DEATH IS EASY by Russell Madden   Softcover, $14.95 Hardcover, $24.95     (Preview. Also available in a digital edition, $4.81.)	FREEDOM, As If It Mattered by Russell Madden   Softcover, $24.95 Hardcover, $34.95   (Preview. Also available in a digital edition, $5.63.)

Most parents love their children and seek only the best for them. Indeed, the notion that their children could have a better and easier life than did they served -- and still serves -- to motivate countless immigrants to endure back-breaking labor, long hours, and economic deprivation in the interests of their offsprings' futures. Such a tradition forms an integral part of the American vision and for any pioneers who have sought to create a positive legacy for their descendants.

This focus on children and their needs and desires permeates our society. Whether represented by a mother enduring long lines or jostling crowds in order to purchase this year's hottest and seemingly unobtainable toy or by indulgent grandparents spoiling their grandchildren, the trend seems to be intensifying.

As long as these activities are confined to the home setting, no harm is done...except, perhaps, to the family's budget or a parent's patience. Even childless people may gain some amusement, pleasure, or relief when observing the lengths to which modern-day parents will go to please their tiny alter-egos.

Unfortunately, the boundaries of child-centered concern long ago expanded to engulf everyone in our society. Encompassing an ever-widening circle of behavior, the politicization of the intimate bonds and responsibilities of parents to their children has restricted our freedom in innumerable ways and continues to fuel the hue-and-cry of those seeking to limit our liberty.

Many of the policies designed "for the children" dovetail neatly with an odd fixation on "safety at any cost." The combination of these two rationales drive us inexorably down a dark road that is becoming increasingly difficult to exit.

A desire for safety is, of course, no more inherently odd than is an interest in the development and well-being of one's children. In Motivation and Personality and other works, psychologist Abraham Maslow discussed a "hierarchy of needs." Presenting these in the form of a pyramid, Maslow identified five broad types of needs which he felt essential to the full development of one's self. Lower levels of needs occupy one's attention first and must be satisfied before one is able to concentrate on other, higher needs.

The five tiers of this hierarchy are:

• physiological needs such as hunger, sleep, thirst, and sex;
• safety needs dealing with security, stability, protection, and strength;
• acceptance needs including issues of love and belonging on the individual and social planes;
• esteem needs addressing requirements for self-esteem, reputation, and prestige; and
• self-actualization needs directed to achieving one's fullest potential and general self-fulfillment.

Despite some qualifications in applying these needs to individual cases, most people recognize how more basic needs must take precedence over other issues. Thus protecting their children from life's multiple and endless hazards; providing them a secure and stable environment in which to grow; and ensuring their general safety are legitimate goals for parents to seek.

When those values are achieved, however, by violating the rights of neighbors, the polished patina of respectability reflecting these self-professed good intentions quickly chips away to reveal the corrosive essence of tyranny lurking below. Need is not and can never be a claim on wealth, on the property or lives of one's fellow citizens.

Enacting increasingly restrictive and intrusive laws, regulations, and rules strangling civil society, politicians promise to provide bribes that few of their constituents can or will refuse. If challenged that their actions are undermining freedom and replacing it with a paternalistic control, a velvet glove concealing a condescending and demanding autocracy, these dispensers of statist largesse purchased at others' expense reply righteously that they are doing this solely "for the children."

And, of course, who could be against children?

With the debate so skewed in favor of middle-class entitlements and protection dressed up in a facade of benevolence for poor, defenseless youths unable to care for themselves, recognition of the fundamental principles involved in this slow-motion takeover of American family life is lost in a flurry of political sleight-of-hand. Freedom, justice, and equality before the law become disposable abstractions to stressed parents who turn a blind eye to such impediments that inconveniently interfere with what they view as sources able to satisfy their children's needs.

Acquisition of goods provided by unwilling others is transformed by the alchemy of the "child" mantra from theft, robbery, and extortion into caring, compassion, and generous concern. Since few are willing to expose the emperor and his new clothes, these child-welfare motivated assaults on our liberty continue their subversive crawl towards dominance.

A few examples ably make the point:

• Government indoctrination, a.k.a., public education, was imposed upon our country to ensure that our children did not grow up to become ignorant and incompetent adults...despite any compelling evidence that parents had failed in their obligations in this arena. Even Thomas Jefferson advocated (limited) government support for nurturing students along in their education. The consequences of losing personal autonomy in this single realm continue to reverberate in our country, providing a source of continual friction and contentious wrangling that hungrily gobbles up not only countless billions in wasted wealth but wide swaths of our freedom. In a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, government-run schools make certain that children learn only the versions of history, politics, and economics which cast the current political status quo in a favorable light.
• Meanwhile, less powerful parents are forced to subsidize the teaching of ideas and values they may abhor. Childless adults stagger along under heavy property taxes to support institutions providing a service they do not need. To add insult to injury, constant bond issues add to their burden as pretty new buildings hide the ugly truth of a dumbed-down and increasingly ignorant and incompetent student body...the very result used to justify the governmental invasion of education in the first place.
• Telephone rates on second phone lines and other services are increased...to provide money to wire every school in America into the Internet regardless of whether this is truly the best avenue for providing a sound foundation of knowledge for children. As an incidental bonus, many educators and families obtain "free" Internet access for which others must pay monthly out of their own pockets.
• In a direct assault on freedom of speech, politicians seek to regulate that same Internet and World Wide Web...for the children. Ignoring the primary role of parents in governing their children's activities, the State declares that only it can keep innocent children safe from the disturbing images of pornography; the dangers of conversing electronically with sexual predators; and the politically incorrect ideas floating uncontrolled in cyberspace.
• Paralleling these efforts at censorship, politicians force television manufacturers to place a "V-chip" in new televisions to block out violent images...and plan to include computer monitors next under their umbrella of watchdog concerns. In a similar vein, the State "persuades" television networks "voluntarily" to rate their programs to protect impressionable young minds. Music recordings, comic books, and other media designed to attract a youthful clientele also fail to escape the scrutiny of our ever-vigilant governmental nannies.
• Advertising on children's television shows is limited even as networks are forced to provide a set amount of "children's educational programming"...programming that invariably proves to be a ratings loser.
• "Joe Camel" is declared persona non grata lest his image corrupt kids and trap them into a lifetime of nicotine addiction. Other cigarette promotions are outlawed for similar reasons. Not to be ignored, humorous beer commercials that might appeal too greatly to underage consumers are also threatened with banishment if they do not change their destructive ways.
• Large breakfast cereal companies are the subject of Congressional ire when the prices of their products seem to pose a barrier to consumption by our youngest citizens. Of course, even when the supply is readily purchased, the products are castigated for containing too much sugar and not enough nutritional value.
• The Family Leave Act is passed with great fanfare. Mothers can take months off their jobs in order to bond properly with their children and yet still have their positions guaranteed upon their return. Childless couples are left to pick up the slack, working longer hours or taking on additional duties to cover for their absent co-workers.
• Fearing that children will suffer physically, emotionally, or socially from care givers unlicensed -- and uncontrolled -- by the State, our political leaders call for greater regulation of the daycare industry. To further aid parents with their child care needs, the president calls for billions of dollars in subsidies.
• To further safeguard the health of the nation's youth, the government moves to provide health coverage for young, uninsured children, providing a matching bookend to the seniors it already controls via Medicare. Soon, only a shrinking number of adults will remain even minimally free of government rule of the insurance industry.
• To overcome the lax care of less-than-vigilant parents, government orders air bags for cars, skillfully avoiding any mention of the dangers to children they represent. Demanding babies be secured in car seats and toddlers by seat belts, the State provides further opportunities for creating unwitting criminals of distracted parents. Helmets for young bicyclers become another symbol of government sovereignty.
• Welfare programs such as AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children), Medicaid, and Head Start are created "for the children" and continue for decades despite their counterproductive results.
• The rights of adults to defend themselves as recognized by the Second Amendment are infringed by "gun-free zones" near schools, by laws requiring guns be locked up or broken down and stored separately from ammunition, or banned entirely, all so children will be safe...despite the fact that accidents involving firearms have steadily decreased even while gun ownership has soared.
• Even the intellectual development of infants falls under the purview of the government as a Southern governor declares that each newborn shall be provided with a cassette or CD of classical music...paid for by the taxpayers.

Implicit in these programs, proposals, and laws is the insulting assumption that parents are incapable of making the best decisions for their children; that only a government bureaucrat who has never met any particular family or knows its unique context is qualified to make such profound and long-reaching decisions regarding the children of this country. Sad to say, too many of those self-same parents, obsessed with safety or the complexity of the modern world, apparently agree with that dismal assessment of their abilities...either that or they drop the responsibility for their lives and that of their children into the eager, grasping fingers of the State, relieved to have someone else do the worrying for them. If confronted with the resentment of those others whose lives and freedom are diminished as they are forced to help pick up the check for another's consumption, these parents evade the consequences of what they do and indignantly claim that anything and everything the government offers to them is theirs as a "right."

Doubtless, many parents are sincere in their beliefs. Equally certain is the error at the base of their reasoning. Engaging in a quixotic quest for a risk-free existence is a fool's errand...even more so when done while violating the rights of others. As Benjamin Franklin said in 1759, "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Not only do they not deserve those values, ultimately they will lose what they so desperately seek.

Anyone truly concerned with promoting the welfare of children now and into the distant future should do everything he can to peel away the multitudinous layers of constraints smothering our nation. If safety and full personal development of our future leaders and citizens are the goals, the best course to follow in obtaining them is one that restores justice and the freedom upon which it depends.

Let's do it for the children...

...and ourselves.