Recent news articles and court testimony have given light to the relative depravity that many children grow up in today (not just recently convicted 1st degree murderer, Matthew Grant). If all too often, some of us become (biological) parents and fail miserably at "parenting" due to different inabilities or fall prey to apathetic justifications and rarely (or seriously) consider the option of placing their unfortunate offspring in adoptive homes, why should society pay the full price or consider giving many youthful offenders who murder a second chance? God forbid some persons even consider enduring (even the thought) temporary abstinence or using some means of contraception. Morality issues aside, why wouldn't one keep up with ith one's own responsibilities (including children)?
A strong sense of entitlement combined with an obvious tendency towards attention deficit or focus on instant gratification seems pervasive. And we Americans think ourselves capable of correcting other societies in other hemispheres or nations when we preach our “do as we say, not as we do” philosophy? Is it any wonder that the radical Muslims call us “infidels”? Go figure.
Just because "misfit parents" propagate as a result of their indifference or ignorance, or "misfit children" are born, that doesn’t mean that this “devils spawn” is entitled to rape, rob or in some cases murder. By the same token, if a child grows up with a silver spoon in its mouth and exists off large bank accounts until the last day of its 17th year, that doesn’t mean adult offspring of rich parents are entitled to go to “critical mass” and murder their stock broker when market takes a dive. We have “prisons to fill” for persons who don’t and won’t (not just can’t) respect the law.
Society pays when persons aren’t accountable for their own actions and won’t do the right things. The “instant apology” syndrome or tendency for settling out of court amounts to a “Nintendo mentality” of sorts. Some things (like murder) are permanent and you can’t just “hit the reset button” where all things are instantly “fair and forgiven”. We can fill our hospitals and prisons full of “human detritus” or leave these issues to God but that doesn’t address the source of the problem.
There’s a redneck bumper sticker out there that reads “If you can’t feed them, don’t breed them” or something along that line. In case no one noticed, most of these (human?) misfits don’t leave the gene pool; they tend more often to “add to it” (disproportionately?). Hasn’t our society learned any lessons from issues such as teenage pregnancy, AIDS and the increasing prison populations? The world doesn’t need more people or more devils or more devils advocates (trial lawyers or defendants?) or to be turned into a large trailer park. The "redeneck bumper sticker" that many of us snicker at, leaves even educated persons pondering notions of what parents inflict upon their children when they fail to be responsible parents. Or it should...
The “abused child defense” just doesn’t wash with me. Other persons have suffered more miserably in their lifetimes and flourished. Matthew Grant is no child, at least not any more. He knew what the consequences for pulling the trigger of a loaded shotgun in a deputy’s face, were. Now he will have to live with (or die by) his choices. Thankfully, he won’t be allowed to add more children like himself to the equation. The cycle must be broken. If your child’s only “personality injection”, is the kind that he might experience after stepping up on a gurney on North Carolina’s death row, don’t have him. Prospective mothers and fathers need to remove themselves from the gene pool (consider sterilization?) and not have offspring they can't (or won't) feed and care for. If and when your childs best defense ends up being your own personal failure as a parent, it's too damn late (for them, for their victims and society).
WRAL, Biological Mother Testifies In Grant Murder Trial, POSTED: 12:38 pm EST November 12, 2004 http://www.wral.com/news/3914334/detail.html
