Children of, by, and for the State: A Legal Framework

Children of, by, and for the State: A Legal Framework

Children are one-third of our population and all of our future. Ostensibly providing for the rights of children worldwide, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) is a universally agreed upon set of non-negotiable standards and obligations. Its three Optional Protocols shelter children from trafficking, prostitution, and child pornography; prohibit their recruitment in armed conflict; and allow children to file legal grievances. No fault here, right?

Think again. What our Founding Fathers affirmed as inalienable rights endowed by the Creator, the global community ascribes to government – specifically, global government. Certainly, no caring person argues for abuse or neglect of children. However, scattered throughout the U.N. Convention's fifty-four Articles are “new” rights that, all told, exceed in length the entire U.S. Constitution!

Arguably, “the institution of marriage/family is absolutely critical to everything we have known in Western civilization.” It is, in fact, “a centerpiece of the Judeo-Christian system of values” which, unfortunately, is not universally up held. Case in point: In the words of the Communist Party Education Workers Congress, “We must remove the children from the crude influence of their families.” Hillary Clinton believes “there's no such thing as other people's children.” In her Brave New World, “everyone belongs to everyone else” and, to guide children aright, superfluous parents must step aside.

First Lady Michelle Obama agrees, “We can't just leave it up to parents.” Phooey. Babies don't come with instruction manuals, it's true; however, when loving parents exercise common sense and willingly accept responsibility for their children, society flourishes. For instance, parents instinctively know better than to believe the American Psychological Association's nonsensical contention that children are “not typically harmed by adult-child sex.” Puh-leeze.

All Traditions That Harm
Recently, a U.N. panel on children's rights spotlighted a politically incorrect law signed by President Vladimir Putin, thereby igniting ire at the Winter Olympics in Sochi. For allegedly stigmatizing gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people, including children, traditionalists purportedly incite violence. Putin hardly qualifies as a moral compass. Even so, like it or not, he is not alone in limiting “family” to the orthodox, traditional model.

In advancing the faulty notion that traditional families no longer matter, global bureaucrats oppose “all traditions that demean, dehumanize, and injure”; but who's to say which traditions are injurious? In Somerset, Scotland, authorities yanked an eleven-year-old boy from the loving care of foster parents after the Christian couple refused to sign an equality agreement endorsing homosexuality. Not the child's best interest, but special interests triumphed.

Government (No Longer Father) Knows Best

Although the state is loath to accept responsibility for its own failed childrearing policies, the 1989 convention advances U.N. belief that government knows best for everyone; and, as a permanent fixture in the life of every child, state agents belong at the very heart of families. In 1998, Representative Henry J. Hyde exposed a movement for cradle-to-grave tracking of newborns of first-time parents. Intervention through Healthy Families America, he warned, is excessive to the extreme.

A prime example of what Rep. Hyde warned against, the Children and Young People Bill, authorizes local officials to assign an adult overseer – specifically, a government appointee who knows the child – for every child under the age of 18 born in Scotland. A first point of contact, the “named person” is a health visitor, head (or deputy head) teacher. The nation's astute Schoolhouse Home Education Association characterizes them as “just plain busybodies” with “arbitrary and oppressive” governmental powers.

In enforcing standards of the U.N. Conference on the Rights of the Child, “health and safety zealots obsessed with risk management” are trigger happy, as it were, to initiate investigations. Scrutiny of the mundane – i.e., a child's diet – threatens to implicate even good, law-abiding parents. With legal authority to see that children are raised in a government-approved manner (reminiscent of Hitler Youth), the liaison records and stores personal details on a central database which, in turn, is shared with other authorities and agencies – no parental consent required.

Kid Power: Third Optional Protocol

Apparently, the global plan calls for emasculating parents while, at the same time, empowering kids. Costa Rica recently became the tenth country to ratify the Third Optional Protocol of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, a new legal instrument to enable individual children, groups of children, or their representatives to file complaints with the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child. Child-sensitive procedures and safeguards allegedly disallow manipulation and/or subsequent reprisals for filing, but opponents aren't convinced. Free World decision-making powers should never emanate from a U.N. treaty.

Legislative Control Mechanism

Though not ratified by the United States, provisions relating to the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child continue to recycle and resurface – e.g., universal primary education, logically preceded by a required national system of daycare. Article 18 mandates government development of institutions, facilities, and services to care for children of working parents.

In his 12 February 2013 State of the Union address, President Barack Obama called on Congress “to expand access to high-quality preschool to every child in America." Accordingly, the President proposed a series of new investments to establish "a continuum of high-quality early learning for a child, beginning at birth and continuing to age five." You heard right: from birth.

Recall that, after lengthy debate (1990), Congress specifically rejected national daycare standards as part of the ABC Child Care Bill. This begs the question, "Are we now to have Congress overridden by a United Nations mandate?” Moreover, is it “neglect” not to establish government daycare centers – or to expose children to more illnesses in daycare centers? Not parents, but United Nations judges will decide.

Canon Law or U.N. Convention?

Disturbingly, some fear that U.N. soft law creates an across-the-board right to abortion that potentially overrides U.S. law and Supreme Court decisions. With respect to abortion, contraception, illegitimacy, HIV/AIDS, gender stereotypes in textbooks, and corporal punishment, a U.N. Committee on the Rights of A Child already badgers the Catholic Church to exchange Canon Law for U.N. conventions. Increasingly, international law applies intense pressure to alter existing statutory law.

“Freedom,” Reagan warned,

“is never more than one generation from extinction.” Hitler recognized, “As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation.” To that, freedom lovers everywhere doggedly decree, “Not on my watch.”