Where does the State end and the Family begin?
What a peculiar title, I think to myself – surely it should be reversed? Yet undoubtedly we live in an era defined by the totality of the State. In most Western nations, it is generally accepted that the State has a monopoly not just on violence, but a moral primacy in education, in social relations, in economic activity, and so forth. We may reflect upon why – certainly the scale of modern nations, combined with the interconnectedness made possible by first the railway and now the Internet, explains a lot. But for those of us who see our families as of first importance, mere explanation of the State’s expanding control is not enough. There is an obvious rivalry between these two locations of loyalty, social activity, and moral education. The pandemic has brought that home in a brutal fashion: the ordinary life of nearly every extended family in the West has ceased. There is no parallel to this in our history. That we have largely accepted this state of affairs indefinitely is tr...