The defenders of American liberal institutions would deny that their philosophical system stands opposed to human values such as "family."  Rather, they would say that liberalism simply seeks to prevent the dead weight of custom and tradition from arbitrarily imposing old structures and assumptions on contemporary ways of life.  Liberalism frees individuals to make choices; but such can surely include the choice of adherence to traditional institutions and lifestyles.  Liberalism, they would say, does not seek social dissolution or revolution, but only freedom of choice for the individual, who is–after all–logically the cell of the body politic.

To the modern ear, this all sounds good.  But alas, this declaration of neutrality may not be true relative to the family, nor perhaps to other natural associations such as village, neighborhood, and religious community.  Indeed, even a look at the key texts of liberal thought suggests a decided and innate bias against family bonds.

Turn, for example, to De Cive, the foundational liberal work by Thomas Hobbes from 1642.  Here, in a famous phrase, he declares as "certainly false" the Aristotelian argument "that man is a creature born fit for society."  Rather, Hobbes says, it is perfectly clear that "all society…is either for gain, or for glory; not so much for love of our fellowes, as for love of our selves."  This quest for individual advantage even extends into the family, where the honor that children show parents is "nothing else but the estimation of another's power," while women "dispose of their children at their own will."  Even at the launch of the liberal idea, then, it seems that the freedom to choose abortion, and so deny life to the very small, was a logical and even necessary part of the liberal scheme.

Writing a half-century later, John Locke sought to paint a more human face on the emerging society of free, competitive men and women, and he carved out "a sort of rule and jurisdiction" by parents over children when the latter were young.  But Locke could find no real role in his system for the institution of marriage, beyond the reproductive function.  Indeed, once children are able to care for themselves, he said, the marital bond "dissolves itself" and the sexual partners are "at liberty till Hymen…summons them again to choose new mates" (Of Civil Government).  It seems that a regime of weak marriages, easy divorce, and cohabitation may also be a innate part of liberal social theory.

This hostility toward the family institution can even lead the liberal into an alliance with the centralizing state.  It was Jean Jacques Rousseau who, worried lest free individuals descend into anarchy, insisted that each autonomous actor "put his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will."  This meant "that there should be no partial society [such as family] within the State" (The Social Contract).  Indeed, "the newly born infant, upon first opening his eyes, must gaze upon the fatherland, and until his dying day should behold nothing else" (The Government of Poland).

Liberalism targets the family because this little platoon with its parochial interests prevents the emergence of truly free and autonomous individuals.  This is true in the field of economics, as well, where the liberal vision of free market capitalism also collides with the claims of family.

Consider the abstract nature of the modern capitalist economy.  The modern joint stock corporation has no fixed loyalties, to persons or to places.  Simply to survive the maneuvers and schemes of its rivals, this "artificial person" must seek every advantage, no matter how small.  The corporation cannot relax.  Its quest for "life" and power (or, in economists' language, for "market share") requires a restless energy.  Threatened by rivals on all sides, it becomes imperialistic out of necessity: competitors must be swallowed up or run into the ground; and rival centers of loyalty must also be neutralized.

The family is such a rival center of loyalty.  The good home makes its own claims on individuals, seeking their first allegiance.  Consider this family home through the eyes of the nervous, apprehensive, morally neutral, joint-stock corporation:

• Family bonds interfere with the efficient allocation of labor.  The economy wants each person to find his or her "one best use."  The goals of maximum efficiency and economic growth rest on this.  It may mean that the father/husband would provide the most gain working as an accountant in New Jersey, while the mother/wife would be best used as a motel cleaner in Wisconsin, while the children would ideally be employed as little coal miners in West Virginia.   Yet they remain in–say–their Maryland home, all performing less efficient tasks, and so denying the economy their most beneficial energies.

• Family bonds also suppress capitalism's productive potential.  Embodying the alien principle of altruism, or love, family members share goods and services outside the cash economy.  Indeed, most perversely, families actually operate under the old selfless mantra: from each according to his or her ability, to each according to his or her need.  Strong families commonly provide their own child care, grow their own vegetables, cook their own food, teach their own children, care for their own frail elderly: all tasks that could be organized more efficiently on an industrial basis and paid for with cash.  Economic growth actually depends on an ever more refined specialization of labor and the transfer of uncounted family functions into the cash economy.  The members of a strong family defy this need and behave as generalists, doing many tasks in less efficient ways, which again spoils capitalism's prospects.

Indeed, both modern corporation and modern state do suffer when families are strong, functional, and self-reliant.  Consider the intact family of husband, wife, and six children on a twenty-acre homestead, with a wood lot, pasture, and garden.  The family grows and preserves most of its vegetable needs and keeps chickens, a few pigs, and a cow for home use.  The wife and older daughters sew most clothing for the family; the husband and older boys make their own furniture in the woodshop and provide maintenance of their old car and pickup.  The children weed the garden, feed the fowl, and clean the house and barn.  Grandma sits by the fireplace, and helps as she can.  Meals are always home cooked and the children study at home, with their parents as teachers.

Alas, the official Economy and the State gain almost nothing from this family.  The family buys relatively few factory-made goods, reducing corporate earnings and state sales tax revenue.  Indeed, none of the family's home production activities add even a dime to the Gross National Product or to government's coffers: they are uncounted and untaxed.  If the children are kept out of the government schools, they also fail to learn about the goals and beauty of "the General Will."  This family provides so little to either the official economy or the state, that it might as well not exist.

But now consider the same family torn apart by a divorce.  Two separate households are now needed, where before one sufficed, meaning that another house, refrigerator, stove, and whole array of household goods must be built or purchased.  This stimulates the GNP.  The mother no longer has time to tend a garden and chickens, cook meals, or sew clothing: she needs to find a paying job.  All these things will now be purchased in the marketplace, as well.  The father, meanwhile, has child support and alimony to pay, and little incentive toward home carpentry.  He, too, turns to the marketplace to sell his labor, gain needed cash, and buy the things he needs to survive.  The older children, for their part, now go to public school and learn to appreciate the state's vision of the "General Will."  The younger children are in day care, with still more money passing hands.  Instead of family dinners, everyone eats on the run in the fast-food restaurants.  And Grandma is now a Medicaid recipient in a for-profit nursing home, doing her part as well to boost the GNP.  In short, both the official economy and the state claim vast positive gains from the act of divorce: and the greater the family's disarray, the more they gain.

The defenders of democratic capitalism would now change the subject.  Capitalism is about giving, they would say; capitalists actually want strong families because it is in such homes that good "human capital" is shaped: children of intelligence, character, and solid work habits.

Now, I grant that this is sometimes true.  By only–only–among corporate entities strongly committed by circumstance or choice to a special geographic location.  Notably, such firms are usually family-held.  Where the hired corporate manager at the joint stock corporation rarely worries beyond three or four years into the future, family-held firms think a generation or two ahead.  For reasons of birth, kinship, and friendships, these firms also commonly have special loyalties to their home communities.  They will invest in the families and the well-being of the next generation, because they see their children as part of that future community.  In addition, they will work tirelessly to keep their workforce intact, even during times of recession, because it is good for the town.

Unfortunately, in our day, there are not many of these firms left.  And the globalized market of the early 21^st Century makes their survival increasingly unlikely, as tariffs have shrunk, transportation costs have dwindled, and the financial system has come to favor "going public" as soon as possible.  "Human capital" can now be mined.  Use it up in one country; and then move the factory to another.  Multi-generational family-held firms were a way of reconciling capitalism's "creative destruction" with decency and social order.  But like the Himalayan Snow Leopard, these large family-held businesses are today an attractive but highly-endangered species threatened by the 21^st Century globalist order.

The Democratic Capitalist responds again: Look at contemporary American politics, where corporate interests and pro-family politics are in political alliance!  Just read the editorials in The Wall Street Journal!

Understanding the place of equity feminism in modern American life helps to clarify this situation.  A casual look at America today does show pro-life and pro-family voters largely attached to the Republican Party and so in political alliance with Big Business.  Feminism, meanwhile, dominates the Democratic Party, in alliance with the labor unions and the pro-abortion cause.  These are, however, unusual and unstable coalitions and ones not likely to last. 

Indeed, from the 1920's until the early 1960's, the Republican Party was the party of equity feminism, a movement which had a natural bond with the interests of big business: both were products of the liberal vision.   When the National Woman's Party crafted the proposed "Equal Rights Amendment" to the U.S. Constitution back in 1923, it was Republicans who first introduced the measure in the U.S. House and Senate.  The National Association of Manufacturers, ever hungry for cheap female labor, was the first big national organization to endorse the ERA.  Indeed, there is some evidence that the Manufacturers Association covertly funded the radical National Woman's Party during the 1920's and 1930's.  The Republican Party was the first major party to include the ERA in its national platform.  And, after the Birth Control Federation of America cleverly changed its name to Planned Parenthood, this organization became a favorite charity among Republican Women's Clubs.

The Democrats, meanwhile, were the party more-or-less defending small property, Christian sexual morality, and traditional family values.  So-called "maternalists" in the Party such as Frances Perkins and Molly Dewson gave first priority to the protection of motherhood and traditional homes.  Central to Democratic economic thinking was support for The Family Wage regime, a system of custom and law that delivered to fathers and husbands a wage sufficient to support a mother and children at home; and a system that celebrated and protected the roles of homemaker and mother.  Father John Ryan–of this very University–justified the family wage through Catholic social teaching; the labor movement justified it as economic fairness for union families.  The primary support for the "family wage" came to be a system of "job segregation by gender": the cultural assumption that there were "men's jobs" and "women's jobs," and that men's jobs deserved higher compensation because they commonly supported a wife and children, as well as the man.  This method of taming capitalism's anti-family tendencies actually proved to be highly effective, helping to produce the Marriage Boom and the Baby Boom of the 1940's and 1950's. 

Compared to today, though, this world that I just described almost seems to be an alternate moral universe.  How did we get from there to here?

Actually, we can trace the change to a single day, February 8, 1964,  when the American social-political order underwent a seismic shift.  But it is a change that you will never read about in a civics textbook, because it is partly a tale of embarrassing political farce.  To close my remarks this evening, I want to tell you something more about the extraordinary events of that day, as a way of illustrating the peculiar spread of the liberal idea, at the expense of the family.

The occasion was debate in the U.S. House of Representatives over the proposed Civil Rights Act of 1964.  The language of the bill on that Saturday morning–as first drafted at the Lyndon Johnson White House–aimed at ending discrimination "on the basis of race, color, religion, or national origin" in the areas of voting, public accommodations and education, federally assisted programs, and private employment.  Reading between the lines, it was clear that the latter provision on private employment–Title VII–would renew an old maternalist goal from the interwar years: to remove those job barriers resting on race prejudice that prevented African-American men from being good fathers, husbands, and breadwinners.  Advocates used an argument that would surface again in the famed Moynihan Report a year later: if the traditional family home was the basis of American civilization, then full citizenship for black Americans required shoring up the economic side of their faltering family system.  Disproportionately characterized by matriarchy, female-headed households, and illegitimacy, "the Negro-American family"–as it was then called– needed to be reconfigured on the prevailing breadwinner/homemaker model found among whites.  If this could be done, racial equality would result.

Yet the white segregationists in the House chamber, their backs to the wall, had resolved on a desperate strategy.  Seeking a "killer" amendment to the Civil Rights Bill, these "Dixiecrats" proposed a change in the language of Title VII that would–they thought–expose the danger of the concept of "equality."Congressman Howard Smith of Virginia rose on that February day and, with a broad smile, proposed that the word "sex" be added to the list of prohibited discriminations in employment under Title VII.  To the laughter of his colleagues, he reported on a letter he had received from a woman protesting the excess number of American females, when compared to the count of American men, revealed by the 1960 Census.  Smith read:

Just why the Creator would set up such an imbalance of spinsters, shutting off the 'right' of every female to have a husband of her own is, of course, known only to nature.  But I am sure you will agree that this is a grave injustice to womankind and something the Congress and President Johnson should take immediate steps to correct.

After making his little joke, though, Smith moved to other, real issues: "Now, I am very serious about this amendment," he told his colleagues.  "I think we all recognize…that all throughout industry women are discriminated against in that…they do not get as high compensation for their work as do the majority [sic] sex."  To bring the matter closer to his fellow politicians' hearts, he added: "I just want to remind you here that in this election year it is pretty near half of the voters in this country that are affected, so you had better sit up and take notice."

As the debate continued, his Dixiecrat colleagues added their sometimes whimsical support.  J. Russell Tuten of Georgia said that as "a man, which places me in the minority and makes me a second class citizen–and the fact that I am white and from the South–I look forward to claiming my rights under this legislation."  Joe Pool of Texas argued that the amendment would "safeguard American women from such inequities with regard to their civil rights as are now threatened in the pending civil rights bill."  And L. Mendel Rivers of South Carolina praised the proposed change for "making it possible for the white Christian woman to receive the same consideration for employment as the colored woman."

In retrospect, it is clear that a half century of political reforms aimed at restoring "the traditional family" and built on the family-wage ideal hung in the balance.  And it appears that the heirs of this maternalist vision, and of the New Deal policies that solidly embedded it into the law, understood that their legacy was threatened.  Pro-family Democrats mounted their last stand. 

Emanuel Cellar, Democrat from New York, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, floor leader for the Civil Rights bill, and a Jew, rose to challenge Mr. Smith.  Notably, he argued for the natural inequality of woman and man:

You know, the French have a phrase for it when they speak of women and men…"vive la difference."  I think the French are right. 

Imagine the upheaval that would result from the adoption of blanket language requiring total [sexual] equality.  Would male citizens be justified in insisting that women share with them the burdens of compulsory military service?  What would become of traditional family relationships?  What about alimony?…Would fathers rank equally with mothers in the right of custody to children?…This is the entering wedge, an amendment of this sort.

Representative Cellar also noted that the Women's Bureau of the U.S. Department of Labor (long a maternalist stronghold) opposed this amendment, because sex discrimination involved "problems significantly different" from race and other factors covered by the bill's language.

Edith Green, a Democratic Congress woman from Oregon, attacked Mr. Smith's amendment as an attempt to "jeopardize" the primary purpose of the Civil Rights Act:  "For every discrimination that has been made against a woman in this country there has been 10 times as much discrimination against the Negro….Whether we want to admit it or not, the main purpose of this legislation today is to try to end the discrimination…against Negroes."  Moreover, she insisted that there were real "biological differences" between men and women that must be taken into account "in regard to employment." 

But the equity feminists hibernating on the Republican side of Congress, having spent forty years in the political wilderness, sensed on that day their extraordinary, if peculiar, opportunity.  Congresswoman Katharine St. George, a Republican from New York, took the podium and suggested  that foes of the "sex" amendment still saw women as "chattels."  She added: "Why should women be denied equality of opportunity?  Why should women be denied equal pay for equal work?"  Congresswoman Catherine May, a Republican from Washington, cited the deep concerns of The National Woman's Party over the effect of an unamended Title VII on "the white, native-born American woman of Christian religion." 

Much to Mr. Smith's surprise, this unexpected coalition of Republican equity feminists and Dixiecrat segregationists carried the day, on a vote of 168 to 133: discrimination in employment on the basis of "sex" would henceforth be a Federal crime.  Two days later, the House approved the Civil Rights Act, as amended.  The measure went on to the Senate, where Hubert Humphrey pushed the measure through, unchanged, throttling a Southern filibuster.

So, in July, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended, became law.  The new Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC), according to one friendly analyst, soon "converted Title VII into a magna carta for female workers, grafting to it a set of rules and regulations that certainly could not have passed Congress in 1964, and perhaps not a decade later, either."  

Most significantly, the EEOC eliminated sex-specific hiring, seniority, and promotion practices.  It was these forms of job segregation by gender that had long served as the buttresses to America's family wage system, guiding men toward the higher-paid positions and women toward the lower ones or toward home.  But now the economic foundation of households would shift.  The flow of married women into the labor force accelerated.  In consequence, it became more difficult to sustain the "traditional American family" on one income.  As female wages rose, male breadwinners working full-time experienced a 28 percent decline in real wages between 1970 and 1990. 

In the early 1970's, women such as Phyllis Schlafly would battle Republican hierarchies to end that party's support for the ERA and liberalized abortion: by 1980 so-called 'Reagan Democrats'–commonly working class Catholics–moved into the Republican camp.  Equity feminists migrated the other way, producing the anomalous political situation in which we live today.  My prediction, though, is that these alliances will not last, but that is another story.

We can see here how the liberal values of individualism and equality once again undermined arrangements that sustained families within the turbulence of the modern market economy.  Of course, the real victor here was not "women," but market capitalism.  Business leaders had always deplored the idea of the "family wage," for it drove up labor costs and restricted labor supply.  They were delighted to see it go.  Household members would all work harder now, just to hold their own.  Liberalism had done its work again.  The Gross National Product grew, and family life shriveled.