The Nation's Pulse
Chapman, Steve
THE NATION'S PULSE by Steve Chapman A merican politics is growing infantile, and like many regrettable national developments, this one has been exacerbated, if not led, by Bill Clinton. Judging...
...The safety of the children of the world depends on it...
...Clinton is not alone in shamelessly exploiting children for political advantage...
...Clinton's invocations of children bring to mind Oscar Wilde's remark about the death of Little Nell in Dickens's The Old Curiosity Shop, that only someone with a heart of stone could read it without laughing...
...If smoking is virtually outlawed, they may someday resent the loss of a pleasurable though risky option...
...After repeated defeats on free trade, organized labor has now tried to make it an issue of whether we like to see sad-eyed urchins laboring in sweatshops abroad...
...We must not allow the 21st century to go forward under a cloud of fear that terrorists, organized criminals, drug traffickers will terrorize people with chemical and biological weapons," the president declared...
...We want to do all these things in education, in health care and agriculture and nutrition," he confessed soulfully, "because we want to see the light that is in these children's eyes forever, and in the eyes of all other children...
...If they weren't going to be around to shoulder the debt, why would we care how big it is...
...As George Orwell said of saints, politicians who wax sentimental about children should be presumed guilty until proven innocent...
...Freedom of expression creates the danger that children will be exposed to material that is suitable only for the mature...
...At that point, millions of parents, teachers, and other Americans who devote much of their time and energy to helping young people must have solemnly pondered the president's words and said to themselves: Gag me with a spoon...
...Now you're asking for it...
...The advice to politicians from their pollsters is that adults should be seen and (Continued on page 79) Child Abuse Does every hack pol have to hide behind "our children...
...named Children's Defense Fund, he learned years ago the wisdom of characterizing every political position as a selfless effort to minister to the young...
...For that matter, neither are liberals...
...The speech was unusually mawkish even by Clinton standards, but perfectly in character...
...Too bad...
...Raised eyebrows should be deployed at any such reference—followed by hoots, jeers, and overripe produce if the speaker fails to justify his breach of etiquette...
...Sure he is...
...If you make laws with a single-minded concern for the lot of the younger generation, you assure that adults will forever be treated (and possibly behave) like second-graders...
...To guard against the purchase of tobacco by minors, the Food and Drug Administration commands retailers to check the IDs of everyone up to the age of 27...
...I t may be a violation of current child-abuse laws to say so, but sometimes the immediate interests of kids should not be paramount...
...Even if you assume a bloated, indulgent welfare state is good for people in their younger years, it's a heavy burden once they get old enough to go to work and pay taxes...
...And it's worth keeping in mind the elementary rule of thumb that children eventually become adults...
...But they don't let themselves be outdone by anybody...
...Ai www.spectator.org Visit us daily on 0 0 the Web t for the most a) a_ up-to-date Spectator News www.spectator.org The American Spectator • June 1998 79...
...But threaten the kids...
...Likewise with New York Mayor Rudy Guiliani's campaign to close down dozens of "adult" nightclubs, book stores, and video retailers...
...Anti-tobacco forces can rationalize any new regulation or tax by saying they are merely trying to protect kids...
...Welfare reform puts youngsters at risk of deprivation if Mom loses her monthly check because she is unable or unwilling to comply with a work requirement...
...Sometimes kids are clearly the chief victims of bad policies—such as no-fault divorce laws, the public school monopoly, and tax laws that encourage both parents to take jobs and letsomeone else handle the task of child-rearing...
...Aid to Dependent Adults, you must admit, would have been a tougher sell...
...When Congress voted to place unconstitutional restrictions on communications that happen to be transmitted by electrons over the Intemet instead of by ink and paper in the form of magazines and books, the law was billed as stemming purely from the desire to shield innocent youths from coarse words and pictures...
...If the genuflections don't suggest a decline in our standards of political discourse, try to imagine the Declaration of Independence insisting that a break with George III was needed "for the sake of the children...
...CDF founder Marian Wright Edelman was a pioneer in this regard...
...It makes sense to lament the burden placed on our children and grandchildren when we run a federal budget deficit...
...But these same groups are not unhappy that meanwhile, the liberty of grownups to enjoy an innocent vice has shrunk to nearly nothing...
...There are occasions when it is perfectly appropriate to examine the interests of the younger generation and generations yet unborn...
...When famously hard-nosed drug czar Barry McCaffrey inveighs against needle-exchange programs that try to prevent AIDS transmission by giving drug addicts sterile hypodermic syringes, he says he is concerned solely about the message they send to "young people...
...Unless, of course, their Uncle Sugar's undemanding generosity has permanently inoculated them against gainful employment—which is also no blessing...
...From his wife, once chairman of the board of the shrewdly STEVE CHAPMAN is a syndicated columnist on the staff of the Chicago Tribune...
...His visit to Africa, which is not unique among continents in being home to many children, was an opportunity for him to lay on the sentiment like whipped cream on a banana split...
...The goo got thickest in Uganda, where he promised to deliver $120 million for such noble purposes as providing access to the Internet for schools that, as it happens, lack electricity...
...That's the only way we can keep our public debate from continuing its descent into a cacophony of baby-talk and prevent the laws governing the nation from becoming a catalogue of rules more appropriate to a kindergarten...
...Judging from his public pronouncements, the president thinks obsessively about children —and that's leaving aside the 21-year-olds in the White House intern pool...
...And I'm Timothy Leary...
...It is essential that those inspectors go back to work...
...The American Spectator • June 1998 51 The Nation's Pulse/Chapman (Continued from page 5r) not heard...
...After four middle-school kids and a teacher were shot to death in Jonesboro, Arkansas, he reflexively appealed to Americans to "come together for the sake of the children...
...There is no officeholder with the nerve to question the notion that all policies must be judged purely by how they affect the young 'uns — like the British parliamentarian who rudely demanded, "What has posterity ever done for us...
...Iraqi weapons of mass destruction will not make age distinctions...
...It was certainly no accident that the nation's chief form of support for idle adults was for decades known as Aid to Families with Dependent Children...
...A colleague of mine accepted an invitation to speak at a local high school and for her trouble received a coffee mug emblazoned with its motto: "Children First...
...He finds it impossible to make his way through a speech without reminding everyone of his boundless and inexhaustible concern for the well-being of the short set...
...She gave it a baleful look and said, "Shouldn't it be 'Women and Children First...
...Adults don't like to admit they want their own sensibilities walled off from manifestations of the carnal...
...He doesn't mind taking this impulse to ludicrous lengths, as in a speech he gave last November arguing that the world should demand Saddam Hussein's cooperation with United Nations weapons inspectors...
...But the right is not above playing this game...
...But on most matters of public policy, what's good for adults is good for the younger generation too...
...Norman Siegel, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, says that citizens who turned out at community forums in support of a crackdown invariably asked why their eight-year-old daughters should have to walk past seedy establishments advertising peep shows and lap dances...
...Saving millions of mere adults from choking on mustard gas or inhaling deadly anthrax spores would hardly be worth the trouble...
...Protectionist trade barriers lower the living standards of everyone, in both importing and exporting countries, from the cradle to the grave...
...In fact, about the only issue on which the left stoutly refuses to proclaim the importance of children is the one which most tangibly affects the little ones: abortion...
Vol. 31 • June 1998 • No. 6
