Traditional Families of the World: Unite!

For too long, Carlson and Mero say, traditionalists have been more divided by distractions than united in defending their common base: the natural family — married mom and dad, with children — as society's bedrock.

"Our foes are dying, of their own choice; we have a world to gain. Natural families of all races, nations, and creeds, let us unite."

Does that sound like a call to arms from Karl Marx and Frederick Engels' Communist Manifesto?

Well, it isn't. The agitators calling for a radical social revolution are Allan C. Carlson and Paul T. Mero, who, respectively, lead the Howard Center for Family Religion & Society and the Sutherland Institute, hardly the types you'd picture as red-eyed radicals.

But in 35 large-print pages, Carlson and Mero's booklet, The Natural Family: A Manifesto, lays down a challenge too bold for either side in the culture war to ignore:

• We will build a new culture of marriage, where others would define marriage out of existence.
• We will welcome and celebrate more babies and larger families, where others would continue a war on human fertility.
• We will find ways to bring mothers, fathers, and children back home, where others would further divide parents from their children.
• And we will create true home economies, where others would subject families to the full control of big government and vast corporations.

Those declarations strike at the heart of what many believe to be a progressive and necessary agenda; they will not go unchallenged. But for too long, Carlson and Mero say, traditionalists have been more divided by distractions than united in defending their common base: the natural family — married mom and dad, with children — as society's bedrock.

Carlson and Mero trace the dissolution of the natural family back, not just to the Enlightenment's liberal secularism but also to the Industrial Revolution. In defending the natural family, the pair gives no pass to socialism or to unrestrained capitalism; any social system that weakens the natural family unit is guilty and must be replaced.

If these concepts sound fanatical, it only shows how far the world, particularly the industrialized world, has drifted over the last two centuries, the authors say. Indeed, "Our best friends [in the battle for traditional families] are actually to be found in the developing world, in the Third World, in the Middle East, South Asia, South America. Our staunchest allies tend not to be white, but rather people of color," they say.

The 21st-century culture war's battle line will be neither racial nor national; it will be ideological, with the definition of family as the ultimate prize. And, the authors postulate, if traditionalists unite, their passion for life will provide not only moral authority but numerical superiority: "Our foes are dying, of their own choice."

Learn more about The Natural Family: A Manifesto.
Learn more about Traditionalists' fertility rates outpacing liberals'.
Learn more about Attempts to define marriage out of existence.

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