Sliding toward totalitarianism ‘to protect the children’

It's the phrase which can move mountains, balance the budget, end war, save the environment and bring the Oilers back to Houston: "...to help protect the children."

Take a look at any major social program, educational fad, moral argument or new piece of spending legislation in today's America. We've expended trillions of dollars over the past 30 years, all "to help protect the children."

Tobacco, for example, kills millions of adults every year. Yet the arguments which precipitated the war on tobacco had nothing to do with the leaf's adult users: it was "to help protect the children" that we've created new tax after new tax on tobacco. It is "to protect the children" that legal eagles in the several states and in Washington are doing their best to sue the tobacco industry into bankruptcy.

We've neutralized discipline in the American family, "to protect the children." You all remember the case of the mother who was charged with child abuse "to protect the child" for disciplining her misbehaving teenager with a slap; the child learned the valuable lesson that parents are powerless in the face of government bureaucracy and red tape.

Think about what we've done "to protect the children." School lunches. School breakfasts. Curfews. Raising the drinking age and lowering the voting age. Psychological counseling on the sly. Car seats, seat belts, air bags and laws on where kids can ride.

President Clinton's latest proposals for government child-care, child health-care and the like are, of course, "to protect the children."

Yet for all we've done, some kids are still hungry, living in poverty, being hurt and dying. Have we done enough?

Perhaps it's time to consider more options.

Studies show conclusively that most children who are abused are abused by their parents, girlfriends and boyfriends of their parents, and/or step-parents. "To protect the children," let's outlaw post-divorce dating and second marriages. Better yet, "to protect the children," let's take children away from parents minutes after birth and raise them all in a protected environment.

We've all heard the horrid tales of ritual abuse at day-care centers, foster homes and orphanages, so "to protect the children," our protected environment must be in some place else. That place must also be structurally sound, built to high standards, able to withstand just about any kind of natural disaster; considering the number of children we're talking about, the only sound, economically-feasible place "to protect the children" would be in our schools.

Even in those places, the risk of war, global warming and religious conservatism remains a threat; "to protect the children," we should consider euthanizing all adults who attend church, own or work in heavy industry, or wear military uniforms. Statistics also show that because most parents in China, India, Mexico and Mississippi are poor, their children are at risk of turning out that way, too: "to protect the children," let's add them to the list.

(Since this would, of necessity, involve a world-wide effort, we'd have to exempt soldiers wearing United Nations uniforms, who of course will only be "protecting the children.")

Even within our protected environments, children will still run the risk of harming themselves or one another accidentally; "to protect the children," perhaps we should consider enclosing them individually in big plastic bubbles, and never, ever teach them to eat with forks and knives.

Certainly, this is carrying things to extremes — think of the individual liberties we'd be depriving! — but you have to remember why we're doing all this: "...to protect the children."