Ed Ward, MD
Hillary and the Politics of Children
Sat Feb 3, 2007 00:57

 
Hillary and the Politics of Children
by Stephen Baskerville (more by this author)
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=19096
Posted: 01/24/2007
Hillary Clinton chose to kick off her presidential campaign by invoking images of -- what else? -- children. Her healthcare policy would target "millions of children whose families today cannot afford care." Not the families of the children. Hillary prefers to work directly with the children themselves rather than their parents.

"We are talking about health care for children in need, which is about as safe an issue as there is," said Ken Sherrill, a political science professor at Hunter College.

Safe for a candidate perhaps, but safe for the children and our nation it is not. In casting her questionable health care ideas as a measure “for the children,” Hillary is returning us to the darkest days of her husband’s administration, when a broad range of intrusive government measures were cynically couched as concern for children.
This is more than just another politician kissing babies. It represents one of the most destructive (and successful) strategies of the feminist Left in recent years: the exploitation of children as political weapons.

Hillary is not alone. "Democrats across the board are putting children at the center of their imagery and message," according to the Washington Post. "Earlier this month, Rep. Nancy Pelosi made a vivid impression by assuming the House speakership surrounded by a squadron of young grandchildren. Sen. Barbara Boxer recently questioned whether Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, not having family of her own, could understand the stakes in Iraq." And, of course, a Democratic California assemblywoman wants to criminalize spanking.

The trend may be traced to Hillary’s mentor, Marian Wright Edelman, who admitted she founded the Children’s Defense Fund in the early 1970s upon realizing that the country was weary of the broader New Left agenda: “I got the idea that children might be a very effective way to broaden the base for change.” Edelman’s achievement was “to put children squarely in the front of almost every domestic policy debate,” according to the late Barbara Olson. In her book on the former First Lady, Olson writes, “For Hillary, children are the levers by which one forces social change.”

Largely through Hillary, this motif dominated Bill Clinton’s presidency. “Children,” wrote liberal columnist Richard Cohen, “have been an obsession for this administration.” His point is borne out by the words of its officials. “Government has got to ensure that parents are old enough, wise enough, and able to care for their children,” Attorney General Janet Reno insisted. Then-Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala was especially zealous for government child-rearing, envisioning a future kindergartener who “will play gender-neutral games in government day care and think of herself as part of the world, not just her town or the United States.”

One does not have to be a Clinton-basher to see this eerily close to Aldous Huxley’s prophecy of a totalitarian dystopia. Praising Hillary's book, "It Takes a Village," for its message that "each of us -- society as a whole -- bears responsibility for all children, even other people's children," professors Stewart Friedman and Jeffrey Greenhaus insist that we "must be prepared to make the most of the brave new world lying in the future."

"Success in the brave new world." they add, "requires skills found more among women than men."

This is far from harmless, either for public policy or for children themselves. Political scientist Jean Bethke Elshtain writes that “The replacements for parents and families would not be a happy, consensual world of children coequal with adults but one in which children became clients of institutionally powerful social bureaucrats and engineers of all sorts for whom they would serve as so much grist for the mill of extra-familial schemes and ambitions.”

This is precisely what is suggested in Hillary’s aphorism: “There is no such thing as other people’s children.” Hillary rejects the notion that “families are private, nonpolitical units whose interests subsume those of children” and believes instead in “the status of children as political beings.”

Feminist-influenced legal practitioners now openly advocate that traditional parental authority be replaced by bureaucrats: “For those who would like to have the State use its power and resources to improve the lives of children, parental rights constitute the greatest legal obstacle to government intervention to protect children from harmful parenting practices and to state efforts to assume greater authority over the care and education of children.”

These words are published in the California Law Review, a mainstream journal that asks “why parents should have any child-rearing rights at all.”

“Parental child-rearing rights are illegitimate,” declared attorney James Dwyer. “No one should possess a right to control the life of another person no matter what reasons, religious or otherwise, he might have for wanting to do so.”

A popular joke holds that within the family mom makes the minor decisions, such as how to raise the children, while dad concerns himself with important questions, like how to achieve world peace. This joke is now grimly writ large in public policy. Conservatives who allow their attention to be monopolized by foreign policy and government finance and leave family policy to liberals from the “Mommy Party” will discover only once it is too late the power of “the hand that rocks the cradle.”

Dr. Baskerville is a political scientist and president of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children.

"Do not separate text from historical background. If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government." --- James Madison.

Tesla - the missing secrets of Nikola Tesla http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5834867580747017149&q=pope...er.corps&hl=en

"On every question of construction [of the Constitution] let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or intended against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed." --- Thomas Jefferson

Aaron Russo's - America: Freedom to Fascism http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4312730277175242198

"Someday the status quo will be more painful and difficult than changing and then America will change." "America Needs a Regime Removal, Not a Regime Change."

Phenomenon Archives: Heavy Watergate, The War Against Cold Fusion http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2229511748333360205

Congress.org: http://www.congress.org/ This is a good site to post the facts. I always include my prepared comments (a list of most of the pressing issues - impeach, 911, Constitutional rights, renewable energy, family rights, global warming, DU, etc.) on anything I post (vote) on: ADD YOUR OWN. Support Ron Paul for President 2008 - Our First and Best Hope in Decades Representative Ron Paul Is Running for President 2008
http://www.dfw.com/mld/startelegram/news/state/16438882.htm
Ron Paul: Next President Of The USA? http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/january2007/120107ronpaul.htm
To see for yourself:
http://www.house.gov/paul/bio.shtml - Who is Ron Paul?
http://www.ronpaul.org/
http://www.house.gov/paul/legis_tst.htm - List of Ron Paul's articles.
http://www.house.gov/paul/ - Website

Phenomenon Archives: The Monopoly Men http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3388799387341337020

Alex Jones - TerrorStorm - Fear & Propaganda CIA Tools of Tyranny. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7516705476148472744
SECRETS OF THE CIA - A Disturbing Documentary http://www.rinf.com/columnists/news/secrets-of-the-cia
Operation Northwoods - FOIA Top Secret Document for False Flag Operation on Cuba. http://emperors-clothes.com/images/north-i.htm
Pearl Harbor Attack Known by FDR (FOIA UNClassified Documents) http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=408
What is the Problem with Equality - Presumptive Equal Shared Parenting http://www.thepriceofliberty.org/04/09/15/ward.htm
Experts Warn North Pole Will Be "Ice Free" by 2040 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2499663,00.html
"The Coast Is Toast: Take the Money and Run" http://www.thepriceofliberty.org/06/07/03/ward.htm
HBO's "Hacking Democracy" http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=hacking+democracy&search=Search
Frontline's "The Dark Side" The Iraq War Scam http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/darkside/view/
Uranium: Deja DU - The Agent Orange of Eternity http://www.thepriceofliberty.org/04/09/07/ward.htm


SAVE AMERICA!
STOP SPENDING AND START SAVING! - CUT THE GDP - GOVERNMENTS EXIST BY THE PEOPLE'S SPENDING - WHEN OUR 'REPRESENTATIVES' START RETURNING THE CONSTITUTION - WE CAN START SPENDING AGAIN. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/02/16/MNG2KH9P4767.DTL

Dei Jurum Conventus - (God's Rights (Unity)/Convention)

Ed Ward, MD; http://www.thepriceofliberty.org/arc_ward.htm
Independent writer/Media Liaison for The Price of Liberty; http://www.thepriceofliberty.org/

Main Page - Friday, 02/02/07

Message Board by American Patriot Friends Network [APFN]

APFN MESSAGEBOARD ARCHIVES

messageboard.gif (4314 bytes)