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COMMENTARY
April 9, 2011
A woman's right
Should the government be telling us how to live? Or should we be telling the government?Expressed baldly like that, I dare say many of my gentle readers would opt for, "We tell the government." And according to the older school of constitutional thought, we have elections in which our instructions are made known. This is indeed what the Tea Party is all about, south of the border: "Now we will speak, and you will listen." A proponent of the Nanny State (as I like to call it, without any flattering intention) will quickly see that he has "a problem with this." In the strange, demented universe of post-modern liberal thought, it is "more complicated than that." Perhaps the simplest way to express the root alternative idea is: "The people tell the government what to tell the people." We vote for the forms of coercion we would prefer. Hence, for instance, a tax code that seriously penalizes one-income families -by pretending that the family does not exist. The single wage-earner (the father, in a traditional household) is taxed as if he were a merry bachelor, enjoying the carefree life. The tables are suddenly turned if his wife throws him out, in which case, the Family Responsibility Office (or equivalent) suddenly comes calling to collect from him, just as if he had been a care-worn traditional father all along. He now gets scotched by the tax department as if he were a merry bachelor, and simultaneously, scotched for spousal and child support. Let me not apologize for that last insinuation. Our tax code has everything to do with our societal propensity to demographic extinction. It helps destroy families in two major ways (and many minor ones for which we won't have space). It forces the mother of small children to work for a second (heavily taxed) family income. Then, offers her the alternative of becoming a "welfare mom" -effectively a ward of the state, but with the bill sent these days to anything that looks like an ex-husband. Fatherless households, with or without angry mothers, are in turn the source of so many of the children we do have: the ones who have survived the abortion mills. Those, of a certain age, acquainted with the modern schoolyard, will have noticed the general tendency toward juvenile delinquency. Though, overall crime rates balance out, thanks to the diminishing number of juveniles, as a proportion of our aging population. The tax code isn't, of course, the only cause contributing to this demographic, social, and moral disaster. The "culture of death" is also communicated through mass media and entertainment industries, and catered to by every sort of commercial advertising. Yet the tax code is the principal originating cause. Over many decades, it has facilitated the Nanny State, by treating citizens as income-earning atoms. The capitalists feed upon conditions in the resulting market, wherein everyone is an atomized consumer, living narcissistically for the day. It is against this very real background that the Harper government has proposed the one thing that looks like a serious policy proposal in the current general election campaign. It is to change the tax code to reduce the penalty on one-income families. I'll leave the technical description of this "income splitting" to the tax experts and policy wonks. Naturally, the feminists, and all other "progressive" people, are outraged by a scheme that would reduce this penalty. A woman's place is in the workforce, according to the received progressive view; which holds that men and women must be treated as interchangeable; which makes children, by extension, discardable lifestyle options. (See rude reference to abortion mills, above.) That is why the last Pope called it the "culture of death." By contrast, the "culture of life," to which humans are called by nature -often in the face of social engineering -envisions a world in which mothers and children play an important, and often the commanding part. In other words, a world that is not essentially sterile. I do not think it is the function of the State to impose, or re-impose, the old order. Indeed, I do not think it is the function of the State to impose any social order, but instead to accommodate. Call me a revolutionary anarchist if you wish. Uncoerced, I think that old "culture of life" would quickly re-establish itself. In this I am in complete agreement with the most radical feminists, for they evidently agree that coercion is necessary to maintain a world in which women cannot find fulfilment, except through a "career." Let those who can't, do as they please. I have no objection to any woman in the workforce, nor desire to put obstacles in her way. Nor have I any intention to impose traditional motherhood upon her. I am merely defending the woman's right to choose. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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