Much more than State Farm, your family is always there

So there's a lot of talk about the postmodern 'family' replacing the actual blood and soil and DNA family.  Mixed families, ersaztz families, zero calorie families, you name it.  Jonah Goldberg reminds us that Families have been around a long time as the ultimate bulwark against chaos:

The whole point of certain institutions is that they are insurance policies against the unknown future (picture G. Gordon Liddy talking about gold, only replace it with “the family”). The phrase “you can always count on family” may not be literally true, but it is more true than “you can always count on your old college roommate.” When times are great, the demands of family (or religion, or good manners, or thriftiness, or a thousand other institutions, customs, and habits of the heart that we can throw under the bulwark of “tradition”) might often seem like too much unnecessary baggage to carry around. But when things hit the fan, family is there in a way that other people aren’t. Not because those other people are bad, but because your family is your family.

But it’s important to keep in mind that the family – or the Bill of Rights, or good manners, whatever – isn’t a catastrophic insurance policy. The value of these institutions is best understood during a time of crisis, but the influence of these institutions is constant, even in times of calm luxury. The fact that these institutions exist forecloses certain options and avenues for reformers who yearn for a blanker social slate.

The family, like marriage, is an institution that predates our Constitution and the very concept of democracy, never mind modernity. That is not to say that it hasn’t evolved and changed or that conservatives should never, ever contemplate further changes and greater evolution. It is simply to say that we should do so carefully, reservedly, humbly, in full knowledge that tomorrow may look as little like today as yesterday did.

I was partners with some Pakistanis.  They have very strong family ties to the extent that the Eldest son is expected to marry but stay at home and care for his parents.  My rich partner lived on the third floor of his parents house with his wife and kids.  He was married to his first cousin.  Family ties are so strong in Pakistan in part because the state and civil institutions are so weak.  You need a strong extended family to protect you against the outside.  We're safe right now in the west but you never know when the kimchi is going to hit the fan and even more than guns or gold, family is a last refuge. Invest in it.

And another reason I like Jonah Goldberg is because he quotes Chesterton and is that cool or what?:

“In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, ‘I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.’ To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: ‘If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.’”

– G.K. Chesterton, The Thing