(A snip from another sci-fi post.)
The Basic Role of the State
In an informative and well-made video, two sentences stands out: the last one, like a mountain.
But think about what’s really happening here: Individuals are expected to work overseas just to pay for an education for the chance of leaving, giving them the privilege of supporting their families.
The state may take credit for this system, but, for their families, these individual moms, dads, uncles, and aunts are fulfilling the role of the state — providing basic things like food and education.
I am utterly confident that a good-sized majority in the United States – and the overwhelming majority of Europeans – assume the truth of the last sentence as a matter of course.
Toss in China, Japan, and Korea – both of them (!) to add another billion or so.
I am going to take a sideroad, and quote from a speech made by Rushdoony around 1970 or so:
Sometimes the best way to understand a matter is to approach it indirectly in order to throw a better light upon it. Instead of looking directly at the nature of the church, for a minute or two, let us look at the nature of the family. The classic work on the family, written and published in 1946, is C. C. Zimmerman’s Family and Civilization. In this very remarkable work, Zimmerman studies the families of ancient history to the present. He classifies the kinds of family that can exist into three categories.
First, the trustee family. In the trustee family, the family is the basic power in society. The family is the source of law. The family is the economic power. It is the mainspring of civilization.
Then second, you have the domestic family in which the family is still powerful, but the state has begun to take over government in the world at large.
And third, at the point of breakdown, said Dr. Zimmerman, a Harvard sociologist, you have the atomistic family, in which the house is not much more than a bedroom and a dining room. The family goes its own way. The family has very little authority over its members, or in society at large, and civilization is at the point of breakdown.
Now, Zimmerman’s analysis is superb. It’s a landmark study, and yet, such studies, however important they are, and I cannot underestimate the importance of Zimmerman’s work, still have their limitations. Even as the historic marks of a true church, which define the church in terms of certain categories, are important, and I do not want to detract from their importance. Still, their importance is limited. Why? Let us look again at the trustee family.
Very definitely, what we have in the Bible is the trustee family. It is the basic institution of society. It is the law center, the life center, and the basic governing force. However, the biblical family classifies as a trustee family, but so does also the old Germanic family, and also the families of old China, with their ancestor worship. So, we have, under the classification of the trustee family, which is the basic government power in a civilization, very diverse kinds of trustee family, so that we cannot classify the biblical family and the Chinese family as identical. The differences are very great. They are alike trustee families, but they are also very diverse. Why? Because each is informed by a radically different faith.
Faith and the Church
Dr. R.J. Rushdoony
Or, put it another way, the overwhelming majority of Imperials — from the highest of the Imperial Ruling Houses, to the semi-criminal, semi-trader families that dominate a given segment of a barrio or ghetto – side with the Pilipinos in the video.
And not with the American narrator.
“Family first.”
Especially when the great swelling promises of the welfare state – and its aging, shrinking base of taxpayers – goes bust.
Acrosss the Stars 