Right-wing amendment would bar children's rights

The whack-a-doos are stockpiling nutty ideas again, because they know they're going to be loaded for bear after losing the next election, and they're going to trot out this loss as "proof" their opponents have been in power forever. They think they'll win the next election after that, and they want to get their gallows lined up in time so they can enjoy it.

For years, conservatives have reserved some of their shrillest vitriol for opposing a document called the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Out of 195 countries in the UN, 193 have ratified this document. As an example of what the convention does, it provides that there shall be efforts to reduce infant mortality, economic exploitation, child trafficking, and abuse. The convention properly upholds the rights of children and parents, and nothing in it prohibits homeschooling (despite what opponents claim). In fact, nothing in it would be unconstitutional at all in the U.S. and A.

Despite this, the U.S. is one of only 2 member nations in the UN that hasn't ratified it. The only other is Somalia, and that's only because Somalia hasn't had a government in years. (The "regulation for thee, not for me" types should emigrate there!) What's the excuse for America not ratifying this document? The Bush regime says the convention's "human rights-based approach ... poses significant problems."

So America's children are held hostage by a government that thinks human rights "poses significant problems." Lovely.

I don't give a damn what high-sounding reasons the Bushbots come up with for opposing this document. There's no excuse not to ratify it. None.

In an apparent effort to combat the convention that the U.S. won't even ratify, conservatives are proposing something they call the Parental Rights Amendment. I remember hearing about something like this about 10 years ago, but I don't think it was that well organized and didn't get too much traction (except maybe in a few states). Now the Bushists have a whole website devoted to adding this amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Protecting child abusers is the transparent purpose of this amendment. Its supporters devote reams of bandwidth to talking about how everything in it is already in the Constitution and how every court in the land already recognizes this to be so. If that's the case, why are they so intent on passing a new amendment? The amendment talks about the "liberty of parents", but it has not a word about the liberty of children.

Why an amendment? Because this measure would protect actions that are generally agreed to be abuse. It establishes parents' ability to "direct the upbringing" of children as a "fundamental right", but it sets no limits. State laws today set limits. This amendment would not.

This is important because this amendment would also seem to bar states from setting any limits. The second clause says, "Neither the United States nor any state shall infringe upon" the "right" granted in the first clause "without demonstrating that its governmental interest as applied to the person is of the highest order and not otherwise served." The third clause bars treaties like the Convention on the Rights of the Child from preempting the so-called "rights" laid out in the first and second clauses.

There's a certain strain of thought (to use the term loosely) that's behind this amendment. It's pushed by those who think children are property. The modern brand of conservatives considers children to be things, not people. They're against the Convention on the Rights of the Child's "human rights-based approach" because they don't consider children to be human. The Far Right considers young people to be the property of their elders until they turn 18.

And that's why they go bananas when someone mentions children's rights.