The vision of the anointed: the left and social policy

National Review, July 31, 1995 by Thomas Sowell

It is not a matter of any subjective animus. The anointed may in fact be willing to shower government largesse upon families, as they do on other social entities. But the preservation of the family as an autonomous decision-making unit is incompatible with the third-party decision-making that is at the heart of the vision of the anointed.

Engels's first draft of the Communist Manifesto included a deliberate undermining of family bonds as part of the Marxian political agenda, though Marx himself was politically astute enough to leave that out of the final version. Nor has the war against the autonomy of the family been confined to extremists.