Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. day. Many people think of children's rights as a leftist human rights worldview. The fact of the matter is that children deserve not only human rights, but civil rights. My future context view as a child advocate involves eliminating the voting age, meaning deleting it from our Constitution.
I do not have an agenda as an advocate, but instead ideals. My ideal is for children to have the same political rights that an adult has.
Dr. King was pro-child himself, meaning he opposed spanking and corporal punishment entirely. Dr. King was not always stoic and serious, but was the laid back type of guy that you might find shooting pool on a Friday or Saturday night. He didn't think within the box, but thought for himself, as a critical thinker. He was not a liberal either, but was a Christian conservative and Southern Baptist, and stressed individual responsibility with his constituents. He was a lot like I am now on the children's rights issue - I see something wrong, and want to do something about it.
Also, just like Dr. King did, I do not want to be well-known. I want my work to be well-known, meaning I want to one day walk down the street, knowing that in the houses I pass, children are safe and empowered - and that *I* was part of the solution, not part of the problem.
To commemorate Dr. King's legacy, I will continue to oppose all forms of child punishment, as is something Dr. King would agree with. Children are the most oppressed of minorities, meaning society sees them as mere slaves or chattel to their parents. Children are the only group of people without political rights of any kind. Here in Pennsylvania, felons can vote, but children cannot vote.
What is getting in the way? Punitive parenting, including all forms of corporal punishment. If we could just have corporal punishment, as well as other forms of punishment, criminalized, then children would be able to vote, because nobody would be stopping them from making that solemn and private choice. Voting is for everyone, especially since some children work, and thus are taxed without representation. The government should not have the right to tell people who can and cannot vote. The government should just issue the ballot box. Who gets to use that ballot box? That is for the child to decide, when he/she is individually ready. Usually, a child is ready to vote when they care about the issues, meaning when they start to inform themselves about the issues.
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