The ideal voter or political representative in any high-functioning democracy is the father. He is more important politically than the mother;  more important than the young man without children or the single woman; more important as a type than even the property owner. Wise democracy would limit the franchise to fathers.

There may be great statesmen or thinkers who have no children, men such as Alexis de Tocqueville who possess vision and insight. But, the ordinary father is more crucial to civilization; without him, it cannot prosper over the long term.

In the father, the impersonal and personal, the abstract and concrete, the public and private are more likely to exist in the sort of harmony that makes for good political judgment. By father, I don’t mean any man who has biologically reproduced, but the man who is married and takes part in rearing his children and has an active bond with them, whether they are young or adults.

For a woman, the world is personal and her influence is pervasive whether she has the vote or not. For the man without children, the future is not as alive; even property or personal wealth may not make him care for those who will live many decades from now. The father is more apt to possess both public-spiritedness and loyalty, dispassion and compassion.

Patriarchy is often misunderstood. Too often it conjures images of despotic chiefs or overlords. A democratic patriarchy is the rule of ordinary fathers. As Pericles said in his famous funeral oration:

   … for never can a fair or just policy be expected of the citizen who does not, like his fellows, bring to the decision the interests and apprehensions of a father.

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