By Mason Mohon | USA

My last article was on the public education system, and how the state’s involvement in education is ultimately a scheme to perpetuate its power. Briefly mentioned in that article was how the education system was created to act as the new morality for children so as to save the ones that fall away from a familial moral upbringing. Although the state intended to help the children through its program, the result was an ever-increasing wedge the state began to force the child from his or her family. The intent of this article is to analyze the state’s attack on the family as a group of people, so to do this what the family is will have to be analyzed, and then the specific ways the state has torn them apart will be analyzed.

In the first place, a definition of family should be made clear. When the family is discussed in this instance, it will not be a tightly defined unit with two parents, mother, and father, along with children. Rather, when the family is referred to it refers to a group of people who are emotionally and usually genetically close to each other. Families will more often than not fit into the traditional view, but they do not always have to.

There are multiple advantages to being part of the family unit. These advantages are those of increased foresight, more trust, and statistically better economic activity. Foresight was a topic I covered in one of my previous articles, which can be found here. It is the tendency to look towards the future and make sacrifices in the present so that one may gain more in the future. It is one of the greatest civilizing aspects of society. The family increases this because it allows foresight to exit one’s lifespan. One can make sacrifices in the present so their offspring in the future can benefit long after they’re gone. The emotional bond makes this low time preference much more common within families than outside of them. Families increase civilization, and that is a major benefit.

Another advantage is trust. Trust is a very important part of a market economy and one that is often common. When entering a transaction, one trusts that the other party is not screwing them over, and usually this base can be covered by a contract or some sort of collateral. The tight emotional bonds promote this kind of trust. Trust makes money and civilizes. It is promoted in voluntary situations because one must have a good “track record” to enter into transactions. This is in stark contrast to the state’s effect on trust. The state has a bad track record, but it can take your money anyway. A lecture on the civilizing effects of trust can be found here.

The third and final advantage of the family is the economic benefit from creating one. When the aspects of trust and foresight align, lives are turned around. A report from the Institute for Family Studies gave a lot of very valuable insight on this subject. The report found that 97% of millennials who follow a sequence of success tend to rise from poverty. This sequence is as follows: graduate high school, get married, wait until you’re 20, and then have children after the first three steps have been achieved. The results are astounding, for nearly all of the people who have followed this sequence are not poor once entering their 30’s. It is especially true for ethnic minorities who grew up in poor families. These effects are astounding and should not be ignored, yet they widely are anyway because fewer millennials are following this sequence than the preceding generations.

The family has many advantages, but it is in trouble. A Wall Street Journal article provided an analysis of this decline. The statistics are as follows:

As recently as 2000, married 25- to 34-year-olds outnumbered their never-married peers by a margin of 55% to 34%, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. By 2015, the most recent year for which data are available, those estimates had almost reversed, with never-marrieds outnumbering marrieds by 53% to 40%. Young Americans have quickly become wary of marriage.

The previous analysis from the Institute for Family Studies and this Wall Street Journal Article all point to a decline, which will lead to more poverty. Without families, foresight and trust are lost, and the economic statistics are also bad. A Brookings Institute study found that 79% of those who do not commit to the success sequence – finish high school, get married, and wait until you’re 20 before having a child – were trapped in poverty. The family is a serious economic machine and one that should not be taken for granted. Why, though, is it failing?

The family is failing because of one institution, and that is the state. The state, through recent history, has sought out to make the integrated forcefully separated and the separated forcefully integrated. A business owner should be able to choose who enters into his or her establishment. They reserve the right to their own private property, which means that they may prevent the Muslim, Catholic, African American, Nazi, or Jew from entering. The economic toll the market forces upon them for this bigotry is not enough for the state, for things must be virtuous by its violent hand. It makes what was separated now forcefully integrated. It has abridged property rights to an inexcusable degree.

The situation is similar the other way around. Those institutions which are integrated – deep bonds between family members – are now forcefully separated, although not as explicitly. It is no secret that the family as a group is falling apart, and seeing as that the state tends to force those separated to integrate, it logically follows that it does force those integrated to separate. This coercive monopoly has sought to rival the family unit as the upbringer of the child, and it wants the citizenry to be dependent upon it so that life without it seems preposterous. There are two main mechanisms it has used to do such a thing. They are the public schooling system and the mechanism of social security.

The institution of public schooling was discussed in my most recent article entitled The State Against The Children. As revealed, the state worked to be responsible for the morality of the child as it grows, yet a growing population and the collectivist tendencies made this idea of individual moral upbringing preposterous and impossible, so the state has done the next best thing: create followers and lovers. Americans unquestioningly approve of an increasing state because they were conditioned to, both on the side of Republicans and Democrats. The idea of compulsory school attendance sends a signal to the parents that they are no longer the moral leaders of the children, and the state is. This has begun to displace the family in the child’s life and thus disincentivize the continuation of a family if only a little bit. Princeton University demographer Norman Ryder nailed the issue of public education in his statement:

Education of the junior generation is a subversive influence…Political organizations, like economic organizations, demand loyalty and attempt to neutralize family particularism. There is a struggle between the family and the state for the minds of the young…[where the mandatory state school serves as] the chief instrument for teaching citizenship, in a direct appeal to the children over the heads of their parents.

This is not where the division of the state ends, though. The system of social security attempts to take the other vastly dependent group under the state’s wing: the elderly. As people get old and can no longer provide for themselves, they would turn to the families they have made a lifelong moral and economic investment in for help. That is the case until the state became involved. The children have less care for the higher-ups of their family hierarchies because the obligation to make a return investment is gone. The value of intergenerational families is diminished and the natural multi-generation hierarchy a family tended to be throughout history is no longer functioning. The law of familial norm and tradition has been superseded by state-based legislation.

The very existence of a state program to take care of the children in the elderly is a slap in the face to family hierarchies everywhere.

This is not pure economic conjecture either. The entire first half of this article talked about who the family unit is falling to pieces, and these government programs are to blame. The mantra of the socialists – “from each according to his ability to each according to his need” – is a justifiable outlook when dealing with those tightly connected throughout generations, but when the faceless violent hands of the state are involved, the entire operation falls to shambles.

Of course, it would be foolish to point out a problem and leave the reader with no solution. The families must be recognized as the source of civilization because of their increased foresight, and the family unit needs to be emphasized.One must tighten their bonds with their land and family, and emphasize helping and forging stronger connections with family members, both immediate and distant. The state seeks to tear you from your brother and sister, mother and father, daughter and son, so strengthen those connections and don’t let the state break them. Your family is a powerful line of defense against decivilizing forces and the left, so use it.