I am going to depart from some of my more recent writing topics to go back to discussions about values (such as post 18 of 100 and post 21 of 100), and why the idea of creating and reinforcing the value of “family above all else” is actually anti-social, misanthropic behavior. I can already tell that some will read this and assume that it means that Benjamin C. Roy Cory Garrett hates families. I can try to counter that by assuring you that I love my family and would probably do many immoral things to ensure their survival (which proponents of Family Values would probably try to frame as “doing anything for family”), but actually:
1. It doesn’t matter at all what you believe I would or would not do for my family or how much I love them. Social posturing around “Loving my family” is pretty pathetic posturing in the first place as it is a general truism except for the cases where trying to love one’s family unconditionally is used as a weapon against those who the family attempts to exclude, manipulate or control. People who preach family values and don’t show love to their own family members regardless of who those family members are hypocrites, while people who don’t preach family values and do love their own family members, regardless of who they are or what they have done, don’t need other people to affirm the value of that love.
2. Intentionally and publicly declaring that your own family is more important than other people and their families is just trying to shield yourself from the accusation of greed, by projecting your conception of “self” on a group of people so that it doesn’t feel like you are acting self-servingly when you do what is best for them at the cost of others. I don’t think greed, or the desire to see yourself or your family succeed are inherently “evil” qualities, but it should be a red flag to people trying to exist together in a society or community if there are numerous people blatantly wearing that greed as a banner of virtue, especially as we have centuries of history showing us that people do not limit “putting their family first” to keeping their families alive, but will quickly use it to justify holding resources and stealing resources, as well as acting out violently at criticism or questioning.
It is rather telling to me that Donald Trump will claim Charlie Kirk as “almost a son,” now that he can be used as a martyr with 0 risk of later turning on Trump and becoming a political rival or enemy (as is the the case with almost all of Trumps “allies” from his first administration). For an interesting reflection on Charlie Kirk’s involvement in the Trump administration and the shaping of Trumpism 2.0 as a political movement, I recommend this article from Baptist News Global, first written in April. Kirk had begun rewriting his own history and the history of Turning Point USA to better fit within a MAGA platform right along side the development of that platform. That is exactly the kind of Loyalty (that is secretly staking claim to power) that Trump both admires, and watches like a hawk, but is easy to lionize once it no longer poses a potential threat to his power. By choosing now to evoke Kirk as family, Trump is trying to rewrite history as well.
This is why I think it is rather disgusting when either democratic or republican politicians start throwing around “family values” as something that voters should identify with and respect. Both political parties are led by people who have spent their lives accumulating wealth at the expense of others. When they stand up for family values, they are standing up for the idea of protecting their own families and their family wealth from any investigation or criticism of how the US political system has been shaped and reshaped to protect the rich and disenfranchise those who’s land, labor and resources have been exploited in the building up of that generational wealth. People who are advocating for policies that are designed to help people generally don’t have to dress those policies up as being family centric because policies that are good for people are good for families. Policies that are “good for families” (and very likely very specific kinds of families and not all families) and only families are probably not good policies to support unless you can make refusing to support those policies something that will get associated with being bad or even “evil.”
In movies, when characters start doing unspeakably bad things to protect their families, we know that they are in fact villains in somebody’s story, and either ignore it because those people are minimized and made invisible within the movie, or else the audience quickly realizes that their actions are not heroic, even if they might be sympathetic within a specific context. Family Values becomes a very easy smoke screen for trying to hide from the consequences of politics that are intentionally self-serving and destructive to others.