Anarchy or Subsidiarity?
The anarchist welcomes the Church teaching of subsidiarity, which says the smallest units of society ought to handle whatever they can, with the larger units getting involved only when the smaller units can't handle something.
“Right on,” says the anarchist. And the smallest unit of society is the family. And even though the family is a type of government, it is a good thing.
In fact, the family is the greatest thing, and it ought to be treated as such. It ought to be supported and strengthened.
But the existence of bigger governments does the opposite, precisely for the reasons explained above: State power comes at the price of social power. If the State will take care of something, you don't need the family to do it.
This was the great lesson of The Great Society: By subsidizing out-of-wedlock births, government got rid of the father. In the wake of the illegitimate sex subsidy, single-mom households in the inner cities exploded and spread to the more rural areas. Other forces were at work, too (primarily, the 20th century's increasing sexual libertinism that exploded in the 1960s), but the act of removing the necessity of a breadwinner removed the father.
There is also the example of the exploding public school system. As the mandatory public schools grow stronger, expanding their reach from simply teaching the “Three R's” to providing physical education, sex education, breakfasts, and after-school childcare, why does the family need to provide such things? It doesn't. Many continue to do so, but the imperative to do so is weakened, and with the imperative weakened, the glue of the family weakens. The family is a necessity, not a luxury, born of the fact that children necessarily issue from the conjugal act. If the necessity of the family is weakened, the family itself is weakened.
The principle that State power erodes social power works at much more subtle levels to undermine the family.
There is, first of all, the simple fact that a stronger authority undermines a lesser one. If a police officer can handcuff and humiliate a father in front of his children solely for a minor infraction like not having his driver's license on him (it has happened), what is the effect on the father's status in his children's eyes?
The effect on the handcuffed father's status is obvious, but the effect on all other fathers' status isn't good, either. The maturing child sees that his father is puny next to the power of the State. The State, by its constant presence everywhere, pervasively makes a boy's father look smaller. It might be subtle, but the effect is there.
Consider also the skyscraper of laws that confronts every person. It's a conservative estimate that the average American citizen is subject to hundreds of volumes of federal and state statutes, tens of thousands regulations, a thick code of ordinances, and the local school district's rules of conduct.
All this authoritarianism undermines authority. When something is so pervasively regulated, anything that isn't regulated is deemed legitimate. “If the government doesn't prohibit it,” goes the subtle shift in thinking, “it must be okay.” (The anarchist wants cocaine unrestricted, but the anarchist also realizes this might not be the most prudent first move in a society where “not illegal” tends to be knee-jerk translated as “morally permissible.”)
Where does this leave the father? What is his authority? It still exists, at least in families that have beaten off the effects of the State, but it's weakened. The father doesn't have the benefit of positive law, so his authority is less respected . . . unless he is merely repeating the injunctions of the positive law and has the authority of the local police man or regulator behind him. By creating the background of moral permissiveness by regulating so extensively what isn't permissive, the father's authority in areas that aren't regulated is intuitively thrown into question.
The good son or daughter still heeds their father, but to do so, they must shake off a contrary reflex.
