The children!
IBy T was billed as a report anchored on “A Comfortable Life for All” – yes, for all but the usual suspects plus a new branch, the savages who prey on children.
In a two-hour performance that showed how much more real he is when he is ad-libbing, the President allowed a glimpse of the soft side of The Punisher, devoting more than a moment’s attention to the plight of the young and helpless: “I will not allow the ruin of the youth, the disintegration of the family” by drug dealers, lamenting that “the trade is back.”
The reality is that even as police stats, seconded by opinion polls, show a dip in crime, babies and children are being snatched, waylaid, murdered – such horrible news every night on television it’s getting to be a nightmare to watch – in the most brutal ways. Little girls stabbed and strangled, their bodies left by the wayside. An entire family massacred, three generations of them. A policeman executing his wife and little ones before shooting himself with his weapon of choice, an assault rifle. A boy cuffed and chained like an animal with open sores, by his own mother. What is going on? Perverts, bums, drunks, drug-crazed demons? “The trade is back.”
Jailing or sending the brutes to hell is the consequence of an unnatural, inhuman act, after a life has been taken. But would capital punishment deter or reduce future occurrences? Maybe not. Still, parents do not need legislation to know that they are obliged to look after their young. Wild animals have the instinct, shouldn’t they?
If there is a stiff law against careless, irresponsible adults masquerading as parents, our legislators ought to add teeth to it. Were they listening when the President paused from his address to confront human rights advocates, “When a child is raped or killed, you do not say anything!”
He also delivered a short message to Chief Justice Lourdes Sereno, reminding her that it has been two years since the Supreme Court TRO’ed the Reproductive Health Law that would’ve taught poorly educated women that they have a choice between giving their babies a healthy life and a miserable one, and they need not resort to abortion, a procedure that has killed not only millions and millions of the unborn but mothers as well.