I’m sorry this to me is just shocking.
“We’ve always had a private notion of children. Your kid is yours and totally your responsibility and haven’t had a very collective notion of these are our children”.
Call me crazy! I thought my children were my children and my responsibility.
She goes on “We have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families.”
Hmmmm…where have I heard that kind of talk before? Oh yeah sounds slightly like Karl Marx who said “The education of all children, from the moment that they can get along without a mother’s care, shall be in state institutions at state expense” . People like Ms. Harris-Perry actually believe what Marx is saying, that the society can teach children better than the outdated notion of family.
After all, family can teach such antiquated ideas as traditional marriage, sexual chastity and heaven forbid they become greedy capitalists! This explains why early collectivist thinker, Jean Jacques Rousseau left his 5 children on the steps of an orphanage, not because of need but because a state education was better for the whole of mankind. Ridiculous.
I’m sorry but nobody is more qualified to teach my children how to be a man or a woman than me. And I will not be handing over that role to any institution or ‘community’ that may or may not agree with my definition of what is good, and right. Over my dead body! This is why I will be homeschooling my children, if I ever have any. I am not going to have my children indoctrinated by the likes of Harris-Perry. It is an outrage.
The family is the most important institution on the earth and the disintegration of societies has always followed a disintegration of the family.
“The Family: A Proclamation to the World” remains “a clarion call to protect and strengthen families,” according to Elder M. Russell Ballard of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, who says it is also “a stern warning in a world where declining values and misplaced priorities threaten to destroy society by undermining its basic unit.”
The Proclamation on the Family closes with these warnings to the likes of Harris-Perry:
“We warn that the disintegration of the family will bring upon individuals, communities, and nations the calamities foretold by ancient and modern prophets.
We call upon responsible citizens and officers of government everywhere to promote those measures designed to maintain and strengthen the family as the fundamental unit of society.”
This warning was given in 1995 and clearly the Prophet and Apostles saw the attack on the family that was going to come in the next 2 decades. Would they have said that if there was nothing threatening the family? No. It is not just vibrato but a warning that calamities will befall a society as it strays away and disintegrates the family. It’s been happening for years. Now people are getting comfortable saying it, even promoting it as a noble endeavor to move beyond the family. Marriage is already been diluted, now let’s dilute the notion of family.
My children are my children. My family is my family. The collective can help when I feel it is of help but that is it. I decide what is best for my children and you better work with me on that or we will have issues. At the very least it will be me removing all the crud shoved down their throats by the supposed enlightened collective. Unbelievable.
“HANDS OFF MY KIDS! My kids futures are not for you to raid in the name of social justice and the need for more ‘failed investments” Say it loud and clear Michelle. The family is the most important social unit and I am going to keep that ‘ private notion’ to my grave despite what Harris-Perry might say.
If Harris-Perry is so comfortable with the collective teaching her children than why doesn’t she send her kids over to my house and I will teach them about traditional marriage and the Proclamation on the Family? For some reason, I think she’d resist that. She only wants collective when it agrees with her and fits into her worldview. I am consistent. The family is an eternal unit and nothing is more important to the happiness and stabilization of our nation than that. My children are my responsibility.
I repeat:
“We have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families.”
Unbelievable to me.
ps. I love the little shout-out to the Mormon church by the liberal commentator. We do it right…
Rachel's Musings 
This makes me kinda heated. For several reasons. But FIRST the reason that the shout out to mormonism is awesome is because for the MOST part, it is done right.
Now for the makes me angry kind of thing. While I agree that it isn’t the right of everyone to raise another child for them, especially the government, there is not enough in the world of giving to help every person in need. There is even limitations on that which the church can help with. The church won’t pay for insurance premiums for someone, they won’t pay for a wheel chair, they won’t pay for braces or dental care etc. For a mom of a child with a disability I have to rely on the government for MORE than I care to. Not by choice mind you. There is NO way that I can take care of my child without charity care. Either by the government ( which is why we moved OUT of the great state of Mormons and to another, because we were able to get government aide. In Utah there is a 9-12 year waiting list for families of kids like mine) or by other charitable means. We mostly get our help trhough teh Shriner’s hospital. The other “Charitable care” tht others believe we would get is from te children’s miracle network and Primary Childrens’. Guess who is the NUMBER ONE person who has taken ME to court becasue I can’t afford 7 brain surgeries and a 75K bill. Yep. The children’s miracle network PCMC. Not a credit card company.
I have to entrust my child to the state education system. Not because I can’t afford to send him to a private school, but because he is not able to get therapy that he needs from the blind school in a private school. He has to have it in a STATE run school.
The list goes on. His values and love and other things are taught in the home, but it does take a village to raise a child. We have a village with the church. That is why it works out. But not enough people give directly to the poor, needy and disabled to make it so no one is in need.
I have way more but it makes me WAY heated.
But she is not challenging the notion of some assistance for those in need, as your child certainly is. She is challenging the very notion that your child is yours. That the family is the building block for society.
This is not just a money issue. It has to do with a ‘private notion of children’ and ‘family’. That your child ‘belongs to a family’ being a negative thing that needs to be changed. That’s what the MSNBC reporter says.
It has to do with a difference in looking at resources provided by the state as reinforcing the family or replacing the family. In the video she is saying that we need to break down the idea that children belong to their families. That just doesn’t sit right with me. I am all for local and state governments reinforcing families like yours and providing needed relief but they are not and cannot replace what you can teach.
Think of how much more we could help you if all of the money spent was spent well? As Michelle says we spend more per capita on education than almost any other industrial nation. The money is not spent well and so much more good could be done. There is so much waste, but that’s beside the point it is philosophical difference in how children should be raised. I am not sacrificing my child to the collective. That is my main problem with the MSNBC clip.
Here’s a way that might bring it home. What if I was assigned by the collective group to take care of Tyler’s health. You would say that is ridiculous. Those decisions should be made by his parents and his doctor. I feel the same way about Tyler’s mental/spiritual health. The government can support that teaching but not replace it. Your kids are yours not the collective. Nothing is more important than the family.
To me Miss Harris-Perry’s words are an outrage and actually quite scary. Our freedom to raise our children the way we see fit are under attack.
Dear Nancy,
I would like to commend you for your devotion to your child of special needs. My nephew, and several of my friends children, have a variety of needs from autism to spina bifida and more. I have some understanding of the challenges emotionally and financially in meeting the needs of these precious children, especially when multiple surgery’s and round the clock therapy are involved. It is a daunting challenge, a constant heartache, and unending frustration to find the services and support a family requires to care for their child of special needs and thrive as a family. The government can play a positive role to ensure medical and other resources to help families of special needs. Sadly, this role is not perfectly managed at this time.
However, Ms. Harris-Perry is not talking about aid in extreme circumstances or access to care (as I believe you are speaking) but is laying the foundation of a socialist agenda which removes not only the responsibility of families to care for their children but the very RIGHTS they have to make decisions for the education and well being of their children. She is focusing primarily on education and removing the rights of parents to make decisions and wants to place control in the hands of the government. In your circumstances, I would hope and pray for you to have access to medical and therapeutic treatments OF YOUR CHOOSING and not to give the government the power to decide what your child’s life, education, and medical care will be. I for one will never support a “collective notion” of a child because it defies the very rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness guaranteed to us in the great Nation.
When the government controls your choices it has become socialist and or totalitarian and the examples of this world wide are frightening on both the micro and macro scale. What about children in Japan who must eat a compulsory meal provided by the state at lunch time which includes fish and dolphin severely contaminated with mercury? The parents cannot even decide what their children eat at school during lunch, even if it is dangerous. And the children are required to eat every bite- food may not be thrown away. In this small, but significant instance, you can see the problem with the government controlling our lives and especially our decisions as parents. What do you do when the government mandates girls cannot attend school or that it is illegal to teach a girl to read, which is a common problem in the developing world? We are all fools if we think America is immune to the effects of socialization and the lessons of history. If we give away our right to decide over to the government, we will quickly lose freedom.
Nancy, fight for your right to care for your child, even fight for the resources you need. Don’t fall victim to the not so subtle subterfuge of your God given right to make decisions for your family. Your child is yours in right and responsibility. When you protect that right you protect your child, your family, and your freedom.
Sincerely,
Wendy
Thank you Wendy. I so agree. I particularly liked your statement “When the government controls your choices it has become socialist and or totalitarian and the examples of this world wide are frightening on both the micro and macro scale.”
Collective child rearing sounds great at first blush but what happens when the collective thinks one thing is good for your child while you think another way.
Don’t forget that we are a nation where the collective decided to exterminate all Mormons at one point. So if you think ‘that could never happen’. It has already happened.
For a modern example think of homeschool. There are many people who think homeschool is bad for children and the community. If a group is making the decision and not the parents what’s to stop them from forcing parents to educate their children a certain way, with certain doctrine being taught.
I would be very careful in giving up your rights as parents.
Again I repeat the words of Miss Harris-Perry “We have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families.”
It is incredibly dangerous words and the fact that it would be used on a promo for a network boggles my mind.
I thought this was a brilliant comment on one of the message boards:
Kids that are not in my immediate circle are the responsibility those in the child’s immediate circle. I do not need to “break through the private idea that kids belong to their parents” to be kind to my neighbors or willingly pay taxes for the collective. Kids belong to their parents and are part of a community. The problem is with the individual people who make choices that put themselves in prison or pregnant by one soon to be there. She should have said “encourage those in your private circle to make good decisions because if they don’t it costs the ‘collective’ a lot of money”. Her “private notion” this “collective notion” that fits into her left leaning worldview. It is not enough for others to work, pay taxes, help their neighbor and raise their own children. No, one must also relinquish the notion that your child is your own and embrace the previously personal responsibility of others.
Check out this article to learn more about the communist underpinnings that are the basis for Miss Harris-Perry’s ‘collective parenting’. As I mentioned in my post, the concept is not new. http://thebea.st/10UeIY6