Dysfunctional Governments and Dysfunctional Families

The majority of world governments are dysfunctional. They promote lies, mass delusions, propaganda, to their people. They do not respect human dignity and human rights. They do not practice social justice—that is, merit is not reliably rewarded. 

In my youth, there was the Soviet sphere, and the Third Word, and only a rough third of the world was “free.” and free of corruption to a dysfunctional level. It might seem that things have improved since the fall of the Soviet bloc; but it seems to me that things have been getting worse quickly in some of the supposedly “freest” countries: Canada, the UK, France, Australia, Germany. And until the modern era, there were no or almost no “free” countries. All governments were dysfunctional.

The Gospel warns of this: the Devil is the prince of “this world.” Government is better than no government, but government is given over to Satan.

The great value of studying history is that there you see the human truths writ large. The state is a proxy for the family; which is why we speak of “patriotism”—from the word “pater,” “father.”

So the lesson of history and politics is that most families, similarly, are dysfunctional. They promote shared delusions; they are not nurturing; they do not reward merit.

By my reading of the Old Testament, the inevitable failure of the family is the conduit for original sin: “the sins of the father are visited on the sons unto the fourth generation.” All the families of the patriarchs are obviously dysfunctional. Abraham abandons his son Ishmael, and is ready to slaughter his son Isaac. Isaac plays favourites between Jacob and Esau. Jacob plays favourites between Joseph and his brothers. Lot sleeps with his daughters. Noah curses his son Ham. Eve tempts her husband Adam into sin. The Bible is making a point, if subtly. Let those who have eyes to see, see.

Richard Mackenzie, who grew up in an orphanage, thought his own childhood without a family had been pleasant enough. And he became a successful economist. So he decided to investigate, using the economist’s toolset. What did he find out?

“Alumni [of orphanages] reported that they had done better than the general population on almost all measures, including education, income, attitude toward life, criminal records, psychological problems, unemployment, dependence on welfare, and happiness…. The alumni reported that they had an overall college graduation rate 39 percent higher than the general population in their age group … They also reported 10 to 60 percent higher median incomes than those in their age cohort. ”

Twice as many said they were satisfied with their own lives, and twice as many felt they had achieved “the American Dream.” 

Shocking? But that was the data. 

Accordingly, associating Christian values with “family values” seems diabolical. Just as we should not idolize the state, we should not idolize the family.