Liberals make lousy parents

Parenting is a difficult job. Parents must be at once a teacher, a moralist, a care-giver, a confidant and role model. If through these duties, they impart self-discipline, responsibility and integrity, they have done everything possible to instill the character traits that will empower their children for a life of dignity.

Over the past century, the government has increasingly taken on a more parental role in the nation. Whether this is a legitimate job for government is a topic for another day. But since the state has assumed the role as parent to us all, it is important to discern how well it is doing. In this assessment, let’s also examine how the different strategies of the two major political parties are working. Simply put, who are better parents – Liberals or Conservatives?

First we must agree that the crucial purpose of parenting is to prepare children to be happy, successful and compassionate adults. We must also admit that parents sometimes fail at this mission. And that failure can always be traced back to the effectiveness of their strategies.

In its presumptive parental role, government faces the same difficulties as birth parents exacerbated by the lack of personal contact with its children. And like an absent parent, it is often put in the untenable position of being either the distant disciplinarian or the absent benefactor. In either case, the preeminent necessity of effective parenting is missing: rapport. Without rapport, the disciplinarian is resented, circumvented or ignored; the benefactor is resented, manipulated and disrespected. And when parents disagree as to their parenting strategy, their resentful, manipulative and unruly children play them against one another.

Politicians generally practice two distinct styles of parenting: the “permissive” and the “disciplinarian.” Lacking rapport, their effectiveness is limited at the start. But any successful parent will point out that the long-term drawbacks of permissiveness far exceed the difficulties encountered by the disciplinarian. Permissiveness trades temporary “purchased compliance” for the promotion of sound character that is the ultimate result of instilling discipline.

With a few exceptions, we can call Liberals permissive parents and Conservatives disciplinarians. Permissiveness is all about unconditional acceptance, care-giving, blanket forgiveness and pampering. Discipline is about morality, behavioral self-control, practical instruction and instilling personal responsibility and self-reliance.

As any family who has struggled to balance permissiveness and discipline will attest, the permissive parent is usually the most popular. The disciplinarian is usually most despised. But since a fundamental tenet of responsible parenting holds that parents must do what best for the child in the long run; and that parenting is not about popularity but about preparing children for responsible adulthood, the disciplinarian – while sometimes painted as the bad guy ultimately does what is best – and eventually receives the respect, appreciation and affection that the permissive parent tries to obtain by shirking their parental duties.

Some examples of the parenting style of Liberals and Conservatives are:

Procreative responsibility:

• Liberals promote procreative irresponsibility by advocating birth control up to and including abortion for minors. For those who survive the abortionists gauntlet, this teaches that one may act on any random impulse, quench any craving and act with total abandon, and the consequences will be borne by someone else.

• Conservatives promote procreative responsibility by advocating abstinence and denying abortion as a means of transferring the costs of irresponsible sex to the unborn child. This teaches restraint, self-control, considering the long-term consequences on one’s self and others for one’s choices.

Discipline:

• Liberals fabricate a variety of contrived excuses for irresponsible behavior, under the umbrella of “social injustice;” transferring the responsibility from individuals to the society. Of course this creates an excuse for their plethora of “social engineering” schemes.

• Conservatives promote the importance of teaching morality and thoughtfulness, and the importance of personal responsibility for one’s behavior and allowing individuals to directly receive the consequences of their own choices; positive or negative. This requires no “social engineering,” just good teaching, responsible parenting, and objective law.

Economics:

• Liberals blame the rich, corporations and unequal opportunities for economic failure – everyone but the individual. Once again (do you see a pattern developing?) this provides an opportunity for wealth redistribution, progressive taxation, Affirmative Action quotas, Welfare, Food Stamps, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, sloppy immigration controls, yada, yada, yada.

• Conservatives promote self-sufficiency, thrift, financial discipline and innovation to promote economic success (you know, all the things that actually create real wealth). Again, this process when coupled with real property rights and impartial justice provides all any person needs to reach their own highest level of economic well-being without any outside intervention.

This list could go on to enumerate all the various topics that currently plague our nation. In each case we could deduce how permissiveness destroys the qualities necessary to real happiness and success, and how discipline nurtures the very best in each of us. But this list incorporates all the essential qualities that in one way or another apply to all the others.

While the disciplinarian may not be the “fun” parent; they are ultimately the “only” parent in this comparison. The permissive parent may be fun, easy and forgiving, but in the end they raise children wholly ill-equipped to live as responsible adults in the real world.

More simply put: Liberals make lousy parents.

Considering that Liberalism has dominated American politics for the last century, the permissive parenting model has created a nation dominated by irrational, unruly children with no objective moral discipline and a surly sense of entitlement. Is it any wonder the family is now destitute and an embarrassment to the neighborhood?