A pro-family and pro-human agenda

What should social conservatives do in the Trump era? In a recent interview with Tucker Carlson, Matt Walsh provided one possible answer. The wide-ranging interview lasted over two hours, and in it Walsh set forth a vision of a confident, unashamed Christian social conservatism. In the interests of brevity and clarity, I’ve rearranged Walsh’s statements into the following outline.

Start with some foundations. God created us and He created the laws of nature. And so you can’t beat nature because it’s bigger than you, because God created it. Because of this, there are certain things that we just intuitively know are right and wrong, good and bad. On top of that, we ought to have a respect for tradition, for the ways that human beings have universally done things in the past. If human beings did something a certain way for literally millennia, in every civilization that we know of, it’s probably right.

This is why progressivism is a cancer that wages war on normalcy and on civilization, using dishonest bait-and-switch tactics and institutions like the public schools to advance an anti-family, anti-human, anti-biology agenda.

And so we have to oppose this anti-human agenda whenever it appears. An obvious place to start is with the trans movement. We don’t need studies to know if chemically castrating a five year old is bad. We just intuitively know it. And we should celebrate the fact that the Trump administration has defined man and woman through executive order and press Congress to follow-up with legislation.

But not just the trans stuff. Gay adoption is an abomination because a child has a basic right to a mother and father. In fact, gay adoption is worse than foster care, because it’s more disordered and confusing to the child, and fundamentally transforms society and our basic priorities (how we live and what matters to us).

The same is true of gay surrogacy. Renting wombs like an Airbnb uses human beings as objects. And it’s worse than adoption because rather than rescuing a kid from an unfortunate situation, you’re creating them to be in an unfortunate situation from birth. So both gay adoption and surrogacy should be illegal.

But it’s not enough to oppose the obvious examples of progressivism. It also means opposing feminism, which is far and away the most destructive ideology in human history. From the body count from abortion to rising divorce rates, declining birth rates, and overall unhappiness and anxiety, feminism has been a disaster for civilization because it wants to upend and destroy the fundamental institution of society, which is the family.

So what we need is a positive vision for society that begins with the family. Good parents want their kids to go to heaven and want them to be good and happy people. Parents are supposed to provide an environment for children to grow and develop and mature physically, morally, and spiritually. Everything in the home and the policies we support in society should be oriented by those priorities.

We start by embracing natural gender roles for men and women. Societies that are structured around gender roles don’t have the anxiety and hang-ups that our society does because everyone has a basic concept of who they are and what they’re supposed to do. This means we must be willing to make personal and financial sacrifices so that mothers can stay home and raise their children, rather than putting the children in government indoctrination centers that will lie to them about biology and are filled with peers who have been shaped by screens and social media. In fact, severely limiting screens and video games so that your kids can have real childhood experiences is a major priority that requires parental backbone. Thirty years ago, a childhood of playing outside, climbing trees, and scraping knees was the default. Now it has to be a deliberate choice.

A father’s role is to provide and protect, to bring home the bacon and provide safety and security. This means a father should be a stabilizing presence in his family. When he’s around, they should feel calmer and safer. When things go wrong, they should say, “Thank God, Dad’s here.” This means embracing a healthy stoicism that doesn’t complain or vent your anxieties when you're stressed so that your family has to carry the burden of your emotions.

Every man is called to be a father (whether biologically or spiritually). So hold fast your faith. Figure out your vocation. Don’t waste time. Take risks. Yes, the world may be rigged against you, but don’t whine about it. Face challenges, including the fear of death, with courage because you’re a Christian, and Christ has overcome the world.

Such was Walsh’s political and social vision, which he advanced with clarity and confidence. In fact, the most encouraging aspect of the interview was Walsh’s willingness to assume the center on so many of our cultural battles, to speak boldly and without sheepish hedging in areas where Christians have often been tempted to retreat into a defensive crouch.

That’s the sort of renewed vision and confidence that Christians must recover in our day.