TAC: Conservatives Need A Pro-Family Agenda Beyond Tax Credits

Thumbs up.

TAC:

“All of these pushes faced strong political headwinds from self-proclaimed conservative gatekeepers at the time. But the post-Trump landscape is opening up new possibilities for ideas once thought heterodox. The recent introduction of Senator Mitt Romney’s “Family Security Act”—which would provide a universal child allowance for all families, regardless of income—was an exciting first step towards an authentically pro-family politics. If it is adopted, it would be the most constructive policy step for families in decades. Of course, it remains to be seen whether the loud, populist voices deeming the GOP a newfound “party of the working class” will put their money where their mouth is.

Battles over the family have tended to be fought on cultural grounds, not economic ones. But the two are clearly linked. Cultural libertarianism supplements economic neoliberalism when it treats all unchosen obligations as suspect, and undermines traditional institutions in the name of efficiency. 

A libertarian-infused approach gives the individual a place of primacy, promoting unencumbered liberty. Identity politics, ascendant on the left, prefers to evaluate the individual as part of his or her racial or ethnic group. Conservatives, in turn, tend to agree with the great sociologist Robert Nisbet that “family, not the individual, is the real molecule of society, the key link of the social chain of being.” This insight should guide a distinctively and authentically conservative approach to social, fiscal, and economic policy.

The unfettered individual, abstracted from the demands of being a parent, spouse, or child, is not just an ideal consumer; he or she is perfectly suited for a culture that prioritizes self-fulfillment and self-actualization. Family life, according to this worldview, is just one path among many. Why bother, progressives ask, looking at policymaking through the lens of a creaky institution that is just one path of many towards adult fulfillment? …”

Hopefully, it is a new day in the Republican Party.

There is a dawning realization that the “GOP establishment” is on life support due to the resorting of the electorate. The demographic base of the True Cons wing in the suburbs has collapsed as those people have steadily migrated over to the Democrats due to their shared lifestyle affinity for modernist and cosmopolitan values. The True Cons faction of the party is now firmly in the minority. The overwhelming majority of Republican voters are now either populists or social conservatives. Donald Trump’s acquittal like Liz Cheney’s censure will show who is really the boss in the Republican Party.

Nothing was conserved for generations except low taxes and open borders because of those people. It all goes back to the Lost Generation. The hatred and contempt that the American elite has for the masses is due to the colonization of liberalism by modernism.

I really need to resume working on my book on this subject.

Essentially, we have been living through a great cultural arc of American history that began in the 1910s with the fading of Victorianism. The American elite gradually became modernist in the 1920s and 1930s. In the aftermath of World War II, liberalism, antiracism, modernism and cosmopolitanism became a bipartisan consensus which was upheld and enforced by the professional managerial class that lives in the big metro areas and wealthy suburbs and has dominated both political parties. Modernist values trickled down from the postwar American elite through the mass media and the expansion of higher education. Modernism is now so widespread today in America that it has become invisible.

These cultures have a lifespan though and America’s “mainstream” culture has grown toxic. We are facing a sterile population, national disintegration, an oligarchy that lords it over the public, the collapse of the family, a debauched culture, the total collapse of trust in institutions, balkanization, polarization, etc. The symptoms are obvious to everyone. It is all different facets of the same underlying cultural disease. The whole “trans” phenomenon is but one example of modernism (the romanticization of consciousness and the interior self as “authentic”) in an extremely toxic and declining phase. Just as romanticism turned toxic in the World Wars, we’ve arrived at a similar point with modernism which is unraveling nations.

The explosion of nationalism and populism in the West is due to mounting cultural and economic distress in the working class and lower middle class and anger at unaccountable elites. It is important to recognize though that what is driving it is not anything like the cultural atmosphere that preceded the World Wars. Romanticism was an integrating force that was projected outward and united elites with the masses. Modernism is a disintegrating force that is turned inward and alienates elites from the masses. The disconnect between modernist elites and the economy which is rigged to suit them and their creed of political correctness and the masses whom they plunder and demonize generates populism.

This is a long winded way of saying that dropping the load of those people on the Right and the possibility of reforming a mere child tax credit represents a huge step forward. They’ve been the real obstacle to addressing systemic problems and reversing course all along.

A conservative version of the New Deal is needed to replace culturally what has been eroded by modernism and economically by neoliberalism. I have no idea how to proceed on the cultural front. How do you rebuild decades of cultural erosion in everything from religion to morals to identity? How do you cleanse the universities and media of political correctness and wokeness and reprogram professionals?

About Hunter Wallace 12379 Articles
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Occidental Dissent

13 Comments

  1. Re: the illustration. What is with those 50s and 60s ads with the dad wearing a suit and tie AT HOME? WTF? I bet no one did that at the time. The most a dad would do at home, then as now, is to wear a collared shirt with no tie and non-working man pants. Madison Avenue was artificial and evil, just like its successor.

    • @ fomzy, sir, before whites, scampered off to the suburbs, when the cities were still white, people were much more formal, there were absolutes, standards = quality, which are people and culture sorely lack, i will give you one example of the difference between now and then, in those days when you turned eighteen years old, you were expected to act like a man, also, too be a mental weakling was considered shameful. Too be physically out of shape, too be unkempt in appearance, to be unemployed, was considered shameful, excuses didn’t go very far, in those days, when our people left the cities for the burbs, in a way we collectively let our guard down, we lost our.edge.

      • Yeah, standards etc. But I was talking about wearing a suit and tie at home. That’s ghey and LARPish, and it was then, too. “Honey, I’m wearing a suit and tie because Mr. Baxter might come over to discuss the Silverman account. Make sure we have that tea he likes, and ladyfingers.” That never happened IRL, it’s TV BS, then and now.

  2. What exactly does the (((Democratic Party))) offer the Historic Native Born White Christian American Working Class Majority?

    Answer:WHITE FUCKING GENOCIDE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    WHITE FUCKING GENOCIDE

    WHITE FUCKING GENOCIDE

    WHITE FUCKING GENOCIDE

  3. Socialism gave us the 1883 CHINESE LEGAL IMMIGRANT EXCLUSION ACT…..Wasn’t that wonderfull!!!!!

    Of Course, The CAPITALIST PIG CLASS opposed the 1883 CHINESE LEGAL IMMIGRANT EXCLUSION ACT…..

  4. (((Democratic Party))) FAMILY VALUES:”If it’s a White Infant….stomp on it with a ((( JACKBOOT)))!!!!!!!

    • To ask is to answer. Willard never gave a straight answer as to how he made his obscene fortune. He meandered on about Staples, Inc. and spoke vagaries about “consulting”, whatever that was but never gave a straight answer. Willard made most of his fortune by helping corporate raiders loot companies and sell off assets. What was left after paying themselves a fortune wasn’t enough for employees and retirees who caught it in the neck so Willard and his pals could get filthy richer.

      When Willard became Governor of Massachusetts the Goodridge v. Dept. of Public Health case came before the State Supreme Court legalizing gay marriage. A liberal Jewish woman judge on the State Supreme Court who was sympathetic to the gays wrote publicly that the case before the bar should be rejected. It clearly violated black letter law, the State Constitution and laws going back to when the Crown ruled the colony. There was also no public impetus for the change. It was strictly wealthy, powerful fags manipulating the system.

      The State Constitution gave Governor Romney the power to flat out reject the case from consideration, something he was urged to do by Catholic and Protestant clergy and others. This would have required the thoroughly corrupt legislature to take up the issue, something they were loathe to do and gay “marriage” would have failed. Mitt was looking at the White House so he punted, did nothing, hoped the issue would fade away but instead one of the most pernicious movements in recent memory triumphed.

      The irony is that had Willard done the right thing he would have burnished his conservative credentials and he might have been elected President in 2012. Willard didn’t have the right thing in him though, he was a piece of shit from the beginning.

  5. I’ve been thinking for quite awhile that the government in Washington is hopelessly corrupt and incompetent. Much of it isn’t even elected, judges and what is ludicrously known as the intelligence community. Why couldn’t the conservative parts of the country form their own central banks? What do you really need besides printing presses, and computers? They create dollars out of nothing. Why couldn’t Florida Texas and other states do it?

    Forming a new system, money is going to always be a major concern.

    I believe a breakaway from Washington is going to have to happen at some point, or the donor class and other assorted nigger lovers will wreak what’s left of the country.

  6. Why do you keep confusing support for Donald Trump as the new GOP base being populist?
    All that really happened long term was the GOP absorbing the socially conservative Southern Dems from the 90s, while not making enough gains elsewhere to make up for demographic changes.
    A good chunk of Trump enthusiasts are upper middle class people who benefit off his fiscal conservatism. If the economically populist shit were so important to Trump voters, they would not have rallied behind Trump (a billionaire from New York) in the first place.
    You have posted the snapshot numerous times of Trump’s record being MORE fiscally conservatism than Reagan, yet the supposed “populist” base still worships Trump.
    It’s not about populism or policy at all, it’s about worship of Donald Trump.

  7. Populists like to portray libertarians as autistic idealists while constantly complaining about the negative effects of libertarianism.

    Why do so many people complain about libertarianism if it’s not real or serious?

  8. If you want a vigourous fertility rate, a strong Welfare State will doesn’t help you at all.

    Europeans country have the best redistribution system and best GINI index of the world. Their TFR is barely 1,6 child by woman. Same thing in authoritarian and nationalist countries of Asia.

    Maybe the problem is elsewhere. Maybe kids are just losing their usefulness in a post-industrial consumerist society.

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