Republican Audiences

"I am thinking this morning … of the little children who, in this system, are robbed of their childhood, and in their early, tender years, are seized in the remorseless grasp of Mammon, and forced into the industrial dungeons, there to feed the machines while they themselves are being starved body and soul...."

  --Eugene V. Debs.

These Republican debates, and apparently the audiences of them, are espousing values that are not just contrary to my political opinions, but which are contrary to the very basis of what I would consider "good and just."  We can debate whether capital punishment is necessary or expedient – but to cheer it?  We can debate the best form of health care – but to be cheer the deaths of sick people?  If a person dies, it means the system – whatever system – has failed.  These are bugs, not features.  A system that has them is broken; a system that tolerates them is blind; a system that cheers them is rotten at its core.

The same can be said about child labor.  It's amazing to me that this is even an issue in the 21st century.  Have we already forgotten the horrors of first phases of the industrial revolution?  In recent decades, it's been bad enough that most college students have to work to pay their tuition, rather than being able to devote themselves full time to study and learning.  If poor children have no "habit of work," as Mr. Gingrich insultingly claims, how about giving them hope for their future?  How about providing them not only with effective schools and the time to study, but also with the confidence that they'll be able to use what they learn to better their position in society?

America has thus far been a land of social mobility, and that social mobility comes in large part through education.  Children, and students generally, need to be able to devote themselves to study, undistracted by cleaning toilets.  Meanwhile, employers need to pay living wages to adults, not try to create a disempowered, exploitable class of wage-slave laborers.