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Hillary Clinton's book, It Takes a Village, gave the village the concern for everyone's lives and choices. The Village cares when care is wanting. Members of the village need not care and should let the village do its job. This is what we are voting for in 2008. Listen to the candidates and their promises.

Cradle to grave care and concern by government, the Village, in all our problems. This belief did not come out of a vacuum, however. The candidates did not create it. It is the answer to a growing feeling that individuals need not be mature in their own thoughts and deeds. Catering to immaturity comes from books, magazines, entertainment and news reporting, as well as schools and careless parenting. The Village created it and now must provide the answer.

This brings us to the question of the value of maturity. Maturity, for an individual, occurs when he or she is equipped emotionally and educationally to be responsible for personal behavior and the results of their behavior. Immaturity, as applied to children, is not being ready, willing and able to stand on their own two feet. Parents are, as a family, responsible for seeing to it their children mature before being sent into the world. The village can never be responsible for good or bad behavior. Civil societies, the Village, can only accept, reject or punish behaviors of its members, not form them.

This brings maturity into focus, whether individuals should be concerned for things more important than they are, i.e., other-centered as opposed to self-centered. The elections pivot on the value of maturity in life. We begin our lives as self-centered children who learn values, shape interests, skills, talents and aspirations, with the help of concerned parents. These are all outer-centered facets of a growing and meaningful life.

The careless parents, to make their own lives easier, ignore the development of these outer-centered needs in their children when they leave it all to the Village. Children grow into sustained self-centeredness instead. They focus mainly on satisfying desires, drives and feelings for their own pleasure. They cannot cope easily with disappointment, which leads to alcohol, drugs, obesity, single parenting and suicide. The Village cannot cope with these growing numbers of social misfits. Political candidates simply offer choices of how the Village shall operate and who pays, even when it cannot work.

America grew prosperous because it took free individuals to make the nation grow. Those were the individuals taught by parents and schools to pursue their own outer-centered dreams and visions to make life better. Now, it is the spineless Village, and the few who care ruling the many that make up the Village. It's a vote for decline and decay.

Learn more about this author, Clay Barham.
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