The Rights of the Child.

You know how much I hate alarmism. I'm not freaking out about who's eating which soup or why everyone isn't required to be telling me to have a Merry Christmas. And, well, *most* of the time I try to be objective and not say things that imply that every public school teacher is out to teach your kid to sin in three easy lessons. (It takes only one for homeschoolers because they're smarter than YOUR kids. :])

But here's something.

Every now and then, I've come across this "Rights of a Child" idea and every time I do, I have to just shudder. I'm hoping that the American freedom-loving people of all political stripes would somehow, sometime be made aware of the UN and the fact that it isn't, to use a euphemism from Monty Python, just a cute little bunny. It has these teeth...

I honestly don't understand why people who don't value the UN tend to be the more conservative types, because I've noticed that liberal people like to have this thing called personal freedom. Hey, they even take it to extremes I don't agree with (gay marriage and abortion). They generally look upon Christian conservatives as being a bit intolerant in those departments, and they'd be right. But it ain't nothin' like living under Sharia, bayyybee.

Which, so far as I understand, is where the UN is eventually headed. Already forms of Sharia have been proposed in Europe. Already there are places the Holocaust can't be taught for fear of riots, and places where parents cannot educate their own children according to their cultural standards. And when those countries get to tell us what to do after the Rights of a Child gets adopted in our country, everybody's gonna be really sorry.

I'm thinking liberals and conservatives, black, white, American Indian and Asian people are all living together mostly pretty peaceably in this country. Sure, we have our moments where things don't go so great and some idiot has to stomp a white kid because he saw a noose some other time somewhere else and, well, he's a good kid anyway... Or some gang of thugs decide they're going to rape a lesbian because she's sporting the wrong bumper sticker that day and, well, she needed a little help going hetero... But, you know, at the end of the day, I really do think MOST people aren't out to ask God to "damn America" or anything like that. I think every religion has a few wackos like that. Every ethnic group has a few wackos like that.

MOST of us do pretty well with one another and have the same concerns as a society. We might want to solve things like health care problems different ways. We might want less money for the army and more for roads or vice-versa. I think, though, as a broad whole Americans get along and widespread riots and that sort of thing doesn't happen over which party gets elected president or which teacher allowed a teddy bear to be named Muhammad. (Do you remember that? Crazy.)

I wonder, though, where the outcry on the UN Rights of the Child is from liberal quarters. (I also wonder where the Christian outcry is on a few other issues, but another post.)

Heartfelt Homeschool blog has been exploring this issue off and on for a while. Usually I just pop on to see how Sarah is learning to tell time, or look at the new kitchen paint... stuff like that. But Lisa hits the nail right on the head when she talks about the Rights of the Child. I mean, "Rights of the Child" is more like a UN version of the "Patriot Act." Everybody wants to be patriotic, right? Everybody wants to give "rights" to children, right?

Sigh.

I wish I could just ask for the "Happiness and Prosperity" act to be passed. In the fine print, I'd get about a billion dollars. You want happiness and prosperity, right?? Ok, hand over some prosperity and make me happy. :]

If you'd like to learn more about the "UN Rights of the Child" and how it would impact American parenting, please go to this link.

I think we have enough homegrown silliness on the issue of parental rights without adding some international stupidity to the mix.

But you know what? At the end of the day, if this treaty gets ratified, it's our own fault for electing these people. It's our own fault if we've chosen people to represent us who want to trade our freedoms in so that they can get a little international street cred. I hope we haven't.