Children, Children, Future, Future

It's a pretty rare occasion when the far left and the far right agree on something. Typically, the two sides only agree completely when the situation is so black-and-white that literally nothing could lead to disagreement (the obvious example being things like Pearl Harbor). Hence my surprise at the growing accord between the two sides regarding a number of issues, including one which recently reached the Supreme Court. For completion's sake, I'll run down the four I'm thinking of; see if you can guess the common link between the four.

1. Santa Clara County in California has banned the sale of fast food meals that "pander to children."

2. Corporate Accountability International is demanding that McDonald's eliminate their use of terrifying demonspawn (or, to use a term many of you may find more fitting, clown) Ronald McDonald as a mascot, calling him "a deep-fried 21st century Joe Camel."

3. Increasingly, parents are refusing to have their children vaccinated, claiming that the injections are dangerous. Still others refuse because they believe, despite numerous studies to the contrary, that the preservatives in vaccines lead to autism (I've got major issues with the attention given autism these days, but that's another story for another time).

4. The Supreme Court agreed to hear a case regarding overturning a lower court's own overturning of a California law banning the sale and rental of violent video games to minors.

The answer, for those of you who saw all the links, remembered my column on "our hyperradical president" and immediately said "tl;dr," is that all of these are examples of legislators pursuing agendas that propose removing responsibility for children from their parents. In essence, legislators are trying to force the state to play nanny, and many parents are all too willing to hop on board for the supposedly altruistic reason of "protecting our children." The far left views this as eliminating unseemly aspects of modern society (particularly childhood obesity and violence anywhere), while the far right can get past the "big government" issues because these issues fall in line with their (mostly) fundamentalist Christian dogma.

Man, it just figures that when you finally get them to agree on something, they're wrong, doesn't it?

These examples are really a continuation of a trend we've seen since the early 90's: reducing the responsibility of parents for the behavior of their children. Heck, if you want to toss the mass overdiagnosis of attention deficit disorder in with the others, feel free, it'd be fitting. More and more, parents are deciding that raising their children properly is just too hard, so rather than amp up their level of commitment, they seek other ways to absolve them of their own failures. Consider the vaccination issue. In spite of overwhelming physical evidence that proves beyond any doubt that the use of vaccines has drastically reduced childhood mortality and even eradicated certain diseases (smallpox is completely gone, polio no longer present in North America, tuberculosis fairly rare), parents would rather take a chance with their child's health. They claim they're "looking out for their babies," but who they're really looking out for is Number 1. If the kid gets something, then they can make the argument that someone else gave it to the child, thus making it this other ill person's fault. Some will counter with the claim that this is the perfect example of taking total responsibility for their children because they're taking responsibility for any future vulnerability to diseases. To that, I counter that in doing so they are abandoning their responsibility to society to prevent the possible spread of potentially fatal diseases. There are studies currently ongoing that show the lack of vaccination, in conjunction with the increasing number of drug-resistant strains, is beginning to allow certain major childhood diseases to return (the measles, in particular, has returned with disturbing force). In this instance, abdicating your responsibility to cover your ass is only putting the rest of ours at risk.

The irresponsibility doesn't stop there. The two McDonald's-targeted challenges are ostensibly meant to curb the spread of childhood obesity, which is a decent goal. The issue, though, is that last I checked, kids don't buy their own food (most of the time). If I wanted a Happy Meal toy back in the day and my parents weren't interested in going to McDonald's, you know what they did? THEY SAID NO. I know that's a foreign concept to many parents today, but it's what needs to be done. In general, children who don't eat fast food on a daily basis don't typically become obese from fast food. Again, odd concept, I know. At no time should anyone pretend they don't know what they're getting into with fast food. I understand with kids, because at that age many don't read particularly well (another issue for another time) and even fewer would understand a nutrition chart if it smacked them in the face. I don't expect them to know the health risks they face from eating that stuff all the time, but for their parents to pretend that it isn't their responsibility to know what's in their kids' food smacks of laziness, apathy, and an unwillingness to take responsibility for their own decisions. The same is true of the push to eliminate Ronald McDonald. The comparison to Joe Camel is erroneous because Joe Camel pandered to minors a substance they could not legally use, a substance with known addictive chemicals present to ensure their continued use. If a child decides "Screw you, I'm gonna have a burger," there's no real concern that the child will become physically dependent on hamburgers for the rest of his or her life. Above all else, though, it's a matter of having a spine. The child is not the one making the decisions. As such, the child's predilection to follow the wishes of a mephitic burger jester shouldn't come into play. If you're pathetic enough that a charlatan in a yellow jumper has more influence over what your child eats than you do, then you might as well just give your kids to Angelina.

The last one, regarding violent video games, really bothers me for a number of reasons. I know a fellow who started playing violent things like Mortal Kombat back in grade school and has continued with it up to this day. He's never had any issues with violence or anger. He graduated at the top of his class in high school, graduated with honors from a respected university, and today is a respected professional with a steady job and fiscal independence. I know this fellow pretty well, because this fellow is me. I've never had an issue with it because from an early age, I could tell the difference between a game and reality. Moreover, my parents understood that I understood the difference, so they permitted me that leeway. To put this simply, if a parent doesn't believe their child can play these sorts of things without reenacting them (in other words, that the child can't tell what's acceptable in real life and what's not), there should be absolutely no way the parent permits the child to play them. There's not even a good excuse for not knowing what games could pose a problem, because THERE'S A RATING SYSTEM. THE ANSWERS ARE ALREADY ON THE DAMN BOX. If parents would just do some research and look at the box, they could be well-informed on what their child could be witnessing and make their decisions based on that. It reminds me of the parents who go to Blockbuster, see the cartoon pictures on the box, rent Urotsukidoji for their kids, and come back furious over what was in it (if you're curious, Google it...there's no way in hell I'm linking anything on that). There's a certain level of responsibility that goes into these sorts of things, and if you're going to duck that responsibility, you deserve the consequences.

You might have noticed I keep using the word "responsibility." That's because that's what all this comes back to: responsibility, and an unwillingness to accept it. There are certain things that a parent needs to know to make informed decisions. For some reason, there's a distinct lack of interest in learning those necessary things; I'm tempted to call it "willful ignorance." Instead, the prevailing thought has become "Let's force everyone to play by a set of rules because we don't have the stones to make our own." That disturbs me, as it should disturb anyone who respects the notion of a free, well-educated society. When did we stop forcing people to own up to their mistakes? When did we decide parenting was the government's job? When did we decide that individual responsibility is irrelevant when it comes to progeny? Why haven't we fixed that? It's time to face facts: if there's something wrong with your child, the first person you should even consider blaming is the person in the mirror. Until next time, whenever someone says "Won't someone pleeeeeease think of the children?", respond with these two little words:

You first.