Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) is challenging Senator Hillary Clinton’s (D-NY) long-held liberal bromide that “it takes a village” to raise a child with the long-held conservative bromide that “it takes a family” to raise a child. Both should read my comments in Grow Up America!, originally written when Bob Dole and Bill Clinton had the same argument a decade ago:
Liberals say, “It takes a village” to make a society great and strong.
The conservatives reply, “No, it does not take a village; it takes a family.”
Both sides are wrong. It takes an individual. It takes an individual to accomplish even modest goals. It takes a special kind of individual to accomplish great things. More often than not, individuals accomplish what they do in spite of the family, or in spite of the village.
It takes an individual to think, conceptualize, plan, and create. It takes an individual to rise above mediocrity, fear, and toward new discoveries.
“Families” do not work, study, and make a living. Individuals do. “Villages” do not discover electricity, or cure terrible diseases. Individuals do. Families and villages are not mystical entities. The are comprised of individuals. It is the brightest, and most creative, of those individuals upon whom the family and village depend.
A society flourishes only to the extent that the individual is respected and valued. A society decays when the individual is denigrated and the “village” or the “family” is held as supreme.
America was once great because the prevailing attitude was in favor of individualism and individual rights. Today, only fading remnants of that earlier idealism remain. Instead, we are left with a choice between a mediocre welfare state and religious dogmatism.
Conservatives and liberals, please note: If you want to save America, you must first champion the cause of the individual. Without the individual, your villages and your families will most certainly perish.
