Note: multiple updates below the fold.
I thought this case of a child custody battle between the Province of Manitoba and a white supremacist couple coming out of Canada would be an interesting piece of news for our more libertarian readers (and contributors) to grapple with,
The children were taken from their home when the girl went to school with a swastika drawn on her arm. Her teacher scrubbed it off in the afternoon, but the girl showed up again the next day with another one, along with other white supremacist symbols drawn on her body.
Family services case workers were alerted and went to the family’s apartment, where they found neo-Nazi symbols and flags. They took custody of the couple’s son and picked up the daughter at her school.
The couple, now separated, are also accused of failing to provide adequate care for their children. Lawyers and social workers told court earlier this year there were problems related to drug and alcohol abuse, domestic violence, criminal behaviour and mental health problems.
Obviously the state isn’t going to base it’s case solely on the couple’s racial beliefs and the allegations of abuse add a whole different element to the decision about remanding the children from their parents’ custody. However, the focus of the case has been the couple’s racial views and it seems pretty clear that impetus for action stemmed from those views, with the incident of the daughter showing up to school with a swastika drawn on her arm (as noted above).
So the question for our resident libertarians: did the government over steps its bounds?
I’ve been thinking about the case and I haven’t yet come to any hard and fast conclusions. On the one hand, this tends to be a regard in which I am skeptical about how much power we vest in government and how much lenience we extend in government’s use of that power. Opposition to the ways in which government can and does have a direct and undeniable influence on how we live our private lives remains, to my mind, one of libertarianism’s strongest hands.
At the same time, there is an almost immediate and visceral disgust and abhorrence towards out and out white supremacists and the image of those children growing up in such a hateful environment is, in some senses, intolerable in its own right. On some level, one wants to be able to say without hesitation, “Yes! Get those kids out of there for their own good!”
But, as is often the case, the waters are far more muddy than they are pristine. There are further links on the case available at the page to which I’ve linked, so feel free to do more reading/research, but I think this particular instance draws some contrasts and tensions out quite nicely for consideration.
Thoughts?
Update: it didn’t take much for commenters to make the case against government having the right to interfere in a citizen’s personal life based on their beliefs, no matter how odious the beliefs underpinning that life may be or what innocent soul might become afflicted with them. This is, I think, largely an unimportant question, upon reflection, given that the majority of individuals are rightly able to see white supremacist views as abhorrent.
The more salient question we’re left debating below; however, is whether, in this particular case, the government had a right to act on investigating the possiblity of abuse at the children’s home with, really, only the markers of the parents’ odious beliefs as signposts.
Further update: Jason Kuznicki at Positive Liberty adds a useful thought,
Second, and relatedly, there may not be much reason to worry about racists having racist children. Even the values taught and learned at a very early age are commonly unlearned later in life. I was a Catholic; Hillary Clinton, a Goldwater Republican; Augustine, a libertine; Paul, Saul.
We could go on forever, and in all directions. For a certain American age cohort, I’d even venture that the ex-racists far outnumber the never-racists. We don’t usually put it this way. Discretion helps the healing process. But in the past fifty or sixty years, have people abandoned any belief system more drastically than racism? (Communism, perhaps. Life is getting better, is it not?)
Some American ex-racists are probably more reluctant than others. Some are clearly still crypto-. But many are totally sincere in their new beliefs. (”You were raised in a non-racist family,” a close older relative once conceded to me. “But I was not!”) The degree of change here is truly astonishing.
I think Jason has a good point here and I know that I have, in my own life, assumed and abandoned a whole host of beliefs, much as Jason acknowledges. And it seems undeniably true that racism is on the wane both in America and elsewhere, so perhaps we’re, at least in part, tilting at windmills here.
My concern, though, perhaps remains centred on a distinction I interestingly made via email in an unrelated conversation last week. Jason wants potentially to gear down the concern about the familial inheritance of racism, but these folks haven’t just been described as racist, rather the additional term white supremacist has been tacked on,
The children were seized by social workers last March after the woman’s then seven-year-old daughter went to school two days in a row with a swastika drawn on her arm. Days before, she and her partner had attended a White Pride rally in Calgary, organized by a group called the Aryan Guard.
The woman says she is not a white supremacist or neo-Nazi but instead a white nationalist — someone proud of her European heritage.
The Aryan Guard is planning another rally in Calgary next month. The mother said she will take the opportunity to raise money for her legal defence.
There is, it could be argued, a whole sub-culture and virulence of belief that a child is submerged into via white supremacist parents, as opposed to the kinds of racial overtones one can find in any number of households thorughout North America. Some might find the distinction unimpressive, but it strikes me that there is a difference between engaging in racist activities such as jokes, name-calling, and discrimination we tend to associate with systemic racism and traveling from Winnipeg to Calgary (conservatively a 14 hour drive) to attend a “white pride” rally.
Which is not to say that people can’t move beyond such strong beliefs as well. Nor does it somehow magically legitamize the state directly and intrusively intervening in people’s lives on the basis of those beliefs. I’m just less inclined to wave the holders of and the kinds of actions to which such sustained and focused efforts in support of such beliefs might give rise off quite so easily.
Burt Likko 
Mary 
James K 
Jaybird 
Tod Kelly 
Katherine 
Will Truman 
Kyle Cupp 
Borat: “I do a picture, only small, of the Tishnik Masacre. Where many Uzbeks…crushed!”
Kindly Gray Hippie: “How did you feel when you drew this?”
Borat: “Very proud!”.
KGH: “I am just listening with sadness…sadness for your people…?”
Borat: “Yes…no, it is not sad. It is us who do the kill!”
When in doubt,
{ 49 comments }
It smacks unpleasantly of the abominable Human Rights Commissions. I haven’t got all the details about the charges outside of the badthink accusations so it may have been acceptable on objective material grounds.
As a general theory though, if the couple is providing adequately for their children but are also foisting a hateful ideology on their children should that alone be grounds for removing the children, I would say absolutely not. That is thought control and a frightening invasion of government power. Government can combat this indirectly by maintaining schools that educate tolerance and equality and by fostering an open community of ideas where the racism and retrograde ideals of bad parents like this can be debated and exposed as the drivel that it is. Children rebel, remember and are almost as strongly influenced by their peer groups in school as much as they are by their parents.
Well, here, I think, is the interesting question this particular case brings up. So let’s say that the accusations of abuse are proven true, but that the only real reason that government agents acted was the daughter coming to school with a swastika drawn on her arm. Are we happy and approving of the outcome?
Child welfare is not criminal law. If there is objective child abuse going on then the children should be removed and my conscience is undisturbed. That the parents revealed their abuse through gratuitous acts of racist stupidity is merely delicious irony to me in that scenario.
So, then every time a child shows up a school with a swastika or other odious symbols on their person in some form or another Child Welfare Services should be called because it might indicate the presence of overt but as yet unseen physical, emotional, and/or psychological abuse?
So Teachers should retain the power to call child services if their judgement says something is amiss, as this particular teacher appears to have successfully intuited.
I think an argument could be made that, by sending their daughter to school deliberately marked with Nazi symbols, they are exposing her to significant risk of being socially ostracized, and possibly even physically harmed. It’s one thing to espouse an ideology in one’s home, and another thing to force your child to be an emissary of it in her school. So, I think the initial investigation is justified.
However, if the child were being well cared-for, and wasn’t being harmed (except philosophically) I don’t think the state has a case in taking her away from her parents. We tolerate odious beliefs in a free society.
The potential for social ostracization is a troubling standard for creating probable cause for a child abuse investigation. What if the parents are hardcore Goth (or what if they’re just ok with their kids being Goth)? What if they’re just poor and can only afford clothes that will increase the likelihood of ostracization?
There is a notable difference between being poor (which cannot be helped) and marking a child in serial fashion with symbols that are known to provoke strong and visceral reactions from people, and which carries a lengthy history of association with violence of the absolute worst kind. Similarly, being Goth may be a socially marginalized identity, but it doesn’t have nearly the same cultural opprobrium that the Nazi/skinhead identity deservedly enjoys.
I agree about the marking issue (see below). But the difference in levels of social opprobrium is not going to be a meaningful difference in practice – who gets to determine what level of social opprobrium is and is not acceptable? It’s not the sort of thing that is subject to ready measurement, and let’s not forget how arbitrary kids can be.
Frankly, I’d be willing to wager that a kid who regularly cross-dressed would find himself more socially isolated than the open white supremacist. Indeed, when I went to a rather diverse Northeast high school in the early ’90s, I even recall that our school had one or two known white supremacists. They were hardly popular, to be sure, and at one point got the living hell beaten out of them, but their social isolation was nowhere near as extreme as that of one exceptionally poor kid in the same grade as them who hailed from the wealthier of the two towns that used our school.
My issue is with the marking, as well. Perhaps ostracization is the wrong way of framing the question. If the parents had marked the kid with the words “I’m a bitch,” nobody would question there being inquiries. I don’t see how marking her in such as way as to imply that she’s a Nazi is any less worrisome.
Completely agreed on that.
This is a spectacular point.
It’s *THIS* that makes it so believable that there are mental illness problems with the parents *OR* that the marking was done as a “Cry for help”, if you will, to get the government to start investigating.
“Lawyers and social workers told court earlier this year there were problems related to drug and alcohol abuse, domestic violence, criminal behaviour and mental health problems.”
If there is ever justification for taking children away from their parents and plopping them into foster care, you’d think that the above would be a good place to start debating the whole “are these reasons sufficient?” thing.
That said, for the sake of argument (and the sake of argument alone), let’s assume that, in this particular case, “drug and alcohol abuse, domestic violence, criminal behaviour and mental health problems” is shorthand for “seriously, white supremacy is screwed up” and the “real” reason the kids are being taken away has nothing to do with drugs, alcohol, domestic violence, criminal behavior, or mental health problems.
Have you seen the movie “Rabbit Proof Fence”? This movie tells the story of aboriginal children taken from their parents in order for them to be… well, arguments about what were going to happen to the children differ. Some argue that the point was “genocide”. You’d interbreed the aboriginals with the whites until the aboriginal traits have disappeared. The other argument was that the children were going to be properly schooled, given a trade, and given a shot at a civilized life which their aboriginal parents couldn’t hope to do.
Paternalism, by definition, tends to have the best of intentions. Getting rid of intentions leaves us with the haggling issue of “how bad does a culture have to be before the government ought to be allowed to say ‘we will take children away from parents who have this culture’?”
Aboriginal culture is, surely, on this side of the line and white supremacy, surely, is on that side of it.
I’m uncomfortable with the government taking children away from parents and dropping them into foster care for little other than cultural reasons… it’s a good thing, I suppose, that we know that there were drugs, alcohol, domestic violence, criminal behavior, and mental health problems on top of everything else.
Residential schools were a disaster. On a bright note, near Cranbrook, one First Nations band turned their defunct school into a resort. It’s a wonderful example of turning a negative into a positive, giving the native population closure as well as an emblem of pride and a source of revenue.
What if they weren’t, though?
What if they worked?
I’m not even sure you can ask that question in a comprehensible manner given the underlying premise of residential schools, though I get the point at which you’re driving.
The feeling that this is so very obviously different from that is one that I felt tug… but couldn’t run with.
Now, of course, I’d say that the people in this particular story are, most likely, crazy. The people who are interested in taking their kids away are, most likely, looking out for the best interests of everybody involved in an enlightened way.
There’s something going on in the back of my head, though, that tells me that the embrace of paternalism is untoward.
If one sees the WS tendency as a signal rather than a philosophy in and of itself, one is much less troubled by this. It’s not surprising that people like that would think like savages. One feels a mix of pity and contempt. We’d best take the children away and make sure that those vile and backwards ideas don’t get passed on. If we do it right, we can make sure the kids grow up to be productive members of society.
So your suggestion is that there is no difference between the thinking that went into the creation of residential schools and the thinking that may well be going on in the linked story? The two are effectively equivalent?
It’s not that the outcomes are the same, but the paternalistic impulse is the same.
The paternalistic impulse really, really bugs me.
Additionally, in cases like these, the paternalistic impulse is the impetus to do something really, really awful… but the best intentions behind the paternalistic impulse can whitewash the (potential) sepulchres. Sure, we now know that the residential schools were a racist, awful idea.
It was generations ago, after all. What would enlightened people of our quality have said at the time?
What will they say about us in 100 years?
Even if they worked you’re talking about non-lethal genocide. An extermination of an entire culture via an involontary confiscation of their children. Even if the children may be better at dealing with the larger societies norms it’s still massively immoral without even touching on libertarian principles.
Absolutely. Whether they worked or not had nothing to do with them being wrong.
What’s the school policy on those types of things? Here in Louisville the school system has rules about what kind of images kids can have on their clothing, backpacks, etc. If the rule was broken repeatedly a visit to the parents is understandable.
In this case, I can see a plausible argument for probable cause for a child abuse investigation that doesn’t turn solely on the parents’ beliefs. Specifically, I’m thinking here of the fact that the parents apparently repeatedly drew the symbols on her body. That’s a physical act that could be evidence of abuse – it’s not the same as cigarette burns, but this is at least arguably a difference in degree rather than kind.
That said, if it were the case that the girl had drawn these symbols on herself, or if we were talking about a t-shirt instead of markings, then I don’t see how you get to the point where a search of their home/full-on child abuse investigation is justified without defining white supremacy as de facto child abuse in and of itself. If that’s the case, then I’ve definitely got objections to this. I suspect that at least in the US, most courts would as well.
So you’d be willing to make that a general rule of application in terms of initiating an investigation of child abuse without any reservations about the intrusion of the state into a citizen’s life knowing that in some cases no evidence of the alleged potential abuse would be found?
My wife is a social worker with our school system and i can tell you from the stories she realys to me that the school is often the best line of protection for these kids. Teachers and administrators are very atuned to these kids and can quickly spot problems. Usually if the concern is serious enough they send a social worker for a home visit. While there they are trained to look for certain signs for concern like the cleanliness of the house, the smell of a meth lab, who is in the house, etc. Their recomendations can go in a number of different directions depending on what they see.
I think the idea of a parent physically marking a child, especially with markings that the child likely doesn’t fully understand, is the kind of probable cause for an investigation that I would ordinarily require, so I’m ok with it as a rule of general applicability. True, probable cause does not equal guilty, but it’s a workable standard that balances the interests of society in stopping crime with individual rights against unreasonable searches and seizures. It also doesn’t require any inquiry into the political beliefs – however offensive – of the parents.
Oh, I don’t think these people are Muddy Waters fans.
Interesting case, to be sure. I think that there is an argument to be made that the act of physically marking the child with provocative symbols is cause for concern. But where do you draw the line? What if the parents wrote, “We are pro-life” on her forehead? Or, “We support national healthcare reform as expressed through the Baucus bill’? I would still argue that’s weird enough to merit attention. Why write it on the kid? On the other hand, what if it’s a shirt lauding purity pledges? What if it’s a yarmulke? You can see this quickly spinning out of control, or at least lending itself to abuse.
I think that the “false choice” here, if that’s what you call it, is the desire for a “policy.” The question appears to be phrased as , “Can we accept this in all cases?” This is, of course, necessary in a situation in which we have national standards. it’s necessary in a situation in which schools are large and the professional education community is presumed to know nothing about the student except the words written on her arms. In reality, the teacher is going to know more than that. the teacher will be aware of related problems, if any exist. Any difficulties socializing, etc.
I guess this is my pitch for smaller neighborhood schools, which I recognize sidesteps the question entirely. But seriously. With some kids/families, a few days without lunch money can be chalked up to forgetfulness or strees or whatever. In other situations, a few days without lunch money might be a hint to teachers that a kid is living on the streets gain, which of course might require some kind of intervention. So to seek a “policy” that prescribes an official administrative reaction when someone doesn’t have lunch money seems to remove the most important deciding factor: local knowledge and experience. This holds in many situations. say a kid has sudden, dramatic weight loss. maybe she is a depressed young lady getting ready to slit her wrists. Or… maybe he is a wrestler and its the beginning of the season.
Does it make sense to have an established, completely consistent response to weight loss? Does not responding to the wrestler preclude us from responding in the case of the nerdy girl? Similarly, does a swastika on an normally well adjusted kid require the same exact response as a swastika on a strange loner? Do we have to respond in the exact same way when a standard kid from the suburbs quotes a 50 Cent line about gangsta culture as we do when the kid in the trench coat threatens to shoot somebody?
I hope not.
The more salient question we’re left debating below; however, is whether, in this particular case, the government had a right to act on investigating the possiblity of abuse at the children’s home with, really, only the markers of the parents’ odious beliefs as signposts.
I don’t like setting the precedent of “odious beliefs” as being sufficient.
Sure, in this particular case, we see that they’re White Supremacists and nobody wants to be asked “why are you defending these slimebags? Is it because you’re a closet White Supremacist? Why else would you clear your throat and start engaging in light sophistry?”
I would be interested in knowing if we will have new and different odious belief systems next month.
One wonders if one will be in the cold, cold ground before any given cultural shift that has one’s own belief system on the “odious” list. One notes that one has been told that one’s belief system is “evil”.
What precedent are we comfortable with setting when it comes to letting the government ensure that The Children are protected from odious belief systems?
I’m not down with it. At all. At all, at all.
You seem to want to draw the line at “odious beliefs”.
You seem to be saying (please feel free to correct this):
“There are no beliefs that are SO odious that the government should ever get involved, because getting involved would set a precedent/rule that will be followed in the future.”
or, even shorter: “First Amendment”.
I can’t find a way to agree with that summary, as there are beliefs that are SO odious as to require intervention (just as with the First Amendment) not only by the government, but also by other parents/teachers/citizens. It takes a village to raise a child, as the African proverbs say.
These glibertarian arguments always seem to boil down to: “We can’t make a perfect system, so let’s not do anything.”
Famous glibertarian H. L. Mencken put it like this:
“The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.”
I find that to be a compelling argument.
You want us to make it illegal to strike another person? Great. I’m 100% behind it. You want us to make it illegal to disturb the peace? Sure, why not. What could possibly go wrong with that?
You want certain belief systems (absent physical harm) to result in The State taking kids away?
I don’t trust The State to be a particularly good judge of what is and what is not odious.
Even if they do have the best of intentions.
Famous glibertarian H.L. Mencken also put it like this:
“I admit freely enough that, by careful breeding, supervision of environment and education, extending over many generations, it might be possible to make an appreciable improvement in the stock of the American negro, for example, but I must maintain that this enterprise would be a ridiculous waste of energy, for there is a high-caste white stock ready at hand, and it is inconceivable that the negro stock, however carefully it might be nurtured, could ever even remotely approach it. The educated negro of today is a failure, not because he meets insuperable difficulties in life, but because he is a negro. He is, in brief, a low-caste man, to the manner born, and he will remain inert and inefficient until fifty generations of him have lived in civilization. And even then, the superior white race will be fifty generations ahead of him.”
If Mencken is a great hero of glibertarians, then glibertarians are in much worse shape than I thought.
As to your further argument, it is still the same. We can’t make a perfect system, so let’s not do anything.
I am curious. Are you a glibertarian nihilist? Glibertarian anarchist? Some other type of chimera? Your positions do not seem strong enough for a nihilist, and if you’re an anarchist I just want to know so that I don’t respond to your comments any more. After all, what’s the point of arguing with an anarchist?
I am a glibertarian chimera but “nihilist” comes close, I guess.
“We can’t make a perfect system, so let’s not do anything.”
This is not my argument. My argument is that the attempt to impose a perfect system from the top down will result in far more imperfection than will come from “not doing anything”.
It’s a harm-reduction philosophy.
I understand your argument (the harm-reduction philosophy). I would still call this the “we can’t make a perfect system, so let’s not do anything” approach, since your belief that the top-down approach would be worse than doing nothing is equivalent to “we can’t make a perfect system”. But, what it is called is not important.
I am further curious: What areas of government does this philosophy (the harm-reduction philosophy) not apply to (in your mind)? The Fed? Roads? Military/Defense? Schools? Medicare/Medicaid? EPA? Interior? Commerce?
FatherlandHomeland Security? Etc?And, do you agree with Mencken’s views that Americans are “boobs” (except for the pseudo-Randian “Superior Individuals”)? If you do, it must put you in a difficult spot. Government can’t be trusted, but neither can the “boobs”. So, who is trustworthy to do the “best” thing (the “least harm” thing)?
We’re all boobs. I trust the boobs to take care of themselves. I don’t trust them to take care of me. I don’t trust me to take care of them. I don’t trust me to take care of you. I don’t trust you to take care of me. I really really don’t trust the people who are really good at lying about how they’re going to take care of me to take care of me. When they talk about taxation paying for them to take care of me, I can’t help but wonder if they’re deliberately lying or if they honestly think that they could take care of me.
When I see people who say “those boobs can’t take care of themselves!” I tend to nod. It’s when they say “we need to take care of them” that I’m back to thinking “you boobs don’t have the competence”.
It’s not that there’s “boobs” and “the government”.
They’re all boobs.
Indeed, *WE* are all boobs. Those pseudo-Randian Superior Individuals? Boobs. Those pseudo-Marxist Superior Individuals? Boobs. The Republicans? Boobs. The Democrats? Boobs. Charles Jay? Boob.
I want power as diffuse as possible. When any one boob gets too much? Or coalition of boobs? It’ll all end in tears.
And, of course, there will be boobs who will explain that this was not inevitable, but would have worked if only the other boobs hadn’t been wrecking everything and if they had helped more and really, really put their back into it.
This is not the case. Why? Because they are boobs.
(I’d like to thank you for giving me the opportunity to write the most fun comment I’ve posted in a long, long time.)
To motorboat back into these here waters, this case is a case where a couple of boobs were harming their children.
How? Well, the drawing of a swastika, of all things, on her arm is a huge signal that “this is just the tip of the iceberg” and, wouldn’t you know it, drug and alcohol abuse, domestic violence, criminal behavior and mental health problems. Jason at Positive Liberty covered this in his post (linked in the trackbacks) when he said that WS types tended to be losers. Hell, I’d agree with that. We’re talking about people who are likely to be so very bad that they would be likely to do more harm to their children than yanking the kids is going to do (and yanking the kids *WILL* do harm). In that case, one is stuck saying that the kids will be better off with random person than with their obviously wicked parents.
This is one of those hard cases that makes for bad law.
It will, indeed, all end in tears.
To continue, I must hit the ball back over the net, so to speak.
If we stipulate that we are all “boobs”, according to your humorous comment, then how are we to trust you (a “boob”) and your (“boob”) opinion over any other (“boob”) opinion that might be counter to your opinion that we are all “boobs”?
As far as the philosophy, I’d say you’re closer to advocating an anarchist viewpoint (where you ultimately arrive at the end of your comment), though you arrive there through very standard nihilist arguments. I think that officially takes you out of the glibertarian camp. Arriving at a core anarchist belief (everyone for themselves) is not a glibertarian (those who won’t take libertarianism to the obvious conclusion) belief.
And, of course, there will be boobs who will explain that this was not inevitable, but would have worked if only the other boobs hadn’t been wrecking everything and if they had helped more and really, really put their back into it.
I find any arguments about “it would have been different IF” to be a pointless argument – intellectually lazy, and evidence of no real argument. We cannot “rewind” the entire universe to try things out a different way. One cannot pretend we know the sum of all histories to calculate how it would be different. Yet, almost everyone does it.
(You’re welcome)
Dude, *DON’T*. Reach your own conclusions. Do your own research. If I tell you to look at a particular website, sure, do that… but look at 15 or 16 more. Check, double-check, and triple-check. Research as to whether something like what we’re discussing has ever been attempted before. What happened? If it turns out it was successful, see whether there are significant differences. If it failed, see whether there are serious overlaps.
Reach your own conclusions. If there’s one thing that I want you to do that I do, it’s this: assume that other folks reasons for being the way they are and they take these reasons seriously.
My biggest problems and my biggest disagreements have little, if anything, to do with “I think opinion X.”
They have to do with “People who have opinion(s) ~X are fundamentally dishonest, or fundamentally ignorant, or are fundamentally wicked.”
There *ARE*, of course, opinions out there that are dishonest, or ignorant, or wicked, of course… but, in most cases, people have their opinions in good faith. Attacking folks right out of the friggin’ gate for dishonesty, ignorance, wickedness… well, it strikes me as politics as personal therapy. It feels good, I’m sure. Dar Williams should write a song about it. Hey, I’m a libertine. If it feels good and everybody involved is a consenting adult… well, it’s not my place to judge.
If you’re looking to change another person’s mind? Well, you probably ain’t gonna. Maybe by example. Maybe.
If you’re looking to change policy? Well, that will all end in tears.
Not to worry. I take no one’s word for anything. Decades of life will teach you that one thing, if nothing else.
But, again, if you are to be grouped in with the “boobs”, why should I follow what you are saying above (about research, et al) rather than listening to another “boob” that says to “listen to the voices in your head”? Why should I take you seriously, or more seriously than anyone else if you are at the same level of untrustworthiness to anyone other than yourself? And, if you are untrustworthy to give advice to others, then why give the advice?
You can see where this is leading if you look a little ways up ahead, just past that sign that says…
You will either follow my advice or you won’t. It’s all good. You will, however, come to your own conclusions. The important thing is that you be permitted to come to your own conclusions.
And the same for everybody else.
Still curious: are there people in the U.S. who are not “permitted to come to [their] own conclusions”? I am not aware of any in the U.S. (or the World, for that matter).
Also, still curious: Over some non-trivial period of time, let’s say I follow your (untrustworthy) advice – after performing due diligence, research, et al. Then, you offer some more advice at a later time, and I follow it again. After some number of times that I follow your advice, it is human nature that I will no longer view you as a “boob”, and will be more willing to follow your advice in the future. This type of behavior happens to everyone (including you).
So, over time, your theory of everyone’s opinion being equivalent (“we are all boobs”) becomes unworkable. It is a part of human nature to classify opinions on some sort of scale, because it saves us time in the future (this person’s opinion has been shown to be worthless many times, while that person’s opinion has been shown to be valuable many times).
This seems to destroy the initial state (“we are all boobs”) very quickly and leads to Mencken’s (and Rand’s) “Superior Individuals”. How can your philosophy be valuable after the initial state is lost?
Please read “people who are not permitted to come to their own conclusions” as “people who are assumed to have reached their own conclusions in bad faith based on nothing more than the conclusions they have reached”.
Then, you offer some more advice at a later time, and I follow it again. After some number of times that I follow your advice, it is human nature that I will no longer view you as a “boob”, and will be more willing to follow your advice in the future.
Your loss. It will all end in tears as I will break your heart someday. I swear to God that I will break your heart.
So will that other person whose advice you are more willing to take at face value because their advice was oh-so-good the last 3 times.
“I swear to God that I will break your heart.”
I thought you didn’t believe in God.
People a lot more hostile to theism than I have used that phrase.
I’m going to side with officialdom on this one. Having spent years in middle and high schools it’s difficult for me to not see the episode, drawing Nazi symbols, as just the final straw that got the ball rolling. But even if this was the first event to cause concern officials did the right thing.
It’s way too easy for teachers and administrators to turn a blind eye to difficult situations.
I recommend the cover story in yesterdays NYT Magazine. Gay middle school students comming out. Teachers too often ignore the taunts, “that’s so gay,” because it is the easy way out.
http://www.thinkb4youspeak.com
Thanks, Ad Council!
Sending a child to school with swastikas drawn on her body is so inappropriate that it clearly warrants asking the parents to come to school to discuss the situation. If that discussion elicits evidence that the parents should be investigated, well, there you are. No one’s rights have been violated.
That strikes me as a fair and responsible course of action, Mike.
As i stated in my last comment above, and as many of the commentators have pointed out, these types of things are signs of much larger stuff. So the school is usually right to investigate. It’s like the cop that uses a busted tail light to pull over someone suspected of a lot worse.
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