If Marriage Collapses, So Does America
That headline isn't nearly as hysterical as it might sound. To wit:
In "A Nation of Singles," his cover story for the Weekly Standard, Jonathan Last quotes Princeton professor Robert George:
As Robert George put it after the election, limited government "cannot be maintained where the marriage culture collapses and families fail to form or easily dissolve. Where these things happen, the health, education, and welfare functions of the family will have to be undertaken by someone, or some institution, and that will sooner or later be the government."
Marriage is what makes the entire Western project--liberalism, the dignity of the human person, the free market, and the limited, democratic state--possible. George continues, "The two greatest institutions ever devised for lifting people out of poverty and enabling them to live in dignity are the market economy and the institution of marriage. These institutions will, in the end, stand or fall together."
There are all kinds of profound implications here, but shall we start with just one?
Anybody who thinks Republicans should shut up about social issues--that we could fix the economy and the country by electing libertarians who just don't care about the institution of marriage--has another thing coming.
Note: You can hear Jonathan discussing his "Nation of Singles" piece on this week's Need To Know podcast with Mona Charen and Jay Nordlinger.
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Sep '12
Re: If Marriage Collapses, So Does America
If we go over a fiscal cliff, won't we already be collapsed?
Re: If Marriage Collapses, So Does America
Compared to the collapse of the family, the fiscal cliff is more like a bump.
Jul '10
Re: If Marriage Collapses, So Does America
Everything the left has done has been aimed at destroying the traditional American culture and ideology. This includes attacking the churches, Christianity in general, and bringing in irrational ideas in the hopes of "mainstreaming" them and so further decaying the old ideas.
So we have with "gay marriage", a concept that has no rational meaning within any realistic view of traditional social structures. But homosexuality is deviant behavior, and therefore all efforts to legitimize it are pushed, so as to devalue reason and history. S0 it is claimed to be "inherited" (as, no doubt, are the drives of a serial killer - but who would accept that as mainstream), "reasonable" (if you have no standards by which to judge), and "good", all the while also demonizing any opposition with various invented phrases (homophobic comes to mind) deemed a great negative characteristic.
The fight is still in the terms of debate, and that doesn't change whether we talk social, economic, scientific - what have you.
Re: If Marriage Collapses, So Does America
So, Peter, are you suggesting that the next conservative candidate for the presidency be against no-fault divorce? Because that's done more to undermine marriage than anything else.
Sep '12
Re: If Marriage Collapses, So Does America
More thoughtful Libertarians would be completely fine with people advocating for others to make better decisions. There are ways to make the state neutral to marriage and child-barring, instead of being hostile to it, like it currently is. From a devout libertarian, Bryan Caplan, on Charles Murray's "Coming Apart":
Edited on December 7, 2012 at 8:16pmJul '12
Re: If Marriage Collapses, So Does America
What are Republicans going to do about the collapse of marriage? Go Rick Santorum and ban contraceptives? Eliminate no fault divorce? Get rid of welfare and the like for bastard kids? We live in a society the prizes individual autonomy on sexual manners and until something horrible happens there is nothing you and I can do to stop it.
Sep '12
Re: If Marriage Collapses, So Does America
... a bump in the road, as our Dear Leader calls it? Sorry, did not mean to be cynical in previous post...it just seems like marriage has been attacked as an institution of import for decades and the conservatives/republicans are demonized and humiliated by the owners of the zeitgeist or the elites -- media, universities. If we speak out for it, we lose the argument. The narrative is owned by the power-left, in terms of how it is perceived as a valued institution.
And, it is true, young people are not getting married even if they have children together.
This could change easily if the left was not in power. Isn't that the real problem?
Feb '11
Re: If Marriage Collapses, So Does America
OK. So what are you going to do about it? Is that a role for government? Romans used to worry about this kind of stuff too. So nothing new.
Edited on December 7, 2012 at 8:23pmSep '12
Re: If Marriage Collapses, So Does America
Well said, Peter.
And to those who say: "well what about divorce, what about this, or that..."
Edited on December 7, 2012 at 8:28pmBill O'Reilly's best line: You can't excuse bad behavior with more bad behavior.
May '10
Re: If Marriage Collapses, So Does America
I wouldn't propose that. First things first. First make the case for marriage and its essential relation to the civil society. Fight the current assaults on what remains of marriage law (i.e. SSM). Then start thinking about practical proposals for how it might be strengthened.
To focus on ending no fault divorce would be like focussing on not allowing a rape exception for abortion, in terms of political effectiveness.
Jul '12
Re: If Marriage Collapses, So Does America
Downplay social issues to get into power and then, once in power, use our political capital to institutionalize our agenda. I truly believe culture can be shaped from the top down. Just look at how Roosevelt and Johnson shaped our culture by using welfare. I think a reversal can be achieved using the same methods, but it must be clandestine.
Mar '11
Re: If Marriage Collapses, So Does America
TeamAmerica has come across an interesting video essay that seems closely related to this topic and put up a discussion in the Member Feed, thought provoking.
It's a another bit from girlwriteswhat if you're familiar with her work.
Mar '12
Re: If Marriage Collapses, So Does America
May '12
Re: If Marriage Collapses, So Does America
katievs
I wouldn't propose that. First things first. First make the case for marriage and its essential relation to the civil society. Fight thecurrentassaults on what remains of marriage law (i.e. SSM). Thenstart thinking about practical proposals for how it might be strengthened.
To focus on ending no fault divorce would be like focusing on not allowing a rape exception for abortion, in terms of political effectiveness.
I couldn't disagree more. The numbers don't support that stance either. In 2010 there were about 150,000 total gay married couples. That's total. Just last year there were about 872,000+ divorces. And those numbers don't include data from several states including California, Georgia, and Louisiana. Let's just state there are well over 1,000,000+ divorces per year and that's been a pretty consistent number per annum.
You have to address the pitiful state of heterosexual marriage first and foremost. Addressing No-Fault divorce, Alimony, and Child Custody laws are essential to fixing marriage. SSM is deeply problematic, but the immediate problem is the pitiful state of marriage which has far more reaching consequences because of the presence of children in those relationships.
Edited on December 7, 2012 at 8:45pmSep '12
Re: If Marriage Collapses, So Does America
Peter Robinson
Compared to the collapse of the family, the fiscal cliff is more like a bump. · 27 minutes ago
Peter, what do you think about this observation: Young people seem to be listless about their futures. They are not optimists. They lack a sense of self-efficacy. This is the 'sickness' that causes them to accept lefty-narrative, that causes them to negate marriage as a possibility. It is a bigger illness than results from no-fault divorce.
Nov '12
Re: If Marriage Collapses, So Does America
Mona and Jay's podcast this week was all about this issue, they even had Mr. Last as their guest.
Aug '12
Re: If Marriage Collapses, So Does America
Were I God, or at the very least Caesar, I'd make getting out of a marriage contract at least as hard as getting out of a mortgage (though that's getting to be trivially easy too). But I'm not, and we won't, so in the interim I'd settle for not making things worse. And there are probably some reforms short of eliminating no-fault divorce that could at least make things a little better. Waiting periods, custody rule reforms, et cetera. This is not my field, so I'd have to defer to someone else on exactly what is possible.
Mar '11
Re: If Marriage Collapses, So Does America
Nonsense, Peter. Everyone knows that marriage, like gender, is just a social construct of the patriarchy to enslave women and minorities.
Oct '10
Re: If Marriage Collapses, So Does America
Why the assumption that “libertarians … just don't care about the institution of marriage”? Libertarians believe that in the absence of a coercive state, humans will self-organise into structures which meet the needs which the state claims to, yet consistently fails to deliver. The foundation of this pyramid of free associations is the family, an institution defined by marriage, freely contracted between and man and a woman.
I, like many libertarians I know, would argue for separating marriage from the state: it did just fine for millennia before the state started to meddle in it, and seems to have gone downhill ever since. But that doesn't mean libertarians don't care about marriage. In fact, most of them I know are happily married and have been for a long time: in my own case 39 years.
Aug '10
Re: If Marriage Collapses, So Does America
Who says libertarians don't care about the institution of marriage? Speaking for this libertarian, I think marriage is crucial to a small-government state, because marriage is the primary private social safety net.
Where we disagree is that you seem to think that protecting marriage involves opposition to gay marriage and through promoting 'social conservatism' by opposing the secular culture, while I think that the biggest force tearing apart social norms and structures is the existence of big government alternatives, and not whether two gay people wish to codify their relationship.
In fact, by refusing to allow gay people to marry and to therefore be able to provide each other with a more formal private social safety net, you damage marriage by forcing people to seek the safety of the nanny state, thus making it more powerful and more destructive to heterosexual marriage as well.
It's not just marriage we should be defending, but the role of grandparents, communities, mutual aid societies, and other private social safety nets both religious and secular. Libertarians have a very keen appreciation of the need for private social structures in the absence of big government.