No Short-Cuts to Liberty

"Our society makes adolescence a legitimate form of insanity. We have come to associate adolescence with rebelliousness and emotionalism, and we consider this to be naturally a time of stress in a person’s life. But this is not true of every culture, nor was it once true of our own. Adolescence has often been in history a particularly proud and happy age, the time of maturity. It is a mentally sick and spiritually sinful adolescence that wants independence while being subsidized by the parents...

"Socialism is simply a social order which attempts to take over the functions of the family and provide cradle-to-grave security which is the function of the family. In order to have socialism, there must be a population of spoiled children who want a great father who can provide them with more than their parents can, take their parents off their hands, and protect them from the necessity of growing up. Whenever and wherever the family breaks down, socialism results as the substitute for the family. But socialism destroys itself, because is cannot truly replace the family, and, unless the family re-establishes its godly order, the result is chaos. There are no short-cuts to liberty and maturity. The godly family is basic to a free country."

[excerpted from RJ Rushdoony, Law & Liberty (Vallecito, CA:Ross House Books, 1984), 103-07.]