Your children are not yours, period; they belong to us. The statement is blatant, without concealment or garnish.
The consequence of course is that if you cherish your children, you need ammo for that gun, and several full size magazines.
ADDENDUM, 4/9/13:
Here is the full text of the video:
"We’ve never invested as much money in education as we should have, because we’ve always had a private notion of children. Your kid is yours, and totally your responsibility. We haven’t had a very collective notion that these are our children. So part of it is that we have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents, or that kids belong to their families, and recognize that kids belong to whole communities. Once we recognize that it’s everybody’s responsibility and just a household’s , then we start making better investments."
First of all, the entire concept is non-sequitur because (a) the notion that not enough money has been invested in education is false, given the cost:benefit ratio of the USA vs other nations, and (b) that the reason is lack of a collective notion of ownership of children.
But leaving that aside, the statement "...break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents, or that kids belong to their families, and recognize that kids belong to whole communities." is either disingenuous in its misdirection, or it is blatant in its direction. There is no indication that she does not believe it. It is obvious, at least to me, that the "collective" "community" trumps any concept of private "belonging" in this person's worldview, and apparently that of MSNBC which aired it.
8 comments:
I consider myself a conservative and agree that children belong to their parents, who have the right to decide how they are brought up. However, I think we are misreading what this lady is saying. She is saying that the community has been shirking its responsibility for teaching the children, and she is laying the blame for poor educational system with the community. I don't think she is saying the parents have restricted rights over their children's upbringing.
This is not the only conservative news story that has been misleading. In the recent report that a college professor told the class to write the name "Jesus" on a piece of paper and stomp on it, the implication was that the professor was promoting disrespect for Christ. But that's not what happened. The lesson plan stated that some students would object and not comply, and then the teacher was supposed to ask why. The response that a name written on a paper represented Christ Himself would initiate a conversation on symbolic representation (i.e. the paper became Christ Himself in the students' minds), and that was the goal. The teacher EXPECTED there to be believers in the class; if everyone willingly stomped on the papers, the lesson wouldn't work.
My point is that we don't want to give the Left ammunition to criticize us for twisting facts. Telling half truths is what THEY do, and if we criticize them (correctly) for doing so, we can't be guilty of it also.
Belong to:
1. to be in the relation of a member, adherent, inhabitant, etc.
...
4. to be the property of:
I think the American right-wing fear and outrage machine has (likely cynically and deliberately) conflated meaning 1 with meaning 4.
"you need ammo for that gun, and several full size magazines."
And this is how the right-wing fear machine leaves its victims. Fearfully clutching their guns (either that or planning the next shooting rampage).
Denise,
I have placed an addendum addressing the first issue at the bottom of the post.
The second issue is this: What if Obama or Martin Luther King or their mother's name, or Hillary Clinton had been written on the paper rather than Jesus? Take a moment and consider it, please.
Would not charges of racism, sexism, hatred, and even criminal activity be charged, with great moral outrage? Only Jesus is a viable target for stomping in our leftist culture.
The entire exercise was not just ill-conceived, it was misinterpreted from its inception. What is demonstrated is disrespect vs respect, not conflating reality with icon images. It is highly doubtful that any child would think that the paper actually was Jesus. The net result of such an exercise would be to demonstrate the disrespect that some people hold for things important to other people. And using an experiment that might not work... good grief.
I do agree with you that half truths are not truths. I also think that their feet must be held to the fire, and that they should take responsibility for what they do.
Action UK,
Read the statement for yourself. If you cannot see the threat, then you likely agree with it, and I suspect that you do, based on your snark.
You might not be aware that almost all the mass shootings in the US have had either no political ties (going postal, we call it), or have been tied to Atheism via Nietzsche, or tied to leftist principles, or were reported to authorities well in advance and the authorities did nothing as in Sandy Hook, or were Muslim attacks within the military. Your accusations are ill informed Ad Hominem Abusives, and are without merit.
And in the USA, we can actually defend ourselves, unlike in the UK where the intruder gets to be the victim if he is wounded.
The increasing violence, and the lack of enforcement of existing gun laws, coupled with endless drug use, and endless new restrictive laws from the left being placed on law-abiders, coupled with non-action on known psychologically dangerous persons has placed much of the population into a bunker mentality. Fear of the future in a Leftist world is the new reality: it is the Change We Now Believe In.
BTW, there is precedence in the USA for taking children from their parents. It depends on the definition of abuse. In Britain, Dawkins is trying to get the teaching of religion to children declared abuse. In Germany, home schooling is abuse. The USA follows the Euro-Leftist trend, but it will get there.
Unless it is stopped.
I do remember a guy in Texas who flew his light plane into an IRS building as a tax protest. That's hard to classify. And I don't think anyone else was killed but him (might be wrong on that).
@Stan: your comment concerning ActionUK prompted me to do some research. Are things really that bad? Just now?
I just finished reading a commentary on Dostoevsky's statement "if there is no God, everything is permitted".
http://www.pravmir.com/article_678.html
I understand it to mean that if there is no God, there is no ultimate Authority and thus, no ungrounded Moral principles. There's just whatever we want, whenever we want it for as long as we hold the gun.
Others (notably the erudite fools at Internet Infidels) take this to mean that everything is permitted because there is no God to punish us for transgressing. That might have been an issue for some, but most of the people I talk to have had the problem with Moral Authority that haunted the Brothers Karamazov.
I also see Dostoevsky described as a 'voice in the wilderness' - and this, in the mid-to-late 19th Century in backward Russia. You might not agree with me, but I think this business of the atheists rising up and tossing out God and turning us all into insects has been going on for a long time.
It can't work. It can never work, because the qualities required to make it happen and, more important, to make it stick are some of the first to be lost when you go down that road.
There is no question of C. S. Lewis's 'controllers' standing outside of humanity or the 'Big Brother' of Orwell standing over and above the rest of the human race. First, the flawless perfection and concatenation of skill and power would annihilate itself the instant it occurred.
And second, the very idea that there exists such a place outside being merely human is a power fantasy.
This does not mean that we are to put down our tools and let the Atheo-left tell us our children belong to the community. (As though the collective were somehow wiser and more dedicated than any of its fatally flawed, well-meaning members. Don't any of them remember that a camel is a horse designed by committee?) We must fight the evil as best we can.
But while the end may not be in sight, we can at least take hope. Our enemies, though they do evil, contain the seeds of their own inevitable defeat. Our task is to reduce the damage they do to human souls as each of us journeys through this world.
“I understand it to mean that if there is no God, there is no ultimate Authority and thus, no ungrounded Moral principles. There's just whatever we want, whenever we want it for as long as we hold the gun.”
Yes, that is stated more deliberately by Nietzsche in his “will to power”, and “beyond good and evil”. Half the world became enslaved by the New Man (ubermench) philosophy, and much of it still is.
“There is no question of C. S. Lewis's 'controllers' standing outside of humanity or the 'Big Brother' of Orwell standing over and above the rest of the human race. First, the flawless perfection and concatenation of skill and power would annihilate itself the instant it occurred.”
I disagree. The annihilation of the same thing in the USSR took 3 generations, and is still an issue under Putin. The enslavement of China has been in effect for 66 years (I think). Cuba, slightly over 50 years. The bloodshed was epic.
“And second, the very idea that there exists such a place outside being merely human is a power fantasy”.
I’m not completely sure what you mean, but I’ll take it to mean that Stalin and Mao were SUB-human, which is backed up in their biographies. Too much power leads to categorical purges and eugenics; it is historical.
The populations which were not alert to the creeping hazards of Leftism found themselves without options, and fairly quickly. I wonder if these things are actually even taught in schools these days. I read just yesterday that at least one college teaches no American history in its history department; it teaches black history, gay history, and other segmental history instead.
"Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.
~ Alexis de Tocqueville"
@Stan: I think we are in general agreement about most of this. However, I should probably refine a couple of my statements
“There is no question of C. S. Lewis's 'controllers' standing outside of humanity or the 'Big Brother' of Orwell standing over and above the rest of the human race. First, the flawless perfection and concatenation of skill and power would annihilate itself the instant it occurred.”
and your response:
I disagree. The annihilation of the same thing in the USSR took 3 generations, and is still an issue under Putin. The enslavement of China has been in effect for 66 years (I think). Cuba, slightly over 50 years. The bloodshed was epic.
I did not meant to say that it could not get started or even carried fifty or even seventy years. I meant that the qualities needed to maintain it are not reliably found in the people who have become - infected, I guess - by leftist principles. Sooner or later, the whole thing collapses - if for no other reason than that you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.
“And second, the very idea that there exists such a place outside being merely human is a power fantasy”.
and your response:
I’m not completely sure what you mean, but I’ll take it to mean that Stalin and Mao were SUB-human, which is backed up in their biographies. Too much power leads to categorical purges and eugenics; it is historical.
That's not exactly it... what I meant is something C. S. Lewis spoke of - the idea that any one of us can stand outside of the moral continuum and choose a moral code for others is simply not possible. We fall time and again back into the only moral framework there is, in order to even choose what we will exaggerate or suppress to support our own desire for power over others.
The idea that there can be choosers, or controllers who stand outside of the morality they choose to instill in the people they control is a power fantasy. The power alone would - does - invariably corrupt anyone who tries it. Atheo-Leftists are well-known for their attempt to perpetually 'have their cake and eat it' but when the dust clears, they are most often in the position of paying for the cake and going hungry.
Nevertheless, they continue to try to attain this impossible position - witness their enforcement of one set of standards for the 'masses' and quite another for themselves. If they paid any attention to history - real history, not the crap they peddle (I saw that article you read, I think) - they would realize that the behavior Atheo-Leftists like is not necessarily the behavior most likely to preserve an Atheo-Leftist regime.
You further wrote:
The populations which were not alert to the creeping hazards of Leftism found themselves without options, and fairly quickly. I wonder if these things are actually even taught in schools these days. I read just yesterday that at least one college teaches no American history in its history department; it teaches black history, gay history, and other segmental history instead.
Well, as Ford noted, history is bunk. It's bunk because it gets selectively taught according to the worldview currently peddled by the instructors, their bosses, etc. Real history is out there, but few can be found who will teach it.
I am not sure about the populations being alert to the creeping hazards of Leftism. Did they really have much of a choice, if they wanted to preserve their lives and the lives of the ones they loved? Circumstances vary, I am sure, but surely there are rightist 'creeping hazards'.
Please don't mistake this as a 'Tu Quoque' statement. I feel at least as strongly as you do that the Atheo-Left has reached an area that is degraded and disgusting. They should be rejected in season and out.
But as Lewis said, errors are sent into the world in pairs, and it is our business to steer safely between the two extremes.
(And help as many of our fellow travelers do the same, I suppose.)
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