Hillary's phrase" it takes a village to raise a child" comes from this movement for example: Meaning family ties, extended families and ties with one's neighbors were important in nurturing the young.
Similarly, Elizabeth Warren in the 1990s wrote about the need to encourage moms to stay home with young children instead of farming them out to daycare, and suggested government policies should figure a way to support such women. (as in done in Germany and other European countries).
The idea is to strengthen the community that is already there.
The problem? In the modern Democratic party, and among too many in the intellectual class, this has morphed into socialism that posits an intrusive (federal) nanny state to do the job that is customarily done by family and local community.
Am I the only one who noticed the "Julia" ad of the Obama administration not only touted that government would help Julia fulfill her dreams, but didn't mention if Julia's parents, friends, or baby father had a role in her lifestyle choice.
Yet who dared to point out to those pushing this lovely drama that few Americans live that way outside of Hallmark movies; most families, even those poorest neighborhoods and small towns that are partially broken by divorce or drug abuse or community violence, still have families and neighbors and churches to help support each other, (37 million caregivers can't be wrong).
Etzioni is Jewish, but his ideas are close to the subsidiarity idea of Catholic social teachings: That a person should be helped by those around him, and problems solved as much as possible at the local level.
Etzioni explains in his book the problem behind the present day American "civil war": that both sides are morphing into caricatures that hate each other, and don't see the reality of life as people actually live it, and hence can't agree on government policies that would actually help ordinary people instead of a political agenda.
an excerpt from his book:
During the campaign, much less attention was paid to the communitarian views that Hillary Clinton extolled in her 1996 book It Takes a Village, which pointed out that to raise children well (and to do well in the moral sense), all community members must bear responsibility for one another’s well-being. The thesis that every citizen has not only rights but also responsibilities is a communitarian keystone.
True, her vision of community is hardly one that nationalists hanker for; still, it is a good starting point for a better understanding of what globalists miss.
As I see it, the rise of right-wing populism in the US and Europe can be attributed to no small extent to the profound misunderstanding globalists have of community and communitarian values.italics mine.
Globalists tend to view society as composed of freestanding individuals, each of whom has his or her own individual rights and is keen to pursue his or her own self-interest.
As a result, globalists assume that, given the proper information, their fellow citizens will see that their aging societies are refreshed by immigration, that free trade raises the standard of living for everyone, and that individual rights outweigh tribalism.
The trouble with this view of society is less in what it claims and more in what it leaves out: namely, that people are social creatures whose flourishing and psychological well-being depend on strong, lasting, meaningful relationships with others and on the sharing of moral and social values.again, italics mine.
These relationships and values are found in national and subnational communities (including families, which are microcommunities). By definition, communities are circumscribed rather than all inclusive and are inevitably parochial rather than global.I haven't read the entire book, but it's nice that someone is pointing out that what Americans do have a lot in common with each other and could work these problems out if it wasn't for the radicals on both sides pushing hate and straw man arguments to "win" power.
Etzioni writes in CityJournal about his problems getting his book published, a fact that says a lot about the state of the intellectuals in American society.
and the article links to a free download of his book Reclaiming patriotism. LINK
as for me: I live in the Philippines, where the government does it's best but it is the family who does most of the caregiving and social support for one another, but is under siege by a modernism that requires family members to migrate to find a decent job to support their families.
but that's another essay for another day.
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