| 
Politics
and the Family
A Diabolical Plan to Destroy the Family
Column Five
by Richard Eyre
Column
1 Column 2 Column
3 Column 4
 In
our first four columns, we've tried to discuss how important it
is to understand that the family should be the basic unit of society.
Now let's pull back and take a longer and more analytical look at
the difficult and dangerous reality of the society that has grown
up around us that undermines our hopes and our efforts as parents,
and that threatens to make it virtually impossible to create and
preserve the kind of families we wish to have.
It is as though
the world, particularly during the last part of the twentieth century,
evolved in a way designed to threaten and weaken families. In fact,
it sometimes seems like some force took a look at the ideal of a
happy, functional family and came up with a plan to make that kind
of unit impossibly difficult to establish and maintain. That family-destructive
three-part plan would have looked something like this:
1. Suck people
into such busy, materialistic, work-oriented and competitive life
styles that their priorities, commitments, and time for communication
shift away from family.
2. Make the
family, with its traditions, rules and motivations redundant and
unnecessary by replacing it with other, larger institutions that
perform the family's functions and lure away people's loyalties.
3. Promote false
paradigms and anti-values to replace time-honored religious values,
and basic moral principles and ethics -- and to get people so selfishly
wrapped up in themselves that they lose interest in the needs and
perspective of their families.
If it ever was
a plan, it is working. Families are slipping badly, and as families
go down, they pull society with them. Too many kids today can rap
but can't read. Too many know everything about drugs but can't pass
chemistry. Too many have sex but have no love.
In America
today, more teenage boys go to jail than join the Boy Scouts.
A generation
ago a survey revealed that the seven biggest problems in one high
school were: 1. talking out of turn; 2. chewing gum; 3. being disruptive,
making noise; 4. cutting in line; 5. running in the halls; 6. dress
code violations; 7. littering. A recent survey at the same school
provides the stark contrast. Today the seven biggest problems are:
1. alcohol abuse; 2. drug abuse; 3. robbery; 4. teen pregnancy;
5. assault; 6. rape; 7. suicide.
Prophecy
Being Fulfilled
We call these
crises "social problems" but it is far too tame a name
-- too academic, too theoretical, and too political. What we need
is a word that suggests how dramatic and deep the dangers are. And
maybe we already have the right word. Perhaps the word was presented
in scriptural prophecy as the final verse of the Old Testament,
where we are told that unless the hearts of parents are turned to
their children (and vice versa), the whole earth will be cursed.
Burgeoning social
problems are cursing America,
and the breakdown of the family is precipitating the curse. The
vacuum created by disappearing families sucks in everything from
gangs to excess government. The public and private sectors -- which
should be supporting, supplementing, and protecting families --
instead seem to be trying either to substitute for them or to undermine
them. Our newest, largest institutions from giant corporations to
information and entertainment systems are creating misplaced loyalties
and false paradigms that are destroying the oldest, smallest institution
of family. And parents, hot in pursuit of professional and financial
success, can find neither the time nor the inclination to put family
first.
Social problems
today threaten our future as much as economic problems threaten
the former Soviet Union. So great are these curses, and so turned
away are our hearts, that as we enter the new millennium there is
serious doubt whether America
as we know it will survive. Rebuilding, reprioritizing,
and revaluing our families is the only alternative to this country's
demise.
"Survive".
"Demise". These are extreme and desperate words -- words
we don't use much when talking about America.
Especially since bomb shelters and the cold war have slipped away.
But de Tocqueville predicted our destruction from within. Illness
rather than injury; not threats moving in, but rot spreading out.
Subtle rather than sudden.
The sickness
we benignly and academically call social problems is so malignant
that fathers rape daughters, so violent that children kill children,
so epidemic that no one escapes.
The shiny surface
of America is pockmarked
by poverty, riddled by racism, gouged by gangs and guns. The greatest,
richest land paradoxically contains the most dangerous and terrifying
places on the planet, places where life is cheaper and joy scarcer
than in any third or fourth world.
And more subtle
but just as sure, the sickness spreads through the suburbs; incredibly
expensive, seemingly incurable, unfixable by courts or welfare —
expanding, spreading. Preventable and curable only at the smallest
stage in the smallest organization: the family.
Individual lives
can teeter for quite a while on the edge, bereft of the ties of
family and the anchor of faith and values. A whole society can do
the same thing. We must revalue our families. "Re · value"
has a triple meaning: 1. once again recognizing the transcending
societal value of families; 2. personal reprioritizing of our families;
3. putting values back into our families.
The Basic
Issues
But before parents
can be fully effective in working on the micro, we must try to better
understand the macro we work within. There are three categories
of problems:
Problem One:
Overcommitted, materialistic lifestyles and wrong-turned hearts.
Problem Two:
Large institutions that weaken and undermine the most basic institution.
Problem Three:
Proliferating false paradigms and anti-values.
Building strong
families today, in this environment, is a huge challenge. In a way,
it is a private war with the society around us. Even with the Church
to help us (can you imagine trying to be a successful parent without
the support of the Church?) we have to work at it every day. Striving
to better understand the world and its trends as they affect family
is part of what is necessary in order to win the war.
Join me next
week to take a more international look at the challenges facing
families. And, when you can find the time, read the earlier four
columns in this series to have continuity and to put the next column
in perspective.
Click
here to sign up for Meridian's FREE email updates.
© 2004 Meridian
Magazine. All Rights Reserved.
|
