As I see socialdemocrats political loyality line it is, social group [gender, sexual orientation, "economic class", migrant group], individuum, country, region, Europe, world. I can't see that for socialdemocrats family is at all something they want to support or only the Oskar Lafontaine defines family ("Family is where adults and children live together." Well, if you are going to school alive, teachers and pupils are a family as well). I will later provide examples, why I think socialdemocrats are even battling families, if they become to big (e.g. have more than 2 children).
To make my points clear I have to go a bit into details of German politics, but I guess most is similar in other countries.
Education: Parents vs. "Lufthoheit über den Kinderbetten"
In 2002 the general secretary of the SPD, Olaf Scholz, todays minister of work, the office through which the most money is funneled, claimed the goverment want to gain sovereignty over the beds of children. Whatever he meant with this, the politics of the SPD is pretty much to separate parents as much as possible from their parents. In the Green Party parents are seen as the main danger to children at all.
Most important for families and probably for about a third or so already sufficient is a decent taxation of families. Therefore a conservative platform would increase the tax free existence minimum or better introduce a family splitting, which would make that people come in more progressive taxation regions according to possible lifestyle. The current taxation system means, that families are much higher taxed for a similar lifestyle as singles or married couples without children. Additional a certain amount of money would be paid for each child (maybe more for the 3rd and more of one family) and then taken into account as taxable income.
In earlier times the fight was, that the CDU wanted to increase the tax freedom for children, while the SPD was more for direct absolut payments. This is over. Today the CDU fights for direct payments, while the left leaning parties don't want at all to give more money to families. Kurt Beck (SPD) says Kindergarten starting age 1, whole-day schools and so on would be more important. No serious attempt to improve the under-financed primary schools in Germany is done. Children seem not deserve to get high-quality time in schools, but only more low-quality time. With taking inflation into account the payment for families are steadily declining, but Kurt Beck and other left-wing talkshow guests assume extra money for children would be used for buying alcohol and cigaretts for the parents. So if a free market economist (Oswald Metzger is from the Green party, but he is an economic right-winger) says many welfare dependent see their sense of life in eating fast food and drinking alcohol (which actually happens to conincede with reality), it is a scandal, but if the SPD announces, that non-welfare-dependent parents are using the money intended for their children to buy alcohol and cigaretts, it is acceptable, despite many of them will see their sense of life in providing best care for their children. And of course the SPD will be right, but it still is scandal. Most parents who are short on money start to save things which are for them. Cutting expenditures for their children will be the last thing they do. If they have some more money, they will spend a part of it for themselfes - how evil. Of course the left -leaning parties assume that parents spend only the money the gov gives them for their children on them - after all parents have borrowed their children only from the gov, which owns all children. When the CSU wanted a compensation for parents who don't want to send their children into a "Krippe", Katrin Göring-Eckardt said, this would only give an incencitive for parents not to send their children in the great gov provided care and expose them to the bad treatment they get at home. Of course she meant mostly poor families, for whom 150 Euro is a lot of money, but for the left-wing for everybody is good, what is good for the 10% poorest. Decide on your own, if you think it is more offensive to be accused you have a bad influence on your children or that you eat too much fast food and drink too much alcohol.
"Krippe" originally is a feeding trough. It was used by the left-wing for Kindergartens starting the age of one, probably because Jesus was born in a feeding trough. Conservatives know, that Jesus was born as a poor boy and died in the most brutal way the Romans could provide, an information which it probably didn't make it to the left-wingers, who think they provide all children with the "king like" care Jesus got, when he was born.
Left-wingers want a minimum wage more than negtive income tax, because it would be undignifying to have to take govs money to survive after you have worked a 40h week. They then owe gratitude, which they assume as bad, but when parents are overtaxed and then the gov provides institutions for children, that doesn't give the gov sovereignty over the beds of children at all? Probably the next step is that parents are only allowed to see their, uhm, the gov's children with "professional" escort.
The left-leaning "family-policy" has indeed other goals than helping families. The number of childless people in Germany is not higher than in other countries, despite the low number of all children overall. But the number of families with 3 or more children is really low. Most mothers with one or two children work and earn money. With 3 or more children this is usually too much. These families are those which are specifically endangered to become poor and often Hartz IV is more than one parent can earn. Direct payment would help these people, but they don't help the left-leaning parties to reach their real goal, which is making all parents working.
Regarding family policy the DDR has won the cold war over the BRD. I see the current politics as totalitarian and my tightest ally on this is really the supreme court, which has already in the past ruled for higher tax examptions for children. If you think this post is long, you can skip the rest. Family policy is the main issue, why I'm unhappy with politics and it might well be that I change my mind on other things. Socialise money, socialise capital, after all the bible claims that Jesus said to them, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's.". But I will never accept socialising children.
Individuum or social group
Another issue a conservative platform would do is abolishing all kinds of affirmative action. Looking on some isolated statics left-leaning politicians conclude that certain groups are disadvantaged. This may or not be true. But the real question is what should be the appropriate reaction.
In my opinion freedom of contracting is to accept and usually should not be interfered by the gov. Nobody has the right to get a workplace offer by a specific company, why should this change because they give a workplace to somebody else? If you look up the exact meaning of "discrimination", you will find, that it means to percept or treat in a different way. So if in privat life (and privat economy is privat) you are not allowed to discriminate, can then a man sue another man, that he has to merry him, because if the first one would be a woman, the second would merry him?
I know a really nerdish mechatronicist, who needs psychological treatment, due to a complete lack of selfconfidence. He simply will not work properly anymore if he has to work together with a woman. It's not evilness, it is just he really is mental ill!
The left wants then to do something to put the average statistics to some number. So they invent programms to promote women, homosexuals, and sometimes immigrants (interestingly in Germany the left has no serious programms to help immigrants, who are those for whom it would be the best case, see below). But as these programms are not targeting neccessarily the really disadvanteged, but just somebody from the selceted group. Therefore it may well be, that a woman (A) is disadvantaged in a concrete case which makes it to the statitics. Then another woman (B) profits from a gov programm. This improves the statistics. But does it make the world more just? Let's assume the man A' (man B') is married to woman A (woman B). As typically marriage is highly social selective, likely man A' will be the one who is e.g. not promoted, when woman B is promoted and man B' had the advatage when woman A was disadvantaged. This is of course only just, when you assume that women and men are more solidaric inside their gender group than in their marriage.
In case of public jobs etc. it is a gov buisiness to not discriminate. But as discriminate means a different treatment any affirmative action is by definition doing exactly that. More over one has to look on prorities. If really two persons are equally qualified for a job (in a free market system one would ask who works for less money...) one can ask who should be favoured. One way is to roll a dice. The current policy is to take the woman. But is it really more important to take the woman than e.g. the person who has children over the person who has no children. Doesn't families need the higher salary more than the single, isn't the unemployment of both parents extremely damaging for children compared with a more flexible single, who can move easier into another city? Sometimes not, sometimes yes. But a top down command without trusting the lower level to make a fair decision can do a lot of harm.
Actually if you look on statistics children with a difficult socio-economic background are much much more disadvanteged compared to a typical middle class child than e.g. women compared to men. But as it is much more difficult to find a simple rule who this is. But believe me, after half an hour job interview I could tell you who has which background without asking directly, although probably asking which job the parents had is not illegal.
Affirmative action for social groups (although I'm against it) has as well the advatage, that likely you really reach a couple of people with the same background. Likely his spouse and parents and children have really to suffer from the same discrimination he has to suffer from.
However, in the end you can't favour one group without disfavouring another. The fact that there specific groups are favoured and families are not among them makes children who may cost you flexibility when surching a job and the harm children suffer from their parents unemployedness not a better game. What tohuwabohu is done, when people don't want to hire out their flat to immigrants, but who cares, when renting a flat for a family of 5 becomes close to impossible. And here we are at an important point, when the freedom of contracting has to be reduced. If only some companies, hirer and so on are discriminating, it may get a bit more difficult, but you still have a chance. If nearly everybody discriminates you, you don't have a chance to compensate that and the gov really should do something about it. But the CDU minister president of Hamburg is openly gay, so is Berlins major, so is the leader of the FDP. Is there really so much discrimination on homosexuals? The chancellor is a woman, more than half of woman between 25 and 55 are working. Is there really a necessity to increase this by gov force? The feminists, who in my opinion are guilty of the current demographic crisis, have done a lot for bringing women to the workplace, but not only women, at least some are activly preventing as well men to take the role of a househusband, which would be a minimum test if they really are interested in equal rights or have a different agenda.
My money, your money, our money
Some communists have argued, that christian values and communists are not so far apart from each other. Although today a number of christians would agree, I disagree. The shortest form to explain the difference is, the christian says, what is mine is yours, too. The communist says, what is your's is mine, too. While a prefect society for both obviously might look similar, the non-ideal society looks quite different. In a nearly perfect christian society the one non-christian would be the richest man in the country. In a communist society the one non-communist would be in prison.
In school we had the chance to read a text from Tolstoi, where he describes the Russian soul and its relationship to mercy. He said before communism mercy was very common in Russia, but the communists forbid any charity, because either there is no perfect communism, then charity only prevents the situation becoming so bad, that there is a revolution to the better, and if perfect communism is reached, the gov is giving everybody everything he needs and charity is not necessary.
We have nowadays a mild form of this thinking in Germany. The SPD defines to be socially warm, when advocating more gov money, despite this is usually everything but socially warm. Privat initiative is seen as a form gov critic, not as privat wish of doing good. When somebody spends money for charity people say, this was for paying less tax, despite he never can save even half the money he was spending in the first place. We had a Peru project in our catholic student community. My parents spend a lot of money for the project. I didn't tell anybody (this here I assume to be sufficient anonymous). The way they regularly insult people like my parents as some form of evil finally made me turning away from the group. When somebody in Berlin made a privat memorial for the dead of the Berlin wall, this was heavily critisised as it was the gov's issue to define what is worth to remember and what not. Lafontaine told a shipping company owner advocated wealth tax for providing better education, but it seems never somebody told him he could spend his money without a tax for better education. Herbert Groenemeyer said on the life8 concert, it is important to view development aid as the right of the people in Africa and elsewhere not as charity. Why? The answer is, because people might be grateful for help. And gratitude is, what left-wingers fear more than everything else. That's the scandal with privat charity: It makes people unequal when somebody gives and somebody gets. I would say it makes as more human. Even in todays privat relationships everybody hurries to say, that there is a equality of giving and getting. What a rubbish. I got so much more from my parents than I gave them or ever plan to give them back. The christian commandment of mercy is not meant as an act of adminsitration. It is meant as a act of humanity.
The system breeds assholes. Education is viewed as successful, when people earn later a lot of money, not when they are socially responsible (the gov has no mandate to educate people to be altruistic). Either you isolate yourself from contact with the have-nots, so you can spend your money in unrestrained consumerism or you simply don't care for them or you stop working much and become a part of the whining fraction. No illusions, nobody likes to work for the gov. If taxes are too progressive nurses say they want time compensation for their extra hours, not in money, and they explicitly say that the progression is the reason. It is just a selfdestroying system with increasing claims against the "rich", who already now pay more than 50% of their income to the gov (including a share for indirect taxes). Most people by that have completely wrong estimations of what rich is. A professor for economy asked his students, what net income it takes to be part of the 5% richest in Germany. The estimates were mostly between 25k and 35k a month. The reality is between 5k and 6k. And there are not enough DAX CEOs to make really a huge contribution.
So what should be done by a conservative platform on taxes. It should take enough money to provide for things which are clear gov issues or provide a big synergy effect when done by the gov (2006 I was flying from Chicago to NY with daylight. The high number of pools in the gardens of the people is a sign of a non-funtioning gov, as e.g. a public swimming pool is much much more efficient than a privat one. Health care is gov issue, because the market can't work as there is a huge information assymmetry between the patient and the physician. Banking is using money which is protected as "legal tender" and therefore has already the gov working in it, there is no reason for not making some more regulation to protect tax payers money when necessary to prevent a systemic crisis. Setting standards in telecommunication and internet access clearly has improved competition and served the consumer well). But the tax system should not subsidise anything (or only children if you assume this as a subsidy), not ships in Korea not Hollywood movies and not night and holyday working. Taxation should not be used to affect peoples behaviour, if it is not for internalising costs (e.g. environmental damage). But the taxing of big cars is clearly an envy issue. A standing car is not emitting CO2. Shifting costs of mobility on the car, instead on driving, increases hold up costs and make more unlikely that people use the train. Big cars may be luxury and one does not want to punish commuters with higher gas taxes, but heating oil is not extra taxed, but people can have big houses. Electrical power from coal plants is as well much less taxed per CO2 ton emission than gas. The reason is purely envy. Everbody sees the car, but the house can be isolated from the have-nots.
Heritage and wealth taxes are to reject, but if necessary a wealth tax is to prefer. Heritage is not a right or wrong of the person who gets something, but of the person who gives and this person (hopefully) has paid taxes when making the money. A wealth tax forces people to use their wealth to make money. If they do this anyhow one can tax the income. But people should have the choice to do something with their property, which is not relate to make profit.
Any conservative issue on taxing and justice is lost, when the party says economic freedom is there for making a bigger cake, which then can be redistributed. Economic freedom is a part of freedom and therefore a value on its own. Especially with regard to family issues GDPism (making the the increase of GDP the value and economic freedom the measure) is a desaster and it follows the left politics on its economism. The last may not be international, but in Germany economism, taking the economy and the distribution of wealth as the main issue of life, is clearly stronger on the left than on the right. But as well the CDU has gone quite a bit on this road (in form of GDPism). When my father wrote a letter to the MdB about several issues the MdB agreed on everything but the statement, that 3% growth are not a good goal.
Foreign policy
I would claim non-interventionism as conservative foreign policy. In Germany there is the special case, that German conservatives are US poodles. But even here Kohl was paying money instead of providing soldiers in the first gulf war. The red-green gov had interventionism on its agenda and was flying air strikes against Serbia. The conservative line is do remain sceptical about what the gov can achieve. Killing more people for a very unclear success is not the right thing.
As the CDU is so much US poodle, one can look here to the US, where such a constraint obviously does not exist. According to Ron Paul nearly all the time conservatives were elected to get people out of wars, while the left-leaning (I know that liberal means the same on both sides of the Atlantic and the Democrats are not really left, but they are not conservative) had interventionism on its flag.
Pope John Paul II declared war means always defeat for humanity.
Bioethics
If you are not sure better be careful. It is not clear, when life starts, so better protect it as early as possible. Abortion may be killing of a human, the later the more the likelihood, that one can really declare it to be human life. I have the informational approach to assume if there is all DNA together it is worth protecting. Embryos are to protect like humans, although of course any punishment for killing an embryo should not be similar as to killing born human. But babys as well have not yet consciousness, so killing a baby might then as well not be punished in the same way as killing an age 3+ human.
I can write about other issues if you want to know more.
