Sen. Marco Rubio @ Claremont Institute Top 25 Threats to the American FamilyHealthy families are at the core of any strong society. Ancient tradition, modern social science, and common sense all agree on this. And yet today, family life is under attack from powerful forces across the nation.
First and foremost, it is under attack from a powerful faction of cultural Marxists in this country who are openly committed to undermining and destroying the family. This faction represents a small minority of the population, but it has an outsized influence in our elite institutions, from the academy and the media to Hollywood and Silicon Valley. Following their cultural lead, upscale liberals now push the Marxists’ anti-American, anti-family agenda at every level of society.
During the COVID lockdowns, parents saw just how serious the threat of the far left is. It started with draconian measures that kept American kids out of the classroom for more than a year — over twice the length that other Western countries imposed remote school — to satisfy liberal paranoia. The social and psychological damage inflicted on children, who were at reduced risk from COVID in the first place, will have lasting consequences for years to come.
If that were not enough, parents saw first-hand how woke activists use the public education system to divide the country, tear down religion, and replace the family with the state. Our children were indoctrinated with the destructive idea that every social interaction is based on race. They were told that if they have a mom and a dad, they are members of an oppressive class. And they were subjected to shocking and inappropriate depictions of gender and sexuality. What were recently fringe theories have increasingly entered the mainstream of school curricula.
To defend our families from this insanity, we need to strengthen community institutions that are still free from elite control: local school boards, churches, law enforcement agencies, and more. But those too are under attack. We have seen leftist states ban in-home church meetings while they declare Planned Parenthood an “essential service.” We have seen cities defund and try to abolish their police forces. We have even seen Child Protective Services remove minors from their homes when parents refused to consent to gender transition “therapies.”
This blatant totalitarianism has no place in America. But those who dare speak out against it will find themselves condemned by the legacy media and canceled by Big Tech. Companies like Google, TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter censor conservative voices and spread Marxist propaganda. Meanwhile, they keep our kids hooked on addictive, corrosive content to expand their profit margins. Millions of young people are currently suffering from depression, anxiety, and loneliness, all enhanced by social media use.
It is no wonder that suicide and drug use rates are on the rise. Our kids are bombarded every minute of every day with negative information and unhealthy stimuli. Without the historic structures of family, faith, and community, they would have nowhere else to turn for help and healing. And yet, it is those very structures that cultural Marxists are working to destroy.
Marxist attacks are enabled by a policy consensus that disempowers Americans from standing up to them. Rescuing our children starts with parents taking back control over their schools. However, it will also require politicians to crack down on Big Tech, even if that’s not what the doctrines of free-market fundamentalism would have once counseled.
More generally, to push back against the far left, we will have to build a new economic consensus that values Americans as workers, family members, religious believers, and members of their communities, not just as consumers.
Our laws should reflect this consensus by making the stability of American families a priority unto its own. That is why I worked with Ivanka Trump and Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) to double the child tax credit for working families. It is why I created the Paycheck Protection Program to save small and family-owned businesses from COVID lockdowns. And it is why I am pushing to strip Big Tech companies from their ridiculous Section 230 protections, which deprive families whose children have been harmed by them of legal recourse.
America is under attack. It is also at a crossroads. We have the strength, the resources, and the creativity to make the 21st century a new American Century, with healthy, flourishing families at its heart. But we could also be the generation that witnesses cultural Marxism usher in America’s decline.
The choice is ours. I hope and pray for the sake of my family, and for families across the country, that we make the right one.
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