Village Fail?

"It takes a village to raise a child".

This quote has always bothered me. I believe it is an African proverb that has made its way into the American psyche. One-time presidential candidate and former Secretary of State (who shall remain nameless here) touted this phrase at one time. Perhaps it was her way of working to bring people together, at least as much as it would benefit her.

At its root, I understand the philosophy behind it. Raising a child or children is a complicated and expensive task. A child is involved with friends, family, teachers and educators of all types and persuasions, coaches, and, in this day and age, constantly bombarded with images and influences from on-line sources. In my mind, this is what has become the issue. There are too many influences that are simply not controllable from a broad range of a 'committee', and today's society, much of it coming from the left-thinkers of the world, is working to lessen the influences of the parent. That's not to say there isn't success in today's society, but that success seems to be slipping away incrementally.

It occurs to me that this mode of thinking has negatively influenced family and children. When has a committee ever truly been successful at anything when a focused idea generally succeeds? Across the board, educational standards are slipping away, the juvenile crime rates are going up (if you believe the standard media reports) and parents have little to say about how their children are educated. What this shows is the globalization of America is well underway. Have you ever looked at where all these ideas of child rearing originate? Mostly from parts of the world where populations are unable to feed or fend for themselves. Countries racked in generational poverty and continually relying on handouts from the industrialized nations, primarily the United States. And when these ideas have completely infiltrated this country, where will they turn when the money runs out, because it will.

Much like those nations whom the left touts, the village of raising a child has failed. Parents need to become the guardian and angel of death to those who interfere with their parenting. That's not to say that all parents are good parents, no more than all politicians are good politicians, or teachers, or engineers, et al. It's obvious when parenting becomes a village requirement and the lazy parents who rely on others to do the work for them. These in general become the problem children...because they relied on the village and the village has failed.