Greedy grownups
The response to last month's political awareness News Bulletin drew a lot of comments, all favorable. Keep that issue handy as the political action is still heating up, not dying down. The battles will shift from Washington to Lansing as the G.O.P. agenda is implemented. You will need the information in that Bulletin to continue to contact your elected representatives. Don't give up now, it has only started. Telephone, write, fax, again and often.
Conventional wisdom has it that things concerning children's issues are exploding. This man's opinion is that the cracks are just starting to appear.
The reports presented at the March Monthly Meeting, by those who went to Washington, D.C., as to informing your elected representatives of issues involving children, was that their success exceeded all expectations.
Politics aside, we have been getting insider reports that President Clinton's reactions to children's issues are perhaps influenced by his unresolved feelings about his own unfortunate experiences in childhood. Rather than seeing the need for both parents, he appears to punish one parent and protect another.
I think that the main message I have been getting from all the goings on is that no one is really talking "kids." There is a lot of: Democrats versus Republicans, Moms vs. Dads, Feminists vs Masculinists. Everybody's fighting. What does this say about us as a society? I get the impression that what we are seeing in the political arena is the equivalent of fighting over the pots and pans in a divorce.
We need a Bill of Rights for Children. It would include the right not to be hungry, cold, or untreated when ill. Freedom from abuse, mistreatment, or exploitation in inane television commercials. That their child financial support is spent on them. The right to be cherished and parented by both parents.
Maybe the cause of all that fighting is that grown ups are fighting each other for their own rights and not considering the rights of disenfranchised youngsters. We have already raised our joint consciousness to the point that people other than free, white, land owning males, as initially provided for in the Constitution, have rights. Animals do, or are getting them. Maybe if we try we can reach just a little bit farther and give rights to people who may be too young to know that they need to form their own lobby or march on Washington. They are being left out and us grown ups are fighting over their share.
Some example.
If the greedy grown ups overcome in one more fight, we might all be undone.
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