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Matthew Schmitz, of conservative Catholic magazine First Things, criticises Elon Musk and the American right over family values
Specifically, he points to a clash between what he regards as an older or more traditional set of family values on the right, heavily influenced by religious conservatism, which emphasises stable marriages and households, care for children and spouses, parents' obligations towards their children and children's duties towards their parents, and so on; and a newer set, which regards parental behaviour as largely unimportant, and instead prioritises genetic predisposition.
He takes Musk as a good test case. Seen from the former perspective, Musk is a despicable father - he has flitted between women and been irresponsible and uninvolved with the raising of his children. Seen from the latter perspective, Musk has perhaps been quite a good father - he has fathered many children while going to deliberate effort to maximise their genetic potential. Should Musk be admired or condemned?
Schmitz is, of course, on the traditionalist side, and he tries to draw a link between Musk's behaviour a kind of libertarian-transhumanist worldview which, he argues, also implicitly endorses positions that Musk repudiates, such as transgenderism, or which the right-wing has traditionally opposed, such as abortion. Naturally he wants a reassertion of the traditional worldview.
Apart from Schmitz's entirely predictable conclusion, though, I think he's correct to identify a tension here. It's no surprise that people like Richard Hanania (who has often protested that he doesn't like conservatives) are in the genetics-first camp, and it's more interesting to note even more 'mainstream' Republicans, like Matt Gaetz, turning towards the genetics-first position. Is there a transformation going on in the right? Are new divides forming around family policy and technology? Or is there some way to square the circle?
Since we just talked about Musk the other day, and since I know the Motte has a large share of what I would consider libertarian(ish) genetics-first or heredity-first posters, it'd be interesting to hear some comments!
I couldn’t disagree with the author’s framing more. That said, I am not a First Things subscriber, and my take necessarily ends where the archived article does.
The author frames this as a faction on the right discovering human genetics and deciding to jettison family values as a consequence; he emphasizes this with the label “genetic determinist.” This is backward. These are people who already occupied the secular center left to center right and weren’t adherents of family values in the first place. They were already okay with premarital sex (and occasionally adultery); they were already okay with divorce; they were already pro-choice, or at least not so pro-life as to have reservations about IVF. They are part of a right-wing coalition, and they have common cause with social conservatives, but no one was under the illusion that they were social conservatives.
I hold (loosely) that nature and nurture both matter and that the nature-nurture ratio is different in different areas of life. But I am not a consequentialist: if I thought that all life outcomes were 95% genetic, I wouldn’t cease to be a social conservative. It’s good to do the right thing because it is the right thing; positive consequences are frosting on the cake. (Even if you are a consequentialist, you should consider the implications for childhood happiness as well as adult outcomes.)
Looking up the author, Schmitz believes that social conservatives should make common cause with social democrats, not with libertarians or the pro-business right. If he has laid this out clearly and dealt with the difficulties in that position, I’d be interested to read it. In America most social democrats are also social progressives, and they have a history of leveraging the welfare state to promote social progressivism and oppose social conservatism. The current political alignment follows in part from that.
As it is, the piece comes off as a disingenuous attempt to find a label for right-wing social liberals that won’t also stick to left-wing social liberals. I expected better from First Things.
And you’ve underlined the reason that the religious right will remain the religious right- when push comes to shove, you get the little sisters of the poor situation going on.
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