Silent, but Urgent Threat to Parental Rights

Very few recognize the slow, yet continual erosion of parent’s rights by many forces in our government at local, state, and federal levels. The erosion has occurred without fanfare and, what little media attention it garners, usually casts the parents in a negative light or takes only the most egregious examples of bad parents to make the point against all parents. Even when parental rights were restored in some cases, the media often still accused the parents of wrongdoing. Often the media would lament that the child protective workers just couldn’t get enough evidence to prove the parent’s guilt. The media never assumes that maybe the “protective” workers were not so innocent and the accused parents were not so “guilty”. Besides such individual cases and the overgeneralizations, dangerous court precedents are being set one case at a time, usually disregarded by the media as unimportant. If that is not enough, bills are working their way into laws which erode parental control over education, healthcare, religion, and other important areas. Slowly the heat is being turned up on parents wading in the waters of our nation’s culture. Those simmering parents must realize the urgency of the next few degrees of heat that will bring the legal waters to a boiling point and will mean the end of parenting in America as we know it.

Why do the supporters of government-controlled parenting enjoy the silence and stealth? In the quiet, they can slowly turn up the heat one degree at a time without anyone taking much notice. American parents just learn to accept the warmer water as being natural since they trust the government to do what is best. The supporters set up law after law, one court precedent after another, until, with a simple tweak of one more degree, everything boils and American parents are stunned to find themselves in boiling water, unable to escape. If parents saw the final goal held by these forces or read the United Nation’s Convention on the Rights of the Child (UN CRC) with open eyes of understanding, they would protest with outrage. The UN CRC aids our understanding because it is the most tangible manifestation of the philosophy that government knows what is best for children and should overrule parents in their decisions for their own children. As it is now, if no parent reads the recipe in that treaty, we will all suffer a common demise of our parental rights in this legal environment.

Why is it urgent? The US State Department is processing this treaty as fast as Senator Barbara Boxer can push them. She wanted to present it to the US Senate for a 2/3’s ratification vote in April of this year. The State Department thankfully wanted time to process it properly. Senator Boxer and others such as our Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, believe that their long awaited dream of ratifying this treaty by 67 Senate “yes” votes is ripe for the picking. Furthermore, our president and many in his chosen administration believe that it is a disgrace that America has not yet signed this treaty. Even though this treaty hands over state and national sovereignty unconstitutionally, they will do so and act “as if” it is constitutionally allowed. Meanwhile, outside Washington D.C., many groups are building momentum to help push this through the Senate. They have held conferences, raised funding, and started grassroots campaigns. No punches are being pulled in this battle for who controls the future of our children.

In summary, supporters enjoy the relative silence compared to the roar surrounding other government issues facing Americans and their fading liberties right now. They benefit from American parent’s deafness and ignorance towards this crucial issue. Yet the situation is growing more and more urgent as each day passes without American parents awakening to this threat, a threat that is ready to boil over at any minute.

(Return soon for part 3 of the series which discusses the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child itself.)