Conservatives are family values hypocrites, Nick Kristof recently argued at The New York Times. They talk about marriage, family, and traditional values, but, in reality, they have difficulty living up to their professed values. In fact, it's actually “liberals [who] practice the values that conservatives preach.”
Certainly, Kristof is onto something when it comes to members of the political class, such as Newt Gingrich, Roy Moore, and Donald Trump. But the story is rather different when one looks at ordinary families across America. In fact, over at Politico, Vijay Menon and I take issue with Kristof's argument. It turns out that Kristof is largely conflating family problems in the South with family problems among conservative families. (This is what scholars call an “ecological fallacy.”)
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