A Family Affair

The truth is, in families and in governments, sometimes the best thing you can do is nothing.

CBS Family Affair 1966 Cast Photo

Yesterday I posted a real, contemporaneous exchange that I thought illustrated the differences in the way conservatives and progressives see the world—and each other.

I wrote about a few challenges I faced growing up in rural Mississippi, while noting that I never lacked anything that satisfied what I needed, I identified the childish perspective with which I viewed those situations. The long and short of it was there was never a shortage of love and support in my home, my parents gave me what I needed, and through them and my extended family, I learned valuable life lessons that allowed me to become the person that I am, be married to an amazing woman for 45 years and raise three amazing, self- sufficient children.

The whole point of the essay was to show that the trials we face are important because how we respond to them matters in becoming who we will be­—and who the next generation will become.

This person chose to see my story as a child being denied what he wanted and that in my writing, I framed the stories to hide my hurt.

This view is based solely on a contextless emotional perspective, a transactional one at best, and further served to illustrate the differences between two opposing sociopolitical and socioeconomic views.

This person said that she was willing to pay extra taxes to prevent children from “missing out”, yet how much she was willing to pay and what constitutes “missing out” is never defined. My point about this was the lack of a definition leads to the open ended process that serves to grow any organization (especially government) because “missing out” could mean anything—and is phrased in such a way that funding or providing prevention of “missing out” must always increase, never be cut, or never be limited because to do so is doing harm to children.

Wanting a child to have everything they want is such a noble and charitable impulse, but it is but another beautiful idea that, unless the child’s health or life is endangered, leads to catastrophe later in life because disappointment is part of life, but it is also one of the most important motivators there are.

Children need to face disappointment and understand limits. This is, I believe, one of the biggest issues we face in youth behaviors today, that many children have never heard the word “no”. Parents go deeply in debt, deny time to each other, and co-sign college loans to give their kids more. Of course, we all want the best for our kids but sometimes, as in my case when I was growing up, learning about life and limits (and how to break through them) is the best gift they can be given.

The second difference, that I “framed” my story to hide my hurt is a perfectly relevant example of how progressives will “frame” their own analysis of others in terms that agree with their pre-conceived notions of who a person is that they have never observed or of whom they were never aware. Somehow my story, as interpreted by her, was a story of loss, not one that led to the victory of living a wonderful life, having a loving, supportive, dedicated and loyal life partner, and both of us sharing the responsibilities of teaching our children what we learned in life to give them a head start.

My wife and I became successful professionals, owning nice homes, nice cars, and my kids benefitted from our success—but as means increase and satisfaction of needs become less concerning, wants and desires, especially in children, tend to increase. Our kids still didn’t get everything they wanted, but we took pains to be honest with them why some things were beyond limits we had set for the good of the family and its future. Learning how to handle disappointment is a key part of becoming an adult.

Chapter 13, verse 11 of 1 Corinthians seems appropriate to quote here:

“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”

Without limits, a family can spend itself into a state of destruction. Without honesty, it can spiral into behaviors that create resentment, envy and conflict, especially when parents give themselves over to emotional reasoning. In essence, parents adopt the mindset of their children in a vain attempt to satisfy emotions that can never be satisfied.

My wife and I have personally witnessed families who have done extremely well but reared children who threw absolute lay down in the toy aisle of Toys-R-Us (when it existed) screaming fits when they were given a new car that wasn’t the color they wanted. New car, right model, wrong color.

The principle is the same whether in a family or a nation. Just because we can provide something does not mean we should. Ian Malcolm’s warning in Jurassic Park applies beyond fictional dinosaurs: the real danger is not capability but the absence of restraint.

In many cases, the best thing one can do is nothing.

It is that same application of emotional reasoning in public policy as responses to appeals to emotion that ends in the heavy tax and regulatory burdens on working people and their small businesses, the talk of confiscating wealth (even the Wall Street Journal is grousing about how much tax billionaires pay), and the accumulation of nearly $38 trillion in national debt plus another $73 trillion in unfunded liabilities at the federal level alone.

Limits are not cruelty; they are logical restraint and structure and are the two things that allow a family—and a republic—to survive and thrive.