Introduction
Well, the internets are ablaze with the yapping howls of feminists and their male lapdogs. Their holy sacrament of voting has been questioned by thoughtful Christians, and they are breathing heavily into brown paper sacks. Even the Secretary of Defense has given us a friendly cheer, “All of Christ for All of Life,” and so panic has set in, along with the usual accusations of handmaid tale atrocity, racism, and whatever other old vegetables they can find in the back of their fridge. Part of the panic in certain sectors is simply the fact that we don’t care. A CNN story about Christians who really believe the Bible used to get a bunch of important people slightly nervous or embarrassed, but this time hardly anyone has flinched.
Everyone knows that in God’s providence Doug Wilson is the catnip of liberals everywhere. I suspect it’s the way he chuckles when he is really amused; it really is offensive to angry people for someone to be that happy. But of course they insist that it’s all kinds of other things like hatred of women, racial bigotry, and machinations of world domination. But when those slanders hit everyone who actually knows the man as utterly ludicrous, they fall flat, because it sounds like you’re accusing Santa Claus of something nefarious. And then right on schedule, you have all the rhetorical effectiveness of Jadis the White Witch of Narnia.
My 16 Seconds
But this time around, I got 16 seconds to speak into the microphone, and even though I wouldn’t claim it was my favorite 16 seconds of an hour or so interview, I certainly stand by every word I said, and I’m grateful to say it again here. When asked about women voting, I said that in my ideal society we would vote by household and, being that the head of the household is ordinarily a man, I would be the one that would usually cast our vote. When Pamala Brown asked me what would happen if my wife and I disagree about who to vote for, I said that would make for a good discussion. She also asked my colleague Jared Longshore specifically about repealing the 19th Amendment, and Jared cheerily announced that he would support that. And the high-pitched screeching commenced on the interwebs.
Now there is much that could and should be said about this entire discussion, and we don’t have time or space for it all here. And I should also note that the 19th Amendment is hardly something that any of us spends much time thinking about or worrying about here in Moscow. I honestly can’t remember the last time anyone mentioned it. I’m a lot more concerned about my garden. But for anyone who is honestly interested, perhaps even some moderns who view such an idea as an archaic curiosity, here are a few thoughts on the subject.
Our First 150 Years
First, let us recall that our country functioned for almost hundred and fifty years before the 19th Amendment. And while there were no doubt sins and evils needing correction during that time, the reputation of America, particularly with regard to how it viewed and treated women, was incredibly high. For example, Alexis de Tocqueville writing in 1835, said:
“As for me, I shall not hesitate to say it: although in the United States the woman scarcely leaves the domestic circle and is in certain respects very dependent within it, nowhere does her position seem higher to me; and now that I approach the end of this book where I have shown so many considerable things done by Americans, if one asked me to what do I think one must principally attribute the singular prosperity and growing force of this people, I would answer that it is to the superiority of its women.”
Nearly a hundred years before women’s suffrage, the reputation of America was that it’s singular prosperity and growing force was due to the superiority of its women, who by and large concentrated their efforts on the “domestic circle,” in which she served in a position of high honor and authority – and all without having the so-called “right to vote.” Try to let that sink in for a minute between sobs.
Real Representation & Limited Government
Now part of what moderns cannot get their head around is that I do not actually believe in disenfranchising women (and neither do my colleagues). We actually believe, like Tocqueville noticed, that women have the highest position in society when they rule their houses well. Not only that, but when households voted, the women were better represented. In other words, I believe women had more of a vote and more influence on society before the 19th Amendment.
Even Richard Weaver once wrote: “The reestablishment of women as the cohesive force of the family, the end of the ‘long-haired men and short-haired women,’ should bring a renewal of well-being to the whole of society… George Fitzhugh’s brutal remark that if women put on trousers, men would use them for plowing has been borne out, and I think that women would have more influence actually if they did not vote, but, according to the advice of Augusta Evans Wilson, made their firesides seats of Delphic wisdom” (The Southern Tradition at Bay, 325).
The point is not to have less godly feminine influence on society. The point is actually to have more.
Even as it stands today, if we were to take the current screeching logic, I would like to point out that women do not vote on any of the bills that appear before Congress. Female citizens are denied the right to vote on every single one of them, all day long, even on Tuesdays. And you call this a civilized society?! Of course, male citizens are denied the right to vote on bills before Congress also. We all vote for “representatives” and “senators” and those folks vote on our behalf (sometimes well, sometimes poorly). So I might ask Mrs. Brown what she does when she disagrees with her senator, and I suspect that she would say something like, ‘if it’s really important she would have a conversation with them, write them a letter, send an email, call their office, etc.’ Ah… but do you feel that your dignity as a woman has been threatened by being represented? (I assume not.) Of course, some progressives would swallow the reductio and insist that we will not have true freedom until we have pure democracy, every citizen voting for every bill, every law, everywhere. But that sort of blinkered folly is a joke for another day.
So it was that for a hundred and fifty years, these United States recognized the government of the family, that a family is a unit, and while it is a unit that can disfunction, it is a natural and created good part of a healthy, functioning society. The demand for a woman’s right to vote was the demand for the federal government (and thereby the states) to assume the disfunction of the family. The implicit assumption was that the head of the household was not representing his wife well or in some way was utterly incapable of representing her, which was an implicit attack on the goodness and cohesion of the family unit. While families have always still had the option of ignoring the attack, and working to preserve unity and like-mindedness, the legal pressure has continued to build. There is a logic that flows from the assumption of disunity and disagreement. It was sort of an electoral prenup — based on the likelihood of disagreement and dissolution.
Edmund Burke called the various associations and governments outside civil government (e.g. businesses, schools, families, churches) “little platoons,” and in a free and virtuous society, they function as checks on totalitarian governments. If the only point of integration and unity is the central government, then that government will inevitably have all the power. But classical Christian political thought has insisted that the centralizing of political power inevitably leads to corruption and tyranny (aka Babel). The notion of “limited government” is a thoroughly biblical concept, and it goes hand in hand with the idea of “separation of powers,” the idea that power should be spread out as much as possible.
Despite all the claims that “Christian theocracy” would be a totalitarian hellhole, you should remember that during the forty years surrounding the founding of our country, the single most quoted text in all the writings of the founding fathers was the book of Deuteronomy. It was cited twice as often as John Locke. And so we have three branches of our federal government, but originally, we also had states that checked federal power, and counties that checked state power, but there were also these “little platoons” throughout society, and the principle one was the family.
Conclusion
Now, you may have any number of remaining questions or concerns about exactly how voting ought to operate, but at the very least, any reasonable person ought to be able to explain why for a hundred and fifty years, the worldwide reputation of our nation was that our women were in some of the highest positions as they ran homes and supported their husbands. I mean, now that we have scaled the great civilizational heights of OnlyFans and the possibility of gay dudes renting your womb, or super gay dudes dressing up like women in order to share your restrooms, I mean, you can at least understand why some of us think we took a wrong turn at Albuquerque.
One final question, and I realize that this is no slam-dunk argument, but it’s an interesting thought experiment. Maybe you’re a center-right or maybe even a center-left type who laments the destruction of the family. Maybe you aren’t sure biblical ethics are entirely applicable to modern nations, but you look around and see the hellhole progressivism has created and you think to yourself, “it sure seems like things were better when there was more marriage, less divorce, and kids grew up in intact families.” So here’s the question: Would you be willing to trade the 19th Amendment for that?
Yes, I understand that there are reasonable questions regarding whether the trade would actually work. Fine. But I think a reasonable person ought to consider the question. The old Christian notion is that God made the world in a such a way that it flourishes when we run along those grooves. One of those grooves is the goodness and blessing of family, and when that family is flourishing, it is a great blessing when a man can say, “As for me and my house…”
Leave a Reply