David McElroy

Hillary Clinton’s 1996 book, “It Takes a Village,” is based on the idea that children need to be cared for by an entire community, not just by their own families. She said it was based on an African proverb — “It takes a village to raise a child” — but there are questions about whether it even originated there.

Now it turns out that the maxim isn’t even true. A University of Michigan researcher says that African kids raised in nuclear families do just as well as those raised by extended families or “villages.”

“In the African villages that I study in Mali, children fare as well in nuclear families as they do in extended families,” said Beverly Strassmann, professor of anthropology and faculty associate at the UM Institute for Social Research. “There’s a naïve belief that villages raise children communally, when in reality children are raised by their own families and their survival depends critically on the survival of their mothers.”

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U.S. military forces have spent a decade fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, but most Americans still don’t have a clear idea why those wars happened. What’s worse, it’s considered unacceptable in some circles to tell the truth about why terrorists from the Middle East attacked the United States 10 years ago. People honestly prefer to remain in the dark about it.

When the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 happened, it was understandable that many people were emotional and frightened. I can even understand — if not condone — the fact that many Americans were willing to support irrational foreign and military policies under such stress. But I have no sympathy for people who refuse to face the truth after this long.

Republican presidential contender Ron Paul is the only presidential candidate who’s been trying to have an honest, adult conversation about why the terrorist attacks happened and why the two wars happened. Shamefully, voters are showing clearly that they don’t want to hear him. In the CNN Tea Party debate Monday, Paul was booed when he outlined why certain groups are upset with the United States. It’s not that they have facts to indicate that he’s wrong. They merely don’t like the truth that he has the temerity to speak.

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One of the first things you learn in politics is to never repeat the charges that your opponent makes about you. It’s counter-intuitive for most people, but after you’ve been in the business for awhile, you learn that if you defend yourself by explaining what your opponents are saying — and why they’re wrong — you end up reinforcing what the opponents are saying, even if they’re wrong.

Because of that, I’m shocked to see Barack Obama’s re-election campaign falling into one of the worst traps I’ve ever seen. The campaign has set up a website that it calls “AttackWatch.com.”

If you set up a site that talks about the lies your enemy is telling about you, all you’re doing is giving them — and their lies — publicity. I know it appeals to the rational side of the brain to respond, but I guarantee that it doesn’t work 98 times out of 100.

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