May 29th, '03
Parents as Human Shields

I haven't written for a while, despite the many "newsworthy" events that have rocked Israeli society lately. But between terrorism, the roadmap, and a new economic plan that some are calling the "Law for the Starvation of Israeli Citizens", things are moving too fast for me. As a result, I find my focus turning inward, to the things I can (more or less) control.

The other day I drove past a bus stop in my neighborhood. A girl was standing there, who looked about 10 years old. She was dressed in a miniskirt, and a top that bared her midriff and one shoulder. It flashed across my mind that this was pretty much the outfit that shocked America 20 years ago when Jody Foster played a child prostitute in the movie "Taxi Driver".

Today, no one's shocked. And while I have some problems with the religious Jewish concept of modesty - at least how this concept is played out in Orthodox society - it is starting to look like an important line of defense against a society that is more and more dangerous for little girls.

But don't take my word for it. Read this article by Shmuley Boteach, the celebrity rabbi who has made a career out of deconstructing sex in modern society.

The Job of a Parent is to Act as a Human Shield
by Shmuley Boteach

Now that America has liberated Iraq, it would be wise to consider liberating itself.

The country I love, that today bestrides the world like a colossus, is falling prey to perhaps the most pernicious, misogynistic, materialistic, and downright silly culture the world has ever seen.

A few weeks ago ABC TV aired a reality TV show called Are You Hot? in which men, but especially women, were literally put on a block and rated by judges for the length of their legs, shapeliness of their breasts, and tone of their muscles, just as if they were slaves being sold at auction. I was sure that any minute the judges would examine their gums and teeth.

It was positively repulsive. But nobody objected because squalid fare like this has become par for the course. That a nation noble enough to sacrifice the cream of its youth to liberate complete strangers from a brutal tyrant is today being corrupted by a cultural sewer with a ferocious stench is both alarming and saddening. That this nation is also the cultural trendsetter for the rest of the world, including Israel, makes it doubly troubling. Is a nation really victorious if it whips its adversaries abroad while losing its youth at home?

Last week The New York Times reported that by the age of 15, one in five American teenagers has had sexual intercourse, while another report maintained that one out of every three 13-year-olds has had sex, half of them at home while their parents were present.

Subjected to powerful emotions that they are not mature enough to assimilate, American youth are exhibiting all the cynicism of a weary been-there-done-that mentality rather than the exuberance of an I-can't-wait-to-discover-life enthusiasm.

Unbridled energy used to be the distinctive character of youth. But when I look at today's teenagers I see lifelessness and listlessness, a dying spark rather than a raging fire. There are many reasons for the ruin of our children. The brilliant but pernicious Madison Avenue advertising executives who like the scientists who mapped the human genome have unlocked the secrets of how to appeal to and manipulate the most base instincts of human depravity, bear a large part of the blame.

But the principal fault lies squarely with a generation of perhaps the most irresponsible parents to ever bear offspring. Parents today believe in being their children's friends rather than their masters, companions rather than superiors, peers rather than authority figures. Strict discipline has been replaced by gentle persuasion. The result is a generation of kids who are out of control.

Last week on my radio show, I asked listeners what they would do if their 14-year-old daughter informed them that she planned to have sex with her 16-year-old boyfriend. "Would you forbid it?" Out of some two dozen callers, only one said he would. A majority said they never use the word "forbid" with their children, firstly because it was inappropriate but, more importantly, because it would be counterproductive and invite rebellion.

As one woman said, "I told my 15-year-old daughter that she's too young for sex. But she insisted she'd do it anyway, so I took her to a doctor to learn about STDs and get proper contraception. Better to give in on this battle so that I can continue to have influence with her."

THE FIRST sign of failure as a parent is when children don't fear the parents' authority, and parents are reduced to bizarre hagglers, cutting deals with their kids. Not only are our children no longer afraid of us, it is we who are now afraid of them.

To be sure, the erosion of parental authority, now decades in the making, will not be reversed overnight. But I have an idea for today's parents that I garnered from the Iraq war.

It sums up how we can begin to rectify a deteriorating situation.

Every parent must act as a human shield. Remember the human shields? Those guitar-strumming, dope-smoking, do-gooder, hippie types that Lenin would have called "useful idiots" who offered themselves up as human sacrifices in order to obstruct the war? Well, just before the war started, I read two differing accounts of what had happened to them. One said they left after the Iraqi military moved them away from schools and hospitals and planted them in their sleeping bags outside power plants and army camps. There is, after all, something downright comical in seeing a dazed Westerner, armed only with his guitar, using his body to protect soldiers armed with AK47s and tanks.

The other version was that once it was clear that war was a certainty, they simply panicked and ran. While it was exciting to travel to Iraq to foil American "imperial designs," the moment the B52 engines were revved up, the human shields quickly scattered.

Of course, wherever the human shields fled, one thing is certain: They never really cared about Iraqi civilians anyway. Their act of sacrifice was always aimed at opposing American soldiers rather than protecting Iraqi civilians. Witness the fact that every day there are stories of horrific looting of hospitals, schools even archeological sites in Iraq. Why didn't the human shields deploy themselves outside the beds of sick children and tell the looters, "You'll steal this hospital's bandages over my dead body"?

Why? Because the human shields were mostly Western youth who exhibited a deep self-loathing and thus were intent on stopping America rather than helping Iraq. Born to privilege without responsibility, a middle-class upbringing with lower-class indulgences, many Western youth today exhibit a purposelessness that results in self-hatred. Unable to find meaning in life, they sought consecration in death. Unable to attach themselves to any kind of living fountain, they bonded themselves to a dying cause.

But there is something that each of us can extract from the misguided shields, even as they scamper to the next America-bashing shindig.

Had parents assumed their rightful place as human shields, had parents learned to declare a resounding No! to their children's excesses and protected them from the pernicious culture to which they are subject, then our children might have found greater value in fighting for freedom and upholding justice.

But since they tasted freedom as the license to ruin their lives with meaningless sex and mind-numbing television, they came to see democratic liberty as the great disease.

The job of a parent is to act as a human shield. When parents fail, they run the risk of their children either acquiescing and living for nothing or becoming rebellious and fighting for some evil cause. Every child is a garden, and our objective as parents should be not only to till the soil with a good education and irrigate the earth with generous sprinkling of love but also to yank out the weeds that snarl around the plants and to build a strong fence to prevent intruders from trampling on the tender shrubs.

The preservation of liberty has always required human shields. The innocence and virtue of our children requires it no less.

The writer, a rabbi, is a nationally syndicated radio host on the Talk America radio network. His latest book is The Private Adam: Becoming a Hero in a Selfish Age.

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