The American Caste System

In India they have a social pecking order called a caste system.  The lowest people class is a group known as the untouchables.   Privileges afforded to the higher castes are not accessible to them.   We look at that here in the United States and we think how archaic that is, and  how odd it is in modern life.   We think ourselves to be more advanced,  more educated, and definitely more sophisticated.   I would propose that all of our sophistication and American pride is a smoke screen.  The reality is that we are more backward than they are.

First of all I would observe that human rights and freedom are not accessible to all.  For example, if a rich man gets accused of a felony, he would immediately call the family attorney, make bail, hire expert witnesses to tear down the prosecutor’s case, and either get a greatly reduced sentence or be aquitted altogether.  But, if a poor man was accused of a felony, he stays locked up during the trial,  he gets a free public defender.  I’ve actually observed trials where the public defender didn’t even have a conversation with the accused until minutes before the trial.  Their reputation is that they carry a heavy case load and are forced to do the bare minimum for their clients.   At least they can wave bye to you on your way to the big house.  There is not justice for all – only justice for those who can afford it.

Then there is the credit reporting system.  Once an individual has a tainted credit score, they will have very limited access to housing and to employment.  So, how can someone get ahead if he can’t access housing or get a job?  And to add to the pain of the credit damaged ones, the insurance company will jack up your insurance rates if your rating goes down.  This creates a slippery slope for those who are struggling to avoid homelessness.

My next exposure of the American caste system is our health care system.   I can remember when my wife’s uncle needed a new liver.   He was told that unless he could ante up $6000 to make a down payment on rejection drugs, he could not get on the list to get a new liver.  Uncle Bill died.

Finally there is the matter of how we deal with life.   Medical technology has advanced to the place where people are killing the handicapped before birth and calling it choice.  Already in this country the elderly routinely get overdosed on morphine as a form of mercy killing if the care givers determine that their quality of life is not worth saving.  The systematic killing of the unborn and the elderly is vigorously defended by the liberals.   One of the first presidential orders signed by President Obama was to allow our tax money to be used internationally to kill unwanted children.  Meanwhile there is a huge shortage of babies for adoption, forcing many in North America and Europe to travel to Asia to adopt a baby.   When we were in China adopting our daughter, we met couples from England, France, Spain, and Italy who were there to adopt.  When people ask me why we didn’t adopt an American baby, I reply that the liberal political system is working overtime to kill them all off.

Your value as a human being should not be determined by your checking account, your credit report, your disability, or your age.  Let’s be the civilized society that we claim to be.   That would be true progress and justice for all.

The Destructive Power of Cigarettes

They came asking for help, they had children in need who might not get fed, but they had cigarettes.   They needed assistance for school supplies for their poor kids, but they had cigarettes.   They sleep under the stars with no home to call their own as they chain smoke cigarettes. 

How costly is it to an individual and his family to smoke?   Using a $2.50 per pack average figure, it would cost $75.00 per month,  and apporximately $900 per year.   Calculating the cost with 10% interest:   $56,952 in 20 years;  $169,536 in 30 years;  $1,299,329 in 50 years.   Hey smokers, your wealth and your future are going up in smoke!  Now triple all of the figures above for a 3 pack a day smoker and it really gets rediculous.

Perhaps you say, I’m doing good financially and I’ll do as I please and it is no one’s  business.  There are 100 million orphans in the world who desperately need our help.  What if you quit smoking and spent those millions you’ll spend on cigarettes over your lifetime on helping someone else rather than on destroying yourself? 

Then there are those who say you want to quit, but you just can’t quit.   If there was a 10 million dollar reward for quitting for good, you’d figure out how to quit even if you had to chain yourself to a tree until you kicked the habit.   So it’s not a lack of ability or opportunity, but a lack of desire that keeps people from quitting.  Or perhaps we should say it’s a love of self that keeps smokers smoking.

The financial burden on the U.S. economy is staggering :  over $92 billion is lost productivity from smoking related deaths and $100 billion in health care costs.  That amount of money would go a long way in helping our country recover from this recession (and possible depression).

I’ve worked a lot over the years helping the poor and it amazes me how people who are desperate and their family is doing without can come up with the cash for cartons of cigarettes, large cases of beer (that are hastily consumed), and costly tatoos and piercings.   Personally, if they can come up with the cash for all that stuff, they don’t need my money or time.   Once while visiting a man who was aggressively asking for my help,  I walked to his refrigerator and opened the door.  He became enraged.   I didn’t care.   I’m tired of seeing the donations of hard working people go to those who do not want a permanent solution or accountability.

On the other hand, we sometimes help those we really don’t want to help because of the children.   Who really gets hurt by the poverty that is worsened by cigarette addiction?   It is the weakest and most vulnerable of our society, the children.

Daddy, You’re My Girl

It took my wife and teenage daughter five long years (of unrelenting nagging) to convince me that we should adopt a baby. This all began, mysteriously, when they both had the same dream on the same night that we adopted a baby from China. They were convinced that God wanted us to do this thing. My response was that if this dream was divinely inspired, God would have given me the dream also. I was dreaming about having the other three children raised and becoming the center of my wife’s attention. I had seen the top of the mountain, there was no turning back, soon I would be pampered and catered to. Then, while at a conference by myself in Toronto, thousands of miles from the nagging, something weird happened. Every morning on TV there was a series on a Christian talk show hosted by James Robison about Chinese orphans. There was video of a little girl on a potty seat singing in Chinese, “where is my mother?” My emotional armor was now breached. That image would forever change my life. Everywhere I turned in Toronto I was faced with little Asian girls. On the elevators, at the conference, I couldn’t get away from it. Maybe God was trying to tell me something. My heart began to change and soon I got the “adoption bug.” I called home and shocked my wife by saying, “Honey, start the paperwork!”

We chose Christian World Adoption in Charleston, South Carolina as the facilitator. As we worked through the maze of paperwork, my wife was soon on a first name basis with the agency workers. There was a home study made by a lady with two adopted daughters from China. I told her we kept pit bulls in the house. She didn’t laugh.

After that was a long wait of over a year. Doubts flooded our mind. Maybe we were too old. Did China change their policy? Every night we would go on the agency website and look at the babies not adopted yet and the ones pictured with their new families. It became our ritual. We prayed for a cute one. It seemed it would never happen and then, just before Christmas, we received a photo of our future daughter compliments of the Chinese government. We teared up. We gave her picture a prominent place on our refrigerator. We made copies and gave to the grandparents.

Travel arrangements were made for March. A close friend from our church and my personal assistant at my business got excited about it and came with us along with our teenage daughter. The flight was long. The stewardesses were grouchy, even in “the friendly skies.” We flew from Florida to Chicago to Beijing, the capital of China. We were lodged in five star hotels. We ate Chinese food every meal except breakfast and it was on the breadfast buffet also. The first full day in China we visited the Forbidden City wher the ancient emperors lived. I broke the rules and gave away cash to crippled beggars. Soon we were surrounded. Some were missing limbs and all were missing teeth. The guide told me I couldn’t do that. I assured her I could.

We were there with eight other families. Two families were back for the second time. We would become life long friends.
The second day we all got on the bus and drove to a government social building next to a school. The children hung out the windows and waved at us. We went one floor up an elevator and waited. There were other groups in the large room getting their babies too. The social workers began calling out the Chinese names of the babies and no one could understand them. We all got our photos out and wandered around through a sea of crying babies being held by social workers comparing the babies to our photos. I yelled to my wife, “I think I found our baby!” We confirmed the name and the photo and it was her. They just handed her to us and she was clinging to me and screaming. There was a photo on the drab wall of Mickey Mouse and when I pointed at Mickey she would stop screaming for a minute or two and stare with her big dark eyes. The Chinese are in love with Mickey Mouse and anything Disney.

The agency had prepared us for the attachment issues in adoption. The babies attach emotionally to the new father first, then later to their new mother. These babies are raised to this point in their life with primarily female caretakers and they naturally crave a man’s influence in their lives. For the first week Hannah wouldn’t let me out of her site. She had a daddy for the first time in her life and she liked it. It started bothering my wife Pam. She had dreamed for so long of holding this child and she couldn’t for very long. Hannah came around a little more each day and now I’m the outsider. Even today, Hannah thinks everything needs a momma: stuffed animals, gold fish, etc.

We spent two weeks in China in three major cities. We took care of legalities and did more tourist stuff. The shopping was fun. We found McDonald’s, Wal-Mart, and KFC which made us feel a connection with home. The Chinese people are very polite. For most of the trip, “Peter” was our guide. When we would question some of their customs, he would answer, “It’s the Chinese way,” give a large smile, and then retreat into silence. That became our motto for the rest of the trip. We made Peter nervous because a few times we defected from the group and took a taxi to get American food. The Chinese food was great, but three times a day for two weeks is too much. We found out that the Chinese can now own their own apartments and can own their own businesses. The Chinese have mandatory retirement at 50 to make room for the young people to work. I expected a sea of bicycles, but I found a lot of motorcycles, small cars, and quite a few luxury cars. China is coming around to capitalism.

We ended at the White Swan Hotel where Richard Nixon and the Queen of England had stayed. It was very nice with a two story waterfall in the lobby. While there we went to the U.S. Embassy and our babies were sworn in as citizens. We were told they weren’t official citizens until their feet touched U.S. soil. We also had to get a physician’s exam for our babies there. It was a nice place to shop. Some of the shops offered free international internet calls. There was also a restaraunt there that offered American food.

We left China via Hong Kong. We regret that we did not have time in Hong Kong. That is a place I would like to visit someday, perhaps when we travel back to show Hannah her homeland. We left with a new perspective and appreciation for the Chinese people. They are hardworking, polite, and have a high level of excellence in everything they do. I would like to send some Americans there for politeness lessons. The airlines within China have the highest level of service and excellence that I’ve ever experienced in my life. It was a great trip, but we were ready to be home with our new daughter.

Hannah has been our daughter for almost two years and she will soon turn three. She was a lot of fun at Christmas and reminds us every day that she has a birthday party coming up. She has brought so much joy to our family. She feels like our own. She doesn’t feel adopted. I tell her all the time, “Hannah, you’re my girl.” The other day she told me, “Daddy, you’re my girl.” I knew exactly what she meant.

You can follow the diary of our adoption with photos of our time in China by clicking this link:    http://www.myadoptionwebsite.com/babyhannah/index.html

 

If you have any questions about adoptions please feel free to email me at JLBURKE57@HOTMAIL.COM and put “adoption blog” in the subject line.