An American Child is Born
Why The U.S. Government Hates Their Own Children
Let’s not talk about the unborn but the already born.
When we look at recent reports in diverse types of modern media, we run across laws that underwrite our uniquely American treatment of children. Whether they are left- or right-wing ideologies hardly matters. Once enacted –or not enacted — into federal law or just federal recognition, our children’s lives are affected. One party or another may have been involved, but both parties could easily stand up and unite on these issues and the people — the vast, vast majority of Americans I would wager— not oppose a quick and obvious solution.
The fact that we can’t support such easy issues reveals a value system unable to focus except on the rage of the day. We can’t take a few moments to help children — our children, America’s.
Here’s few I came across over the last few years alone and recall:
◦ An interesting issue arises when a journalist notices in 2021 how disparately we treat our children: The U.S. pays less than any other developed nation in early childhood education. It begs the question of worth, as worth is represented by money, and money can be tracked to government budget expenditures. The question: Why doesn’t the U.S. government see worth in their children? Why are our children and our children’s future not worth something to what our Founders call “promote the general Welfare” in the Constitutions opening lines?
◦ An interesting problem is solved that a podcaster recognizes in 2012: Oklahoma, a solidly red state with complete republican government votes to have pre-school universal. It turns out that all the people in the state like it and now they can’t cancel it. It turns out children are important to even republican parents. Republican parents like saving money by not paying high fees for pre-school. Middle- and lower-class Republicans can go to work where the mom supports mortgage payment as well. So why doesn’t the federal government follow suit? Why do they hate their children?
◦ A vexing problem is noticed in 2017 as journalist notices an online organization in the U.S. that has a website against Child Marriage. In the U.S. an 11-year-old or a 14-year-old that is raped can be forced to marry her rapist. The U.S. is just one of three countries that allow child marriage (the other two are Yemen and I believe Haiti but don’t recall — though Afghanistan does have a federal law on its Islamic books against child marriage). Why doesn’t the U.S. protect its children against childhood marriage, or forced rape legal adult rape and slavery? Why won’t it end the forced practice ‘under exceptional circumstances’ or allowing adults to make other adults consent to have their children married off to older men? A few states have come out against forced legal marriage for child rape and pedophilia? Why is it so hard for federal U.S. politicians though to stand up against seeing children married off at ages under seventeen? Do federal politicians hate American its children?
◦ The U.S. is one of only three countries not to give paid time off for every mother whether they work for the government or private sector and the America is only one out of the top 41 first world countries a research center noticed in 2019 not to give paid parental leave. The other two countries without paid leave are Suriname and Papua New Guinea. Of the three countries, we are the richest and the “worst” according to a UK journalist. Yes, every other country you can think, even Afghanistan, have paid parental leave. Why doesn’t the U.S. government want to give this post-partum time for women to recover from birth and to bond with their newborn like the other 190 plus governments who recognize birth and babies as being important in practice and not just pre-birth political footballs? Why do federal U.S. politicians hate America’s own children?
◦ Why won’t the U.S. sign the Child’s Rights? The mostly white male government has not ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. There were one of three countries that had not ratified it. The other two were South Sudan and Somalia. But it appears Somalia recently has. South Sudan has yet to have a government that functions, being a new country and in constant civil war. So why won’t the United States government recognize children’s rights, our own children’s human rights?
We in the United States see ourselves as exceptional, better than everyone else as a country. American exceptionalism was endorsed not just by Trump, but by Obama, Bush 43, Clinton, Bush 41, Reagan, etc. The vast wealth generated by rapid industrial expansion after World War Two produced untold wealth as American invented at a faster rate, took in educated immigrants at faster rate who created more inventions, exported goods for decades globally unmatched in value and profit to almost this day, with China just now surpassing the US in total dollars.
But the U.S. is still number one as the largest trading nation. Trading and its wealth building are superlative not just in the late 1940s and 1950s but in every decade after as manufacturers goods needed less and less manual labor and became more and more sophisticated. The weapons of war like battleships, fighter jets, guided missiles, produced greater profits when our private companies sold them to foreign governments. Now software and the internet with no hardware spread globally, suddenly, with only China locking us out of information and wealth capturing, hiding from us behind their “Great Fire Wall.” The name is said mocking by us, as it is not just locking out democracy and free speech, but the U.S. capturing of all that wealth behind it.
The point is that we as a country have confused profit and wealth building as real worth, human worth. As least we as judge by our federal politicians who represent us as a people. Powerful politicians, predominantly white males in all the Republican Party and white males in the Democratic Party. Decades of an exclusively culturally white male dominance of Senators and Presidents who come from entitlement and higher college education — the vast majority Ivy League) have produced a sense of superiority from sitting on top the biggest and most profitable economy.
And yet this includes as white: Obama. He is culturally white, raised by white grandparents in Kansas, then with his white mom in white prep schools in Indonesia and Hawaii, and then Harvard, a white elitist culture where everyone called him Barry. He did not grow up in or go to any ‘ghetto’ schools and never encountered black poverty but only white affluence. That’s fine; I wish success for my children. The United States has denounced child marriage in other countries as a “human rights abuse that contributes to economic hardship,” though Obama wouldn’t push against child marriage in the U.S. or push for Child’s Rights.
Can it be any wonder the sheer arrogance we have that is manifested in this hatred towards our children. Simple moral stands all other countries have made, we cannot. Children who received the benefits of Ivy League education grow into politicians, like Ted Cruz or Bill Clinton, have made it. They are the masters of the world for so long, they might have an inherent sense of power that tells them unconsciously that only strong child deserves attention and privilege. It must be a sense of ‘weeding on the weak’, or only the strong survive. Trashy kids who can’t climb their way out of poverty don’t deserve powerful positions in the U.S. that the senator’s and presidents must believe.
I don’t know. I honestly don’t know what prevents them from standing up across the board against forcing children to marry their rapists? Religious reasons in a secular democracy based on humanist principles of equality all our founding fathers foresaw? Please tell me if you know. Please comment.
I can’t think of other reasons for not giving the same rights to U.S. children that almost every other nation does, even the poorest ones give at least on paper. Does it have to do with an over-inflated sense of entitlement, white privilege? We are afraid to kowtow to the rest of the world by ratifying the UN convention on Child Rights? We are afraid that we, the most power and richest country ever on earth, would have to bow down to the UN overlords? Ridiculous.
It’s not even a law, the UN Child’s Rights Convention, that would come into effect in America. It’s more of a good will gesture. It’s a simple moral stance that recognizes the value of born children, our already born children. Who would be against taking a moral stand for America’s children that costs nothing but a simple up or down vote?
Obama wouldn’t try to support it by demanding Congress speak out by fear he wouldn’t pass it by a two-thirds vote. Really, he could go on TV to make an obvious moral stand strongly showing his support for our children’s right, even symbolically, because he was afraid Republicans would be against it?
Yes, they would have deflected, stating they wouldn’t want ‘give up’ American ‘sovereignty’ to the UN, but then let go on the record as opposing it officially with a vote. There would have been no harm in losing when taking a principled stand in a prime-time speech or State of the Union address. The battle for the rights of your country’s children is just too important. But Obama could even demand that. Centrist Ivy League Dems and Elitist GOPs don’t just run the show, they dominate it.
It seems overwhelming easy to value and protect our children. But our federal government has failed to do so. The items above are cheap and easy for us to act on, to pass on paper. Think about, Burundi and Nepal did it, whether they practice what they pass or not. Our children are held hostage not just by the white male-dominated GOP who appear to hate family, but also by the centrist white-wing of the Democratic Party. What would be a simple moral stand to take is a failed one. If we are a caring Christian nation that values the family, you could have fooled me.
Letting 14-year-olds get married to adults with ‘parental permission’ is nothing more than government sanctioned pedophile rape and slavery. I’m very serious about that.
This is not some inflammatory internet meme or tweet meant to momentarily enrage you. It is meant to test you at your moral core.
Take this seriously for a second: If our own government can’t stand against that to protect our children, then they are depraved and sub-human. Equality and justices for all: democracy in practice we are not.
If you judge a people by how its government values its children, then we are exceptional, exceptionally bad and morally repugnant.
