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Note to Keith Olbermann:
some things are true, even if Bill “Orally” says them. The adorable
Olbermann launched yet another coruscating attack on Bill, because he
promised to do a segment on kids who, unlike Shawn Hornbeck, mustered
the strength to escape their abductors. As I did in
last week’s column, where I also defended O’Reilly for opposing the
therapeutic establishment in its efforts not to diminish, but to trash,
the concept of individual responsibility. (Bill must be hanging out at
his old haunt,
WorldNetDaily.)
So here’s another angle for Bill. With the “Hildebeest”
adding her voice to the deafening din about “Our Children,” how about
sparing a thought for Hornbeck’s poor parents? This really dates me,
doesn’t it? First I submit that teenagers have a modicum of free will
and an ability to tell right from wrong. Next, I venture that the boy
wasn’t exactly finely tuned to his parents’ anguish.
A parent in this situation is beside himself with worry.
All he or she can think of is, “Is my baby alive; is he warm enough.”
And, “Please God don’t let him suffer.” As a parent, I’d be driven to
distraction by thoughts of my daughter in agony. Daily life would come
to a stand still. I also know this:
I’d be furious to learn that my daughter posted a
message on
mom’s website, but failed to notify me she was alive. Recall, in a
forum on the Shawn Hornbeck Foundation Web site, the boy posted a note
asking his parents how long they were planning to look for their son.
(Shawn also had a Member Profile on a website called “MindViz.com.”)
There Shawn’s parents were, dying a slow death every
day—because, face it, kids have that effect; they burrow in your soul
like no one else. So these folks are pining away, and the little
so-and-so can’t bring himself to append this to his message, “Your son
is alive, don’t sweat … like, whatever. Sorry gotta run; I have a game
of Dragon Ball Z and Gears of War on the go with my buddy Tony.”
Then it dawned on me that my girl, who still checks in
with me even though she’s an adult, would have let me know she was
alive. She’d be too scared not to,
on
the off chance that she’d be returned to me one day. And because she was
brought up to think rationally, she’d know better than to try
this line on me: “Mom, I was suffering that
syndrome the nice lady on TV said I had, and that prevented me from
calling you for 4 years.”
Thin gruel, indeed.
Small children during the Holocaust performed amazing
acts of bravery, such as smuggling food for their families in and out
the ghettos. Some were shot on site by the Nazis. In a story titled "the
brave children of Afghanistan,” the BBC tells of the heroism of
poverty stricken, severely malnourished, war-damaged kids in Kabul. They
shine shoes to support their families, earning $1 a day. Asked “how he
felt about his situation,” the one little boy replied: “I am happy and
not happy. Happy because I work, but not happy because I cannot earn
enough to bring my family everything they need.”
Yet people claim that the lad in question, Shawn, was
incapable of contacting his hapless parents for 4 years, not even to let
them know he was alive. Come now! I’m not here advocating such a
developed—or defeating, to some—sense of duty in small children as
evinced by the Afghani kids. Nor am I implying children are miniature
adults; they are developmentally different from grownups. But neither is
a teenager an ameba. The human spirit is irrepressible, in children too.
An anonymous sage said that “expectations tend to be
self-fulfilling”: expect nothing and you’ll get nothing. In the United
States, if kids so much as dial 911 in an emergency, they are decorated
for bravery. Mitchell Hults, the boy who gave police the description of
the perpetrator’s white truck, has been hailed as a hero by the sheriff
and showered with awards and gifts. This, for merely reporting what he
saw! If the consensus in society is that doing the bare minimum is an
act of supreme courage; then failing to perform basic obligations must
be considered the norm.
In The Constitution of Liberty, Friedrich A.
Hayek insisted that “The assigning of responsibility is based, not on
what we know to be true in a particular case, but on what we believe
will be the probable effects of encouraging people to behave rationally
and considerately.” In other words, don’t fall for the tyranny of low
expectations; let your teenagers know you expect them to behave
rationally and considerately.
©2007 Ilana Mercer
WorldNetDaily
February 2
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