Speaking before a raucous crowd on Thursday night in Dallas at the Republican Midterm Convention, Vice President JD Vance hailed the nuclear family as the foundation of civilization.
“I can’t help but think about what it is that we’re fighting for and what it is that we want for all of our children,” Vance said. “What I want for my family, I want for your family, too.”
Noting that he and his wife, Usha, have recently welcomed Alec, their fourth child, into the family, the vice president praised the freedoms, opportunities and institutions that have been gifted by God and created by previous generations:
We live, of course, in an imperfect world of fallen men. We live in the city of man, not the city of God. But I believe that our founders built this nation on a promise that echoes our Creator, that every American child is born an heir, is born with a birthright, born with the right to inherit the blessings of the greatest country on earth, not because of who their parents are, not because of what they look like or where they come from, but because they are Americans, and this is our country.
Alec’s birth marked the first time in more than 150 years that a sitting vice president had welcomed a child while in office. VP Vance framed his remarks on Thursday around how God’s gift of family is influencing his own children’s view of the world:
It is inside of that nuclear family where I watch my four-year-old little girl, little Mira, beg to feed a bottle to her new baby brother.
It’s inside of the nuclear family where Alex’s older siblings just a couple of weeks ago witnessed the wonder of a new baby’s very first smile. It’s inside of that family where I’ve seen Usha show an almost divine patience with those four kids.
The former Ohio senator suggested that attacks on the traditional family “come not from a love of country, they come not from a desire to serve you or our fellow Americans, but they come from a very deep emptiness in the soul.”
A student of classic Christian theology, Vance was likely alluding to Augustine’s famous observation in “Confessions,” in which the Bishop of Hippo wrote, “You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”
C.S. Lewis made a similar observation when he wrote, “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”
Talking about the world that the vice president and Second Lady want their children to grow up in, Vance went from the theoretical and theological to the practical.
“I want my son to grow up healthy and strong,” he told those gathered. “I want him to have access to clean water and real food. I want him to live in a country where you don’t need a PhD in chemistry to understand the ingredient list in the grocery store. I want to live in a country where my son’s doctors answer to parents and to the Hippocratic Oath, not to a bunch of far-left bureaucrats.”
He continued:
“I want him to get a real education. He’s gonna grow up and go to school. I want him to go to a school that teaches him to read, to write, that teaches him arithmetic, that teaches him to love his country and his fellow citizens.”
VP Vance went on to say he wants an America where children can find meaningful employment, enjoy affordable housing and live in safe neighborhoods.
The vice president warned radical actors to stay away from his and other parents’ children. He then defended the nation’s hard-fought religious freedoms.
“I want them [our children] to be free to worship to the dictates of their own conscience,” Vance declared. “And I want our children to grow up in a country that doesn’t roll its eyes at people who pray but remember that this country itself was an answer to prayer 250 years ago.”
Vice President Vance put a ribbon on his remarks by alluding to marriage as the cornerstone of life, noting, “I want my kids to do the most important thing. I want them to fall in love. I want them to find somebody who’s worth building a life with.”
Thursday night’s address was in a political context, but the underlying message should be nonpolitical: children are gifts from God, entrusted to parents, and not political pawns to be exploited in culture.
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