Richard A. Viguerie's post came out at Yuletide, but it is timeless, and as the new year begins, along with the attendant resolutions, it bears reprinting:
… if Christmas is a celebration of the family,
today, as First Lady of the conservative movement Phyllis Schlafly
reminded us in her column, the American family is in serious trouble.
Last
year, 41 percent of all babies born in the U.S. (including 53 percent
of babies born to women under 30) were born outside of marriage. “It is
obvious,” said Schlafly, “that when the mother of these children has no
husband to support her and her babies, she calls on Big Brother
Government.”
This is an important point to keep in mind as we take a holiday break from the battle over the fiscal cliff, taxes and spending.
America’s
urban liberal elite, who are the arbiters of popular culture,
constantly promote the idea that the family is irrelevant, motherhood is
demeaning and stay-at-home mothers are a burden on the state.
After
forty-five years of the sexual revolution, urban liberal feminists, the
media and an amoral government-run education system have convinced less
educated Americans that marriage and the “role of father or husband or
wife” are not only unnecessary to emotional fulfillment and economic
advancement, getting married will get in the way of the activities
celebrated in the popular media, such as partying and casual sex.
Establishment
Republicans don’t want to talk about marriage and the family. It all
sounds so judgmental around the bar at the country club.
However,
as Phyllis Schlafly noted, the breakdown of the family drives
government spending because you and I then pay the bills for welfare,
after school programs, Head Start and a host of other expensive and
largely unsuccessful federal efforts to replace the nuclear family.
This
is very much what Rick Santorum was saying out on the campaign trail
during the Republican primary elections, but it is a truth that
disappeared from the political conversation as soon as Santorum
suspended his campaign.
This Christmas, please join me in
celebrating the family and, in the midst of our battle over federal
spending, let’s re-dedicate ourselves to helping to solve our
government’s fiscal crisis by solving our nation’s family crisis.
In this context, it is never a bad idea to bring up the writings of
Stephen Baskerville…
