Conservatives often complain about the way that liberals always say that every program, every expansion of government they propose is “for the children” writes Jonah Goldberg. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is playing the children card this week as she demands the reauthorization of "SCHIP", the State Child Health Insurance Program.
Goldberg tells us where the children thing got started. It was Marian Wright Edelman and the Childrens Defense Fund back in the 1970s. Edelman realized that it would be better to advocate for programs for “the children” rather than for their poor and minority parents. Then, of course, advocates could turn around and marginalize their opponents.
By making The Children the beneficiaries of welfare rather than the adults, the left could portray any attempt to curb the welfare state as "anti-child."
Goldberg wants to get away from all this cant, particularly since, when the Clintons start to talk about The Children they make partisan points while claiming that they want to take the welfare of children out of “political or ideological debate.”
Children are hugely important. But they shouldn’t be a Trojan horse for policies you can’t sell fair and square. If saying so makes me anti-child, so be it.
But Goldberg is wrong. Children should be at the center of the debate. And the conservative line should be: How can you possibly think that yet another underperforming government program—like the failed government education program—could do anything but harm children?
We should turn the words of the liberals back on them. Take Randi Weingarten, head of the New York teachers’ union. She likes to hiss that anyone opposed to her just doesn’t care about kids. Very well.
If you are against curbing teacher tenure and accountability, Ms. Weingarten, it must be because You Don’t Care About Kids.
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