Seeking to defend the family within the discourse of modern rights is like trying to save Gondor by using the Ring.
Liberalism is more than just a social ideology focused on personal freedom, governmental consent, legal equality, and protecting private property, though it is often reduced to a mere endorsement of these principles. It claims to champion freedoms such as speech, religion, and assembly, emphasizing individual autonomy and restricting government intervention.
Yet, in practice, liberal societies witness the gradual erosion of these freedoms. People become more constrained, face increasing poverty, while immense wealth accumulates in the hands of a few. They endure policies imposed without their consent, with laws wielded against dissent. Access to property is limited, reliance on government grows, and thought control spreads.
It seems to me this paradox—liberalism producing outcomes opposite to its ideals—stems from an implicit anthropological premise that liberals rarely admit because acknowledging it would expose its falsehood.
Liberalism holds an unspoken arrogance: it presumes that once individuals are fully freed from the shackles of history, culture, unchosen duties, and tradition, they naturally adopt liberal values. The belief is that emancipation reveals people’s authentic selves, who, unburdened by previous constraints, inherently embrace liberalism.
Thus, liberalism relies on a circular argument: it frees people; freed individuals inevitably become liberals; those liberals then promote liberalism endlessly.
John Stuart Mill, a notable English liberal, expressed this idea:
Where, not the person’s own character, but the traditions or customs of other people are the rule of conduct, there is wanting one of the principal ingredients of human happiness, and quite the chief ingredient of individual and social progress.
Mill asserts that authentic happiness and social advancement depend on freeing the individual’s inherent character from the grip of tradition. However, this internal logic has proven flawed when tested in reality.
Take, for example, the experience of Muslims migrating to Europe from countries like Syria, Pakistan, or North Africa. When provided with the conditions to be “emancipated,” many do not adopt liberal values but instead turn to fanaticism or extremism. This “diaspora radicalisation” phenomenon has become a key topic of sociological research investigating the spread of jihadism in the West.
Interestingly, liberals typically refuse to attribute this trend to Islamic teachings, religious leaders, or the Muslim communities themselves. Instead, they blame the native European population.
In the UK, for instance, the stereotypical patriotic figure—the beer-drinking, St George-flag-waving citizen—is often accused of hindering Muslim integration and labeled “far-right,” a term whose overuse has diluted its meaning. Recently, UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer condemned Conservative Shadow Justice Secretary Nick Timothy as “far-right” merely for questioning the rise of Muslim public prayer demonstrations and suggesting such acts might indicate a desire for dominance.
Liberals contend that Muslims turn to jihad not because it is rooted in Islam but because they are allegedly excluded from society. This exclusion is linked to Europeans’ attachment to their national heritage, traditions, and culture, which Muslims perceive as barriers. This explanation aligns with the preconception that liberalism is the default condition for the truly emancipated individual.
What does this issue imply for the future of Christian families in Europe and beyond? My focus is less on Muslim communities and more on how this example exposes a deeper flaw within liberalism: the assumption that everyone will adopt liberal values regardless of background or faith. If even in a liberal society people do not embrace liberalism, the only conclusion allowed is that the society isn’t liberal enough. Within this worldview, the exclusive solution to all difficulties is simply more liberalism.
This compels liberal governments eventually to confront and eliminate any societal elements that obstruct the full liberal ideal. Paradoxically, they must become illiberal themselves to maintain the liberal project. In demanding individuality and diversity, they ironically enforce conformity. They target native traditions, involuntary loyalties, and pre-political attachments as threats to their vision of emancipation.
These attachments are primarily cultivated within the family. Therefore, given liberalism’s particular mythology of the pre-social authentic self and eternal emancipation, the family inevitably becomes the chief target.
Liberal regimes consequently pursue weakening marital bonds by easing divorce, redefining marriage, treating children as state dependents, regulating homeschooling and education curricula, and promoting procreation separate from sexual relations via technology. Essentially, they deny nature’s primacy as the foundation of reality.
This is not merely an excess of individualism unchecked by other liberal ideals such as responsible citizenship or the public-private divide. Rather, this erosion of the family stems from liberalism’s very logic. The assumption is that no one is truly liberated until the family is reduced to a dissolvable contract under state authority.
Unfortunately, many family advocates mistakenly accept the liberal rights framework in attempting to defend the family. Scholars and the Christian Church have increasingly adopted human rights language to resist familial decline. Understanding liberalism’s internal reasoning, however, exposes why these rights-based defenses of the family have consistently failed.
We must recognize that modern liberal “rights” differ profoundly from the Christian or classical notion of rights (or “ius”). Initially, rights were tangible claims to objects. They evolved into moral powers fulfilling duties, then into protections against harm, and finally into seemingly limitless moral powers bound to the singular duty to become one’s authentic self amid continuous emancipation.
Within this framework of ongoing liberation, where liberal rights are one expression, natural institutions like marriage and family cannot withstand the pressure. Trying to preserve the family using contemporary rights discourse is, as stated, like attempting to save Gondor with the Ring.
The discussion about the future must not be constrained by competing rights that assume liberalism as the sole political option. Such a debate is already skewed by the myths of a regime inherently antagonistic to family and marriage. The argument in favor of the family is therefore lost before it even starts.
The real question should be whether we continue to acknowledge nature—which liberal progressivism seeks to free us from—especially that aspect known as human nature. Ultimately, the fate of the family depends on this recognition.
Original article: europeanconservative.com
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