One of the most vital, enduring and, more recently, VILIFIED institutions we have in this nation is the FAMILY. Families include parents, grandparents, husbands, wives, brothers and sisters, children, cousins, nieces and nephews and so on, ad infinitum.
For example, my family consisted of my grandparents on my mother’s side, occasional visits from my paternal grandmother and uncles and aunts, great aunts, my siblings (I grew up with seven brothers and six sisters; one sister passed away about ten or eleven years ago) and numerous cousins, all located within 45-50 miles of us. We were relatively tight, though my father’s kin were scattered about the country a good bit. My mother’s family was largely who was close by.
We lived in a rather large house owned by my maternal grandfather. He was rather crusty and curmudgeonly, but was a gentleman of the OLD school. He and my grandmother lived upstairs in that old house, my aunt (mom’s youngest sister) and her three kids (two boys and a girl) lived in the back of the upstairs, my mom’s older sister lived with her cats in a small apartment over the store that was part of the complex and was at varying times, a convenience store, ice creamery, pizza place and so forth. We had a large back yard where I and one of my cousins would play a lot… the small toy soldiers of the day in green plastic always got a good workout when we were younger. As we got a bit older, I recall that they started dying in various imaginative ways, depending on what stolen goodies we had that could either melt them or simply blow off limbs and body parts.
My uncle, mom’s only brother would come over every weekend and he and his oldest son would spend hours playing pinochle with Gramps. It was fairly idyllic in those days. WWII was well past, Korea was over and Eisenhower was President. We, as family, were pretty tight and there was precious little we wouldn’t do, one for the other. Oh, and as unusual as it was, we were not Catholic, though I got asked that often when the topic of family size came up. In fact, I was raised in the Baptist Church and still carry fond memories of our pastor, one of the later assistant pastors and a lot of the membership.
Franklin Roosevelt efforts to disrupt the family structure and create a dependency on government with his Social Insecurity program
Of course there were problems; NO family can exist without them. But my main point here is that families were, as late as the 1950s, the foundation on which this nation was built. True enough, during the 1930s and 1940s, efforts were made by the notorious Franklin Roosevelt to disrupt the family structure and create a dependency on government with his Social Insecurity program, which discouraged family cohesion, thrift and planning during a seriously bad time nationally, the Great Depression, Round One.
My wife comes from Jamaica. Her father made a name for himself from about his fourteenth birthday, when he had to strike out on his own. He became quite successful and raised essentially two families. The first was several sons and daughters from his first wife; after her death, he married my wife’s mother and raised about nine MORE kids, my wife being the first of this group. He had some strict rules for the family to follow, and under those guidelines he took GREAT care of them. He passed away right around my wife’s twentieth birthday, but to this day, the family is the foundation for Jamaicans, just as it used to be for us. And one other, VERY important point here: there are NO hyphenated Jamaicans. Even though you will find ancestries going back to India, China, Scotland, Germany, various African nations, England and so forth, they are all now ONE nationality: Jamaican, mon!
So, though there are socialists in Jamaica trying hard to ruin THEIR family structure, it seems that they are having less success than here. We have been in the “Progressive” crosshairs for well over a century, starting out with the Prussian model of public “education,’ designed, according to Horace Mann, one of its leading proponents, to turn out good little citizens, who would bear allegiance to the State, rather than to their families. Now, it’s good to love your country. However, government does NOT equate to country except to Statists, to whom government is synonymous to everything they consider “good.” Of course they only consider government GOOD if THEY control its reins and if all the rest of us are controlled BY those reins. The government given us by the Founders, who had just thrown off a tyrannical monarchy, was so limited as to be laughable. Yet from the first there were those who wanted a MUCH stronger central government. Alexander Hamilton even wanted a monarchy HERE. Thank God he was overruled by the good sense of Paine, Madison, Jefferson, et. al.
The closest we’ve come to royalty here is the Kennedy clan, though I believe with the passing of their “Patriarch,” Edward M., they will become far less relevant than they already were. At least I am hopeful that this will be the case. They are one family that rose to a prominence they never deserved, based on an ambitious father who made his fortune as a bootlegger/smuggler, rose to prominence as Ambassador to the Court of St. James (England) just prior to World War II, was a Nazi sympathizer, and parlayed all that into getting his number two son, Jack, into politics after the war. (He lost his firstborn, Joseph, who was killed in action over Europe.) Of the Kennedy boys, the LEAST desirable one to have in any position of power was the youngest, Ted. Yet he spent forty years in the Senate AFTER killing an aide in a purported accident. He had his hand slapped with an INFRACTION, yet Mary Jo Kopechne is still dead.
But enough of the BAD example. Let’s consider how we can maintain some GOOD examples of family life to counteract the plots and plans of the Left. If you read the comments posted on my last article, on morality, we had a brief discussion on some steps to take to counter the influence of the Left on our kids. Today I want to delve deeper into that discussion, for the benefit of those who don’t read the comments section.
Mind you, now, I am addressing this primarily to Conservative Christians and Jews, the ones whose ethical system was the underpinning of this Republic. For those of you of other persuasions, yet who would call yourselves Conservative, you can modify this to suit your spiritual beliefs (or lack thereof).
First, is to join with like-minded people. A Bible-believing Church or Conservative Synagogue is a great start. When you walk in and it feels like being home, then you ARE home. You are among folks who share your values. Next, consider either home-schooling your kids or sending them to a private secular or religious school that shares your values and that takes pride in giving its charges, your kids, a well-rounded and thorough education. You might even consider forming a co-op school with your friends and neighbors, in order to give the kids a proper education and much less of an indoctrination into Leftist “values.” They are YOUR kids, YOUR responsibility. YOU must step up and be their PARENTS. You must share your values with them, you must LIVE your values so that they shine through you and your kids and those around you can SEE your values reflected in your life. That is the biggest single factor in maintaining the family as the bedrock of the Republic.
Born Upstate New York, served in the Marine Corps from 1967-1993. Currently living in Northern California’s Bay Area. Married to a most wonderful woman and we have two outstanding sons and three grandkids. to whom I wish to hand a FREE America, as it once was. My family’s been in this country since before it was a country and has been a part of the growth of the nation since its birth. I am a PROUD (non-hyphenated) AMERICAN.
