When I was a kid, my parents explained our two party system as being like two parents. The GOP was the strict father who wanted you to be self-sufficient and the Dems were the nurturing mother who looked after the unfortunate. I bought into that when I was a kid, and rhetorically it kind of soured me on socialism, welfare, etc. Who wants to have mommy take care of him forever? (Women vote lib because they want to be the mommy).

The thing is, “mommy government” is totally evil. And we don’t have male and female styles of governance today, we have two competing mommy governments. It’s ‘single mother’ government. And single moms are bad. Real bad. The #1 predictor of childhood delinquency isn’t poverty or race; it’s whether the kid has a father or not. The Dems, and by extension communists and socialists, are the overbearing mother who overprotects her kids. And in doing so destroys them. The GOP is the ghetto single mother that leaves her kid alone while she goes around slutting it up with whatever high status bastard flashes a wad of cash. Who sometimes comes home and beats her kids.

All democracy ends in single mother government, and all single mother government is evil. (Fascism is like having a very butch lesbian as your mother.) True paternal government is monarchy. Filmer goes into this in Patriarcha. If you want to really educate yourself, read the old masters and not the blog of a young reactionary who has better things to do than wax poetic. But government by father is qualitatively different from any kind of maternal government. Mommy cares about your thoughts and feelings. Daddy doesn’t. Your soul is your own, and his rules are designed to develop your agency and let you live the best life you are capable of. Not coddle you, promise you the world, and tell you that you’re a victim.

If you were raised by a good father, you know what I’m talking about. Maybe he was strict, maybe he was aloof, but when the rubber hit the road you knew that he loved you and had your back. And his love was the love that wanted you to be your own man and felt fulfilled when you achieved your independence. Early republicans used rhetoric implying that the European commons had ‘grown up’ and was ready for self-government. Which turned out to be a massive lie, or if you want to be charitable, misguided optimism. If I had to bet, Locke’s ghost is buying Filmer’s drinks every night. Now, this is a massive oversimplification but if you want the scholarly stuff you can and should crack open Filmer, and Carlyle, and Froude. Any parent and any government can be abusive, but single motherhood is categorically abusive while only a personally evil father is abusive.