Behind all the statistics, all the observations, and all the examples given in this article, a clear and simple message screams out: All this amounts to nothing less than a massive criminal assault on the most innocent and defenseless members of American society -- its little children. Shameful and epidemic child poverty in America is something that no decent, moral nation should tolerate for even one child... In his famous book on free enterprise, The Wealth of Nations, even the prophet of capitalism Adam Smith acknowledged, "No society can surely be flourishing and happy when part of the members are poor and miserable"...

In my view, one of the first priorities of any civilized society is to take care of its children, to prevent their needless suffering. In the words of famous American writer Pearl S. Buck, "The test of a civilization is in the way that it cares for its helpless members." No moral society will allow children to be born in abject poverty. Every civilized nation should work to refine models of social policy that nurture its children, should protect and subsidize families with children simply because those children are its future; if they are neglected, stagnation and decline of a nation become inevitable. Any nation that allows large numbers of its children to grow up in poverty, afflicted by poor health, handicapped by inferior education, deserted by parents and cut adrift by society, is doomed to societal chaos and eventual collapse. And America, no doubt, will follow this pattern.

Children and youth, who have traditionally served as a source of hope and inspiration for any nation, any society, now signal here, in this country, by their endangered status, the near genocidial conditions into which American society has slipped: How can this society survive if homicide is already the leading cause of death for its children? How healthy can this society be if suicide is the second leading cause of death for its children? How can this society expect to progress and thrive when at least half of its young men and women are destined to be unemployed? What can American society expect if half of its children will probably never graduate from school, and many of those who will graduate lack the basic skills needed to simply survive in the 21st century? American society, which offers to millions of its children only an unstable and grim future, should expect deep trouble in response.

The nation simply cannot continue to compete and prosper in the global arena when more than a fifth of its children live in poverty and a third grow up in ignorance as in America today. When almost 15 million children are in dire need, scorned and hated by the political establishment, what kind of fool can expect that life in America will be better 20 years from now than it is today? "Children who go unheeded are children who are going to turn on the world that neglected them," says Harvard psychiatrist Robert Coles.

And as Marian Wright Edelman, founder and president of the Children's Defense Fund said, some time very soon "the rage and pain of these homeless, hopeless, abused, alienated children will explode in communities all over America." As I see it, the future of American society is almost guaranteed a blood bath -- one that will someday make the 1990s look like the good old days... Well, in my opinion, this society will get exactly what it deserves...