I would say generally speaking under Liberalism the notions of different registers or rings of “collective” are illegible. There is only the individual and the collective, not different types of collective with different rules and protocols.

This is why even ideas like the nuclear family are hard to define or defend within Liberalism.

Remember that Black Lives Matter had on their website a declaration that they rejected the notion of the nuclear family.

Along the same exact lines the notion of what makes someone a citizen of a Western country is very hard to define or discuss. In some sense every person on earth is basically an American, they just haven’t been officially granted citizenship yet. No one can actually define what particular qualities qualify someone to become an American citizen or not, everyone just has vague notions and some ad hoc mishmash of various financial or political interests.

This makes discussions around illegal or legal migration in the West very difficult to have, purely on an intellectual level in terms of the categories.

> This is why even ideas like the nuclear family are hard to define or defend within Liberalism.

> Remember that Black Lives Matter had on their website a declaration that they rejected the notion of the nuclear family.

The definition of nuclear family is incredibly easy to explain. And BLM rejecting its enshrinement in certain political and legislative situations doesn't make its definition any harder?

Like if you are a kid brought up by your aunt, or grandma. Or if one parent is dead, or divorced etc having limited legal protections is silly. We already cover this with the concept of a legal guardian, but its limited and complicated and offers only partial protection.

The nuclear family is a cold war political tool designed around car centric suburbs and civic design red lining. It didnt even make sense at the time, when many children had their dad leave for Korea and later Vietnam. And with women working, the primary caretaker being secondary family members.

And that is entirely within the framework of white, suburban middle class america.

> This makes discussions around illegal or legal migration in the West very difficult to have, purely on an intellectual level in terms of the categories.

Only if you pretend that you do not understand what people are talking about, the context of certain discussions and the situations or problems being addressed or discussed.

Categories are context dependant and humans are very comfortable making and working with categories, even universalising them. But there is no perfect enclosure so categories NEED to be context dependant, this is equally true in pure Maths as it is in human realities.

Well, yes, liberalism is often pushing against building a society where we have "clans" or "groups" that exert authorities on individual actions.

I don't think it means that "ideas like the nuclear family are hard to define within liberalism". I think they define them as clearly as in conservative circles (if not better, in conservative circles, these notions are often "gut feelings").

And I don't think liberalism is "trying to kill ideas of nuclear family". People can still have as much nuclear family as they want, as long as it does not impact people who don't recognise their arbitrary authority.

For example, Black Lives Matter is a good example, as they never rejected the nuclear family itself, just said they don't recognize its authority when this structure is restricting the solidarity potential between individuals.

Same with citizenship: it is not true that liberalism struggles with this notion. Liberalism is just trying to find a fair balance and avoid cases of unfair restrictions on people whose only crime was to be born on the wrong side of an imaginary line. It does not mean citizenship is rejected in itself, but it means that you cannot arbitrarily invent rules that favourise the group you are part of.