There is a really good Irish
contemporary music band based in the Twin Cities, The Wild Colonial Bhoys. They have some great songs and some very
thoughtful lyrics, including a cover one of my favorites composed by Nancy
Griffith, It’s a Hard Life Wherever You
Go.[1]
The singer is in a cab in Belfast,
during the “troubles” in Northern Ireland, when the driver points out a child
on the corner. “What chance has that kid
got?”
It’s a hard life, a hard life, it’s a
very hard life.
It’s
a hard life wherever you go.
And if we poison our children with
hatred
Then
a hard life is all that they’ll know.
There ain’t no place in
Belfast for that kid to go.[2]
The second verse brings it back to
America:
Cafeteria
line in Chicago
A fat man in front of me
Calling
black men trash to his children
But he’s the only trash here I see.
And there ain’t no place in Chicago for
those kids to go.
Children learn what they live – that’s
an old cliché, but a true one. They live
with hate and disrespect, they grow up with hate and disrespect. As a prosecutor and a judge, I’ve handled
dozens of child sex abuse cases. More
times than not, the offender was abused as a child.
Children who are poisoned with hate,
hate.
I read of a child protection case in
Canada where the government sought to remove the children from neo-Nazi
parents. While I can’t see that
happening in our country or state, I find it really sad that good-intentioned
child protection workers would have to even consider such a drastic action so
that those children would not be poisoned.
While we cannot and should not insert
ourselves in the inner workings of a family, as long as the children are not in
physical or emotional danger, we can and should model acceptable behavior. If enough of us do, the unacceptable behavior
is marginalized.
If we do not, what chance does that kid
have?
There ain’t no place in Minnesota for
that kid to go.
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