"Big Government needs little Hitlers".
Ain't that the truth. It's a new tagline of the UKIP, as discussed at Samizdata.
And in that context, Moonbattery announces the return of It Takes a Village- a quote:
As summed up by Human Events, the book dismisses the traditional family as inappropriate for the modern world. "The village" — i.e., government bureaucracy — should take its place.
This point of view may explain why Shrillary opposed relief from the marriage tax, and favors publicly financed divorce — which she would treat as "a public health issue," presumably covered under HillaryCare.
For the view of the world which is close to that of us Maggie's Farmers, try Villainous Company on Free Will vs. The Nanny State. A classic blog rant on the subject of responsibility. A long quote, from a section on marriage:
Because Dad made a decision, long ago, that his happiness was the only thing that mattered. How many people, over the years, will try to step in and take the place of that "man" who walked away from his vow, from a marriage that there was really nothing wrong with, from a promise, not that he would always "feel" love, but that he would always practice it, no matter what? In sickness, in health, for richer, for poorer, 'til death do us part. Only he didn't mean what he said. He couldn't be trusted. That small boy learned a valuable lesson, early in life. It is dangerous to trust.
People make decisions on the basis of trust, like the decision to make yourself economically and emotionally vulnerable by having a child who will impose a lifelong responsibility on you. One that, on the basis of that promise, you thought would be shared between two people.
This is a less obvious case, and no one in today's world is likely to argue for coerced enforcement of marriage vows. But that is not the point. The point is that it is not invalid to disapprove of irresponsible behavior. It is not wrong to wish people would do the right thing. It is not impolite to notice when other people's tendency to avoid their responsibilities keeps spilling over into your life and causing problems for people who would never dream of doing those things. And above all, it is not beyond the pale to observe that in our oh-so-tolerant quest to be nonjudgmental we have, perhaps unintentionally, also done away with many of the restraints on human behavior that used to encourage the more weak-willed members of society to buck up and stick it out when the going got tough. We used to call this being ashamed of yourself. But in today's climate so little invokes a feeling of shame that we have a woman who lies and cheats on her husband actually asking a therapist if this can ever be "wrong"? And other people defending her actions. Bizarre.
Read it all.
