Yesterday was a busy news day in the US: a controversial Supreme Court nominee; another indictment of the Majority Leader of the House of Representatives; continuing  political upheaval in Iraq.  So much was happening that this post at the liberal blog Daily Kos was quickly pushed off the front page.  But I would like to bring it front and center here for a moment.

    The title of the post caught my eye: "Strong Families, Strong Communities, Strong Nation."  I immediately thought of Confucius.  And, without invoking the Chinese sage, the writer of the piece was struggling with the kinds of issues liberals have liberals encountered when they try to make Confucius fit their political project.

     For those not familiar with Daily Kos, it is a very large and influential blog on the left-liberal side of the American political debate.  Writers there are reliably anti-Bush but they differ on what strategy the Democratic Party should pursue in opposition.  The writer of the piece in question, "Hunter," is responding to the question: what do Democrats stand for?  And he comes up with his formulation: strong families, strong communities, strong nation.

     He engages the possible critique that his message may sound fairly conservative:

If it sounds "Republican", it shouldn’t. It represents the three core principles of the Democratic message. And it’s easy to explain.

Strong, viable families build strong communities. Strong communities build strong economies, and strong states, and support the basic framework of American resilience, competitiveness, and high quality of life. Those, in turn, build a strong, prosperous, well protected, well respected nation.

     It also sounds quite Confucian.  And Confucianism, in a modern variation, may well be supportive of a liberal political project.

      First, the Confucian element of Hunter’s idea is the notion of building national prosperity and strength on the building blocks of families.  In various statements, Confucius suggests that if relations within the family are well ordered, larger political and, ultimately, national relations will also be well ordered.  Here’s one example:

Duke Ching asked Confucius about governing, and Confucius said: "Ruler a ruler, minister a minister, father a father, son a son."

"How splendid!" exclaimed the Duke. "Truly, if the ruler isn’t a ruler, the minister a minister, the father a father, and the son a son – then even if we had grain, how could we survive to eat?" (12.11)

     In order to prosper social relations within the family must be loving and tight, and those solid ties will cascade upward, supporting good government (which also relies on political leaders conscientiously fulfilling their roles) and national strength.

    Of course the modern downfall of Confucianism is the overbearing patriarchal power that it supported in traditional China.  So, the question becomes (and this issue has challenged Chinese intellectuals for the past 150 years): can core Confucian ideals be maintained without the patriarchy of the past.  I think the short answer is: yes.

     The most direct way to proceed in preserving Confucian ideals in a context of gender equality is to substitute the word "parent" for "father" and "child" for "son."  While Confucius himself may have resisted such a move in his own time, his central ideas of Humanity, Duty, and Ritual can all be maintained and reproduced in modern America (and modern China) with that sort of revision.  This may also allow room for gay families, too, as I have suggested before.

    So, yes, there is a certain sort of social conservatism in this line of thought, as Hunter suggests.  A Confucian-liberal political project would strive to provide resources and policies to conserve and support families as the basis of national prosperity and strength.  There is an organic social unity that is being recreated in this.  It pushes against individualist libertarianism.  And it might be effective as a platform for a revived Democratic Party in the US.