What ARE We to Tell the Children?


    During the impeachment attempt against President Bill Clinton, I
remember the Republicans asking again and again, "What are we to tell the
children?" How were our children to grow up with any respect for American
values--and for us, their parents--if the President could get away with
lying about a sexual escapade?

    For my part, I told my children, "The President has been accused of
having oral sex with a young woman who worked for him. He was surprised with
the question while giving public testimony in another matter, and lied about
it." My daughter was a high-school junior at the time, and she asked, "Why
were they asking him about that?" At sixteen, and full of her own blooming
maturity and independence, she thought a woman in her twenties was old
enough to make that sort of decision for herself, and that the infidelity
was mostly Mrs. Clinton's business--not the public's. My son, in eighth
grade at the time, asked, "What's oral sex?"

    In all, I felt there was more explanation needed for the private
motivations of people who would set such a trap--a trap that would have
embarrassed a great many of them, too, as it turned out--and then drag our
nation through the tawdry details thus revealed. But really, what to tell
the children--about either the particulars of one man's lust, or the strange
depravity of the elected voyeurs who would rake through those particulars in
public--was not a paramount concern. It was altogether an affair of ordinary
mortals, and not of ideas--and I considered ideas immeasurably more
important.

    I still do.

    I was raised with a traditional concept of what America was, what it had
been, and what it should be. I was raised to believe that our Founding
Fathers risked their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to leave
us a legacy so valuable that countless good Americans have given their own
lives over the course of two hundred years to preserve it. I was raised to
believe that included in this legacy were values that were worth dying for
because life itself was not worth having without them--values that Thomas
Jefferson eloquently expressed in the Declaration of Independence, and that
our ancestors enshrined in the Bill of Rights--values that Abraham Lincoln
voiced succinctly when he spoke of "government of the people, by the people,
and for the people"--values that Theodore Roosevelt enlarged upon when he
challenged the corrupting power of giant corporations, and when he set aside
cultural shrines and tracts of irreplaceable wilderness as the common
heritage of the American people forever, safe from the marauding
self-interest of profiteers.

    I was raised to believe that America was a land of constitutional
government, with checks and balances intended to prevent the undue
concentration of power in the hands of any person or group of persons. I was
raised to believe that elected officials and public servants performed their
functions under the eye of a watchful press, which was obligated to report
the truth to the people--a people who considered it their duty as citizens
to be informed. I was raised to believe that when those officials failed in
their duty, or misused the power with which they had been entrusted, an
informed populace would exercise its right to replace them by open, fair,
and peaceful elections.

    Growing into adulthood in the 60's, of course, I learned that not all
was as it should be--that corruption had sometimes tainted the ideals of the
America I revered; that human frailty had sometimes allowed our nation to
stray from the paths of truth; that for too many, patriotism was more a
matter of waving the flag than of defending what it stood for. But somehow,
the Vietnam Era and Watergate did not shake my faith in America--because
ultimately, in each case, justice and the will of the people did prevail.
Learning in college that Jefferson and Lincoln and Roosevelt had faults and
failings like other people did not shake my faith, either, because I had
never been brought up to venerate men in the first place. It was ideas that
mattered.

    That's why it didn't trouble me unduly to learn that Bill Clinton was
just a man after all. I'd already guessed that, and it was ideas that
mattered. And it's in the realm of ideas that I find myself asking in dead
earnest now, on the eve of George W. Bush's second presidential campaign,
"What ARE we to tell the children?"

    What are we to tell the children when, as adults, they are herded out of
their leaders' sight and hearing and told that they may only express their
opinions in designated "free speech zones" from which the media is excluded?
Shall we tell them that at one time every street corner in America was a
free-speech zone? That at one time, if one wanted to be President and go
about courting adulation and campaign money, he also had to confront the
questions and the criticisms of his people? When they ask us why we
surrendered the right to free speech, and the right to peaceably assemble,
and the right to petition the government for a redress of our
grievances--all the rights embodied in holding up a sign for the President
to see--when they ask how we could give up those rights without a whimper,
what shall we tell them? That we didn't know those rights were cornerstones
of democracy? That we didn't know it mattered to remind the President from
time to time that he was just a citizen, as we were?

    When they are dragged away for thinking the wrong thoughts, or speaking
the wrong words, or knowing the wrong people, and then imprisoned without
charges or access to attorneys or outside communications for as long as the
authorities care to hold them, what shall we tell them? That at one time, no
American citizen could be held without due process, formal charges, and
representation? That these fundamental safeguards were extended even to
non-citizens on our soil? When they ask us how we could stand by and let
such essential birthrights be stripped away, so that no one in America could
ever be safe again, what shall we tell them? That we actually thought it
would make us safer? That despite a blatant record of suppressing dissent by
any available means, we actually thought that if we were doing nothing
wrong, we had nothing to worry about?

    When they ask us why their medical records, internet correspondence,
private telephone conversations, and personal finances are open to routine
invasion by federal snoopers on the lookout for "patterns," what are we to
tell them? When they point out that the information thus obtained is being
used to deny employment and insurance benefits, to prosecute drug dealers
and pornographers and tax evaders, to harass abortion patients--indeed, for
almost anything but combating terrorism--what shall we tell them? That at
one time, privacy was the assumed right of any American who had not given
probable cause to suspect him of a crime? When they ask us how we could
surrender such a critical element of human dignity as our privacy, what
shall we tell them? That because foreigners with legal visas were successful
in purchasing box cutters from hardware stores, and airline tickets from
airline counters, we somehow made a logical leap to the conclusion that our
private lives should be laid bare for virtually anyone who really cared to
look?

    When their quest for learning has been suppressed in favor of "approved"
religious beliefs or the self-serving mock science of interested
corporations, and when the people who ought to be opening their minds in
America's schools have been bullied into compliance with this suppression,
what shall we tell them? That at one time America did not engage in the
suppression of ideas? That colleges in our country were once fertile grounds
for research, and hotbeds of intellectual debate? When they ask us how we
could allow such priceless fields to be sown with salt for the political
convenience of the few, what shall we tell them? That it didn't seem
important? That we were confused about what sort of knowledge was useful and
what was not, and decided to leave that up to politicians?

    When the information they need to function as responsible citizens is
finally controlled by a single media source, shamelessly bound to the
leaders whose actions they must judge, what shall we tell them? That there
was a time when, if one news source buried the facts, it must surely face
the humiliation of seeing another dig them out again? That at one time
America was a land of countless competing voices, from which the truth must
inevitably arise?  When our children ask us how we could stand by and allow
those voices to be silenced, one after another, in a quest for corporate
singularity--so that they would only be told what their leaders wanted them
to hear--what shall we tell them? That we were too tired or too venal or too
shallow to seek the truth while it could still be had, and to demand it from
those whose job it was to keep us informed?

   When they struggle under a ballooning national debt so that a tiny few
may grow ever more ludicrously wealthy and powerful--so that our noble class
may wallow in a level of excess never before approached in human history,
and pass it on intact to their young--what shall we tell our children? That
at one time, America was a land in which people rich and poor gave their
fair share, and a prosperous America was in everyone's interest? When they
ask how we could stand by and allow that America to become a land in which
the rich not only paid no share at all, but enjoyed unchallenged access to
the national treasury of those who did, shall we tell them that we sold the
birthright of a prosperous nation and the integrity of our public
institutions for a couple of hundred dollars apiece of our own money--the
average family's one-time dividend of the great tax giveaway? That we
couldn't imagine anything improper in public servants setting policy and
overseeing contracts that directly enriched themselves and their business
associates, friends, and relatives?

    When they are still dying in lands they'd never heard of, to protect and
further the interests of the very souls who are looting their national
heritage back home, what shall we tell them? When they come home maimed for
life, and find that there is no provision for their medical care or
rehabilitation, what shall we tell them? When they do not come home at all,
or come home in aluminum transfer tubes, and there is no provision for the
loved ones who depended on them, what shall we tell those loved ones? That
at one time, America had committed the lives of its young people only to
defend itself and the principles it held sacred, and that it honored their
sacrifices and helped them to begin their lives anew, or took care of their
bereaved dependents with all the resources at its disposal? That at one
time, because we cherished our children's lives, it was the duty of Congress
to soberly deliberate and declare a war, and that the power of the President
to commit troops on his own authority was limited by both our constitution
and public law? That at one time, we had learned the lesson of Vietnam and
grown wary of being stampeded into hopeless wars on false or misleading
premises? When they ask us how we could relinquish our responsibility to
preserve their very lives against the whims or ambitions of the powerful,
what shall we tell them?

    When they seek impartial justice at the highest court in the land and
cannot find it, what shall we tell them? That at one time America enjoyed a
system of justice that was the envy of the world--a system in which
principles stood paramount in that court, and the land echoed with its
courageous affirmation of those principles? When they ask us how we could
permit members of that court to debase its stature by anointing a man in
office whose father had seated them on the bench, without any constitutional
grounds for doing so--when they ask us how we could stand by as the
offspring of those justices were subsequently given powerful government
positions as rewards--what shall we tell them? That we couldn't see a
conflict that stared us so brazenly in the face? When they ask us how we
could stand by as a pivotal member of that court compromised any lingering
shred of its integrity by enjoying costly private social outings with a
litigant whose cases he was hearing--what shall we tell them? That the
justice himself assured us his impartiality could not be questioned?

    When they seek the truth in public documents and cannot find it, what
shall we tell them? That at one time, no president could forever conceal his
doings from the people--that by law, all but his personal papers belonged to
the public domain after a statutory waiting period had elapsed? When they
ask us how we could allow a government which was supposed to be
transparent--which must be transparent, if democracy is to endure--to become
a government that conducted its affairs under a permanent shroud of secrecy,
what shall we tell them? When they ask us how we could allow a president to
arbitrarily set aside a public law specifically intended to make presidents
accountable for their actions--what shall we tell them? That the man
preferred his privacy, and we had no reason to suspect a president could
ever want to hide anything?

    When they struggle to find meaningful work in the gutted remnants of
this once-great economy, and find that no options remain to them except
menial labor and the military, what shall we tell them? That at one time the
American worker was the most productive, the most qualified, and the best
paid worker in the world? When they ask us how we could stand by and allow
millions of jobs to be sent overseas to virtual sweatshops--how we could
countenance awarding lucrative government contracts and massive tax
concessions to corporations who employed few Americans below the level of
the executive board--what shall we tell them? Shall we tell them that we
listened to the assurances of our leaders that it was just good business?

    When they choke on the stinking air in our cities--when their bodies are
consumed with cancer from drinking the tainted water in our ground--when
they gaze across the pillaged ruin of our national parks and monuments, or
out to the still horizons of our gray and lifeless seas--what shall  we tell
them? That at one time America had begun to confront the scars left by its
exuberant greed and heal them--that the healing itself had begun to spawn
whole new industries and whole new ranks of employment centered on good
living in a healthy world? When they ask us how we could allow ourselves to
be dragged back from this brink of sanity, and chained again to the very
attitudes and ways that had poisoned our world in the first place, what are
we to tell them? That we didn't know the world was sick?

    When they ask us why they are denied the right to intimacy without
conception--and forced to bear the children so conceived--what shall we tell
them? That at one time, Americans were the masters of their own bodies, and
might love as they wished and bear children as they chose--but that we could
not focus enough resolve to preserve those rights against the whims of
resentful old men? When they ask why they may enjoy those intimacies only as
approved by these self-appointed guardians of public morality--only with
those persons and in those ways that have the blessing of a particular
religious perspective--what shall we tell them? That we stood on the
threshhold of a civil respect for all earnest and faithful love between
competent adults--and allowed the flagrant exploitation of our most juvenile
fears and biases to turn us back?

    When they ask us why their votes disappear into a trackless maze of
electronic circuitry and come out neatly summarized in digits on an
electronic screen, with no physical proof that they were ever cast--and when
those digital summaries are wildly out of step with every intelligent
expectation, what shall we tell them? That at one time, every American voted
on simple pieces of paper which could be counted again if the first count
was flawed or challenged? When they ask us how we could bid farewell to this
elementary safeguard of electoral integrity, what shall we tell them? That
in America, we'd never had cause to imagine a vote might be compromised or
questioned? When they ask us how we could put such simple-minded faith in
soulless machines, never asking for so much as a scrap of verification that
our votes had been duly recorded, what shall we tell them? That in a world
plagued by rampant computer viruses from one week to the next, most launched
by mere hobbyists for their own amusement, we could not envision that our
voting terminals might be vulnerable to motivated private
interests--interests with access, expertise, and billions of dollars at
stake in the outcome of our elections?

    When they ask us finally if we were a nation of cowards, too frightened
to value the priceless heritage of our freedoms--when they remind us that
whole generations of young Americans had volunteered their lives to preserve
those freedoms, against enemies far more substantial than a few lunatics
with box cutters--and ask us how we could simply give those freedoms
away--what shall we tell them?

    When they ask us if we were a nation of credulous fools who couldn't see
through the most transparent showmanship to the real man in the Oval
Office--who were effortlessly led to see Marshall Dillon in a posturing
child of privilege who'd never faced danger or personal consequences in all
his life--what shall we tell them?

    When they ask us if we were a nation of mental defectives who couldn't
remember what such a man said from one week to the next--who didn't notice
when he reversed directions without a word of acknowledgment or explanation,
or when his actions contradicted his words to the shame and detriment of us
all--what shall we tell them?

        When they ask us if we were a nation of spoiled children who could
not see past our own immediate wants to the preservation of the common
weal--who were thus easily distracted, divided and conquered by cynical
manipulations of our basest fears--who had somehow mistaken democracy for a
primrose path to Final Solutions rather than a mechanism for peaceful
change--what shall we tell them?

    When they ask us if we were a nation of the morally blind, who could see
no future but a shambling and gutless flight back into the corruptions and
oppressions of the past, what shall we tell them?

    Indeed, what shall we tell our children? If we allow Mr. Bush a second
term in office--and the certain completion of the agenda he has so well
begun--what are we to tell our children? We cannot say we were not told. We
cannot pretend we did not see, or did not know about the stealthy hands that
have dug so deeply into their future and into our national integrity. The
information is all around us, and has been from the outset of this
administration. It has not been drummed into our skulls, because it is not
about oral sex--but it's there, and as citizens we have the responsibility
to maintain an adult attention span and a sense of how isolated events fit
into larger patterns.

    We cannot even say it was too late. Every transgression imagined here is
a reality in the United States right now, today--but it is not yet cemented
in place, nor out of our hands. Today a clear choice lies before us, and
there is still time and there is still a mechanism for making it. If we lack
the simple courage and civic diligence to make that choice correctly, what
are we to tell the children?

    For that matter, when they turn away from us with the revulsion and
contempt we deserve, what are we to tell ourselves?