Dr. Bacevich suggests how the Republican Party can reform:
If the Republican Party wishes to represent a conservative perspective, it should advance a serious critique of American culture and then derive authentically conservative economic and foreign policies from that critique.
What might that mean? Several things:
First, conservatives should claim the environmental movement as their own. Preserving the natural world should be a cause that all conservatives embrace with gusto. And, yes, that includes the issue of climate change.
Second, conservatives should lead the way in protecting the family from the hostile assault mounted by modernity. The principal threat to the family is not gay marriage. The principal threats are illegitimacy, divorce, and absent fathers. Making matters worse still is a consumer culture that destroys intimate relationships, persuading children that acquiring stuff holds the key to happiness and persuading parents that their job is to give children what the market has persuaded them to want.
Third, when it comes to economics, conservatives should lead the fight against the grotesque inequality that has become such a hallmark of present-day America.
Call me old fashioned, but I believe that having a parent at home holds one of the keys to nurturing young children and creating strong families. That becomes exceedingly difficult in an economy where both parents must work just to make ends meet.
Flattening the distribution of wealth and ensuring the widest possible the ownership of property can give more parents the choice of raising their own youngsters rather than farming the kids out to care providers. If you hear hints of the old Catholic notion of distributism there, you are correct.
Finally, when it comes to foreign and national security policies, conservatives should be in the forefront of those who advocate realism and modesty. Conservatives should abhor the claims of American dominion that have become such a staple of our politics. Saving humanity is God’s business, not America’s.
Does he realize that the Republican Party in its origins is not the "conservative" party but the party of the rich? Hence its early embrace of feminism? Illegitimacy, divorce, and absent fathers - the breakdown of patriarchy. Have the Christian ecclesial communities failed in capitulating to a divorce culture? Yes. Even if we agitate for changes to divorce laws and the like, can we succeed in the face of those who are content with the system as it is? Dr. Bacevich may refrain from advocating that women be homemakers and mothers to their children, but how many women will really be satisfied with a man who takes upon this role? I agree that having at least one parent home is necessary for family health, but feminism is opposed to this, and the Republican Party will not repudiate feminism -- just look at the examples of McCain and Romney.
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