Stable Families are Better for Children | Sir Jacob-Rees-Mogg

if I can come to the term social conservatism can I ask you how you would describe that and why you see it as good for society particularly in the context of the the line I've always thought it was a bit of a home goal with people in the conservative country of movement in this country saying we're seen as the nasty party well the emergency say we're seen that way you're you've allowed others to Define you and you're owning it it seems to me but that's an aside social conservatism and why it's good for for society well I think it's an important aside I never thought that conservative party was the nasty party I remember that speech made by trees are made very well because the next day I was speaking to a conservative group and it was in Shropshire the conservative women's group and there you had all these people who had worked for years for the conservative party who also did all the charitable work in their local communities then they ran the village of Fate all those sorts of things and suddenly they've been told they were nasty so I thought it was wrong foolish thing to say um and misunderstood what conservatism was about again back to my point on the family being the building block of society rather than the other way around and therefore of the of the state the conservatives ought to support the family because it helps individuals in their lives the successive people who are brought up in a stable family is statistically better than those who are not brought up in a staple family but the butt is very important it's not for politicians to be judgmental on how others lead their lives but it is for politicians to allow people the freedom to lead their lives what we have currently in the UK and I don't know if this is also true in Australia there's a benefit in tax system that is actively hostile to the family you are worse off in a family than not in a family this can't be sensible so I didn't want to go back to a time where you stigmatize people living in other groupings or make their life more difficult um or make it harder for single parent families who have a pretty tough time for all sorts of reasons I don't want to penalize or pillory them but I do want to support the traditional family because I think it's helpful for society overall uh and I suspect is is important in terms of economic outcomes ultimately well I think that's absolutely right that if you if you look at um success at school if you look at the prison population uh and you correlate that with um children in care well it's a particularly difficult picture if you correlate it with broken homes altogether it is a difficult picture so the stability that you get from being in a traditional family is very helpful to people growing up and to their families as I say this doesn't mean you want to criticize people whose lives haven't worked out that way or have made other choices they must be free to do that but you don't want to have policies that actually make family life harder we do seem to be living in an age of um sort of quite radical self-autonomy you know um the idea that somehow the greatest virtue is that I am who I feel almost that I am and that sometimes I think creates awkward Dynamics uh in that set of Virtues is not particularly friendly to community including family it can be a bit Anarchy an archaic a bit uh you know uh anti-organized government and and stability uh and certainly anti-religion so you've got a bit of a clash there with this modern idea I think of the virtue of self-autonomy and what we've seen as the essential ingredients of a cohesive and Cooperative Society well people can identify as they wish they're completely free to do it but am I obliged to accept how they identify it was in the papers recently that somebody had come to United Kingdom from America and had identified as being British well that doesn't entitle him to a passport and he may think he's British marvelous I'm not in favor of people thinking that great thing but that doesn't entitle you to the rights of a British citizen it doesn't give you a bait it doesn't give you a passport it doesn't give you a National Insurance number and so I think people are entitled to say what they wish it's a free country but equally others are entitled not to change their behavior in accordance with somebody's whim this has been the genius I think of Western uh civilization over the last few hundred years we've evolved to the point until it seems recently that we were able to accommodate one another's deepest differences in a way that's been quite unique and one worries a little that it's under attack yes I I think there is an intolerance um and the intolerance mainly comes from the left not from the right I I see this uh on I do a television program for GB news I see this with some people that I interview that people on the right who I disagree with don't automatically think that I'm a bad person because of it some people on the left just assume if you disagree you must be bad and the right very rarely feels that towards the left intolerance is a bad thing it's bad for the cohesion of society but it's also a desperate arrogance because if you look at human history you go back all through whatever records there are we make terrible mistakes we all believe things which then turn out a hundred years later to have been wrong unpleasant false based on bad information but therefore one ought to have a certain humility about one's own views and images [Music]

Channel: John Anderson Media

Views: 5,306

Keywords: John Anderson, John Anderson Conversation, Interview, John Anderson Interview, Policy debate, public policy, public debate, John Anderson Direct, Direct, Conversations

Id: dRt8x_DOzxQ

Length: 6min 20sec (380 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 27 2023