The following is an article by uber-conservative Micahel Graham. Would be interested in your thoughts...especially those who consider themselves to be conservatives.

link

WHEN BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE

When did my fellow conservatives forget the core premise of conservatism, namely that life sucks?

When it comes to the case of Elian Gonzalez, this seems to be the hang-up for conservatives like Brit Hume of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, who of late sounds like Hillary slipped something into his Snapple.

In the old days, Rush was the first to seize liberal Pollyannas by the scruff of the neck and fling them onto the cold streets of reality. Now this formerly cold-hearted conservative is suddenly enamored of the idea that this little boys happiness is both achievable and important.

Right-thinking conservatives have succumbed to the wrong-headed notion that principles should be abandoned when they become painful. This is absolutely contrary to the no pain, no gain philosophy that brought me to the conservative movement.

At the risk of committing a gargantuan simplification, the difference between liberals and conservatives is that liberals want to be nice, while conservatives want to be right. A bum wanders up to a liberal, and he gets a dollar because giving the bum a dollar seems like a nice thing to do, even if it buys said bum that one can of Sterno too many. Conservatives, on the other hand, reject the temptation (however weak) to hand over their hard-earned cash because doing what is nice encourages behavior that is self-destructive and wrong.

We know the bum might end up going hungry if we dont help. We further acknowledge that this might be the one guy in the world who would take that dollar, get himself a meal, get cleaned up and turn around his life. To which we reply, So?

The principles of individual responsibility and social justice (i.e., getting what one deserves) are more important than the misery of any one person. Indeed, we ask, what principle worth having ISNT?

Defending the Second Amendment means some innocent people are going to be shot, you say? All right.

Protecting free speech means some people will say hurtful, racist and stupid things? No problem.

And allowing parents to raise their children as they see fit means some will grow up in horrible homes exposed to bizarre, even dangerous attitudes like Christian Scientism, Pentecostalism and even Rotarianism?

Hey, thats life in the land of conservative principles. Or should I say, it used to be.

Conservatives used to believe in doing what is right and accepting the consequences. Now we believe in Elian.

Im getting ideological whiplash watching President William Jefferson Perjury Clinton announce that we must defend the rule of law, while his conservative opponents plead for us to look beyond the law and consider the best interests of the child.

What? Since when have we conservatives cared about the best interests of a specific child? Parading hard-case kids on TV to persuade America to throw the Constitution overboard is a tactic Ive come to expect from Hillary Rodham, not Henry Hyde.

I am absolutely confident that if he goes home with his dad, his life is going to suck. Period.

And I have no doubt that life in communist Cuba is a series of daily tragedies for the millions who live there. Bad food, ugly clothes, long speeches and good cigars: Thats life under the Commies.

But I dont care if Fidel Castro locks little Elian in a hotel meeting room with Tony Robbins and forces him into a lifetime of multilevel marketing, Im not going to abandon the principle that parents should not have to get permission from the United States government to raise their own children.

Whether or not Elian lives in freedom and wealth or totalitarian squalor is not nearly as important as ensuring that every child from every country and every political system who is here in America is protected by the rule of law.

When Rush Limbaugh-types accuse me of not caring about Elian, I quickly concur. In the final analysis, I dont. Instead, I care about keeping an America where everyday people raise their children with beliefs, behaviors and values their neighbors find objectionable, and nobody can do a damn thing about it.

I care about the ability of an American parent in Iran and an Iranian parent in America to know that their children belong to them, and that the American government will work to protect, not diminish, those parental rights.

Since the Elian case came up, I have been repeatedly asked Would you have handed a child back over the Berlin Wall to a parent in Eastern Europe if the escaping parent had died? My answer: Yes. And I know their lives would suck because of it. But by doing so, we would be protecting the values that make our nation a place people are willing to risk their lives to reach.

Protecting our principles, even when it hurts is the right -- and the right-wing -- thing to do.

)2000 Free Times Inc. All rights reserved.

-- (what do@you.think?), April 25, 2000

Answers

Sysop,

If you could remove the unformatted duplicate of the article after the copywrite notice, I'd appreciate it. Thanks!

-- (what do@you.think?), April 25, 2000.

In general, I agree with the major points of the article. The whole concept of law in the US is that applies to everyone equally. I'm not foolish enough to say this has always happened but it's still our goal. Picking out any one person as an exception is always dangerous, even if it seems like there's a "good" reason. I think we can argue all day long about how Elian should have been reunited with his father but I don't think there's any doubt that, by rule of law, that's where he was supposed to end up.

-- Jim Cooke (JJCooke@yahoo.com), April 25, 2000.

Graham's point, I think, is that we cannot claim the moral high ground unless we respect human rights--even when those human rights include the right of a parent to raise a child in a place that "sucks." If we're prepared to deny that parent's rights, how can we deride Castro for denying rights to his own people?

-- (Adelle@uplate.com), April 25, 2000.

Adelle:

Hi there. I do not believe I have seen you post before.

You are right to point out the logical trap inherent in the boy being compelled to stay with the fammily in Miami(had he not been rescued). If we agree that a parent has an inherent right to his child, that this is a human right, and then we do not acknowledge that right and say he cannot be reunited with his father, then it follows that we cannot deride Cuba for denying rights. We in essence become the opressor. The only way out of this trap is to exalt the individual child's rights above the child's parents, in some hierarchy of individual rights. I am not sure I accept this premise.

-- FutureShock (gray@matter.think), April 25, 2000.

Future Shock,

I definitely don't agree with that premise unless the parent is shown to be unfit. Let's face it, given the choice, I'm sure that a 6 year old boy would prefer to live at Disney World. It's up to the parent (s) to make the decisions for the child until they are old enough to appreciate the consequences on their own.

-- abc (123@456.789), April 25, 2000.

Just to play devil's advocate and get some people thinking:

What would your position be if the mother had first reached Florida, said, "take care of him for me", and then died?

Please, before the flamefest. I am torn between the rights of a father to his son, and the freedom that the mother died trying to obtain.

-- J (Y2J@home.comm), April 25, 2000.