On the need to uphold family as a pillar of human development

We are born alone in this world, as the saying goes, but we are fundamentally social creatures. Living a social life means entering a relationship that its rooted into and develops within the family with a father, mother, brothers, sisters, and relatives. Living in a society means a child's growth and involvement in daycare, in a kindergarten, a school, at work and later it means leading a public life. The family is the incubator of humanity. It maintains this role throughout a human's life.

It is clear, therefore, that no one is really alone in the life he or she goes through; everyone interacts, receives support and supports others towards achievements. Family undoubtedly lies at the very foundation of this development as the main formative factor for every individual.

This simple fact has been proven time and again throughout thousands of years of human society. It has been pointed at by the holy books of all religions, and it has also been sustained by psychology, which to some extent tried to take religion's place in the last 100 years.

Inside the family, the parent is primarily responsible for the education of the children, having the great responsibility to set an example before them.

Edmund Burke writes that liberty cannot exist where morality is absent. And we have grown to know today, morality itself cannot thrive in the absence of the family.

As the child grows up, he bears the responsibility of carrying forward the family legacy, taking care of the elderly parents, giving back some of the support he received from them growing up.

Despite hundreds of years of invasions and half a century of communism that was poised to undo the very being of every Albanian, we have managed to survive and bring the most sacred traditions of the family to the 21st century.

• Yet how is the Albanian individual and family developing today, when even Albania is not immune to the trends imposed by globalism?

• How can the state help?

• What role should the Democratic Party have in the Albanian political map to ensure that the Albanian individual and family, as a main pillar, develop in a healthy way?

Let me share with you some scenes from the daily life of the Albanian individual and family, in the times and days we are living in today - in the era of incinerators, in the era of the "lost" (DP) seal, in the era of McGonigal, in the era of money hidden in the hood box:

• I saw with my own eyes, in a shopping center somewhere in Tirana, a child about 4 years old, playing a computer game. In this game, with the utmost innocence, the child killed people with a machine gun. Meanwhile, his mother, sitting next to him, passed the time on her cell phone.

• I am bringing to you another scene recorded in one of our schools: two children of 6 and 8 years old are proud of the fact that they watch Big Brother Albania VIP together with their parents before going to bed. These children, these careful viewers of such a famous program, cannot sit still, climb on chairs, talk loudly, conflict with the group, trying to imitate what they have seen on television.

• A simple look at children's programs on private television brings to you cartoons that are shown without any restrain, to children aged 3-10: (1) animals chased by humans and killing humans in self-defense; (2) babies born in baby factories and mailed to families around the world on mail per orders – at the end of the film, the family that ends up showing up at the incubator to receive the ordered baby consists of two men; (3) in another children's movie, a 6-7 year old boy who is recruited by a secret service with the permission of a family consisting of two mothers.

• Any simple observation of the online portals that can be accessed without any hindrance by children through computers or mobile phones shows us quite clearly: Pornographic material is present in almost every Albanian news portal.

• We have seen girls in their early teens become the topic of the day because of the video that takes over the networks and shows them beating each other.

• We have seen teenage boys who, in cooperation with each other, put pressure on their classmate and threaten her with intimate videos. In order to protect herself, the girl is subjected to several months of sexual exploitation by them.

• We have seen an African girl who was mistreated and lost her life in Albania in the simplest and most macabre way possible.

• We are all witnesses that the number of Albanian teenagers taking drugs is twice as high as the number of adults. Drug and alcohol abuse trends for 13-14 year olds have also become part of television chronicles.

• According to a CRCA study, 38% of felony convictions affect young people. According to INSTAT statistics, in the case of violence in love relationships, 88.9% of the perpetrators were young men aged 25-34.

• Unemployment and the lack of opportunities for talent development, good wages, quality education and health are also key reasons for young people leaving, but also adults turves, which leads to the separation of families or their eventual removal from the country (which is addressed in the depopulation speech).

• To cover the average expenses, a family of four needs about 85,000 ALL per month. How many Albanian families are unable to have this monthly income so as to live a decent living?

• Man and woman are two beings identical in dignity, but different in their societal roles. In Albania, the dignity of women is violated and this is clearly manifested in the objectification of women and the violation of their rights, starting from the right to life and not to be violated.

• Dozens of Albanian women have been killed by their husbands in recent years and nothing can sideline this scary statistics.

• Today's Albania counts 153 women killed in the last 12 years. In 2022 alone, 4,000 reports of domestic violence were made and 2,400 restriction orders were issued for women and girls.

• We must not forget a great trauma of our society, that was never properly addressed: the fact that in the years 1990-2000, thousands of Albanian girls were trafficked by Albanians through the streets of Europe as prostitutes.

• Many of them were engaged or married to their abductors. From the psychological point of view, the question is: How is it possible that this happened? Could it happen again?

• In 2020, Albania counted 6.16 marriages per thousand inhabitants, almost twice the average rate of the European Union. In 2020, 1.5 divorces were registered per thousand inhabitants, from the countries with the highest divorce rates (1.4-1.6) according to Eurostat. By these figures Albania has turned out to be the first country in the region in terms of divorces.

• Despite the increasing use of contraceptives, on accounts of which no statistics can be found and no information can be gathered except from conversations with pharmacists, abortion rate is scaringly high. In the period 2015-2019, a total of about 29,000 abortions were recorded. In 2015, 83.6% of women who had abortions were unemployed, in 2019, 63.1% of them were unemployed.

• Albania counts about 30,000 orphaned children, enough to populate a small town. Most live either in their parents' families of origin, or with one of their parents. There are less than 300 children in residential institutions. Family members themselves do their best by keeping them in families and not in institutions.

• The elderly today make up about 13% of the population and the trend is increasing, given the massive emigration of younger people. Low pensions make it impossible for them to live with dignity and expose them to abandonment.

• There is a disproportionate focus on LGBT issues, extensively and visibly financed from abroad, especially if compared to other important topics that greatly affect the individual and the family in Albania, which are thus sidelined and willingly or unwillingly ignored.

• There are also orchestrated provocations to introduce into the public debate topics that do not belong to the Albanian reality at all, such as the definition of mother and father as parent no. 1 and no. 2.

• In front of this situation, in front of these not at all optimistic numbers, and in front of these actors that the Americans call "foreign actors" - who are actually not at all benevolent ones towards our heritage, our identity, our future as we want to live it, the Albanian nation can only have one massive response - resistance, as organized, as informed, as well-structured as possible.

• How can resistance be organized against those who aim to destroy the core of our identity? There are several ways to do it, and there are obviously infinitely paths to take about those ways. Not all of these are effective. But some of them are necessary.

• The first and most important solution lies in the politicization of the problem. National identity and the preservation of its substance is a matter of cardinal importance, it is an extremely sensitive issue, and it is not without reason that the "open society" condemns and pushes away any attempt to politicize such issues as "just fashionable" or "construed", "outdated" or "related to nationalism".

• To the face of this I say that national identity, the preservation of its substance, is absolutely related to the present and intrinstically connected to the very way we will live in the near future. It has to do with children, with pornography, with the destruction of the fundamental values that keep families together, with the preservation of this poor and needy Albanian family that nonetheless is keeping Albania afloat, at a moment when this country has no other pillar to rely on - once its institutions have fallen, once its justice system has fallen, once the myth of the honest FBI agent has fallen, once the myth of the omniscient, all-knowing and ever impartial American ambassador has fallen, once the role of the school as a bearer of national values has been greatly damaged, and the family - the only pillar we have left, the only one who sustains us as what we are and what we want to be - is being undercut by, amongst others "external aid and assistance".

• When I talk about politicizing the defense of family, I talk about an informed, structured and well-prepared approach of the Democratic Party of Albania to this problem, as a matter of national interest, far from any shallow "electoralization" of it. The Democratic Party of Albania places the family instinctively and intrinsically at the core of its being. This essence must be articulated in programs and policies – not merely nominal, not merely populist. There is no need for the Democrats to have any complex about putting the family where it is - in its DNA as a political force. The only difference between DP and any other party that raises this cause lies in the fact that, for PD, the non-negotiable integrity of the Albanian family is not, nor will it ever be, just a catchphrase.

• The room for action is large. It includes:

o Fiscal policies targeting well-being of Albanian families: (1) through tax reductions for families in need, for families lacking one of the parents, for grandparents and relatives of orphaned children who grow up in their homes, for families with many children, for the birth of more children in conditions where the first consequences of the decrease in fertility are already being seen; (2) with subsidies where possible. As an example of this approach, I would bring the Austrian People's Party, which turned the Family Bonus into a key point in the last electoral campaign that turned out successful and convincingly brought it back to power.

o Education policies: (1) education of parents to help them be better parents; (2) educating children to acquire as many skills and values as possible and to experience the most careful human development that leads them away from unbridled freedom which is a misinterpretation of freedom, but to the freedom to excel based on practices of positive psychology and faith in God. Schools should be extensions of family education. Parents should have their voice in the design and approval of textbooks. For this, an important example comes from the state of Virginia in the USA, where the current governor, Glenn Youngkin, won the election with exactly this promise. Parents during the time of COVID when learning was done online, had finally understood what their children were being taught. They organized, protested and won.

o Protection policies: (1) monitoring of media to prevent any kind of attempt to alienate children's minds (footage of violence, pornography, perversity); (2) monitoring of learning and teaching material delivered to teachers and children in schools; (3) protection of children, women and the elderly as the most vulnerable part of society; (4) the protection of unborn babies, by providing the opportunity for counseling to pregnant women and girls before they make the decision to have an abortion, as well as by promoting the support of pregnancy centers.

• Second: beyond the politicization of the issue, which is its most important aspect, it is also worth mentioning the continuous and convincing promotion and representation of this cause, beyond politics, in all domains of society and its institutions, in that that is known as "civil society", which the actors of the open society try to depoliticize to the point of its total de-factorization.

But this discussion, dear friends, requires a more detailed treatment in another conference.