It Takes a Family

Dear Senator Clinton,

As I write you my dear wife, who by the way, bakes cookies and stands by her man, is busy making two suppers. One of them I will enjoy in a few hours. The other she will deliver to our friends, the Deweys. Monique, wife of Mark, and mother of six beautiful children is now the mother of seven beautiful children. A few days ago she went to the doctor of her choice, no thanks to you, and had Josiah David. Now it is tough for a new mother to get supper on the table. It is even tougher for the mother of seven little drains on the environment. So her friends in the church and the community will be bringing meals for her and her family until she gets back on her feet. (It's actually just an excuse to get a peak at the little guy.)

You hit the bestseller list a few years back with your book, It Takes a Village. The title was appropriated from an African proverb that argues that we all need to pitch in and help one another with our children. You, however, turned it into a diatribe in favor of more government interference in the raising of our children. "Our children" is where the confusion slips in. (It was an easy step to make, after teaching us for decades to talk about "our" schools.) When you labored for the Children's Defense Fund you argued that children belong to the world and not to their parents. You lobbied the state to transfer children from their homes to the state. That, more than anything else, is why I'm not such a fan of yours. Be a liberal, be a feminist, be a socialist, be a shrew, but keep your paws off my children.

It can take a village, but there is a huge distinction between a village and a nanny-state. The "village" in which my children are raised is peculiar. This village consists of those who have made covenant with me, my wife, and my children, to help bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. That covenant was made when I brought my children forward and witnessed them being made citizens of the Kingdom of God. I made the decision, not you or some lesser bureaucrat, nor the children themselves. Our little community is odd. We have convictions about children that would appall you. No doubt were you the village elder you would have forced Josiah David into an early grave. You would have found a way to forbid his birth, lest he consume too much. We have convictions about education that would give you nightmares. Our children are taught to fear God, and to distrust people like you. They are taught that they cannot pledge their allegiance to you, because they have already pledged their allegiance to Christ. They are taught that that same King is the center and source and end of all things. He is not a rhetorical tool to be used to dupe the ignorant masses, but the source of all knowledge.

We bring food to the Deweys because they are a part of our extended family, because we know them and we love them. We do so because we know they are faithful citizens of our little village. We do so because before he was even born, we loved little Josiah, and will for all his life. We have vowed to do so.

Your "village" on the other hand, enters into Josiah's life and instead of calling him Josiah, you give him a number by which you will know him the rest of his life. You want the authority to determine when and where he will be educated. You want to decide what and how he will learn. You want him to embrace the worldview of that village that sits around the Potomac as some kind of eternal sinkhole. Your goal in all this is to make him fruitful, not for his sake, but for yours. You view him as just another potential earner to continue to drain while you seize more and more control over the village. You want to make of him a citizen of the world, and use your position of power to make it so. You do not protect the children, you consume them, at least those that you allow to live.

Ironically, you who are such a champion of choice, want me to not have the choice of what village my children will inhabit. You want to choose what Josiah will become. You want him to embrace the same invidious hypocrisy that has marked your public life from the beginning. You asked the media to stay out of your family's life, to honor the sanctity of your home, to keep private family matters private, all while you hatched your plans to run the homes of all of us. You sent Chelsea off to the school of your choice, while insisting that we, the peasants in your village, must not have such a choice. Anyone who would want their children to live in your global village must be a village idiot. Of course the world is full of those, since you specialize in producing them down at your village school.

You and your competitors on the other side of the aisle can bicker on into the night over what to do with "our" children. You can haggle over tax rates, educational IRA's, national testing, and every other concoction of control you can come up with. We hardy few know that they do not belong to you, and we will not hand them over. And we do so with great confidence, knowing that our children are neither yours, nor ours, but belong to the One who made them. He is their strong fortress. He is their strong tower. He is their battleshield. He has placed His mark on them, and neither He nor they shall be moved.

Mark and Monique have been commissioned by the king to care for little Josiah. We have been commissioned to help. And all of us together have been commissioned to destroy your Village of the Damned. And it will be done.

In the King's Service,

R.C. Sproul Jr