THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, September 5, 1995 TAG: 9509050036
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: Medium: 59 lines
Columnist Cal Thomas was grumping away Monday about Hillary Rodham Clinton's trip to Beijing to attend the U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women.
My misgivings about Hillary Clinton's going to the conference are of a markedly different nature than those troubling Thomas.
The syndicated columnist focused on proposals in the conference's draft platform which, he said, aimed to redefine the family in a radical way.
The prospect of a clash of ideas doesn't bother me. Our culture has been redefining the family's role radically, for good and bad, at a pell-mell rate since World War II. We are all a part of it.
The change is manifest in women and men trying to balance demands of the family and their jobs; the impact of divorce both as a boon and a bane; and the effects of television as an instrument of reform on one hand and as a purveyor of unbridled violence on the other, especially as it gives the young a skewed notion of what violence can do.
My concern is for the safety of Hillary Clinton and the rest of the delegates in a country under a regime prone to turn a clash over ideas into punishing physical strife. I'll feel better when they are all home safely, God bless them.
Certainly the regime in China will be relieved when the women have departed. Until the conference closes, the global microscope will focus on China and its contradictions.
If Hillary Clinton had stayed away, that would have been a slap at China. Now that she has arrived, the government's conduct would seem to be under severe restraints.
In junior high schools, long ago, glee clubs sang with gusto a song declaring: ``Give me 10 who are stout-hearted men and I'll soon give you 10,000 more!''
If 10,000 men can make a striking difference, think of what 10,000 women on the loose can do!
Listen, 10,000 men who ``shoulder to shoulder grow bolder and bolder as they go to the foe,'' as the song proclaims, aren't anything to 10,000 women who, being women, are more idealistic, generally, more articulate, more conscientious, more inclined to be open and communicative about their opinions than are men.
Their presence in China may have some of the persuasion to change of an incoming tide flowing around a castle in the sand.
Hillary Clinton is at her best under intellectual challenges as she was in advocating health care reform before congressional leaders.
To go to China took courage, not only for her own well-being but even more so for what reactions her presence might evoke from the Chinese and their government.
The Beijing conference poses more of a threat to breach the Great Wall than were the hordes against whom the wall was built. by CNB