The Left's War On The Traditional Family | Peter Hitchens

[00:00:00]Much of what's happening in Western countries, uh is is common to them all.

[00:00:04]They're borrowing quite irresponsibly against their children and their grandchildren. It's a theme I often come back to because it worries me enormously. Um you know, you've got a very rapidly declining birth rate.

[00:00:15]You've got young people disillusioned.

[00:00:16]They don't feel they can get a start in life. They can't afford a house. That's affecting family formation. Many of them don't want children anyway. What would you say about the state of, for want of a better term, the family?

[00:00:28]>> Oh, I'm terrified by the whole thing, uh wherever I look, but it is particularly bad here.

[00:00:34]And for a long time, I've annoyed people by saying, "Look at the places. I've never seen a country more finished."

[00:00:40]Uh the the I'm part of the reason for this has been the so many policies since the 1960s have been based on trying to replace the stable married family by the state.

[00:00:52]In that in that sense, which you can't do. And this has entailed the weakening, particularly the weakening of the marriage bond, to the point where it barely exists in reality anymore.

[00:01:02]Uh and the weakening of of family life in general, and honestly abolition of the two roles of husband and father, which were so important in my childhood.

[00:01:12]And which has now vanished from the life of many many people. I It it it it scares me stiff. And on top of that, the all the economic indicators flashing red.

[00:01:21]And [snorts] you can't help worrying.

[00:01:24]I don't This is why I don't really engage in politics, because I can't I can't see any way in which anybody could conceivably come to political office in Britain now uh who could put forward an honest program which would confront these things.

[00:01:41]Because an honest program would be would be destroyed by the but by the the state of public opinion which we have now. That's another of the problems in modern politics. You Honestly in politics is not rewarded.

[00:01:52]>> Another way of putting that is that we seem to be in absolute denial of the evidence. I mean, we know, just to touch on something that you talked about, we know from all the research what a what children need early on. We understand the importance of stable homes. We actually understand and we have it all there. And yet, they're almost things you can't talk about anymore.

[00:02:15]>> This is great.

[00:02:16]>> And that is the >> new because the new Look, the the the Gramscian donor of the new left, although not Soviet, is is still fundamentally hostile uh to the to the former Christian nature, particularly of the European nations, which are and and indeed the United States, which are at the heart of all this.

[00:02:42]It is it does it it does oppose that. It does It does It isn't a supporter of of marriage or the or the or the married family or or many aspects of it or indeed of tradition or um parental authority or all kinds of other things which were essential in the old politics, now gone.

[00:03:03]It wants a new world. It is It remains utopian.

[00:03:07]It just has more subtle ways of achieving it than it used to have and it's and it can make its sound better than it ought to and does so, but the un- the underlying problems still remain. I mean, the the deep core of the problems of this country and of the Western countries, going back, as I say, 60 or 70 years, are so profound that I I I just blench at the idea of trying to address them. If if ever any of us were suddenly woken from a dream by thunderous voice saying, "You're in charge now."

[00:03:44]I don't know if I dare to start.

[00:03:47]Almost everything you'd have to do would be so contrary to what people have been taught to believe.