The Necessity to Speak, by Sam Hamill, is one of the most powerful, true essays I have ever read. The ideas that are presented are so true that it is almost scary. How often I see things that I do not want to see. I have seen little kids with huge bruises on their faces, standing in line at the store, their parents needing to buy that bottle of liquor, so late at night. I have also seen kids get screamed at in line at the grocery store, the parents not caring who was around to listen. Everybody who did hear said nothing, including me. We were embarrassed to say anything. Embarrassed that someone would act in such a manor, embarrassed to even be there, but probably most of all, embarrassed for the child suffering. These parents often threatened their children with spankings when they get back to the car. This brings up Hamill’s idea of spankings. He believes if you are going to spank you child with a belt, why not a stick. If you use a stick, why not use a bat. Parents believe in an acceptable amount of violence, why else would they spank their children? I believe that is not a good message to send the children. When they get older and have their own kids, maybe their acceptable violence limit would go up. With that, then we have child abuse, but the parents would find solace in the fact that their parents did it to them when they were young, so it must be alright. Where is the acceptable limit? I believe there is no acceptable limit of violence. That theory went out the window long ago. These days with super weapons that are 180,000 times as powerful as they were in 1945, violence on every channel on TV, and military recruiters in our schools, there is no escaping violence. It has been molded into our way of life. So what does that say about the child and the abusive parent, the victim and the executioner, Hamill and I agree on this, we must save them, but how?
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