Laughable.
A typically clueless libertarian reply. I take it you think I'm talking about a nuclear family alone. You are mistaken. By "family" I meant what is effectively a tribe.
Before you go assuming you know what I'm talking about, best you understand what is in the Torah and how the system it posed works. VERY few people do, if any, yet the origins of its precepts are observable worldwide in the enduring attributes of tribal cultures.
Name one agro-urban civilization that has survived half as long as the Masai, the Bushmen, the Lapps, the Magyars, the Innuit, the Bedouin, the Aborigines... The principles underlying the Torah were meant to transfer the properties that enabled those tribes to endure onto a nation comprising combined agro-urban AND nomadic components, cross fertilizing the former with the ideas of the latter. It never happened. Post-exilic Judaism made a valiant attempt to interpret those ideas, yet because of that urban lens ended up making a mess of it. We have been stuck with an urban intellectual's interpretation of how that tribal system was supposed to function ever since. It was an internally structured poly-archy, with the Law as its organizing element. The only thing that resembled a government were to be the judges' rulings as to how it applied.
Torah, Schmorah. Agro-urban? Is America agro-urban? In any event, we're still here, but we've only been around 238 years or so. Sorry we couldn't have started sooner.
I don't have any preconceived notion about how the tribal system is "supposed" to function. As far as I'm concerned, it's supposed to function however its individuals decide it's supposed to function, presuming it doesn't trample the unalienable rights of said individuals. Anything else is sub-optimum.
The libertarian ends up precipitating government control at the expense of freedom because of the emphasis upon the individual at the expense of family.
Still laughable. Your broad-brush smear on libertarians is neither justified nor accurate. The onus of backing up your assertion is on you. Provide evidence of your claim. How is the emphasis on the individual at the "expense" of the family? What individual rights must necessarily be curtailed to prevent such a situation?
When individuals are fully empowered, families (loosely defined) are at their strongest and most independent.
Are you saying "It takes a village?"