NY Times Op-Ed: Kids Threatened By . . . Capitalism
Even more appalling than the mindless screed "The Kids Are Not All Right" itself is the fact that the New York Times chose to feature it on its Op-Ed page today. Author Joel Bakan's simplistic, socialistic message: today's children are under assault from capitalism, or as Bakan frames it, "for-profit corporations." In Bakan's view, the ills afflicting today's kids--from fascination with social media, to obesity, prescription drug use and chemical exposure--are to be laid at the feet of those e-e-e-v-i-l for-profits.
Bakan yearns for the good old days of 1959, when children were supposedly protected by--ready?--the United Nations. Excerpts after the jump.
- "By the middle of the century, childhood was a robustly protected legal category. In 1959, the United Nations issued its Declaration of the Rights of the Child. Children were now legal persons; the “best interests of the child” became a touchstone for legal reform."
- "But the 20th century also witnessed another momentous shift, one that would ultimately threaten the welfare of children: the rise of the for-profit corporation."
- "The challenge before us is to reignite the guiding ethos and practices of the century of the child."
The irony, of course, is that capitalism--at least as it used to be practiced in the United States--was the single greatest force providing longer and better lives for generations of children growing into adulthood. And as Bill Bennett documented in his classic book, The Index of Leading Social Indicators, it was precisely the rise of the welfare state that Bakan favors that led to an explosive rise in social pathologies among and against children--from drug use to crime, out-of-wedlock births to welfare dependency.
It is the kind of virulent anti-capitalism that Bakan preaches that the Times apparently finds attractive in op-ed authors . . . and politicians from city council members to presidents.
Want more Bakan? Be sure to pick up and read "The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power" at a college campus near you!
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Comments
Don't like reality....?
Submitted by NeoKong on Mon, 08/22/2011 - 7:11am.
Then just invent your own.
I know a corporation that hurts children.
It's called Planned Parenthood.
If I were Bakan I wouldn't be crowing over the U.N.'s record of taking care of children. They have overseen one genocide after another while they stood by uselessly with their stupid blue helmets.
Mark, you forgot "motherbelt's axiom"
Submitted by motherbelt on Mon, 08/22/2011 - 7:16am.
Liberals know the "truth." The facts are a conspiracy.
Who Are Those EVIL for-profits?
Submitted by neutron on Mon, 08/22/2011 - 2:37pm.
"In Bakan's view, the ills afflicting today's kids--from fascination with social media, to obesity, prescription drug use and chemical exposure--are to be laid at the feet of those e-e-e-v-i-l for-profits."
Let's see:
Social media: FaceBook is owned and staffed by liberals, Google is getting into the social media game, and they're liberal to the core.
Obesity: sitting on butt on the internet listing to iTunes or texting on iPhones. FB and Google covered, but Apple is another liberal company.
Prescription Drugs: well, liberal doctors and counselors prescribe them for kids, and when kids are left alone, the liberal ones will take their parents' drugs, so this is looking like a liberal problem again.
It looks like liberals who are for-profit are the root of these evils that BaconMan imagines are killing our youth.
If I could ask Mr. Bakan one
Submitted by Ed Gregory on Mon, 08/22/2011 - 7:29am.
If I could ask Mr. Bakan one question, it would be: Why did you write a book? If the answer "To make money" is not among his reasons, he is a liar and a hypocrite.
No, no, no!
Submitted by HockeyKid on Mon, 08/22/2011 - 8:50am.
He'll explain to your poor, mislead conservative mind that he wrote the book because that's what academics do, you see--nothing to do with money, but rather the requirement to "publish or perish" that exists in academia, because if you don't publish, your peers don't know you, and your department is--well--embarrassed to have you, and you might lose your job, which means...
money.
But not PROFIT, sir! Never that.
/sarc
"Beauty is only skin deep, but liberal's to the bone." - me
I am sure any book profits he will donate to UNICEF.
Submitted by Red Jeep on Mon, 08/22/2011 - 9:00am.
Yeah, right.
You make an excellent point.
Submitted by Ed Gregory on Mon, 08/22/2011 - 9:22am.
You make an excellent point. And, frankly, it has me thinking. I'm a corporate communicator, which means I have to deal in truth or the company suffers. But if I became a pointy-headed intellectual who took up residence at some sham liberal-arts school, I could not only bang out his type of fact-free blather all day long with ease, but earn the praise of my peers and get published in the Times! One thing I can't do, though, is grow my hair like his. I'm not nearly so self-serious.
I know it's no way to judge people, but sometimes it's fun...
Submitted by WhoIsJohnGalt on Mon, 08/22/2011 - 7:34am.
Doesn't this dweeb look like he's never, ever been involved in any sort of endeavour where he's had to either put out a product or perform a service in a production environment? You know, an environment that didn't involve contemplating where he could change things for the better in his imagined perfect world. An environment where, if you didn't produce, you didn't take home a paycheck, and therefore didn't eat.
Was Mark Finkelstein EVEN
Submitted by Vorlon on Mon, 08/22/2011 - 7:52am.
Was Mark Finkelstein EVEN ALIVE in 1959? He seems way to shallow and lacking in details to be much older than 12. His drug damaged brain just doesn't work as well as it did in his younger radical stooge days. Of COURSE HE'S WRONG.
All the liberals are grasping at straws, trying to fit their stereotypes into any BS they write. Do liberals ever see reality instead of idealistic fantasy? Why do they mis-quote, lie, spin, and ignore facts when trying to make a point? Those pesky facts and specific details are way beyond the mental acuity of liberals. Just ask Joe Biden.
Vorlon
Submitted by Mark Finkelstein on Mon, 08/22/2011 - 7:56am.
Joel Bakan is the author of the New York Times op-ed. Mark Finkelstein is me, the NewsBusters guy who wrote about Bakan's blathering. And according to Wikipedia, by odd coincidence Bakan was born in . . . 1959!
Wow,
Submitted by Boudin on Mon, 08/22/2011 - 9:07am.
Another coincidence?
Oh, thank you, United Nations
Submitted by Galvanic on Mon, 08/22/2011 - 8:39am.
For all the credit Bakan gives to the UN's recognizing the rights in children in 1959, how far has it gone to protect the children around the world? Did they ever expel a member nation for tolerating the mistreatment of children, from working for pennies a day to slavery?
In the Third World, whatever progress has been made can largely be attributed to the charity and foreign aid of capitalist countries and their citizens. This giving was made possible by an industrial age driven by those 'evil for-profit corporations.'
Compare the standard of living of children in capitalist countries to those in non-capitalist countries. Compare health, education, life expectancies, and legal protections. The higher quality of life in capitalist countries was already rising decades before the UN thought of making a declaration in 1959, and continued to rise regardless.
And let's not forget the UN's infamous "Oil for Food" program, which was supposed to ensure that essential foods and medicine got to Iraqi's children. Instead, mega-corruption at the highest levels of the UN turned it into one of the biggest black market criminal activities ever. As Iraq and its pals blamed the US for the deaths of tens of thousand of Iraqi children, the food and medicine was stocked at warehouses to be sold by Hussein's henchmen as UN officials and their cronies were profiting from his oil credits-- even the Secretary General's son was involved.
But to Leftist like Bakan who write articles for profit, the UN is the model for world government and social justice.
Don't forget the numerous child sexual assault reports...
Submitted by drsamherman on Mon, 08/22/2011 - 10:31am.
...coming from countries where UN "peacekeepers" or other UN personnel were involved. I remember news reports about child sexual molestation at the hands of UN representatives across Africa and Asia. Notice how those reports have all been swept under the rug.
Don't forget the numerous child sexual assault reports...
Submitted by drsamherman on Mon, 08/22/2011 - 10:31am.
...coming from countries where UN "peacekeepers" or other UN personnel were involved. I remember news reports about child sexual molestation at the hands of UN representatives across Africa and Asia. Notice how those reports have all been swept under the rug.
Remember The LIberal's Unspoken Motto
Submitted by Wildcatter1980 on Mon, 08/22/2011 - 11:30am.
Don't ever let facts get in the away of attacking your opponents.
--
If you want to know what liberal secular progressives are really doing, just listen to what they are accusing others of.
Recommended reading: Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg
Libs are particularly
Submitted by HockeyKid on Mon, 08/22/2011 - 8:55am.
mentally disordered where it comes to children. It used to be universally recognized that leaving a child without guidance, instruction, and care constituted abuse. The libs seem to think that "children have rights", so parents must be ultimately permissive so as not to violate those rights. And you see what we get: a scourge of societal ills borne by young people raised so that they have no moral framework by which to determine their own behavior.
Bakan's "analysis" is nothing more than a load of liberal navel-gazing.
"Beauty is only skin deep, but liberal's to the bone." - me
Fret not, comrade Bakan, because when comrade Obama finishes
Submitted by Dave. on Mon, 08/22/2011 - 10:28am.
...getting his "plan" into place, we won't be a capitalist country anymore.
Then you'll have to find something else to get your red thongs in a bunch about.
-Dave
Vote for the American in November
So this idiot is tacidly
Submitted by rbosque on Mon, 08/22/2011 - 10:41am.
So this idiot is tacidly advocating Communism as an alternative? People have a choice in a free society I don't have to let my kids be exposed to commercialism. Under a centrally planned gov't, what choices does one have?
And don't you just love these dolts on the left advocating for a system of government that has shown time after time to be responsible for genocide and acts of cruelty against people (especially kids). These mutants have never lived under the heels of the totalitarian systems they promote and would never be given the right to print grievances as this fool does under a free Capitalist and open society.
Espousing that the U.N, take care of our children is laughable if it weren't shocking that this idiot actually means it. The NYTs really has taken a nosedive.
Liberalism (nee Progressivism)
Submitted by Wildcatter1980 on Mon, 08/22/2011 - 11:28am.
Don't you know that the individual simply is not smart enough or educated enough to know what is best for him or her and their children? You see, those legend in their own minds liberals are the only ones who are smart enough and educated enough to know what is best for everyone else and we are just supposed to shut up and follow them. [/sarcasm]
--
If you want to know what liberal secular progressives are really doing, just listen to what they are accusing others of.
Recommended reading: Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg
rbosque,
Submitted by Agnostic on Mon, 08/22/2011 - 11:38am.
Take the person from your quote as an example - he and his wife were truly great historians and the 'History of Civilization' is a great set of books that is well worth being on a shelf. However, he believed in Socialism in one form or another until his death even though he chronicled the devastation of socialist regimes through history. In his younger days he even infiltrated the church in order to help bring down the religion establishment from the inside. He mellowed over the years but never really gave up on his 'power to the workers' rhetoric and his sympathies even though he was clearly disillusioned by the consistent message of history that the average income and the poor are always the ones who suffer the most outside of a few brief examples.
what alternate universe do these clowns live in....???
Submitted by wizardjr on Mon, 08/22/2011 - 11:07am.
"Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn’t so." - Ronaldus Magnus
The Truth Is...
Submitted by Wildcatter1980 on Mon, 08/22/2011 - 11:23am.
(First, a bit of nitpicking. It is, in fact, "free market capitalism" that is key.)
The truth is that what we are threatened with is not free market capitalism. What we are threatened with is the ever-growing and encroaching modern day liberalism, nee progressivism/socialism/fascism.
It has been fascinating reading Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism. I knew many of the facts he presents in the book. What I am learning, though, is just how intertwined American Progressivism (including Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover and FDR), Socialism, Italian Fascism, Soviet/Bolshevik Communism and German National Socialism ideology and principles are. Also, that many of those ideas and principles carry on today in modern day Liberalism.
Of course, today's liberals will deny they are actually causing the problems we are seeing because they have been indoctrinated into their liberalism and not educated about it and it's true historical roots.
--
If you want to know what liberal secular progressives are really doing, just listen to what they are accusing others of.
Recommended reading: Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg
Funny To Watch
Submitted by rammingspeed on Mon, 08/22/2011 - 11:35am.
The crackpots come crawling out whenever The Armageddon hits their gig. They scream out their last insane thoughts while being sucked into their self-made abyss. The Marxists - er, democrats - took over in '09 and the country/economy has plunged faster than Bill Clinton getting a quickie from under his desk in the Oval Office. I digress. (But if the dems can refer to W., I can refer to any knucklewad dem I want.) This is so laughable that even the limousine libs who think of the NYT as their Bible will have pause. (I'm talking about the limo libs who hypocritically made millions through business efforts while espousing socialism. The other ones are mooches, drunks, and whores.)
Let them speak, so we know them for the madmen that they are.
The NYT is a big joke. The UN
Submitted by jessieH on Mon, 08/22/2011 - 12:10pm.
The NYT is a big joke. The UN is a bigger joke. Our polititians are the biggest joke. The EPA is the punchline.
Reagan said it best
Submitted by Marcus Porcius on Mon, 08/22/2011 - 3:06pm.
"Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so."
'nuff said.
"Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions." G.K. Chesterton
www.theconservativereview.com
Once again
Submitted by IdahoJim on Mon, 08/22/2011 - 3:12pm.
Mr. Bakan has confused education with intelligence. He may be highly educated, but...
IdahoJim
http://idahoandy.net
That will teach me.
Submitted by IdahoJim on Mon, 08/22/2011 - 3:18pm.
NOT to keep poking the "Save" button until something happens.
Patience may be a virtue, but it appears to be mandatory for computers.
Like yelling "Hurry, faster" in front of a running microwave oven.
IdahoJim
http://idahoandy.net
Once again
Submitted by IdahoJim on Mon, 08/22/2011 - 3:12pm.
Mr. Bakan has confused education with intelligence. He may be highly educated, but...
IdahoJim
http://idahoandy.net