I like to babysit, sometimes, just to feel like a mom. I believe it takes a village. I often hear fellow childless thirty somethings say, "yeah, kids are cool, when you can bring them back to their mom."

I take on responsability, like a pride lioness, for family and friends alike. I don't know why this happens, but I feel that it is natural, on a small scale.

On a larger scale, I feel the weight of war. I see the children on the Gaza Strip, and their cousins on the Iraqi borders. I feel the hungry American, Apalachian, blonde and dirty. I feel the hungry Mexican migrant workers daughter, who has no books.

I care more for children in general, than some parents do for their kids. And that's the problem. Parents have become complacent, lazy, abusive, and neglectful of their childrens needs.

All over America, mom's and dad's struggle with children they had while entering their selfish twenties, or even their sucessful 30's. And yet, nearly all kids, when asked, would say mom and dad don't spend enough time, mom and dad care more for themselves, mom needs a new dress, "Jeremy spoke in class today."

What happens is this, while parents are busy doing nails, getting haircuts, shopping at Gelsons, their kids are getting into trouble.

It's not symptomatic of only the poor. The rich neighborhoods where I grew up were equally full of kids who found bad things to do. The case was that their parents had more legal power behind them.

I guess, with teen pregnancy and all, it's hard to really make a child responsible for a child. But a lot of parents have no excuses for their kids behavior.

In most cases, you see that kids who have more attention obviously do better in school, do less drugs, and tend to succeed.

The most obvious offshoot of this sad state of affairs is law.

We established a nation to protect us from other, scarier nations. And then we realised we had to protect ourselves, from ourselves.

The laws came piling up from moral oblivion until each and every one of us has had at least one ticket.

We don't watch our children, because there are too many, and there is too much else to do. So our liberties are taken away, for the sake of the children.

The largest argument in the drug war is the effect on your innocent kids. But the reality is that kids who have successful family patterns, don't get caught up n the drug world, they generally skip through it, or only dabble like our president elect Clinton.

Same goes for just about every debaucle we can get our kids into, sex, Aids, crime, all can be thwarted with a good parental relationship.

The same institute on drug policy that gives us grim stats of our kids being pot heads, also says that in countries where drugs are grown, the addiction rate drops from 90% to 10% because the community is well educated of the dangers.

So why do we settle for 90% addiction rates. Easy, because we don't have time to teach our kids the truth about intoxication. That it was once an integral part of religious ceremony, even for the Jews.

The very fact that 72% of Americans want to legalise medical marijuanna is indicative of an educational trend.

This trend is the slow spreading knowledge that we have been bamboozled by the medical industry on so many medicines, maybe it's time to go bak to old standards, like herbs, and faith.

We don't say hospitals are bad, or modern medicine has no place, we simply say, we should have the right to choose our own medicine.

As far as protecting our children, it's very animalistic to want to remove a threat from your child. The logical human way to handle it though, would be to teach your child of the nature of the threat.

As long as any drug stays illegal, it is run by the black market of killers who handle illegal things, including the pharmecudical companies that hardly ever have your interest in mind.

When they are legal, people who reallly want them can have a place, and time, to be free, and criminals will have to find another means of finance. Your kids, will be protected, only by your own steadfast devotion to their enrichment.

Infringing on my liberty, for your children, is unfair to those who do not, and would not, have kids. Your kids are your responsability. People should care because they want to, not because they are forced to.

I help whenever I can, because I have no kids, but if you can't controll your kid, because you never pay enough attention to what makes them tick, don't blame me. People who smoke pot are not the culprit in teen pot smoking, parents who don't care are.

If you cared, you wouldn't allow bad people to profit, instead of letting it be naturally grown. Prohibition draws people into crime who normally would be no more than a Saturday beer drinker. It costs taxpayers billions we could use for jobs, food, books. It makes grandmothers with glaucoma into prisoners. That's just wrong. Let's make life safer, leave our bodies to us, and take care of your own damn kids.

There are lots of people who would help. And your kids would much rather have you be dad than a cop in blue.