“It Takes a Village”--Not

Different commentators share concerns about political correctness, about hypocrisy, about unrestricted abortion, and about attacks on Christianity. These all relate to the elite's telling us what to do. If “it takes a village” to properly raise a child, then the family has turned over to the state its primary duty. Censorship, hypocrisy, devaluation of human life, and attacks on religious faith may follow.

Peggy Noonan, writing in the Wall Street Journal, says that Bill Maher’s wishing for Dick Chaney’s death and Ann Coulter calling John Edwards a faggot are “Tourette's-like” reactions to the pressure people are under to speak politically correctly. Political correctness censorship holds sway not only for public speech, but extends its pressure to everyday, private conversation. Noonan notes, “We are very good at letting people know that if they say something we don't like, we'll shame them and shun them, even ruin them.”

The Hoover Institution’s Victor Davis Hanson takes on the hypocrisy of both liberals and conservatives who live the high life while calling for public sacrifice (Gore’s megawatt-eating Nashville mansion comes in for additional attention). To Hanson, “Debt, drink, drugs, gambling, lotteries and sex all happen without much restraint or rebuke - and our most prominent are often the most susceptible to these new appetites. In modern American life, ‘do you own thing’ on a charge card is the new national gospel.” The ruling class, in tune with the national zeitgeist, asks us to watch what we say, not what we do.

Ann Hulbert, in the New York Times, finds “Generation Next” (the ones after Gen X) slightly blurring the sharp cultural divide their Baby Boomer parents drew through American politics. While the younger generation is less religious and more tolerant of homosexuality—views one might expect from today’s youth—the Pew Research Center poll also showed 18-25 year olds slightly less supportive of abortion than their elders. Hulbert suggests that tolerance plus concern for life may mean a generation giving “priority to children’s interests.”

Steven Warshawsky is a Jewish agnostic who writes in defense of Christianity. Warshawsky takes on critics of the religious conservatives who dominate today’s Republican Party. Warshawsky states:

As a Jew, I am deeply grateful for this nation's Christian heritage. No nation on earth treats Jews better. . . Most, if not all, of the values and principles that we hold dear -- the dignity of the individual, freedom of conscience, political and economic liberty, representative government, and so on -- are inextricably intertwined with the Christian culture that produced, developed, and/or sustained them.

Reagan said, “Our country was built [on] belief in God, love of family, neighborhood, and good, hard work.” In defending Christian America, Warshawsky adds:

One of the hallmarks of American conservatism is that we reject . . . elitist, top-down interference in the daily lives of our citizens. Unlike liberals -- who claim to know how the rest of us should live -- conservatives respect the rights of individuals and communities to govern themselves.