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Children need fathers, but social fragmentation gives an advantage to those who seek centralized power.
By now it’s clear that Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral victory in New York last year over former Gov. Andrew Cuomo was less a fluke than a harbinger.
Noncoastal socialists have racked up congressional primary victories against establishment Democrats in Colorado and Pennsylvania. They’ve won state and local contests in Kentucky and Georgia and are on the ballot in Florida, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin. These far-left candidates aren’t hiding their extremism. They want punishing taxes on the wealthy to fund “free” daycare, healthcare, housing and college. Some oppose private property and prisons, while others view border security as unnecessary and racist.
Conservatives are right to be concerned about the impact on our free-market capitalist system if enough people with such views are elected to positions of power. But socialism’s impact on the traditional family structure is no less concerning. Children from intact families are more likely to finish school and avoid poverty. The absence of fathers is strongly correlated with teen parenthood, drug addiction and involvement with the criminal justice system. The cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead wrote that “every known human society rests firmly on the learned nurturing behavior of men” and that civilization “depends upon social inventions that will make each generation of males want to nurture women and children.”
Continue reading the entire piece here at the Wall Street Journal (paywall)
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Jason L. Riley is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a columnist at The Wall Street Journal, and a Fox News commentator. Follow him on Twitter here.