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Tears and Turkey
By Kay R. Daly
November 29, 2004

A friend of mine calls Thanksgiving Day in her household a festival of "tears and turkey." In this post-election holiday, many a dining room table may indeed find a clash of red states and blue states. Can you imagine, for instance, what it must have been like at the Kennedy-Schwarzenegger household?

"Tears and turkey" is right on the mark at our family's Thanksgiving weekend, but not for the reasons you might imagine. My mother-in-law is a neo-natal intensive care unit nurse and my husband's aunt is a social worker and every year, we hear horrific stories of children abused, neglected and tormented. The stories are not getting better as the years go by. In fact, they are getting much, much worse.

The headlines seem to be filled these days with stories of abused and murdered children. The Texas mother who cut her toddler's arms off and calmly dialed 911 while her child slowly bled to death. The Maryland mother who rented a storage facility and left her two children, ages 5 and 3, as I recall, in the cold, dark room for three days without food, water, light or blankets in 45 degree weather. They lived through that terror while the mother visited her own mother's home for 24 of her 72 childless hours for a warm, safe, comfortable night.

Those are just the stories you hear about.

This Thanksgiving, at a table overflowing with food, we heard about a 14 year old mother, oblivious to her tiny child's impending death due to herpes induced pneumonia, trying to cajole this weak two pound bundle into smiling and laughing as the nurses in the neo-natal unit looked on in horror.

We heard about the 10 year old girl who knew all the details of the drug trade going on at her home, down to the money stash in the baby wipes box. She had the added joy of watching her mother's erstwhile boyfriend being gunned down in the driveway in a drug deal gone wrong.

And who could forget the story of the 11 year old girl who lived in a house filled with broken windows and cockroaches who gave birth to her uncle's baby at 29 weeks gestation. This was apparently a happy event for the 33 year old newly minted grandmother who was unfazed by the situation.

Then there is the 7 year old boy whose mother was too strung out on drugs to take care of him or his younger siblings so he would feed and cloth them. Often, he said, he would give his 5 year old brother and 3 year old sister the only food in the house because, he said, "they were hungry." His favorite thing about school was the fact that he "could eat."

This is what we have wrought in our nation. We have devalued life, achievement, marriage, self-reliance, the family and any semblance of decency to a point where society is literally crumbling around us. We've taken God out of every aspect of public life so that now most students have no idea that Thanksgiving is about far more than pumpkin pie. Decades of government induced social services don't seem to have helped the situation. In fact, if anything, it has proven a dismal failure.

Marvin Olasky wrote an important book entitled "The Tragedy of American Compassion" which was the springboard for welfare reform in the 90s. In the book, Dr. Olasky clearly outlines why government cannot take the place of faith based volunteerism. At the turn of the century, this country had two volunteers for every person in need. That was replaced by "The Great Society" which seems to be neither great, nor doing much for society.

The President's national radio address on Saturday was actually about the importance of volunteerism. We have so many blessings and so much to be thankful for in this nation that we should heed this call to action. Folks like my mother-in-law and aunt who see the worst side of humanity have patience that only comes from a true calling to their professions. I am thankful for their extraordinary work. But what about the rest of us?

Compassion doesn't just mean handing government money to the down and out, but truly providing opportunities to change lives for the better. Imagine what would happen if each one of us didn't just write a check to a cause but actually volunteered with a public or private program that truly made a difference in people's lives.

If we truly do our job as compassionate conservatives, then perhaps there will be more turkey and fewer tears in a true celebration of family, life, opportunity and the bounty of God's blessings in all of our lives.

Let's get to work.

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Note -- The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, views, and/or philosophy of GOPUSA.