Liberals: Do you really hate the traditional family? - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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Modern liberalism. Civil rights and liberties, State responsibility to the people (welfare).
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#13537242
The vast majority of conservative thinkers and intellectuals have said yes, and have provided strong arguments to support their assessments.

I just want to hear a liberal perspective, do you think the world would be better off if families in the traditional sense didn’t exist? If so, why? If not, why?

Also, when I say "liberal" I mean anyone who does not fit into the American definition of conservative: Anti-Gay marriage, Anti-abortion and often says "It's time we put God back in *insert country here*." If these do not reflect your views than you are more than qualified to answer my question.
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By Nattering Nabob
#13537295
According to conservatives, liberals have a different definition of "family"...

This does not mean liberals do not value the nuclear family...

Anyone who claims liberals "hate" the nuclear family is a troll...
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By ThereBeDragons
#13537298
The traditional family is a perfectly acceptable unit of society.

Whathastobedone wrote:I just want to hear a liberal perspective, do you think the world would be better off if families in the traditional sense didn’t exist? If so, why? If not, why?

I would have to think about that one. What would it be replaced with?
By Whathastobedone
#13537312
ThereBeDragons wrote:I would have to think about that one. What would it be replaced with?


I don't know, I'm not liberal. I was hoping the anti-family left could tell me.
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By ThereBeDragons
#13537333
Off the top of my head two alternative basic units of society besides the traditional Western family, there are societies where the basic unit of organization is the extended kin group, or the clan group (where responsibility for say, raising children, is undertaken collectively). These methods of organization have their advantages and disadvantages and I can't really say that one of these is a "better" model than another.
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By Cartertonian
#13537361
Nat wrote:Anyone who claims liberals "hate" the nuclear family is a troll...

This.

Clearly I am the antithesis of an American conservative (thank God), yet I head a traditionalist, 'nuclear' household. The difference is that whilst that lifestyle is my choice, I reject the arrogance of the American right in their assumption that any other choice is deviant and should not be tolerated.
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By Rei Murasame
#13537384
Since this topic is a radical topic, I'll give an equally radical response:
Whathastobedone wrote:The vast majority of conservative thinkers and intellectuals have said yes, and have provided strong arguments to support their assessments.

I spit on their arguments:

The vast majority of those supposed intellectuals also refuse to use the power of State to defend that which they profess to care about, they instead advocate using it to prescribe just one type of family, "The Traditional Family" which is a selfish little isolated bubble with a mortgaged little suburban home and a neatly tended back garden - doubtless trimmed by an illegal immigrant - and 2.5 children who grow up and learn how to kill themselves on the Western Diet.

The father is an unhappy grasping person with an inferiority complex, trying desperately to live vicariously through his children's careers because his lack of decent education in his own youth. He drowns his sense of emptiness and his alienation from his own low-wage work and his disconnect from the land of his ancestors in alcohol, and then beats the hell out of his wife while in a drunken stupor at least once a week. He is never going to pay off the mortgage on his house, which is just one other way that the bankers will be raping him. This knowledge gnaws at his mind every night before he goes to sleep. He prays to the masculine father-figure deity that he was taught to worship in his youth, for some sort of intervention.

He finds that in his adulthood he is more fervent in his faith than he was in his teenage years - this is part of crisis where he desperately needs to talk to someone who can help him, but in this society that would be seen as weakness, so his only resort is the distant father-figure deity who never answers, but he 'feels in his heart' that the father-figure deity telling him to suck it up and 'man up' and accept that it's just how the Free Market works. By 'feels in his heart' he means that he heard it at Church last week.

The mother is a timid and simpering mouse of a woman, she displayed some talent in her youth, but this was suppressed by the patriarchal structure which wanted her to instead use her time cleaning up for and catering to men in domestic situations. This suppression was compounded by the religion of the masculine father-figure which always told her she was inferior and second-best, and that any ideas of superiority she might be harbouring, should be abandoned. She instead chose to channel those feelings of superiority into small and petty acts of cruelty to animals as a result.

She despises her existence, spending most of her days locked in nostalgia for a childhood she never really enjoyed, and so she fabricates her own memories in some vain attempt to embellish her own past - but since she knows it's a lie and why she is lying to herself, that only makes her more and more unhappy.

She is planning to kill herself. The next time that her husband gets drunk and raises his hand to her, she will pull use her Smith and Wesson pistol and shoot him three times in the chest before using the fourth bullet on herself.

The government has just passed a budget to cut social services funding, it's announced on TV, the TV that is always switched on, 24/7. She doesn't care now, nothing matters anymore, because soon she will finally be free to walk through the door, and the key to that door is loaded and in her hand.

Whathastobedone wrote:do you think the world would be better off if families in the traditional sense didn’t exist?

The traditional family doesn't exist, it's a disastrous arrangement that you arbitrarily decided was traditional, when in fact it was created in the modern era as a response to industrialisation. It needed to be altered as society evolved, but you people arbitrarily decided to put the brake on that, so people are still expected to be living in family units exactly like it's the 1950s, even though it is not 1950 and we know more than they knew then, and we have greater resources at our disposal for managing families than ever before.

If we actually allowed you to continue to enforce the 'traditional family', then that cynical little story I made up at the beginning of this post would become a more and more prevalent reality.

Whathastobedone wrote:If not, why?

Because it takes a community to socialise young new citizens, and because families (with an 's') come in various shapes and sizes. Some of that socialisation will involve Local Social Services Authorities, Schools, and the State.

Whathastobedone wrote:I just want to hear a liberal perspective

I'm not a Liberal.

Whathastobedone wrote:Anti-Gay marriage

I have no problem with gay marriage.

Whathastobedone wrote:Anti-abortion

I fully support abortion, and the ability of a woman to make that decision at any time for any reason, because women are the mate-selectors, and women are the guardians of the population group and should be able to decide what will or will not be born.

Whathastobedone wrote:and often says "It's time we put God back in *insert country here*."

Which god?
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By Jordan9
#13537420
Liberals don't "hate" the traditional family, AFAIK. But there is a huge divide between what American conservatives say about families and what they do about families. Ever notice how a lot of conservatives are adamantly opposed to abortion and welfare? It's disgusting.

"Young, unwed, uneducated woman! Don't you dare abort that baby! It's a precious human!"

"Well, um... ok. Can I maybe get some help, though? I'd really like to finish school-"

"No, you commie!"

"It's just that raising a baby takes time and effort, especially alone."

"I did it! You're just lazy!"

It literally makes my stomach churn with revulsion. I am reminded of what Obama said in a Time magazine article... Something about "policies that value families" vs. "family values policies." Liberals don't hate the family, they're just skeptical that American conservatives actually care about it the way they say they do.
By Rich
#13537520
Well as a Godly person. I'm pro Death when it comes to abortion and don't support the State's right to choose like so called Conservatives do. Firstly there's nothing in any of the monotheistic scriptures that supports the fetishisation of embryonic human life. Quite the reverse. When God ordered the Israelites to slaughter the Canaanite Men, Women, children and Babies, there must have been pregnant women so he must have wanted the unborn children slaughter as well. From a naturalistic perspective. God terminates 50% of all pregnancies, he clearly doesn't want us to see human life a sacred.

On the family, the traditional western family has a lot of advantages for society, but if we're going to be pro family we need to throw Christian morality into the garbage bin. Read the Christian scriptures, they have no interest in the family what so ever. They are superficially anti sex but in fact provide a perfect cover for dressing up homosexuality or Peodosexuality as spiritual purity, as we see so well with the Catholic priesthood. The Protestant family thing like the work ethic is completely alien to the original Christian message. The Gospels and acts promote a Communist message, which the Monastic orders tried to follow, Communist systems if ever there were any.

Go into a Catholic church. Take a good long look at Jesus in his loin cloth on the Cross. Now come back and tell me that's not a sado masochistic, homo erotic fantasy. If you read Paul with his obsession with humiliation you'll see where the fantasy comes from.
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By Paradigm
#13537528
George Lakoff believes that political differences often come down to two different cognitive metaphors of family: the strict father metaphor and the nurturant parent metaphor. No one's psychology is composed purely of one or the other, but conservatives tend to be more influenced by the strict father metaphor while liberals tend to be more influenced by the nurturant parent metaphor. The strict father metaphor emphasizes strict discipline, punishment for stepping out of line, and an emphasis on group conformity. The nurturant parent metaphor emphasizes compassion, understanding, and tolerance. Both of these models are "traditional family." Both of them go back to the beginnings of humankind.

Basically, the simplest answer I can give to this question is that I don't consider hate to be a traditional family value.
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By Negotiator
#13537628
LOL. Yeah. The "conservatives" "love" the family. So much ! LOL !

Thats why they do all the things like: kill the welfare state, ask the parents to be "flexible" with work, fail to provide good schools, and so on and so forth.

If anyone does actually something for families, then its the liberals, not the conservatives.

All the conservatives do for families, traditional or not, is lip service.
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By Invictus_88
#13537764
It's one hell of a coup the American neoconservatives have pulled off here, persuading people that the nuclear family is a "traditional" and "natural" arrangement.

This couldn't be further from the truth, and yet it comes back, presented in that same way over and over again.
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By Invictus_88
#13537774
Negotiator wrote:LOL. Yeah. The "conservatives" "love" the family. So much ! LOL !

Thats why they do all the things like: kill the welfare state, ask the parents to be "flexible" with work, fail to provide good schools, and so on and so forth.

If anyone does actually something for families, then its the liberals, not the conservatives.

All the conservatives do for families, traditional or not, is lip service.


As far as I can tell, both sides do their damage.

Neoconservative emphasis on the nuclear family cuts people off from natural extended family ties and makes the unit much more geographically mobile, much more socially isolated, and consequently much more easily exploited by industry and commerce.

Liberal detraction from the importance of personal role models, father figures, structure, and order tends to destabilise the natural structures in which healthy families develop, and the liberal keenness to defend the status of single mothers, homosexuals, transsexuals (etc) blows those issues out of all proportion to their actual importance and distracts from the importance of the relationships that most people form and most people rely on (ie: monogamous heterosexuality).

Neither of the two sides which prevail in US politics can claim the family for their own. In their own ways, they are both enemies of the family.
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By ThereBeDragons
#13537778
I thought the nuclear family actually was a traditional arrangement for Americans, except with like, five children instead of two and a half.
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By ex-rep
#13538005
The vast majority of conservative thinkers and intellectuals have said yes, and have provided strong arguments to support their assessments.
The vast majority and you couldn't provide one link? One Ann Coulter rant does not a majority make.
I just want to hear a liberal perspective, do you think the world would be better off if families in the traditional sense didn’t exist? If so, why? If not, why?
This is a non-issue from a liberal perspective. Liberals aren't against a "traditional" family. They are against the idea that this is the only kind of family. If a liberal (or anyone else) chooses to live in a different way than you, it doesn't necessarily mean they "hate" your way or the traditional way. It just means that they think their way is a better fit for them. I don't wear suspenders. They don't really fit my style. It doesn't mean I hate them.

You make conservative thinker sound like an oxymoron.

The "hate" is coming from the conservatives (and not necessarily the thinking ones). You hate that liberals don't agree with your myopic worldview.

While I'm kicking myself for even responding to this silly post, I couldn't let myself slide by with a simple, "Rei! What an incredible post! :lol: " -post. I have to save those for days when I don't have time to write anything.
By Decky
#13547288
Also, when I say "liberal" I mean anyone who does not fit into the American definition of conservative:


Why call these people liberals? That is not what it means.
By Rich
#13547382
Hang on a minute, I'm no expert on the history of the family, but my understanding is that the nuclear family existed in large parts of pre industrial Europe. There were significant differences in family structure prior to industrialisation.
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By Headache
#13554612
I'm a "non-conservative" and I don't hate anything to be honest. "Liberals" are the most accepting group of people there are, so how do Conservatives think that they hate or are against anything? Just seems like Fox News indoctrination to me. Actually I forgot. I hate Fox News. They lie about everything (case in point this thread). That's better.
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By Negotiator
#13558068
I wouldnt go so far as to claim "liberals dont hate".

I definitely hate the conservative attitude of basing their world views around fear.
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