they are threatened by is the democratization of power within the family structure. To be concise, they are threatened by how men have lost power/control, and by how women have gained the same.
In the secular liberal enclaves where the traditional family structure still prevails (i.e. children living living with two married parents) it has done so because norms and attitudes allow for flexibility in power sharing within the family structure, and not in spite of such norms and attitudes. It is much easier to keep a family together when both partners are open to arrangements where both share power equally, or in counter-traditional ways (i.e. the women being the primary breadwinner).
20
I've wondered about this for a long time. This was the most informative and interesting article I've read at NYT in quite a while. Thanks to the Author for doing all that research.
5
There is historically an ongoing tension between a form of hyper-religiousity that is given to suffocating individual interest and the hope to explore a more genuine expression of the self and one's engagement in the world. Of course, sex - a powerfully loaded term for years and years - has long been contested. Give women the right to vote? Why, that's an absurd idea since they don't have the capacity for rational thought...or so it was said. There are those who blame Darwin for dared having challenged the idea that we were created by god and have been given dominion over the earth, planting the seeds for the downfall of society. (This view continues to be voiced by luminaries such as Ben Carson.) Or, for that matter, Copernicus who made clear that we were not the center of the universe, and that has served to corrupt the social order. The appeal to religion as offering the one and only true path to living a righteous life has long been a real source of misery and suffering. Yes, there have been more liberal wings of religious movements - Dorothy Day, for instance - but that philosophy tends to be dismissed as wrong headed dogma. We, as a species, are both love with and are bound to our cognitive illusions. And so, there has long been an ongoing tension/conflict over the "Truth" (biblical in form) and truth (as is manifested in critical and painstaking inquiry, i.e.,science). Challenges to the social order - including economic interests - invariably evokes a backlash.
3
Professor Kearney says, “ we are in a new social paradigm that has normalized nonmarital childbearing and child rearing among certain segments of the population...” Has the Pro-Life Movement contributed to that new norm? Maybe it’s religious conservatives that are destroying the family.
7
The Trumpian war on "liberals" goes like this:
We hate progressive liberalism more than any thing that Trump can do including "shooting someone" or its equivalent.
Interesting that the vilified liberal leaders are all strong women: Hillary, Nancy, Elizabeth, AoC the squad. Mysogynistic? Not to mention racism and immigration bans against Muslims. Favorite tropes to blame on white decline.
Trump's family values: 3 marriages, 4 children by three wives, and many well known "dalliances". If he had no money, he would be the model family man of the poor whites described in this article. He couldn't afford to be a grifter if he were poor; likely he'd be incarcerated.
The article rightly defends that liberalism isn't the cause of white decline; white decline is self inflicted. In fact, liberal policies like USG aided health care, anti-drug, and education programs can help them.
9
I'm struck by that preposterously small table. Those were the days...
2
@Robert McConnell
Ha! Good eye! Those were indeed "the days."
And I should know. I could have been one of those kids in 1958 ...
1
Barr’s apocalyptic vision is merely a fancy way of saying what one man I know said he feared: that Trump would be the “last white male president.” They fear loss of their white male hegemony of power, and will say or do anything to prevent that, and to keep everyone else “in their places.” As for the Framers, Thomas Jefferson said that “our civil rights have no dependence on religious opinions.” The Framers were the product of the Enlightenment, or The Age of Reason, with its focus on the intellect and individualism. By contrast, Barr and company dangerously have much more in common with the Middle Ages and the Inquisition.
8
Most recently Trump says that the Democratic Party wants to change the name of Thanksgiving. Understanding the willingness of people to accept the outrageous lies of the Trump family, Barr, Giuliani, McConnell and others is no doubt useful. Stopping the media and major institutions from repeating the lies in a false attempt to be "balanced" is quite another. Spreading malice while pretending innocence to inflate profits (see Facebook et al) should be a criminal offense in my opinion.
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I’ve never heard a more divisive, hateful, sermon than the one in an evangelical church. The “throwing the first stone” passage came to mind then, as it does now.
That was 20 years ago, and evangelical thinking has moved from the steeple to the halls of Congress and State Houses. In the Trump era their hypocrisy has been shown to have no limits, and they stand for nothing when money and profits take priority.
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Great work here Prof Edsall. It is a crucial study, timely.
Barr completely ignores the Enlightenment origin of much that we see in our Constitution and in our Bill of Rights.
The Founding Fathers, or should we simply say, those men who tried to construct a stable, democratic society oh so long ago, were some of the founding fathers of our liberal traditions and cautiously, without "Godless" over-reaction, were our first secular leaders, absolutely emphasizing the importance of the separation of church and state.
He has no interest in historical accuracy, in evidencing a true understanding of our secular human history that goes back for thousands of years.
If you do not invest yourself in faith, if you don't want to ride the supernatural bus, your opinion is beyond simple error, you are a member of a destructive social group, determined to bring everything down.
Talk about a "witchhunt."
Proud Secular Democrat
7
Indeed, the absurdity and illogic of this Conservative talking point is laid bare by what I used to remind my sociology and social control students at the University of New Mexico: among the chief forces causing instability in nuclear families are the lack of sufficient wages to enable a single parent to support a spouse who wishes to stay home to raise children, and affordable health care.
In short, it is the neocon agenda of wealth as equivalent to evidence of virtue and economic success as proof of broader wisdom about how society should be ordered, that is responsible for the ills of the working and disappearing middle classes.
One would hope that the despicable avarice, cheating, and disregard for the rule of law by Trump and seemingly every one of his appointed officials should wake up his brain-washed constituents, but sadly it may take sheer desperation and watching the damage done to their children created by the policies they cheer on at his direction to do that.
4
"How did this preposterous idea leap to the forefront of conservative thinking?"
Are not preposterous ideas - often patronizingly articulated as though logical, reasonable and "plain as the nose on [one's] face" - pretty much all of what may be styled conservative thinking?
1
@Jethro Pen Conservative thinking is an oxymoron. Conservatives are creatures of reaction, not thought. Thinking is something to be suspected and feared.
2
Continued evangelical support for Trump baffles me. The poster child for violating Commandments 7 through 10, with dishonorable mention for a few others, didn’t ring even a tiny alarm bell on voting day. When they dropped their ballots into the box, their souls went with it. Their motto: We don’t care how much damage he does to this nation, we want Supreme Court justices and an end to abortion rights.....and while you’re at it, make life for gay/transgender people miserable. If the GOP succeeds in destroying my affordable healthcare....hey, that’s just the price of victory. Crushing environmental protections at all opportunities....still just the price of victory. And on, and on. When someone tells me they’re a “Christian”, that means nothing to me until I understand their motivations and see them in action. What they say they are, and what they actually are, are often in direct conflict.
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@Tug
"Continued evangelical support for Trump baffles me. "
It shouldn't. If you believe that America is a white Christian country that should be under the dominion of white Christian males, and you are willing to do ANYTHING to achieve that goal, then it perfectly explains evangelical support for Trump.
Politically, they are getting what they want. Voter suppression of non-White people, more restrictive abortion rules, a clampdown of immigration from Latin America, and people with ties to white supremacist and white nationalist formulating national policy.
1
@Carl I understand what you’re saying, but those positions aren’t “Christian”, thus my bafflement. If “Truth in Advertising” laws reigned in Christianity, and the “chaff” got nailed, the remaining believers, who are actually true to Jesus’s words about love and concern for the poor and marginalized, would be a much more attractive and respected lot. As one prominent New York pastor said, “the word “evangelical” has almost become synonymous with “hypocrite”.
Barr's just upset that society is no longer ruled by rich white men. THAT'S what the so-called conservative movement is about, trying to restore power to wealthy white men at the expense of everyone else. Because they seem to think they're the only ones worthy of it.
3
Look at their perspective, not yours. Of course, these are generalization as almost all political opinions are. These are the most pertinent reasons cons. think libs. want to destroy the family. One, abortion. Two, religion. Three, socialistic (state-centered) politics. I don't think I have to go into details. You know the arguments.
As for destroying society, not just conservatives, but moderates hear liberals, including their leaders, talk about ending our borders, disparaging, even threatening those who were financially successful, or who are in law enforcement, changing our system of elections (so they never lose), our judicial system (so they will always prevail), laughing about pot, fan the flames of racial discord to win over the black vote, and to end a lot of norms many people like (carbon fuel, for-profit higher education, for-profit medicine), ending free speech if it offends them, somehow trying to change what is male and female.
Personally, I think many wonderful things have come out of liberalism in the past hundred or so years and the conservatives were almost always wrong (and now cons. often champion what past cons. opposed). But, as with most, maybe all good things, too much can become toxic, and that's where we are now on many issues.
Why do you think Obama spoke out? Is he a crazy conservative now?
1
The family that conservatives are railing about being destroyed is the Cleaver family, with June, Ward, et al.
That family never included LGBTQ people, or people who had abortions, and a whole host of others that conservatives find distasteful.
4
President Obama, a Democrat, is a man with strong family values—a stable, loving marriage and a healthy, loving relationship with his daughters.
trump, a Republican, is a man with NO family values—two divorces, serial infidelity, a daughter born out of wedlock, and children he finds useful only after they are grown and can serve his ends.
Guess which man the conservatives lionize.
6
This is one of the main tenets of the Lost Cause mythology, this idea that Southern slave state conservatives are protectors of family values against the evil immigrant North.
We should not forget that the Confederacy never faded away, it has been with us to the present day.
For slave state conservatives, if they can't have slavery they have Jim Crow laws and lynchings. If they can't have segregation they can ally themselves with Republicans and carry on as if they were actually virtuous.
Slave state conservatives and the Lost Cause are the original fake news in our country.
7
Mr. Edsall asks, "How did this preposterous idea leap to the forefront of conservative thinking?"
Racism, misogyny, homophobia, anti-immigrant sentiments(non white, non protestant, etc.) and an allergic reaction to facts plus reasoned thinking on the part of "conservatives" have all lead us to this place. Also the legacy of Reagan, the tea party, Karl Rove and now the Freedom Caucus (laughable name).
1
As far back as I can remember, Thanksgiving has always been a much anticipated family holiday, marked with family gatherings, seeing relatives you havent seen for a while. College kids come home for the holiday to see their parents, and it marks the beginning of the holiday season.
However, liberals now regard Thanksgiving, this most joyous family holiday, as a racist, mean spirited holiday, representing genocide and the evils that is American history......according to liberals.
Salon.com wrote about how millennials stopped celebrating this holiday....
https://www.salon.com/2018/11/22/have-millennials-stopped-celebrating-thanksgiving/
And according to CNN...
"As our country reckons with the persistent racism and cultural insensitivity that has, for so, so, long, been hiding in plain sight, yesterday's model of Thanksgiving no longer cuts it. It's time to figure out what's next."
https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/26/health/thanksgiving-for-kids-parents-guide-parenting-wellness-strauss/index.html
That is what liberals call - "progress".
And then you wonder why liberalism is looked upon as destroying the family unit.
6
It’s all about being “woke” until it hurts and then being more woke.
2
While our public debates usually center around race, sexuality and immigration, the baseline issue is economics. The other dimension is the question—or assumption—of government’s role. Some (of all races) have a fundamental need to be self-sufficient and independent. The other somehow feels (and are told) they are entitled to services as a way of operating (not just a safety net). While Trump was the wrong medium, that constituency asked for more opportunity via jobs and a growing economy against a backdrop that consistently hammered that it was race, sexuality and immigrants who deserve the country’s attention and resources. As we see in College Behind Bars is that education is the transformer. For decades of Republican and Democratic administrations, education has been the neglected second-fiddle.
The War on Poverty (The Great Society) created negative incentives. Instead of promoting the growth of healthy families, the welfare system discouraged them. A single mother could receive larger payments from Uncle Sam by remaining single than by marrying the father of her child.
Over time, many fatherless children entered the world. The welfare checks showed up month after month, regardless of how their parents spent their days. As these boys and girls grew up without fathers around, they came to regard such households as natural. The social safety net, designed to be a temporary help to the people in need, instead kept them trapped in government dependency.
This situation continued for three, even four generations until 1996 when a Republican Congress passed historic welfare reform legislation (over President Clinton’s veto — twice) that began turning things around. It transformed the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program into one known as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. The program required recipients to perform at least 20 hours per week of work or job preparation activities in exchange for the cash benefit.
The results? Overnight, welfare agencies became job placement offices, and people who had been dependent on government began seeking employment. Within the first five years after the reform, caseloads were cut in half. Employment for single mothers also increased dramatically, and child poverty plummeted.
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@Mike Clarke
Say what? Evidence please.
@Mike Clarke
Every time the "welfare narrative or the single mother" is brought up it always excludes the fact the overwhelming racial discrimination in jobs, housing, education, and access to capital played in creating the conditions of poverty.
It continues to amaze me how willfully ignorant many people are to the historical conditions that have lead to the current state of affairs then sit back and tell themselves "Lot how awful those people are doing!"
2
@Mike Clarke - Caseloads were cut in half because so many people no longer qualified for the program. There was a five year lifetime limit on TANF, cut to 2 years in many red states, plus a 30 hour a week work or job-training requirement. (Except there weren't many job training programs available). Not being able to qualify anymore does NOT equal finding a job and being able to support the family.
Meanwhile, contrary to rightwing myth, the average length of stay on TANF is 9 months, and the average number of children by women on the program is 1.4.
Thank you, Mr. Edsall for this erudite and deeply compelling push-back on the false narrative of the right. It is extremely welcome just prior to Thanksgiving, and perhaps it can inform some of those conversations we have around the dinner table.
Some argue avoidance of such discussions - but if we don't talk to each other (with an attempt at kindness and understanding, if possible), then we are lost. We need to discuss these things.
Without conversation between those of us who may disagree, how are we to ever plant seeds of change?
Lovely evidence, true, but conservatives do not care about evidence (or historical accuracy, since the treatment of Germany after WWII was to heap massive amounts of economic assistance on the defeated country).
The reality is that the forces are pretty well documented: a neoliberal economy increasingly unable to deliver the economic well being that supports marriage and family. THere's a reason the more affluent are also those with more stable families. Stress is incredibly corrosive.
And of course, that neoliberal society, with all rights to the corporation and no protections for the individual, is ultimately grounded in a conservative lack of social consciousness with its relentless focus on individualism (manifest as rants about "freedom" as a reason to not take action for the common good or goals of "small government" to prevent collective actions for the common good, or denouncing every effort to work to the common good as "socialism."). Ultimately, Barr and his ilk are casting aspersions on liberals because they cannot face that their conservative ideas have brought massive ruin upon America.
4
One other aspect of the Conservative attack on "secular" liberals is that they ignore the fact that a great many liberals are at least as connected to spirituality as are the conservatives and in many cases their actions are more consistent with their values than is the case with conservatives.
The evangelical ministers and laymen/women that surround Trump have almost totally forsaken their heritage of righteous behavior and care for the underclasses, forgiving the unChristian behaviors and policies of the President in exchange for a seat at Trum's table. When Trump is gone, in a month, a year, or five years they will be left holding the rags of their supposed morality while the liberals they despised will try to put the world back together again.
8
I think geography is relevant to the perception that too many people are dependent upon the social safety net. With the exception of Canada, the other countries mentioned are small and compact; it is probably much easier to find jobs within driving distance. Thus, American rural residents have a huge obstacle in their way that does not exist in Europe.
Second, because rural people may be aware of relatives or neighbors scamming the system (since they are more likely to know their neighbors).......and......they may personally know proportionally more people using the safety net, statistics notwithstanding, it seems to be a bigger problem than it is.
2
If Barr believes this then why is it that Massachusetts has a divorce rate half that of the very red state of Arkansas, & all the red states have higher divorce rates than the liberal states?
577
@pburg
In blue states, there is a lot more living together without marriage. When the couple breaks up, it's not a "divorce" so it doesn't count in the statistics.
13
@Ian
"If you were married by common law(cohabitate, btw) and move to a state that doesn't recognize them, you'll still have to obtain a legal divorce in that state, just as if you were ceremonially married. This is because of the fact that all states recognize marriages from other states."
8
@pburg
Back at the time of the 2000 election I had this argument with a conservative colleague who was religious and I was easily able to collect a load of statistics showing far worse social values in red states in many areas (crime, divorce, spousal abuse—you name it) than in blue states. A major outlier was Utah; Mormonism actually seems to work the way conservatives claim religious values are alleged to.
44
The key section of this excellent article is this: 'It is critical to bear in mind that the U.S. has a less generous social safety net than almost all of the other advanced countries to which we compare ourselves: Canada, the UK, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, etc. And yet we have higher rates of nonwork among prime-age men and women, and much worse socio-demographic outcomes: family stability, investment in children, educational attainment, life expectancy, rates of violent death, etc. It defies logic to assert that the relatively stingy U.S. social safety net has somehow lured the U.S. public into licentiousness and social decline whereas the much more comprehensive social safety nets in other wealthy democracies has failed to do so.'
Very well-put and accurate. I don't have a great deal of hope that American voters will stop voting for their enemies, the Republicans. I wish I did. I can't even wrap my head around the idea that some people support Trump and his allies. When I read the articles about polling, it's very depressing.
17
It was the late Tony Judt's observation that the post-WW II social safety nets of the west were put in place to help stop the kind of anxieties exploited by the radical right -- Hitler, Mussolini, Franco -- between the wars. It's far more likely the transition from an industrial to technological era combined with a stingy safety net are producing two American phenomena: growing insecurity and anxiety, especially among white men and the rise of an American radical right.
252
@Glenn W. Smith, excellent analysis.
However, it leaves out the part about the “others” or “takers” who are usually exploited by these right-wing leaders.
How do you expand the social safety net while also having a de facto open borders immigration policy?
Many of the folks that are taken by these right-wing authoritarians are fine with “socialism for us” but not other people. (Trump ran on protecting and even expanding these programs but he obviously didn’t do that.)
It seems to me you have to choose between a more generous safety net or a libertarian immigration policy.
6
@JJ We might EVENTUALLY have to choose between broad social safety nets vs. a very accommodating immigration policy. But right now solutions to the challenges and issues confronting both those subjects are not the product of one impacting the other. Of course those things have relationships to each other, but those relationships are far from being the basis of their respective struggles.
For example, bringing in lots of immigrants might eventually impact social safety nets. But the struggles of say, Social Security, are mostly political/philosophical manifestations, artificially contrived to serve various agendas. No relationship to #'s of immigrants (except for illegal aliens contributing but not receiving SS!).
Conversely, immigration issues are not a product of SS or welfare or Medicare. People aren't trying to sneak into the USA for SS.
Saying the problems of these two subjects are due to one impacting the other is not true, and saying we have to solve the problems of one at the expense of the other is just an utterly false choice.
11
@Glenn W. Smith
You might as well call it the rise of the American fascists, and one that has its own Ministry of Propaganda a Goebbels with Fox and fright wing radio to boot.
As a native of Germany I do see history repeat itself on the shores of my adopted country and am very afraid to the point of being without hope of it ever become the beacon of freedom again, one that liberated all of Western Europe from fascism.
8
In Anne Nelson's book on the Shadow Network she lists groups that grew from the Fundamentalist movement that are run by members of right wing group, Center for National Policy, These organizations show that conservatives have focused on families for many years, mostly to prove that liberal influences were undermining families and therefore American morality. William Barr is similar to Trump in that he formed his opinions, which are fairly extreme, and he now believes them absolutely. He has no flexibility on these matters and should not be in the justice business. (Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, American Family Association, Concerned Women for America) Those are just the organizations with family in their title. An economic boom and a new positive focus for the future most likely would reverse these negative trends.
1
Could've fooled me.
The hatred seems especially strong towards Europeans or Americans of European ancestry.
3
One of the most appealing attributes of America for this foreign-born citizen was that its politics were all liberal - a little right of center and left of center defined the parties but the constitutional order, the limited state ruled by law and the broad acceptance of capitalism as the favored economic system were bedrock principles. Classical versus modern liberalism sums it up pretty well.
That has changed with the rise of Trump. Conservatives have moved away from classical liberalism towards religiously condoned bigotry, nationalism, populism and authoritarianism. Indeed, radicalism more often better describes this movement than conservatism. When one says this person is “very conservative” today they really mean “radical” or properly, not at all conservative.
Again, classical versus modern liberalism used to cover the major political battle lines here. The country was much better off because of this relatively narrow difference, however intense the partisanship got. Today, the right has moved decisively away from the center and its aggressiveness and increasing detachment from reality make it dangerous and unpredictable. To avoid the fate of countries more typically in the semi-periphery like Argentina, it will have to excrete this political movement very quickly. That seems possible still but everyday it remains in power it becomes harder to limit the damage. Good luck America. You’ll need it.
4
I will answer the question posed by the title directly.
When LBJ happened, the democrats knew they were losing a large block of their base-the racists in the south-to the GOP.
Then, Reagan happened and sealed the democrats’ fate. The Democrats’ response, unfortunately, was a purely federal strategy spearheaded by centrist Clintonism. In this avatar, they tried to abrogate the GOP strategy by swimming right, right and further on right with the GOP. The result is today’s Democratic Party looks a lot to the right of Reagan. The GOP response was to cast the Democratic Party as not family values party but get away nominate pedophiles and perverts to the top of their ticket.
It is a losing game for the middle class meanwhile. If the Democratic Party does not support a full throated return to the New Deal ideals espoused by Bernie and the AOC wing of the party, the party is dead along with the the GOP. To the majority of the population anyway. And while we are at it, a culture war based strategy for the democrats is a losing proposition. Doesn’t do anything for 99% of the country. An economic progressive based strategy otoh is a winner everywhere, except of course with the party apparatus.
1
@FurthBurner ....The only way to successfully govern is from the center. There are no liberal agendas or conservative agendas, there are only agendas that work and agendas that don't work.
1
@W.A. Spitzer
"There are no liberal agendas or conservative agendas, there are only agendas that work and agendas that don't work."
That's an incredibly naive point of view. Anti-sodomy laws and the prohibition of same-sex marriage are agendas that relegated gay and lesbian people to second-class citizen status, that forced them to hide their true selves or face social ostracism and even violence. That was a conservative agenda that worked most of this nation's history.
The same can be said of lower taxes on corporations and their affect on concentrating wealth. That too was a conservative agenda that has proved to be very effective.
On the other hand the Civil Rights Movement and the push for marriage equality were liberal agendas that where also effective.
The overall conservative agenda is to maintain the social, and economic hierarchy which this country was based on.
The overall liberal agenda to build a more inclusive society and looks for way to provide more people with economic opportunities.
On issue such as abortion, racial equality, rights for the LBGT community, wealth inequality, and climate change there is no middle.
@W.A. Spitzer
It is quite funny that you think a centrist agenda can win or be useful.
GOP dis-information. The Republicans making it personal again for votes. If the GOP says it, it is in veritably false. Additionally, there is no definition of what they mean by anti-family. Without definition, what does the accusation mean?
2
Edsall is right. 40 years of Reaganism and Third Way Democrats trying to emulate conservatives has gotten us the crisis we now face, but by all means please tell me how liberals are at fault.
4
I wish liberals were destroying the family! Instead both sides of the political divide in the US pay lip service to “the family” with nauseating sanctimony, while turning off their critical thinking. I am so tired of both liberals and conservatives trotting out “the children” as the decisive argument in any substantive political debate, whether about immigration or war in Yemen. My response always is “I don’t care for the kids; give me facts”. No, the real issue is whether divorce and dropping birthrate are a negative trend. I don’t see why. We live longer today, and no couple could can stay together for 50 years without being bored out of their minds. Nobody needs children in order to live a good life, not to mention the fact that they are a drain on financial resources instead of an investment, as they used to be. In countries with very generous safety nets, fewer people have kids than in the US precisely because their lives are better. The traditional family is only one of the spectrum of social arrangements, and not the best one. We should celebrate the fact that we have so many more options today than our grandparents did.
2
Oh please. One does not need such a long article to explain GOP use of wedge issues.
Its fairly simple, but effective:
1- The GOP cannot win running on their real goal. Which is to not only enrich the fabulously wealthy and impoverish most other Americans, but to also put the reins of power into the wealthy's hands. Sort of recreating how many past South American "republics" were run.
2- So, they need to get votes another way. They started with the Southern Strategy in '68, using race. Federal laws barring racial discrimination also allowed them to sell resentment of the Federal Government for everything else, such that we now have vast swaths of America hating its own government.
3- In the late 70s, they discovered religion as a way to sell their party. And that's where the "liberals hate the family" comes from. For in certain religious quarters, access to abortion and birth control, true equality for women, and teaching of science is anathema.
Now, the GOP can confidently count on the votes of millions of Americans on issues that have nothing to do with their real goals. Its quite effective, in a heinous way.
10
Liberal progressives say live and let live. Hardcore Conservatives say live the way I live. Simplistic I know, but much truth.
11
@Steve - Sorta correct, but it would be more accurate to say conservatives say, "Live the way I say you're supposed to live, even though I don't live that way myself."
2
dr. edsall could more effectively rebuke by pointing out that the fundamental premise of modern consumer society requires "the unbridled pursuit of personal appetites at the expense of the common good."
a common good like, you know ... the planet.
but i digress. this should not be an inquiry into the question: "whether fine, upstanding post enlightenment individuals can possibly come to believe in ideas so obviously false" but: "how human can be induced to believe anything, on any pretext, if the persuasion campaign works for decades."
contrails -- or chemtrails? flat earth, or round? don't look at the evidence, look at the information ecology in which bottom dwellers feed.
i lived the '60s -- a fabulous moment in which young females across all layers of the socioeconomic strata first walked about with their libidos free -- and i attest: it was an amazing realization of "the natural habitat of the human animal."
much of the rest is idiocy. i can't credit harm to single parent households except in a society that ignores the welfare of its children. those who preach the "cultivation of virtue" are the same prudes and switch wielding scolds that raised orphans in the poor house.
"social context partially determines the family formation response" -- i'd say family *is* the social context, for isn't family the product of friends, neighbors, communities, schools? homilies of "good or evil" starve children, not feed them; they dictate to human nature rather than nurture it.
3
Edsall deftly avoids dealing with the distinction between a classic liberal Democrat - a la Hubert Humphrey - and today's dominant faction in the Democratic Party, the radical left wing statist collectivist progressives.
In fact he goes to great lengths to conflate the two, a cheap and transparent stunt.
3
@Objectivist
I’m guessing you’re too young to actually remember Hubert Humphrey. Fact is, his program was further to the left than most of current democratic candidates.
2
Why do "conservatives" (who are better described as radicals) demonize Democrats as hating the family? The answer is actually quite simple once you accept that they're not arguing in good faith. They are deliberately misrepresenting their political opponents' positions. That is, they're lying. Dr. Krugman has recognized this; Mr. Edsall should as well.
Stop giving them the benefit of the doubt.
6
@Len Reed -
Indeed. Mr. Edsall would be well served by reading some Chomsky on the decades long conservative effort to poison opinions in the US.
1
The real problem with the sexual revolution undermining “morality” was allowing the lower middle classes (today’s Trump voters) to get the message. The elites can tolerate and moderate a great deal of “freedom.” The lower orders need more discipline and control. The Brits know this; we Americans are too naively enamored of the notion of equality.
1
@Richard Katz
I congratulate you on courageously posting such a sincere, but profoundly Unamerican, position.
I am particularly impressed by your use of the Victorian phrase "lower orders". You would likely make a good character for a Dickens story.
2
Our Founding Fathers fought hard to keep god in the Church and out of the Capitol. The words "under God" and "In God we trust" were added to the Pledge and money during the 1950s in response to the "Red Scare". That was the same era that started feminism rolling and putting Jim Crow on the ropes.
In other words, it was when white men started to lose their strangle hold on absolute power.
Post WWII, women and non whites started to gain real independence in the boom that really did lift all boats. But when that boom began to recede, some white men saw their boats grounding while women and non whites sailed on.
Every move by the Republican Party since then has been designed to scuttle that progress. It is a testament to the power of women and non whites that they have not succeeded.
Time and world events are against white male dominance. Unfortunately, like a wounded, cornered animal white men here are destroying everything around them in an attempt to win that power back.
They are willing to destroy this country, world peace and possibly the environment of the entire planet to gain that end. Hence, Donald Trump.
3
@Maureen Steffek
Did you know that there are a lot of "white men" who are progressives?
And, alot of females who routinely vote GOP?
Such is the pitfall of identity politics.
I suggest you start pondering economics and wealth as the real root of the problems in this nation. The GOP uses race/sex to win, and produce dominance by the wealthy few. Its a marketing tool.
One of the things that comes to mind in reading this excellent piece, is that any kind of social change, however positive we might view it, has a downside. As Mr. Friedman has said, "There is no free lunch."Change, social (women in the workforce) or technological (mechanization) always has its losers.
3
Since the 1970s, corporate takeover of our political system began to get hold as either “corporate center-left” or “corporate center-right”, the economics of families began its decline where today we have a demoralized country.
Corporatism through deregulation managed to offshore industries, destroyed companies, unions, healthcare, our political system and institutions and turned education into an industry. The net impact the destruction of American families. To institutionalize itself, corporatism exploited all traditional institutions like the church that was blamed for everything under the sun. Historically, churches were aligned with our political system and were crucial in organizing communities and getting the vote out. Far right Evangelical leadership is a business that’s been bought to support corporatism. Preacher Franklin Graham said a few days ago that he thought it was "almost a demonic power that is trying" to oppose President Trump,” or Liberty University’s Jerry Falwell Jr. Graham and Falwell blame our problems instead on women equality, family planning, gay rights , minorities and all the sins mentioned in this essay. Traditional morality and ethics have been replaced by “greed is good”, which explains the OxyContin crisis created by the Billionaires. Now shameless Bloomberg is running for President
4
@Ted
BINGO! Its all about wealth and power, but our nation (on both sides) seems mired in identity politics.
1
These are things that conservatives tell themselves to justify their obviously abhorrent choices of leaders. The thought that the party of Gingrich, Guliani and Trump can lecture the rest of us on family values is laughable. The thought that the party of Roy Moore, Denny Hastert and "I didn't see anything" Jim Jordan can lecture the rest of us on sexual morality is absurd. So they tell themselves that liberals are anti-family, even though the lowest divorce rates are in liberal Massachusetts and the highest are in the bible belt.
3
"How did this preposterous idea leap to the forefront of conservative thinking?"
Conservative thinking assumes a fact not in evidence.
3
Accoding to Barr, liberal ideology is responsible for mass communication, popular culture, the entertainment industry and academia. That's a pretty great portfolio of American ingenuity.
3
@Allison
Don't be too hard on Barr. Even though he was raised in
the 20th century USA, and was educated in the law of the USA, his most cherished ideology is to make Presidents of the USA into absolute monarchs.
It shouldn't be surprising that he doesn't like radio. film, TV, recorded music and the internet.
2
Barr’s failure to call out Trump’s own behavior, including his divorces, fathering and abandoning his children, adulterous affairs, etc., as well as the licentiousness of many of those around him (Giuliani in particular) shows the value of his opinion.
4
@Stephen Hyland
Its part of his ideology. This "unitary executive" concept.
Which, in essence, would make a POTUS above the law and able to wield absolute power.
As in the age of absolute monarchs, the King (and nobility) can do just about whatever they want. But the rest of society is subject to the law.
1
Why is a response to this false claim necessary, when the Trump administration's actions on immigration are intent on separating families?
3
The party that denies climate change, and blames the Ukraine for hacking hte 2016 election, must not be taken seriously for what it says about family disintegration--or any other issue. It is cynical, sefl-serving, corrupt, and, evidence is mounting, in bed with the Russians. Is there any reason to think that it sincerely wants to solve any of our social problems--never mind whether it has the solution to them?
2
The picture painted by conservatives about secularism is so dire that Republicans are willing to go along with Trump and the extreme right on replacing democracy with authoritarian government and accepting white supremacy as manifested by Trump's overtly racist immigration policy. They have already accepted detention camps with children placed in overcrowded cages. In fact it appears there is no limit to what they will accept to stop secularism. By seeing Democrats as an existential threat to society they will support anyone on the right no matter how extreme. And we know Stephen Miller has been connected with some very extreme white supremacists and Trump continues to keep him on the payroll. These are the type of extremist people these conservatives are supporting if they continue to side with the Republicans.
2
Sadly, Barr, Falwell Jr. Perkins, all devout in their faith, embrace Trump as someone chosen by God. Wrapping themselves in concern for family and morality by embracing the outrageous and amoral behavior of Trump would be laughable if it weren't so damaging to those who truly live their faith.
2
Its funny, all these educated authors miss an important point. In 1964, the Johnson administration had people going door to door in poor neighborhoods offering single mothers federal welfare benefits. That year, 24% of black children were born to single parent households. Today, its 74% because the policy incentivized single motherhood by increasing the benefit the lower the household income. It has been a disaster for the black community with two generations of children raised without fathers in the home and chased for child support to boot. Liberals might not want to destroy the family, but their policies haven't supported it either
2
@RD
To my knowledge, a conclusive link to the rise in out of wedlock births and welfare benefits has not been made.
It of course sounds convincing, and has been used a cudgel by conservatives for decades.
But drug abuse, deindustrialization (ie; lack of jobs in cities), unwillingness of women to stay married to abusers and the basic fact that it "takes two to tango" also must enter the analysis.
And, last but not least, when will your side come up with a viable, effective position to deal with the inner cities?
@RD - In 1996, traditional welfare was replaced by TANF. It had a 5 year lifetime limit on benefits, cut to 2 years in many red states, and required 30 hours a week of work or job-training (even though there were few job training programs available).
The average length of time on TANF is 9 months, and the average number of children for each mother is 1.4. In other words, you're repeating Reagan-era propaganda even though the situation has changed drastically.
Trump and his cabal know that if you repeat a lie enough, it will become acceptable as true to those who don't have the ability or desire to find the truth. This is the case here.
2
@David Kannas
True, but this particular conservative talking point goes back decades.
The social fabric of rural and conservative communities has been unraveling for decades. Their jobs are gone, the communities are overrun with drugs, their kids are having children out of wedlock, etc. It's beyond ironic that these people- the kind of people who worship at the altar of "personal responsibility" and who tell us that the solution to any problem is to pick oneself up by the bootstraps- are now desperate to find someone to blame for their crumbling towns. They have no one to blame but themselves.
That's why they hate "liberal elites". They can't stand that there are people out there who they would describe as "god-hating liberals" who somehow manage to live better lives than them. To accept that those people can live healthy, moral lives would be to accept that their close-minded view of the world was wrong all along. They would rather tear this country down than watch people who don't live them them become successful. It is a culture of grievance and spite and it cannot die out fast enough.
3
@Greg
I wouldn't mind them having grievance and spite if they directed such at the correct targets:
Those who actually control this nation.
The hyper wealthy.
2
From the earliest socialists, through the communists, the family was considered a repressive, regressive institution. That ideology still informs the left.
2
@David -
Prove your point beyond some hundred year old tracts by
utopian writers.
Even Stalin's Soviet Union didn't suppress the family.
2
Conservatives have all kinds of preposterous ideas. One of the more disturbing ones is that poor people are poor because of some moral deficiency. When all the time conservatives are maintaining a less than obvious class system.
2
@David Bible
Actually, its a MORE than obvious class system.
That Americans have been taught to ignore it
does not make it otherwise.
1
Conservatives only spew hate and a fear of things they do not understand. Not to mention the “traditional families” are something completely made up by society. Even in the Bible several men had multiple wives.
I for one am happy to be living in an era where I am able to have moderate control over my body and my future. I can have sex and not worry about raising a child (like men in the past). I can own property. I can vote. I can work instead of finding a “nice” man to settle down with, and solely rely on even though he’s beating me to a pulp every Friday or cheating on me. I am happy I have an education and a career so I am able to support my children on my own if I need to. I am happy to be seen as a person by my husband and not just a broodmare.
If liberals promote autonomy, then so be it, it is better than the alternative.
3
Trump's born again Christian base consists of very gullible people who can be easily manipulated by skilled politicians to believe just about anything. These same politicians are only interested in staying in office and will exploit the credulous any way they can. I don't believe these people will ever get any smarter and can only hope that Trump gets ousted in our next election. Only in America.
2
I thought democracy was about freedom to think & believe in any way one wishes. According to the Barrs of the world that can only happen in what he calls a moral reality. Well guess what, his commander & chief is the worst nightmare for all those morally perfect believers.
1
How easy it is to toss it away, America—idea, dream and reality. A combination of religious, political and business policies and beliefs could destroy a whole planet.
If you, as a good friend of mine does, believe Donald Trump’s either brilliant or clueless awfulness will help bring on events supposedly found in the Bible’s Book of Revelation... and here I will interrupt my rant to say if YOU can find such a thing in this short and much referred to and opaque writing, I’d like to hear your version... then maybe I am wrong.
The one thing I keep coming back to is how we have asked so little of ourselves, how we have consistently taken the easy way out and how we have looked, always, at how much everything will cost business and government. Was there no far-seeing brain that could visualize that millions of tons of unregulated plastic and metal and chemical waste would one day become more than Earth could tolerate?
We have no saviour and no Wall-E to come to our rescue. We have, instead, chosen an unqualified human, much like a cartoon character embodying our largest weaknesses and we have made him our leader. And, we might do it again, given the chance.
1
Yesterday on Twitter, where elite liberalism reigns, Buttigieg was eviscerated for this comment he made in 2011:
"You’re motivated because you believe that at the end of your educational process, there's a reward, there’s a stable life, there’s a job, and there are a lot of kids, especially the lower-income, minority neighborhoods, who literally just haven't seen it work. There isn't somebody they know personally who testifies to the value of education,"
Evidently this was deemed racist by our liberal betters. They also added that fathers aren’t needed. If liberals don’t want to destroy families they certainly appear hostile to them succeeding.
2
@Max
You forgot Bill Clinton and Jon Edwards. Oh wait, they were Democrats.
Kinda blows your claim of “why is it always conservative Republicans” right out of the water.
There are examples of flawed humanity in all parties. Trying to pretend it’s all “the other party” is laughably ridiculous and stokes divisiveness.
Bad behavior should be called out regardless of party affiliation.
1
The problem is, the country still hasn’t reckoned with what happened back in 1964-65 with the southern re-alignment.
When a person looks at the way conservatives attack women like AOC, Omar, Pressley, and Tlaib, it becomes clear that when white working class conservatives attack “Liberals,” it’s just code for non-whites.
It has nothing to do with the economy, or religion, or jobs, or the deficit or anything else. It just has to do with the fact that millions of people resent the fact that a black kid can attend the same school as a white kid. They literally view the end of segregation as the destruction of society and they’ve never gotten over it.
2
How did this preposterous slander land on Liberals? Easy, it's because too many liberals just have to get it right period. Take the biggest vote destroyer of all for Liberals and Democrats - abortion. All they have to say is that it's your choice, even if you make the wrong one. Planned Parenthood should walk their talk and support all women, especially when they fail and women make the wrong choice. Contrast that with the so-called conservatives who can only stridently scar anyone who doesn’t disavow abortion. What woman, or man, wouldn't vote for someone who clearly supports helping others as compared to condemning vulnerable women and families? The President has slimed immigrants and he’s doing the exact same thing to women. Don’t let him get away with either horror for the sake of our country. Vote him out!
1
When the “..steady jobs...” go, then young men cease being “...good providers...” who can afford to pay a mortgage. So, they cannot get married because they re no longer catches of any sort.
So are young women supposed to go childless?
1
The alleged republican concern for family didn’t extend to babies a few weeks old being taken from their parents on the border. I do not recall Christ qualifying ‘suffer the little children to come unto me’ with ‘as long as they’ve got the right documents’. The hypocrisy is sickening.
3
This assault on liberalism might explain why some Trump voters loved fake news stories and images suggesting Hillary Clinton's soul was a hideous demonic entity. It might also explain why some true Trumpers apparently believe that 2016 Russian "saved us from Hillary." I guess gone are the days when conservatives once referred to Russia as the birthplace of "godless" communism. Hillary Clinton--a Methodist-- was more dangerous to the country than a nation that once believed religion was the opiate of the masses.
2
I don't think Liberal concepts are designed to destroy the fabric of our society... but they seem to be doing just that.
2
Conservative projection pushes the boundaries of believability.
1
One obvious way liberals shred the family is by supplanting parental involvement and control with the government's. School choice is a perfect example. Liberals want to deny parents the opportunity to decide which school is best for their own child. Another is to impose their values on all school children regardless of the child's parents' religious, economic, etc., beliefs.
And let's be honest. The government does a terrible job parenting. Just look at how it handles child welfare.
4
@AACNY My town has one public grammar school (K-6), one middle school (7-9), and one high school (10-12). There is also one parochial school (Catholic) requiring tuition, along with private, non-denominational schools in the area. 80% of white parents send their kids to non-public schools.
During the 1980s, white flight caused the public schools to have an increasing percentage of minority students.
The public schools also saw an increasing percentage of minority teachers and administrators, and minority parents involved in school activities, including PTA.
By the early 1990s, non-minority students in the public schools K-9 represented about 16% of the student population. Their parents complained that the schools were in decline. They needed more "choice."
What did they do? Did they organize the other parents, find a consensus for a positive action plan, and present it to the school administrators and school board for approval? Did they commit to public school education as a bedrock of American ideals, roll up their sleeves, and fix the problems?
No. They fled.
They opened a charter school white parents would run and made sure their kids got into it. That was their idea of "choice."
Please. "Choice" is a political code word driven by racism, bigotry, class conflict, and ignorance.
3
@AACNY
Or putting kids in cages!
1
“How did this preposterous idea leap to the forefront of conservative thinking?”
Let me fix that for you:
How did this preposterous idea leap to the forefront of conservative propaganda?
The question is why do Republicans so violently manipulate the citizenry? Michelle Goldberg nailed them very appropriately in her scathing NYTimes column yesterday. The question for all Americans is why we are subject to such deliberate, broad scale disinformation and hypocrisy and gaslighting by the elected Republican “representatives” on Capitol Hill. If it were a marriage, their behavior would qualify as mental abuse.
2
The greatest threat to a right wing political coup is women. Educated women, suburban women, women of color. To blame the problems in America on the sexual revolution is to point the finger at women. This is the real witch hunt, not what is happening to Trump in Washington.
3
Fear sells, and conservatives are masters at using that tool to smear liberals and elect half-bright hucksters. And I say that as one of the liberals, the masters of scolding.
1
Sorry, but my eyes glazed over about half-way through this column. You seem to be making a valiant effort to refute conservative social views, but having heard their liberal-blame game for...about...50 years now, I can tell you it is that well-known exercise in futility. No amount of statistics, no reality-based arguments penetrate.
But I would remind all those...youngsters...out there that seem to love the ‘Boomer’ blame game, that but for us, and the sexual revolution (along with civil rights, women’s rights, the environmental movement, anti-war awareness), you’d probably still be wearing shiny patent leather shoes, flouncy dresses with 3 starched slips underneath- or bow ties and hair goo. Your mother would be on tranquilizers, your dad would be out with his secretary, and your Sunday church service might include that too-friendly priest.
Save the sermons, the columns. We know exactly what kind of ‘traditional values’ conservatives are peddling, have been peddling for decades. No sale. Not at any price.
2
Convincing their base that Democrats are the embodiment of evil is the only thing Republicans have left to campaign on.
1
The premise in your headline, along with Barr's ridiculous pronouncements in service to Trump is the insidious movement led partially by Roger Ailes in his quest to reshape American thought to his personal philosophies. The poison inherent in Fox News, with its disinformation campaign started long before Trump and has gotten steadily worse with the current President cheerleading their more dangerous rhetoric. Other right wing pundits follow the same playbook, and it was also evident in Devin Nunes manner of describing the opposition in the House hearings. The right wing prefaces any talking points about the left with a series of vile adjectives and adverbs..."the baby killing, god hating, radical socialist left or Democrats and a myriad of variations on that ugly theme. The Democrats on the other hand simply say "the Republicans" or "My Republican colleagues" for the most part, although "bigoted, white suprematist, lying" sometimes creeps in there usually in reference to certain people or events. Demonization of liberals, the left and the Democrats has been going on since mid 20th century. It's ugly, divisive, and misguided and Barr's comments are out of line for an AG of the United States. He and Trump are at the forefront of dividing the nation and they are hand in hand with right wing media helping them to do it. MSNBC or CNN or the NYT may be left leaning but they are reflecting how appalled we all should be about the loss of truth and decency.
3
I am not a conservative and/or a Republican but would like to identify myself as a humanist--Buddhistic in philosophical inclination. In my view, given contemporary moral decay (relations among multiple people--indicative of wild abandon) and expectation of "politically correctness" in every single sentence we utter or observation we make, I feel like we are under the hegemony of what I call "liberal fascism." It is so true that contemporary society has turned into “licentiousness — the unbridled pursuit of personal appetites at the expense of the common good.”
1
Thank you for bringing the AG's bigoted views to our attention. The hypocrisy of those on the right is infuriating! Blathering on about the virtues of religion, and blaming liberals and licentiousness for society's decline, while supporting Trump?! I want to scream!! How blind can people be?
1
"How did this preposterous idea leap to the forefront of conservative thinking?"
A number of reasons:
1. Right-wing hate radio that demonizes everything.
2. The under educated, willfully-ignorant, easily manipulated lump of humanity that believes everything they hear on #1.
3. The likes of Harvey Leroy Atwater, Newton Leroy Gingrich, et al.
4. Active, and relentless disinformation measures along the lines of the classic KGB campaigns.
5. Tribalism, nativism, racism, evangelical messianic complexes.
2
moynihan deserved criticism for suggesting black family problems were unique to some psychosis of blacks. the bitter joke is that those problems now afflict whites. but now it's a problem we need to fix, not a psychosis. as usual white privilege adjusts it's perspective both to protect itself and to oppress blacks. for that reason, little improvement is to be expected until the root problem of discrimination is uprooted.
Why has Barr been silent on the destruction of families wrought by this administration’s cruel family-separation policies? Why no conservative outcry against this state-sponsored lasting trauma? For shame.
1
Conservative = hypocrite. For instance, Bret Cavanaugh's lack of a moral center was vividly revealed at his confirmation hearing, and "conservatives" showed a total lack of concern. Liberals are ridiculed when they try to encourage respect for women. And our "president," well let's just say his respect for anything goes no further than his own mirror.
1
“licentiousness — the unbridled pursuit of personal appetites at the expense of the common good,” . Wow, just wow, talk about projection. Barr inadvertently just made a statement that is, by far, the best description of the Trump administration I've ever seen.
1
Republicans/Conservatives have always played dirty and appealed to the worst instincts in people. But never have they had a so morally-repugnant standard-bearer as Trump and it gives them goose-bumps of pleasure. Finally! A leader who shamelessly expresses the thoughts they never felt free enough to and, better still, appears to thrive in the throes of his depravity.
Conservatives have found their White Whale. Let's hope this story ends the same as it did for Ahab.
Liberals don’t want to destroy families, but conservatives do.
Republican malevolence seems unlimited...as long as we have a runaway 'brutus ignoramus' in-chief as their promoter. Not that they were opposed to the hysteria of 'birtherism' to begin with, revealing their racist background. Somebody adventured the idea that we have yet to achieve a true democracy, where we practice solidarity and the 'golden rule', and truly try to integrate even the least among us. Let us hope that we educate ourselves in detecting our subconscious biases...so we can embrace the richness of our diversity. If you think this is 'too much' to ask, and proceed accordingly, we may deserve these ugly 'Trumpian' times (Ugh!) where it's mantra consists of spreading 'fear, resentment (hate) and division'. Let's give it to Trump: however ignorant he may be, he is a master in deceit, in lying, and distracting, and exercising cruelty 'gratis'...just because he can, aided by a deeply degraded G.O.P.
His president has gotten how many divorces? The hypocrisy is about played out.
Mary Eberstadt's faith and reason institute - could there be a better example of a contradiction in terms?
2
Preposterous ? Ha! This is completely real without even obfuscation in their part. Despite years of research from Moynihan onward, the nuclear family has been empirically proved to be what communities require , and yet liberals are more interested in whether boys can be girls (in fact , not by dress-up fun). They say they are interested in race but never once do they address the obvious cite issue of why minority communities fail: the family or lack there of. You sir, are confused , because you seem to buy that a family can be “whatever we say it is,” rather than the specific need of a father and a mother with the unique energies each specific gender provides. How many times do we have to see fatherless girls wrecked and lost on the system? You can have an enormous, wealthy support group of “successful” women, yet without a father, it just doesn’t work . This is because men and women are “completely” different - not vaguely the same in what they provide. You disagree, am I right ? Well there’s our meeting of the minds right there
1
A great writer once wrote, "When Facism comes to America, it will be carrying the cross and wrapped in the flag". Voila! William Barr.
1
Mr. Edsall might be less surprised of the perception he attempts to undermine if he had a NY Times subscription and read the comments sections. Let's count the ways liberals work against the Family: 1) rabid anti-religious sentiment, 2) rabid abortion advocacy, 3) idolization of the "single mom", 4) focus on welfare, which emasculates men, versus jobs and economic growth, 5) legalization of marijuana, and 6) idolization of "anything goes" sexuality, that decouples individual pleasure from marriage. To a progressive, anything traditional is wrong, as there should be no responsibility or boundaries, only accommodations. Mr. Edsall should wake up and realize he's been getting checks from the NY Times for a decade, not the WSJ. He seems very confused.
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It's easy for white males in their 60's plus to talk about the good old days and wax poetic about lost morals and values. When they were the masters of the universe, everything looked good to them. Of course they didn't bother to look under the shiny veneer.
Were it not for the work of liberals, Mary Eberstadt would not be a senior research fellow at all.
Makes you wonder what she considers the "natural habitat of the human animal" to be. It seems that she believes it to be a state in which she is not taken seriously when she tells us what she thinks it is.
Republicans have very stealthy commandeered "Christianity" and "Family Values" which is hilarious when you consider which party has been behind every social measure down through our history. and republican policies are the least Christ-like practices.
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Liberals are also out to destroy the US, outlaw religion, teach kids to be gay, and do away with Christmas. When your political strategy is based on keeping your base frightened, demonizing the opposition is pretty basic stuff.
How the "base" could possibly fall for this nonsense is the real mystery, and the real tragedy.
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The same way the idea Obama isn't American did; or that he founded ISIS; or Sandy Hook was a hoax; or global warming is: Conservative conspiracy theorists try any imbecilic claim out on radio shows and the Internet; if it sticks, which it always does, they make it a thing. How does this work? It works because they've learned to tap into the natural human proclivity for hatred and selfishness, mixed in with a big dollop of ignorance and the Christian fixation with demonizing, quite literally, anything they don't like. They'll destroy the world this way. For God's sake, vote them out before it's too late.
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Let's not forget that William Barr is a member of Opus Dei, the ultra-right, secretive Catholic group. In past speeches Barr has condemned public schools, called for the imposition of "God's Law" in America, and gone after supporters of the separation of church and state.
Barr cleary wants to impose a theocratic cultural agenda in the US.
As with Fox "News" according to a recent column, the intent of these self-proclaimed social conservatives is not to examine or inform, but to inflame emotions. That is how they keep Republican voters in the fold. It started long before Trump's presidency. For example, in 2004, political operative Karl Rove lobbied to place same-sex marriage bans on the ballot in several states to drive Bush voters to the polls.
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Yeah. Health care for all and free college education would surely destroy American families who love paying high monthly premiums, high copays, high deductibles, and high interest student debt. And just think of the harm living wage jobs and the right to unionize would do to families.
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As much as I appreciate all the evidence and thoughtful analysis done by the author, does anyone believe that it will make one iota of difference to a Republican Party who has tied its fortunes to a narrative of societal decay caused by liberals?
When you assault a families values and the institutions that support them, you assault the family. Traditional conservative families are under attack culturally, educationally and legislatively from the Left and have been for decades. I don't know why people like Edsall deny this - they clearly want social conservative families to be marginalized and removed from participation in most of society.
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Splendid article, Mr Edsall.
This hogwash, AS you so aptly describe it, is hardly new. At the height of population growth following a fishing related economic boom in western Norway in the first half of the 19th Century, religious leaders and other pundits were spouting exactly
the same unfounded drivel as Barr & Co are spreading today. Barr could even be quoting from the following example. In his report for the years 1836-40, the chief Stavanger County Governor (Amtmann), Vilhelm H. L. von Munthe af Morgenstierne, noted that the number of paupers was a cause for anxiety and that expenses related to poor relief had increased dramatically.
The Governor accounted for this development in the following way. Under the heading, "Considerably Increased Population" he opined that the population was growing as a result of prevailing liberal sentiment which encouraged a desire for independence and meant that everyone would sooner or later want to be his own master and "[...] result in early marriages between people who own nothing and rely entirely on God's providence or, without a care for the future, enter into these kinds of relationship without the means to feed a family [....]
National archives i Stavanger, Norway Amtmannsberetningene 1836–1840:134.
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@James Jacobi
I am indebted to Olav Tysdal of The University of Stavanger. Norway for this reference and quotation in Vol 3, 2017, Issue 1 of Cogent Social Sciences.
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@James Jacobi
I am delighted that because of the rise of Humanism we are writing that there never was a famine in Ireland. It was an economic genocide justified by an economic philosophy grounded in Divine Providence.
By any measure this is the best time for humans to be alive.
Here in Quebec we are militant in our Humanism and Quebecers my age still can't believe how transformative the switch from a God based to a Human based society has been.
I understand how religious belief became intertwined with morality. I know most Americans cannot understand that there is absolutely no correlation between religion and morality. I know even the bible teaches there is no correlation between religion and morality. Our Canadian Prime Minister is a devout Catholic and our Quebec Premier is a Secular Humanist and they are both moral men. It gives me hope for our future.
How does one explain that if I could believe in God s She would be a Secular Humanist committed to obeying the laws of the universe.
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Nobody wanted to destroy the Dodo Bird - but it happened.
Strip miners don't want to destroy the land; the destruction is a by-product of getting the coal, which is what they want to do.
Something doesn't have to be on your "To Do" list, for you to cause it to happen. Those whose have a policy of artificially reshaping our society, need to take responsibility for the bad things that happen - intended or not - as well as the good.
Note: The authors use of the term "Think Tank" is disturbing; whether sponsored by the right or the left, the proper term is "Propaganda Mill".
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Robert George needs to read more history.
The "defeated" Japanese got a Constitution after the war, compliments of the United States.
In that Constitution women were made absolutely equal, something that the United States has never done for the women of this country and conservative (what do they think they are conserving?) Republicans, Christian folk, all, have sworn will never happen in this country.
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving.
What am I thankful for?
That the United States at least made the women of one country Constitutionally equal.
Now they need to do it here and remove that legal impediment that is the base for all right-wing political parties and religions.
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I am so happy to see Barr's polemic challenged. Conservatives, especially evangelical Christians, demonize liberals without any examination of our behavior. Meanwhile, their anti-immigrant punitive attitude has been transformed into family separation and mass caging of innocent children. Second Amendment rights are seen as protectors of families instead of being the catastrophic illness that produces 310 shootings every day. And now the leader is pushing alliances with the most brutal dictators of 'civilization'.
Obviously, Barr is not alone in his delusion. But if we can begin a meaningful conversation on shared values and societal goals, perhaps we can end the culture wars and return to governing with the aim of supporting the shared values.
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It seems to me that conservatives are well aware they have been losing ground for decades and have sharpened their rhetoric and radicalized their opposition in response to the increasing changes beyond their control. The vitriol in our body politic is very much one-sided as barr so clearly demonstrates in these speeches. But it isn't the diversification of the family structure or the meager welfare state we have that really threatens their precious, corrupt and unjust patriarchy. It's human knowledge and technology which is entirely unstoppable. And while the arc of time bends toward progress, to borrow a phrase from a good president, I don't want to have to live out my best years under the tyranny and dysfunction of these tired old dinosaurs and their last gasps and I look eagerly to the meteor that will relegate this current bunch to the unforgiving dustbin of history. The sooner, the better.
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Mr. Edsall's latest opinion piece is titled: "Liberals Do Not Want to Destroy the Family -- Or society, for that matter. How did this preposterous idea leap to the forefront of conservative thinking?"
But the more important -- indeed, truly urgent -- question: Why did liberals ever allow this preposterous idea to become accepted by grassroots conservative voters?
And here's the maddening answer: Years ago, we liberals (especially of the upper-income, urban, well-educated demographic) stopped reaching out to our blue-collar, predominantly rural, non-college educated American brothers and sisters.
We coasted on our history (now largely an obsolete, self-deceiving mythology) of being champions of the working class; during the difficult concurrent eras of the Vietnam War and the Sexual Revolution, we allowed "patriotism" and "family values" to become terms of derision; and although rightly embracing multiculturalism, we allowed an acidic politically-correct blame game to become part of it, and sneeringly dismissed conservative Middle Americans as "a basket of deplorables."
And we were blindsided by the phenomenon of "Reagan Democrats"? Stunned by the election of Trump? Mystified at how we lost the Culture Wars?
Now we're indignant that so many Americans blithely believe those conservative thinkers who reach out to them, claim to share their values, and tell them that liberals want to destroy the family.
Really?
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The important thinkers among the founders were not particularly religious in their outlook nor in their practice. In regard to religion they were most interested in the freedom of its practice and in separating religion and state. They were determined not to have a state religion. It is reported that Hamilton when asked why the Constitution did not mention God, I presume the question was a chiding one, replied, "We forgot", thus not giving the questioner the time of day. In regard to Barr we must not forget that he is a member of Opus Dei, one of the most conservative of the Catholic organizations. I doubt if Pope Frances would approve of Barr's viewpoint. In fact I suspect that Barr actively opposes the Pope.
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The Khmer Rouge in Cambodia understood that the family unit is a microcosm of the social structure. American slave holders understood that as well; break up the family unit, and you break down social strength and order. The "traditional" hierarchy of the family is the primary male, secondary female, subordinate children. In order to completely change society, bring about Year One, the Khmer Rouge, like American slave holders, forced the disintegration of the family unit. I think that's what Cons like Barr are responding to. Jim Crow laws and legal limitations on females were inarguably social engineering that ordered society into a hierarchy that resembled the "traditional" family unit. Cons argue that it's the Left who impose social engineering through civil rights laws, but equity and access are not the same as barriers.
Edsall is right to make the connection between this reactionary fear on the right to the "loss over time of advantages" enjoyed by white working class Americans. There's truth to that theory as well. Higher education--with its social and economic advantages--is increasingly excluded to two groups: the very poor, who can get financial aid, and the very rich, whose parents can pay for it. In that context, I can understand both the reactionary fear, and the need for affordable higher education.
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As women were increasingly able to leave bad marriages (that became more and more possible just over the last century with women being able to vote, pursue an education, and earn a living), the basis of marriage itself shifted from “security, stability, and raising children” to meeting each other's needs for “love and intimacy.” That was not a liberal or conservative shift, but a societal one clearly articulated 40 years ago.
A solution for many is skills training to help men and women learn what was rarely modeled in their own childhoods: marriages where people are a pleasure to each other because they can talk and listen, confide, be vulnerable, experience the range of emotions, problem solve as peers, and have a fighting chance of bringing their biggest dreams and aspirations to life.
We can research this to infinity and beyond and not change a thing for anyone because people can no more behave in ways they don’t know then they can dress in clothes they don’t have.
Overcoming these challenges in Red homes, Blue homes, and Poly Party homes too, quite simply, begins with listening.
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In the WHO World Mental Health Surveys, a study I worked on, people in many diffferent countries were asked about childhood adversities including physical and sexual abuse, economic adversity as a child, parental divorce, loss of a parent and other major adverse events in childhood. Compared to European countries and Asian countries, people in the United States reported much higher rates of childhood adversities. In the US, 24% reported two or more major childhood adversities, whereas the corresponding rates were 9% in the Netherlands, 10% in France, 11% in Japan, 7% in Belgium, 6% in Germany, 5% in Italy and 4% in Spain. The only countries with rates similar to the US were Mexico with 26% reporting multiple childhood adversities and Columbia with 33%. The social democracies with liberal welfare states outperform the United States when it comes to protecting their children. We are comparable to developing countries with a limited welfare state. The religious right blocking the development of an advanced social safety net is the problem.
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A study of divorce rates in all 50 states, published in the American Journal of Sociology, found that "states with larger proportions of religious conservatives [in the form of conservative Protestants] have higher divorce rates than states with lower proportions of religious conservatives."https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/674703
The study posits various possible reasons for the finding that the more religiously conservative you are, the more likely you are to divorce. In other words, Mr. Barr's contention that "secularism" has caused "the wreckage of the family" (as he puts it in his speech) seems totally irrelevant and maybe even the opposite of the truth.
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I’ve never heard of Democrats “wanting to destroy the family unit” from any republican and I live in Tennessee.
I have been told that policies put in place decades ago made it more a better deal to stay single and raise my kids alone (with help from the government) rather than get married.
I get more money by opting out of marrying my children’s father than I would get if I married him. Plus, I don’t think you are allowed to live together. That could be wrong.
The skyrocketing single parent home statistics do coincide with these policies. Are they good intentions? Yes. I’m not sure if they helped or hurt in promoting two family homes. I wish we gave more money or the same money to women regardless of their marital status.
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@Emily S In CT our close friends had a neighbor living with her partner for 18 years, never married. By declaring herself to be single, near free healthcare ($50 a month) for her three children. Never understood why income of both parents regardless of marital status is not factored into welfare eligibility.
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It’s fascinating that our conservative movement has been paired with some people seeking to advance a weird version of “Christianity,” which is partly characterized by the hatred of a long list of people, starting with those who are gay.
That’s OK, real Christianity is too powerful to be brought down by them. Our real Christians will continue to follow the simple call of the Gospel, for us all to love one another and minister to the poor and the outcasts.
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