The blog I was trying to send yesterday was about the differences between family value politics and the task of governing. I’m going to try again and see if it works today.
In the aftermath of the Iowa
Families are human-sized units in which people interact with mutual respect and love, if the family is functioning as it was meant to, and do not seek to dominate other family members, except perhaps in the games children play as the figure out the boundaries of behavior that will be tolerated by others.
Governments are overseers of a large unit called a state. Some states are independent. Some are conglomerates of consenting smaller states. Some are put in place by those being governed. Some arise from power struggles. Some exist because of territorial needs. Some are the product of war and repression.
So, one could be the most successful ‘governor’ in the world and find that the attributes used to govern would make for a very disfunctional family. Conversely, one could be a perfect family member and lack the attributes needed to lead or govern - attributes such as love, tolerance for small rebellious children or adolescents, mercy toward transgressors, and the realization that if the family is to be happy and functional, then all members must be. That is demonstrably not the case with governing, where the majority inflicts its views on the minority with little thought to making the minority happy or functional. In the case of governing after conquest, we have ample examples of even minorities in positions of power making the majority submit in circumstances where their happiness or functionality is trampled on daily.
This led me to seek out what wiser people have said about families and governing. The quotations are below. You can decide whether being a good family participant would make you a good candidate for governing.
Family
My wife has been my closest friend, my closest advisor. And ... she's not somebody who looks to the limelight, or even is wild about me being in politics. And that's a good reality check on me. When I go home, she wants me to be a good father and a good husband. And everything else is secondary to that. - Barack Obama
Having children makes you no more a parent than having a piano makes you a pianist. - Michael Levine
I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it. - Harry S Truman
Govern a family as you would cook a small fish - very gently. - Chinese Proverb sometimes attributed to Confucius
The lack of emotional security of our American young people is due, I believe, to their isolation from the larger family unit. No two people - no mere father and mother - as I have often said, are enough to provide emotional security for a child. He needs to feel himself one in a world of kinfolk, persons of variety in age and temperament, and yet allied to himself by an indissoluble bond which he cannot break if he could, for nature has welded him into it before he was born. - Pearl S. Buck
Governing
Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action. - George Washington
Today, when a concerted effort is made to obliterate this point, it cannot be repeated too often that the Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals—that it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government—that it is not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizen’s protection against the government. - Ayn Rand
As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron. - H.L. Mencken
Free government is founded in jealousy, not confidence. It is jealousy and not confidence which prescribes limited constitutions, to bind those we are obliged to trust with power.... In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in men, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution. -Thomas Jefferson
The government is merely a servant -- merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn't. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them... - Mark Twain
If these quotes are any gauge, there is little similarity between being a member of a family and supporting family values and being a person who governs. The family is founded on love and mutual support and cooperation. Governing, and those who govern, is an act of force which will inevitably get out of control and become oppressive unless it is constrained by a vigilant and active citizenry.
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