Happy Father’s Day, or as it might be more appropriately called in today’s entertainment world, Happy Doofus Day!
Look at any number of TV shows, movies, or other elements of pop culture, and you’ll often, though not always, see fathers–when they’re even around the kids–portrayed as buffoons and doofuses.
At the same time, we’re suffering, as a nation, from an epidemic of fatherlessness, leading to young men getting inadequate instruction and role modeling in being responsible. This is particularly acute in, though not limited to, the black community. (For a more scholarly treatment of this question, I recommend From Family Collapse to America’s Decline, which I’m working through these days.)
What can we do about this? Government can and has made matters worse: think of the large number of fathers incarcerated because of the “war on drugs” or the fact that the welfare state provides mothers a financial substitute for fathers.
But if government can be a force for destruction, can it be a force for good? The record of activist government doing good, especially to address a social problem, isn’t great. Perhaps the best it can do is stand back and let private groups, such as churches and the Boy Scouts, do their part. Unfortunately, we didn’t get into this mess overnight, and it’s going to take a while for things to be turned aright. As Hannah Arendt once observed, civilization is continually under assault by a new wave of barbarians, which we call children. Fathers should play an important role in socializing the barbarians into productive behaviors and habits. Unfortunately, culture and government policy discourages their hard work.