The UN has produced many seriously flawed documents and has limited authority to do anything substantive. Even so, there is no excuse for America dodging this political discussion.

We need not sign every treaty proposed by the UN, even when every other G8 and third world country in the world has signed onto it.

But there are certain issues that demand our attention and we should at least sit at the table and talk about how we can ensure a fair and decent start in life for all our children.

The fact is that our national unwillingness to participate in an international discussion is indicative of the silence in our political dialogue on the issue of poverty, and specifically child poverty.

Neither political party is tremendously interested in equipping and assisting the poor to escape their situation. The Republican party would like to cut the legs out from under the poor without first enabling them to stand on their own. The Democratic party subsidizes poverty by cultivating a culture tolerant of irresponsibility, single-parenthood, unemployment and dependency.

Both parties are more interested in implementing their own version of the same stagnant status quo than in innovating new solutions for the tenacious problems that persist.

When America chooses not to attend the discussion on Sept. 19, we will send a message to the world about where our national commitments really lie. It seems that we would rather kill a handful of teen murderers than talk about how we can feed, house, and educate poor children.