Monday, December 11, 2006

It still takes a family

Ol' socialist Hillary is out there warming up, getting ready for her big presidential run in '08 and one thing she felt she needed to do was update her "parenting" book, It Takes a Village.
Maybe Hillary grew up in a place and time when most children had intact families and neighbors felt free to offer advice and correction to all the kids on the block. But, it isn't like that anymore, due to folks like Mrs. Clinton. The feminists, the liberals, and their ilk left America a much more expensive and more lonely place to raise children. The 50+% rates of divorce and illegitimacy have wiped out the financial and social stability effect of the family. Fewer mothers stay home with their children due to the oppressive tax structure we now have, not to mention the social stigma of "wasting a college education to change nappies". Elites have also turned parenting into a competitive sport, trying to pit moms against each other in every aspect of child-rearing.
Her entire concept of big goverment replacing what is a simple and efficient structure is horrifying to me. We have seen where this is leading socialist Europe: a increasingly elderly population with high taxes and very few children. According to social scientists Italy, Greece, Spain, and Germany will, in the next 40 years, basically cease to exist simply because of demographics.
This was one of the reviews of her original edition on Amazon:
The book in its introduction describes how family life used to be.
Its primary focus is the need for "investment" to end great social ills such as poverty, homelessness, and illegitamacy. While well intentioned this ignores the failure of government intervention to solve these problems. In the almost 40 years since the New Frontier was first proposed we have seen only limited results, from increased "investment" (taxes). That increased tax dollars have marginally narrowed poverty, abuse, and neglect found within inner cities.
Government funded good intentions are often the greatest enemy to the same people Ms. Clinton is trying to protect. Often leading many to be unable to escape griding poverty, illegitamacy, and abuse she is trying to protect.
The focus should be on greater self reliance, rather than on creating a whole new generation of children who are unable to escape the stranglehold of increasingly repressive Orwellian system.
I am a big advocate of a limited goverment that doesn't take most of the money we earn, stays out of our personal lives, and allows parents to exercise the God-given right to educate our children as we see fit.

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