Damn the war on Saddam! I want, no, I DEMAND a war on domestic violence, teen depression, toddler drownings and whatever else is responsible for 76 kids dying in Arizona in 2001.
Yo, Dubya, pay attention: Spend my tax dollars educating parents, counseling troubled teens and, if necessary, denying abusive adults access to their, or anyone else's, children. Instead of, "No child left behind," how about, "Every child left alive?"
The national numbers for child abuse are staggering. Suffice it to say, more than 1 million children were documented child abuse victims in 1999 alone, with the trend increasing rapidly.
One preventable child death is one too many. One adult looking the other way is one too many. One legislator shirking her duty is one too many.
Kudos to those of you who are trying to make a difference here. Volunteering at, and donating to, battered wives and children's shelters are laudable activities. However, it's treating the symptoms, not the disease.
And just what is the disease, you ask?
We are the ones who enter into, and remain too long, in abusive and/or dead-end relationships because we refuse to accept the fact that all marriage laws are in direct and irrevocable conflict with human nature (you cannot legislate morality). Therefore, we abuse each other and our children physically and mentally.
We are the ones who have not taught our children to take responsibility for their own actions. Therefore, our children do whatever they want, whenever they want, to whomever they want. They make babies with each other because they don't know the difference between love and sex, and because we refuse to accept the reality that healthy young animals will jump each other's bones, and we refuse to furnish them with sex education and birth control. (One more time: YOU CANNOT LEGISLATE MORALITY.)
We are the ones who try to shelter our children from the realities of life. Therefore, they kill each other because they don't understand the reality of death. On TV programs and video games we support, violence is the best/only answer, and the "dead" person will be on another program tomorrow.
They don't understand that there are bad people everywhere—but not everyone is bad. They don't understand that we won't always be there to bail them out (literally, in too many cases).
We are the ones drawing the arbitrary lines between child and adult. Therefore, they question why we can ask them to go far away and die for us, but we won't let them do all the other things "adults" do. They rebel because we try to rule them instead of guide them, own them, instead of cherish and support them.
We are the ones who refuse, or, in too many cases, are unable to protect our children and prepare them for adulthood. We make all their choices for them. Therefore, they are not competent to make good choices in life. We haven't taught them how to judge character, so they hang with bad characters.
Some of you reading this are going to have to bury one of your babies, that is something no one should have to do. But, until we treat the disease, as well as the symptoms, that is going to continue. By now, hopefully, you've figured out what the disease is.
I have looked into the face of the disease, and the disease is us.
Terry Moore is a graduate English student. Reach him at limerick@asu.edu.
