Modern Conservative Values

Rob Henderson writes:

One piece of inherited wisdom is the value of the two-parent family. It’s not fashionable to talk about this. How people raise their children is a matter of preference. But it is not really up for debate that the two-parent home is, on average, better for children. …

Along with taking accumulated wisdom seriously, I understand conservative philosophy to mean that the role of the individual in making decisions and undertaking obligations is paramount. Individuals have rights. But they also have responsibilities. …

My adoptive mother and her partner raised me from middle school through high school in the early to mid-2000s in a rural California town called Red Bluff. They made a stable home for me. … Though they experienced homophobia and struggled financially, they never let it get in the way of doing the right thing for their son.

7 Comments for “Modern Conservative Values”

  1. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    If today that makes me a conservative, great. I take responsibility for that.

    WTF? Since when do conservatives believe that stable two-parent families provide a better environment for children than single-parent families and foster care, and liberals don’t?

    Henderson has constructed a strawman the size of Godzilla.

    But if that is the excuse he needs to hold hands with Tony Perkins and pretend he’s all about “family values”, God bless him.

    • posted by GregoryG on

      Since when do conservatives believe that stable two-parent families provide a better environment for children than single-parent families and foster care, and liberals don’t?

      Since Murphy Brown, at least.

      Katie Roiphe, In Defense of Single Motherhood.

  2. posted by Kosh III on

    IF two are better than one, than Henderson, Miller etc should convert to Islam so that they can have 4 wives—5 is better than 2!
    Or Colorado City AZ to join the polygamous LDS–20 trumps 2.

  3. posted by Lori Heine on

    IGF is going to go the way of Gay Patriot–and soon.

    It isn’t that there are fewer conservatives than in the past. Actually, the ranks of the political Right are swelling. It’s that conservatism has largely moved beyond kissing the butts of religious frauds and lunatics.

    Like many right-of-center LGBT Americans, I’m no longer willing to sit passively by while I’m lied about. Slander is not okay with me, nor are straw-manning or distortions of the truth.

    There are other options, now, for homocons. We no longer need to kiss the butts of religious charlatans. And those in the conservative media who fail to grasp this are going to go the way of the dodo.

    • posted by JohnInCA on

      I hope you’re right Lori.

  4. posted by Jorge on

    A mother/stepmother household that only comes into being about when a boy reaches adolescence has the same effect as an “intact” family?

    That’s steel.

    WTF? Since when do conservatives believe that stable two-parent families provide a better environment for children than single-parent families and foster care, and liberals don’t?

    There’s so many options to choose from it’s hard to pick just one.

    A) When the word “bastard” fell into disfavor

    B) Around the time of increasing awareness of domestic violence. A host of sins became added up and attributed to men, causing the devaluing of manhood. Fatherhood fell along with it.

    And we yanked the children from their mothers because they thought fatherhood was more important than physical and emotional safety.

    C) Once divorce was no longer stigmatized.

    D) Once white women entered the workforce.

    E) Once Ronald Reagan disparaged the welfare queen. Liberals were so outraged at its racist overtones they turned away from social responsibility.

    The truth, of course, is not that liberals do not believe in conservative social ends–who doesn’t? It’s that they have very little stomach for making sacrifices for social stability, especially when it’s other people who pay the unpleasant social costs*. For just one person to be railroaded by the system is an abomination for which there must be a reckoning. That kind of thinking has a price.

    *: This reluctance on liberals’ part for other people to pay for one’s desired social ends does not extend to their own preferred social and economic goals. Liberals will sell out their own mamas in the name of social justice for some strange reason, and eat their own children in the name of economic justice.

  5. posted by David Bauler on

    And he said, “the aristocracy”…..

Comments are closed.