It is not that I am suggesting that liberals want to destroy communities simply because they are vicious. I apologize if I made it sound that way.

They want control, they want to change the way things are done, and they want to eradicate all that they see as being wrong with the traditional way of doing things. The problem is, they are not careful about how they evaluate what ought to change, nor are they careful about constructing plans with attention to unintended consequences. The more their policies have failed, the more they have responded by simply insulating themselves from feedback.

The result is a situation that is quite frankly ridiculous. For instance, to cite only one of so many examples: parenting classes exist in every major city. This is what has replaced the support structure that existed before the sexual revolution decimated families and neighborhoods. If you go to one of these parenting classes you will undoubtedly find that every kid there has divorced parents, and usually one parent (the one who is there) takes care of the child, while the other parent behaves very badly, and by all accounts causes a great deal of mischief. But the parenting classes will not generally involve the absent parent – however necessary it might seem (if the goal were a real solution), that’s too difficult. So instead, the usual approach is to the family (meaning the parent) sign a “contract” – a bizarre idea based on the idea that the child will behave as he ought to have been behaving all along, and in return the parents will give him something to make it worth his while. The starting presumption is that the parent needs to do more and the child needs to be bribed – and nothing at all is done about the real source of the trouble.

This is an example of a left-wing idea that might or might not have originally been a good idea, but nobody is paying attention to any of the details, so it does more harm than good in actual practice.

The phenomenon I discuss is not exactly part of a liberal plot, which sounds needlessly conspiratorial. However, I do think that liberalism — in the broad sense — has everything to do with it, in so far as it tends to reduce all communities to mere voluntary associations, denying any intrinsic differences among them. Thus the state is a product of a social contract, marriage becomes a mere private contract between two partners rather than an institution, and so forth. The difficulty with Blake’s analysis is that it locates liberalism on the so-called left only, while in North America both rightists and leftists are heir to the broader tradition of liberalism.

Today we kind of have a skewed view of authority. I think that what Blake pointed out had some kind of correct analysis in that what was once considered “a village” is now something completely different. When people think about community authority, they look to the national government and state authorities on how to run their family unit. No longer is “the village” the close knit community that we once had, it has now become a nationalized and separated, distant “village”.

Blake and I differ on the cause of this, he claims it’s a liberal scheme, but nonetheless the overall analysis is accurate.

How many people do you know that know every person on their street? I know only a handful of my neighbors. When my family moved to a new house, there was no one on the street to greet us and welcome us to the neighborhood.

“communities” hardly exist anymore. Luckily, many churches do provide a place for community where followers can go for council and help from the community, something that isn’t provided secularly.

First they broke the village – having destroyed everything that holds communities together and provides the cohesion.

Now, they want to exploit what they’ve done by making themselves – the central planners – into the village-substitute. Only the goal here is not the same as the goals of a community; they do not intend to support or nurture. They intend to control and bully.

I am reminded of – was it Isaiah Berlin who spoke of Napoleon finger-painting with soldiers across the canvas of Europe? (Wish I could remember the quote)….families are now to be reduced to things for the elite to “paint with”.

The equality of man is not compatible with central planning. The only one qualified to give moral commandments from on high is God.