Rod Dreher, senior editor of the American Conservative, has penned a semi-apologia for CCP-style communitarian childrearing. What might compel a Christian to support a nation whose government suppresses Christianity and persecutes its adherents? (Not to mention a nation that, until recently, banned having more than one child, and whose population is now shrinking.) In response to a New York Times op-ed written by an American woman who, returning to this country after raising two children in China, wrote that she “learned to appreciate the strong sense of shared values and of people connected as a nation,” Dreher admits, “I went to this NYT op-ed by Heather Kaye expecting to hate it … but in fact, she gives us a lot to think about.” Such as, for example, how bad America is. Dreher writes:
I would not for one second like my kids learning Communist propaganda! But consider the propaganda that our kids routinely get here, especially by woke teachers pushing racialist propaganda and the radical LGBT narrative.
To Dreher, the United States is so decadent and corrupt that he has to give Chinese communitarian parenting a second look. He writes:
To be clear, I would not want to raise my kids in a Communist dictatorship. But if you think about what Kaye is saying here — especially if you’re a parent — you see the advantages. What Kaye is talking about is a society that is confident in its own values, and believes it is the role of society to protect kids from harmful influences.
Dreher seasons his praise of China with a generous helping of “to be sure”: “Based on the research I did on China for Live Not By Lies, I would not trade what we have in the US for the Chinese way of raising kids.” However, “that doesn’t mean that every single thing about life in contemporary China is bad.” Indeed, he “can see why Heather Kaye feels the way she does.”
As Dreher is keen to remind his readers, he now lives in Budapest, Hungary, from where he now regularly condemns the country of his birth, seemingly obsessed with its faults. To him, Hungary is the country we used to have, but “lost.” It reminds of him of America in the 1990s, “just before things began to fall apart.” Now, values such as hard work and self-discipline are nowhere to be found, as the U.S. devolves into an endless hellscape of woke hysteria and personal irresponsibility.
This country has its problems (if I may be allowed a “to be sure” of my own). But there is a lot of good here as well, even if Dreher, for whatever reason, thought he couldn’t find enough of it to want to stay. It is his right to leave. But there is no good reason to so loathe America so much that you start looking at other countries — even China! — enviously. And he should not think his preferences are widespread. We should hope not. What’s wrong with this country won’t be fixed by Dreher-esque condemnation and pessimism — especially when it comes from Budapest.