Editor,
Many adults get rich off poisoning kids’ bodies and minds. Many churchgoers are horrified when kids kill kids and old people, but these are the same churchgoers who have no conscience against paying Uncle Sam tax dollars to kill kids and old people in other nations.
Many kids are damned as no-good hoodlums for stealing cars and computers while politicians and corporation presidents are praised as fabulously successful for stealing billions in natural resources and dirt-cheap labor from other nations.
Some kids commit atrocious crimes and they need to change their ways, but the number one responsibility for kids’ crimes is on adults.
Kids do not own the gun factories and gun stores. Kids do not make, sell and advertise booze. Kids do not manufacture the violent video games. Kids do not make the major movies glamorizing war, rape, jealousy, guns, booze, cigarettes, revenge, robbery and money addiction.
Kids do not import the heroin and cocaine from abroad. Kids do not create the TV commercials pushing people to crave expensive crap we do not need, and to do anything to get it. No kid should be spanked, cursed, bruised, beaten or ignored.
Kids do not run Hollywood, McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, Coors, Phillip Morris, Wall Street, the Pentagon, Congress, the CIA, Baskin-Robbins, Sandia Weapons Lab, Exxon, General Motors, Wal-Mart.
Imagine if we adults refused to work at any job that harms people and poisons the earth. Imagine if we devoted ourselves daily to creating a world where it is easier for us all to be good and to do the right thing.
Parents — if you want your children to be open and honest, are you always open and honest with them? Do you ever ask them to lie for you about anything? If you want your children to be dependable, do you keep your promises to them and to others? If you want your children to apologize and ask for forgiveness when they wrong you, do you apologize and ask forgiveness when you wrong them?
If you want them to be warm and affectionate, do you hug them often with deep feeling? How can you lecture your children not to use street drugs if you are hooked on booze, Valium, junk food or cigarettes?
Never demand your children to obey you and other authorities without questioning. When parents teach kids to follow orders and to obey other authorities, without questioning, these kids often become soldiers who murder on command with no conscience — in Auschwitz, the West Bank, Vietnam, Iraq, Chechnya, Afghanistan.
Teach your kids by your own life to question deeply everything, to follow their conscience no matter the cost and to love and do good to all people — including our enemies.
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Don Schrader
Daily Lobo reader
