So many Republicans seem to hate their family members - and seem so eager to disown entire groups of them - that it confuses liberals (who actually have the expectation that one ought to accept one's family - because liberals believe that people should be accepted and should be allowed to exist, just the way they are, and they don't understand why conservatives reject that belief).
All of which is beside the point. The issue isn't really about one's relationships with one's family. It's about political structures.
Oh, and taboos. There are things we aren't supposed to discuss - like anything involving the word "feudal", for instance. Or anything involving the word "class", as in "social class", which doesn't exist, because there are no classes in America. We're all just middle class - well, except for a few losers who just won't work (but that's their choice!) and a few people who have done very well (but have earned it, and deserve it, and don't you dare say a word about that!) and of course those who are discriminated against, which is the only real oppression going on anywhere - just ask anyone who understands what is and isn't taboo here in the USA, and they'll tell ya, they will, they will!
But tossing those taboos aside for a minute (I'm looking around, waiting for lightning to strike) I see a political ideology arguing that the nation-state should stop trying to compete with older political structures. The family, not the nation-state, should be the basic source of life for its members. In this scheme, the strongest families thrive, while those unlucky enough to be born into weak families had better find a family to protect it and offer it what it needs (like, for instance, health care coverage).
To this worldview, liking one's brother has nothing, nothing at all, to do with it. It's about loyalty, obedience, submission, power, survival of the line - not love. It's about a collection of people who agree to abide by the rules that preserve the strength and power of the unit. "Family values" means embracing a set of values that values the family. (As opposed to valuing the individual - that post-feudal idea that individuals can choose things for themselves.) This is the image of the patriarch and his dependents - with the guy at the top controlling the loot and all the lower-status people stuck with roles and professions that don't suit them (because everything is allocated according to the whim of the Decider).
The patriarch will decide what merit means, and who has it. Legacy usually counts for more, anyway. No matter how incompetent, one still prefers one's own son in the White House. Merit has to be left to the discretion of the authority figure - one wants the freedom to reward loyalty, after all.
Open and fair competition - such as, for instance, everyone going to the same excellent and well-funded public schools - that is not an image that appeals to the patriarch (and, really, who else matters, in such a scheme?). What matters is us/them - and bestowing an advantage on us by any means, fair or foul.
This is a worldview that is fueled by anxiety. (I believe the real reason for the popularity of the Godfather books by Mario Puzo involved the fantasy that such a powerful leader could actually be fair and just and benevolent.) Those who fear the very real dangers out there are willing to trade away their own freedom in exchange for protection, physical and economic. Those who fear godlessness of the universe are willing to trade away their own identity in exchange for a chance to belong to a larger, more significant group. Something that might survive after they are gone. Something worth living for. Something to structure and give meaning to life. (Maybe those who hope the universe isn't really godless believe they're just following orders?)
It works like this: you ally with the larger "family", which might be a literal family, a corporate entity, a church, a fraternal organization, a gang, or any network (formal or informal). In exchange for your fealty you get whatever protection and assistance the group can offer. You might be required to tithe, or work, or submit to strange demands, or whatever, as a condition of membership. You also might be 'encouraged' to donate, or work, or submit to even more dictatorial authority, out of the recognition that the group is only able to protect you from threats if the group is strong.
It is a viewpoint that has grown strong because the government is too weak to hold its own against this competition. Our government has not protected the people it is supposed to look out for, and in return those unprotected people have fled to find safety wherever they can*.
The conservative/Obama viewpoint is a pro-business, pro-corporate viewpoint. It opposes anything that grants people what they need to live being given to them as an entitlement. It would rather keep those benefits as things that the wealthy can give the poor if they choose to - which also suggests that they could withhold those life-giving resources, if they wanted to. When your superiors give you what you need to survive and you therefore owe something in return. If you didn't "earn" what you got (by pleasing your superior), but it was given to you out of the recognition that it is indecent to watch people die and do nothing, that is called "charity", and you still owe the one who gave it to you.
The Democrats, on the other hand, typically argue that you are entitled to certain things:
In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.The first is freedom of speech and expression -- everywhere in the world.
The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way -- everywhere in the world.
The third is freedom from want -- which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants -- everywhere in the world.
The fourth is freedom from fear -- which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor-- anywhere in the world.
That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.
To that new order we oppose the greater conception -- the moral order. A good society is able to face schemes of world domination and foreign revolutions alike without fear.
Since the beginning of our American history, we have been engaged in change -- in a perpetual peaceful revolution -- a revolution which goes on steadily, quietly adjusting itself to changing conditions -- without the concentration camp or the quick-lime in the ditch. The world order which we seek is the cooperation of free countries, working together in a friendly, civilized society.
This nation has placed its destiny in the hands and heads and hearts of its millions of free men and women; and its faith in freedom under the guidance of God. Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere. Our support goes to those who struggle to gain those rights or keep them. Our strength is our unity of purpose.
To that high concept there can be no end save victory.
If you are entitled to freedom from want, then you don't owe anything to the government if you draw on its "safety net" program. You bought into the insurance program, and you are entitled to withdraw a claim if you satisfy the legal conditions for that claim. This is a larger, wider view. The 'family' is the nation itself. We are all the family. There isn't supposed to be a single monarch, because we believe in checks & balances instead.
But from the point of view of those who have paid for private benefits, the government is not only redundant - it's a rival. If you look to your family for your security and assistance, wouldn't you resent the government taking your money and making demands on you? You've got a more powerful group (and you sold your soul to buy your membership), so the US government is not wanted or needed. It is viewed as just stealing resources**, maybe even helping your family's rivals.
The big problem with the family values viewpoint is that people have forgotten their history - specifically, they have forgotten why revolutions happened in the first place. The bookstores sell fantasy after fantasy, both in the speculative fiction aisle and in the regular fiction section, and maybe even into the nonfiction section - across genres there is this pervasive fantasy of the wise, benevolent king, the lord who will seize power and then rule in such a way that we all prosper and none of us have to solve any tough problems (that's what heroes are for, after all). If only a man would rise up - sorta like Obama is doing....But the reality is, there are no benevolent kings:
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.The glorious leader's notion of the ultimate goal is his own glory, not good stewardship. And Clintonian peace and prosperity isn't what makes you "great". Great means winning wars. Great means doing really big things. How many peasants get killed in the process is really irrelevant.
Ultimately the split between the two ideologies is about how power is distributed - merit or legacy? Equality or patriarch? The truly elitist nature of the conservative is deliberately downplayed; conservatives use libertarian-sounding language to try to make privilege sound like equality. They say things like, a man ought to have freedom. He ought to be able to do whatever he likes. And really, they mean this - just look at those who argue that if Texas polygamists want to keep women and girls as pets, well, they own the women fair & square, don't they***?
And the patriarchs don't really don't care if you're gay. They don't care what you do in the bedroom. They have no problem with men cheating on their wives, or employing prostitutes, or using and discarding multiple wives. There's only one catch: don't threaten the power structure. But we don't talk about things on the taboo list so that doesn't really exist.
What they don't like to talk about so much - and herein IMO lies the mystery that is Obama - is that libertarianism, like capitalism, has winners and losers. The dirty little secret of libertarianism is that, even here in this land that prizes equality of opportunity, the winners in the Libertarian scheme are those born to affluence and power and influence. The others - the dregs, that is, lower status males and the women, they get only as much freedom as their lord & master grants to them. They are there to serve "the unit" - that is, the family (that is, the patriarch). The unit does not exist to serve them.
In fact, a lot of the lower status males are going to have to be culled somehow, because the patriarchal/tribal unit is based on one man possessing many women, and most of the resources, and that doesn't leave a lot left over for would-be rivals.
(soundtrack: Don't Give Up, Peter Gabriel - anyone remember it?)
moved on to another townThis is why Obama has to keep bringing race into it. He is keeping the low-status males focused on men of that other skin color. It's becoming increasingly obvious that the trap that was laid when the language of race first became conflated with the language of class, is reaching a sort of climactic ... yeah.
tried hard to settle down
for every job, so many men
so many men no-one needs
The opposite of this feudal structure is what I always thought of as "progressive" - you know, as in a belief that "progress" is real, that we are becoming more complex (and more civilized) as we grow. Surely a society that allows people to utilize their real talents (instead of strictly limiting females to childrearing and often stifling support roles, and deliberately blowing away most of the extra males in unnecessary warmaking) is better? Ah, but better at what? We have filled up our planet. Our increaesed efficiency is wasted on an over-full planet. We need to either expand beyond our current atmosphere - or reduce the population.
To me, this is the real ideological divide.
Michael Moore once described Bill Clinton as the best "Republican" President we've ever had. I am pretty sure I am not the first to say this, but if Bill Clinton were a Republican,I'd be one too. But Bill Clinton was only a "Republican" in the sense that "Republican" means "I think you're icky and I'm better than you". Bill Clinton is more of a Democrat than Michael Moore ever was or will be (Moore is really just bummed out because the political party he really ought to be a member of doesn't have enough people to actually win anything) .
What made Bill Clinton such a great Democratic President? He understood that what the voters believed in was the notion that all good citizens deserve a fair shake. If you are willing to work hard and play fair, you should be able to have a decent life here in this land of opportunity of ours. Bill Clinton understood this and he was able to convey that he would do his best to give this to us, and that is why he was and is adored by the people. This was so threatening to the Republicans that Newt Gingrich had to come up with his own version of the "Contract With America" to try to distract, deflect, etc. and of course the media, then and now, does everything it can to rewrite the reality.
Obama does not pretend to be a Democrat. He does not describe himself as a Democrat; when he must, he will say change the subject, describing why Democrats are weak. flawed losers, and why we must look to Republicans for greatness, leadership, and ideas. Obama does not believe in a nation that offers equality - not to women, not to gays, not even to low-status males or Appalachian "white trash". He does not believe all men are equal. He believes in his "awesome God", which is clearly the language of the Republican family values code.
There really are two kinds of Democrats - real Democrats, and those who have appropriated the Democratic "brand" (the name recognition, the assets, the party apparatus) to further the interests of the Ivy League types....
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* Liberal churches offer philosophical debate; they're proud to consider themselves as being perched atop Maslow's hierarchy, and not quite sure why attendance has been dropping off so steeply. Conservative churches offer real-world networks with their salvation - if you get in a jam, there are people, good people, who will help you find a job or pay that bill or figure out what to do or just go with you and be a moral support on the date of your son's court appearance.
** or taking your children away, in the case of that Texas polygamist family - which, incidentally, appears to have won the right to ignore the law at will. I wonder how this relates to the larger campaign to legalize polygamy.
*** And the next argument is usually to point out what a rotten job the liberals have done of fixing society, what a mess the liberals have made of child protective services, what a mess the liberals have made of the outside world where it's downright hypocritical to care about a teenager having sex in Texas when Planned Parenthood is handing out condoms over parents' objections in schools all across the nation.
And all of these charges are absolutely fair and relevant: this assault on secular liberal government is happening because the liberals screwed up, made a lot of promises and then delivered sewage instead of gold, and are still - even today - refusing to recognize (let alone take responsibility) that the reality doesn't match what was promised. The liberals were gonna save the universe, and instead they just made a mess, and the cure for today's conservative backlash is on the liberals' head - people are sick of Bush and ready for liberals to show up ready to lead, but first the liberals have got to shut up about the evils of conservatives, and they have got to fix the mess that they themeslves made. They have got to take responsibility, admit that saving the universe turns out to be a little tougher than just handing out some government cheese, and maybe stop preaching long enough to study the problems - or at least learn something about the real people in the real world who get hurt when liberals experiment and it doesn't work out right.
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