nChrist
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« on: June 16, 2011, 05:37:41 PM » |
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________________________________________ The Patriot Post - Who Needs a Father? From The Federalist Patriot Free Email Subscription ________________________________________
Who Needs a Father? By Mark Alexander · Thursday, June 16, 2011 'It Just Takes a Village' to Raise a Child, Right?
"It is the duty of parents to maintain their children decently, and according to their circumstances; to protect them according to the dictates of prudence; and to educate them according to the suggestions of a judicious and zealous regard for their usefulness, their respectability and happiness." --James Wilson
In 1996, Hillary Rodham Clinton published "It Takes a Village: And Other Lessons Children Teach Us," in which she asserted that organizations outside the family could meet the needs of children, and that society, her euphemism for "government," has an obligation to meet those needs.
Part of Clinton's thesis was correct in that millions of children are victimized when their parents do not fulfill parental obligations. Unfortunately, the rest of her thesis suggests that parenthood can be outsourced.
Some 15 years later, Barack Hussein Obama and his socialist cadres1 are fast-tracking the redefinition of "marriage and family2," which, in effect, perpetuates the neglect of children, thus necessitating institutional solutions.
Not surprisingly, the Left's primary mode for indoctrinating neglected children with the "village model" is government schools. "The education of all children," as Karl Marx wrote, "from the moment that they can get along without a mother's care, shall be in state institutions at state expense." (Note: He never even mentioned the "father's care.") Marx's disciple, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, concurred: "Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted."
Obama understands that to "fundamentally transform America" into a socialist state, the Left must successfully destabilize the three pillars of Essential Liberty3: Individual Liberty, Economic Liberty and Constitutional Liberty.
Founder James Wilson once described an indispensable common denominator supporting each of these pillars: "That important and respectable, though small and sometimes neglected establishment, which is denominated a family ... the principle of the community; it is that seminary, on which the commonwealth ... must ultimately depend."
If the pillars of Essential Liberty, which have suffered much degradation in recent decades, are to be strengthened, then the place to start is within our families, and most particularly with fathers.
Marriage is the foundation for the family, which in turn, serves as the foundation for a free society. This principle is especially embodied in the spirit of natural law upon which our Republic is founded.
In 295 B.C., Mencius wrote, "The root of the kingdom is in the state. The root of the state is in the family. The root of the family is in the person of its head."
When fathers do not take on their parental responsibilities, broken marriages and families are the result. These, in turn, lead to broken societies.
Thus, the failure of fatherhood has much more than mere social or cultural consequences; it is a menacing national security threat. The collective social pathology4 of the fatherless presents a great obstacle to Liberty and the survival of our republican form of government as outlined by our Constitution5.
Father's Day should thus be a call to action. Indeed, the majority of social entropy6 afflicting our nation today originates in homes without fathers, which definition includes those without functioning or effective fathers.
Currently, almost 60 percent of black children, 32 percent of Hispanic children and 21 percent of white children live in single-parent homes. (See Bill Cosby's "Truth about Black America7.") According to the CDC, DoJ, DHHS and the Bureau of the Census, children who live apart from their fathers account for 63 percent of teen suicides, 70 percent of juveniles in state-operated institutions, 71 percent of high-school dropouts, 75 percent of children in chemical-abuse centers, 80 percent of rapists, 85 percent of youths in prison, 85 percent of children who exhibit behavioral disorders, and 90 percent of homeless and runaway children. (When these children become "adults," the social consequences become even worse.)
Generationally, daughters who have been abandoned by their fathers are seven times more likely to have children as teenagers and 92 percent more likely to divorce.
A successful fatherhood begins with a healthy marriage. To be good fathers, we must first be good husbands.
I have been blessed with many mentors, including Dr. Jim Lee, director of Living Free ministries8. Jim taught me that the Christian marriage paradigm is built on a foundation of five principles: "First, God is the creator of the marriage relationship; second, heterosexuality is God's pattern for marriage; third, monogamy is God's design for marriage; fourth, God's plan for marriage is for physical and spiritual unity; and fifth, marriage was designed to be permanent."
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