Family values

Not wishing to derail the voting of Americans today, but just some thoughts to throw in ref 'conservatism' and 'family values'.

Once upon a time all good people lived in families presided over by a daughter's ideal father and a son's ideal mother and romped in (innocently) by a parent's ideal children. Alas, the serpent of modernity, personified by wicked raisin eating liberals (or worse, socialists), entered this bucolic idyll. Those who trumpet 'family values' imply that in order to restore said idyll it is necessary to elect conservatives who will put single mothers back in the workhouse and gays back in the closet.

Needless to say, conservatives when elected do no such thing. Evelyn Waugh once remarked that the problem with the British Conservative party is that it has not turned back the clock one second. He was, of course, entirely correct. The main contribution of conservatives to the family has, in fact, been to have a number of them. Someone once observed that if abortion was ever criminalised in the US it would be a disaster for the Republicans as a large chunk of the relgious vote would think 'job done!' and return to their natural home in the Democratic Party. Much the same could be said about family values. It is necessary, therefore, that the spectre of the dissolution of traditional values haunts the skilled working class and the lower middle class in order to persuade them to vote against their economic interests. Like the conflict between Oceania and Eastasia the war is necessary to keep the proles in a state of war hysteria, its resolution is not seriously intended.

Let the debate begin!

Yours in Christ

Matt