The family is the source of our greatest joys and some of our keenest sorrows. It is where our most basic need to loved is met. In the family men and women learn to sacrifice, love, and serve. Children learn to value work, respect, and responsibility. Experiencing life in a natural family becomes absolutely fundamental to the preservation of society.
Some years back we begin to hear voices that claimed they could take the “difficulties” out of life by eliminating our responsibilities–especially in families. The objective of these voices was to “relieve women of their oppressive roles as wives and mothers and men of their responsibilities to provide support and security for their families.” They used words like equality and liberation to create a feel good motive for destroying the very bases of civilization—the family.
In 1978, guided by a love for the family and the recognition that these voices could destroy not only families but entire civilizations, United Families International was created to protect and strengthen the family. By strengthening the family, communities, states, and nations are strengthened.
We strengthen the family by promoting:
Family: Respect for existing law, political structure, religion, and cultural norms that preserve the family.
Marriage: Respect for marriage between a man and a woman founded on chastity before marriage and fidelity in marriage
Life: Respect for the sanctity of human life including unborn children.
Parents: Respect for the right and obligation of parents to love protect, provide for, and teach their children.
Sovereignty: Respect for the sovereign rights of each individual nation as we work in the world community to protect the common good of individual families.
But how are communities, states, and nations strengthened by strong families? Inversely, what happens to a society where the respect for important cultural institutions and behavioral norms are lost?
“For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.”–Newton’s Third Law
In the recorded history of mankind, people have acknowledged that an ordered structure of behavior valued, and adhered to by the vast majority of individuals in a community, state, or nation, brought results that improved their lives. This ordered structure consisted of principles, supported by institutions. Adherence to principles (the action) produced positive results (the reaction) for the entire society. These societal improvements included peace, prosperity, fewer interpersonal conflicts, reliable systematic progression from one generation to another, self-respect, self-reliance, refinement, abhorrence for imposing upon the community burdens and responsibilities best borne by the individual, and liberty.
This process of developing principles, institutions, and patterns of beneficial behavior was called “civilization”. Mankind prospered greatly under this civilizing process. Achievement beyond description to one generation became commonplace for the next because of the civilizing impact of man’s institutions.
Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary defines “civilize” thus:
Civilize: to cause to develop out of a primitive state; to bring to a technically advanced and rationally ordered stage of cultural development.
Webster’s also defines “culture”:
Culture: the integrated pattern of human behavior that includes thought, speech, action, and artifacts and depends upon man’s capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations; b: the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group.
What happens to a civilization or cultural society when, after realizing the success achieved through multi-generational development of institutions, it devalues and destroys those successful institutions? To find the answer one must merely observe our modern society as we discuss the cause and effect relationship (action and reaction) that brought us to our present circumstances. The devaluation of the institution of the family is leading to its replacement as the fundamental unit of society. Government now seeks to become the fundamental unit of society, placing liberty, freedom of conscience, and free agency at risk.
The devaluation of marriage between a man and a woman threatens the destruction of this successful cultural institution. The sexual revolution of the 1960s and the feminist movement of the 70s have falsely convinced people that the incessant pursuit of personal pleasures and desires are the only benefits to life. Cohabitation, divorce, homosexuality, physical or emotional abuse of spouse or children, are a sampling of the threats to marriage. A culture that does not value marriage, will eventually replace civil society with tribalism. Development of societies of gangs that spread internationally illustrates the negative consequences of a marriage-less culture.
The activist judge that recently struck down California’s Proposition 8 preserving marriage between a man and a woman said he could find no harm to anyone by forceful imposition of homosexual marriage on a people opposed to it. Only the intellectually deaf, dumb, and blind can fail to recognize the harm.
Parents are also being replaced by governments. These secular-socialist regimes seek to strip the rights, privileges, and obligations to teach the rising generations the basic moral fundamental principles that built our civilization and substitute it with an amoral, corrupt, political correctness. To successfully replace parents, these governments must supplant free agency, freedom of religion, freedom of conscience, and other liberties and institute policies of indoctrination of youth in government schools.
In lieu of the joy associated with life, a culture of death has become pervasive. The devaluation of life is evidenced by millions of voluntary, birth control-driven abortions; billions of forced, population-control driven abortions; millions of aged and ill persons euthanized when they become a burden to care-givers; institution of a “duty-to-die” mindset when secular-socialist regimes no longer have the financial resources to provide life prolonging medical services; escalating levels of seemingly random acts of violence, where murder is a tribalist right-of-passage, or tactical pursuit of business interests.
The negative consequences (the reaction) of rejection of long-valued cultural institutions (the action) are real and measurable. Social scientists tell us that our prisons are full because of the breakdown of the family. Imprisoned are gang members who live in primitive, tribalist societies. They house increasing numbers of individuals driven to drug and alcohol abuse. They house an increasing number of child and spousal abusers.
Children and their unmarried mothers languish in poverty and neglect because governments, having replaced the family, lack resources to provide for them. In addition to the intense and pervasive personal suffering attributed directly to these actions, the financial costs to struggling economies cast a shadow of fear across the future wellbeing of everyone.
The world has more artists, actors, musicians, and writers than ever before. Once instrumental in, and a sign of cultural refinement, the “artists” of today are purveyors of cultural decline. Where we once valued refinement, we now prefer vulgarity, crudeness, and crassness.
In our modern society, the collective good is being replaced by short term satisfaction of adult desires that brings long term harm to those seeking such satisfaction. Rejection of cultural institutions and behavioral norms has resulted in a cultural devolution or reversion to a more primitive state. An entire generation is now, ironically, supplanting its own long-term best interest in exchange for short term satisfaction.
Civilization, as we know it, is at a tipping point. We can succumb to the trends I have described, or we can hold true to those civilizing institutions that brought the broad range of cultural success we enjoy in the world today.
At UFI, we are dedicated to our mission of preserving these cultural institutions. We continue to educate the world regarding the value of cultural institutions and the consequences of their destruction. Stand with us by dedicating your resources to help us preserve for generations to come, the cultural benefits you have long enjoyed. Click HERE to support the family today!
Mike Duff
President, United Families International