Dinner with Orwell
Timothy Birdnow
Once again, the elites are trying to tell people how to live their lives - and are trying to use the force of law to browbeat them into it.
From ABC news:
"Ludwig, an obesity expert at Children's Hospital Boston and associate professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, shared his divisive idea in an opinion piece that ran in the Journal of the American Medical Association Wednesday: that state intervention can serve in the best interest of extremely obese children, of which there're about 2 million across the United States.
"In severe instances of childhood obesity, removal from the home may be justifiable, from a legal standpoint, because of imminent health risks and the parents' chronic failure to address medical problems," Ludwig co-wrote with Lindsey Murtagh, a lawyer and researcher at Harvard's School of Public Health. "
End excerpt.
By what right does a self-described "obesity expert" assert control over another's child? That child was given to his or her parents, not to some over-educated windbag with no common sense. Parents are responsible for their children, not medical doctors, not psychologists or bureaucrats. God gives them to their parents to raise. Perhaps the parents may not always do a good job, but it is not up to a Harvard doctor to sit in judgement.
That is the classic slippery slope; extreme obesity today, tomorrow it could be "psychological trauma" such as sending the kid to catechism school or having them attend Tea Parties. Every time society usurps the authority of the parents it ends badly.
How many parents have had the nightmare of losing children to family services over unfounded allegations of abuse? How many grudges by other adults lead to "friendly tips" that end with children being removed from good parents? How often do bratty kids punish their parents for punishing them by claiming abuse, then find they can't retract the charge after they face the consequences? I knew of such a case; the daughter was mad about being punished, and make accusations against the father. At first her mother believed her, but eventually she realized the child was a chronic liar and was lying in this instance. It didn't matter; Family Services put the girl and her brother in foster care, and the couple could not get them out. It's the modern version of the scarlet letter.
But that is a charge of actual abuse. As with all liberal concepts, deconstruction is occuring on the word, subtly changing it from meaning actual beating or rape into, well, something else. It is becomming a matter of abuse if a child is embarassed or made uncomfortable in the course of ordinary discipline. A few years ago a woman used an old family discipline on her child, making the child wear a little pig nose. Now, I would not advocate that, but it's not my place to judge. At any rate, Family Services swooped in and took the child.
And, of course, any form of corporal punishment is considered abuse these days.
I wrote about this a while back at Intellectual Conservative.
http://www.intellectualconservative.com/2009/10/23/dreams-of-their-fathers/
At any rate, start taking children for obesity and where does it stop? It stops when the public acknowledges the right of government to take children whenever it pleases. That is the endgame; to create the view that parents have no rights, that families are mere societies of convenience, that ultimately society and by society we mean the State is the ultimate owner of human beings.
They are not. Rights derive from "Nature and Nature's God" and not from the concensus of the public, not from the authority of kings, not from the brains of self-styled intellectuals. There is a simple principle involved here.
But the Left hates that simple principle. We exist to service THEIR pleasure.
This is the stuff of Orwell.
Once again, the elites are trying to tell people how to live their lives - and are trying to use the force of law to browbeat them into it.
From ABC news:
"Ludwig, an obesity expert at Children's Hospital Boston and associate professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, shared his divisive idea in an opinion piece that ran in the Journal of the American Medical Association Wednesday: that state intervention can serve in the best interest of extremely obese children, of which there're about 2 million across the United States.
"In severe instances of childhood obesity, removal from the home may be justifiable, from a legal standpoint, because of imminent health risks and the parents' chronic failure to address medical problems," Ludwig co-wrote with Lindsey Murtagh, a lawyer and researcher at Harvard's School of Public Health. "
End excerpt.
By what right does a self-described "obesity expert" assert control over another's child? That child was given to his or her parents, not to some over-educated windbag with no common sense. Parents are responsible for their children, not medical doctors, not psychologists or bureaucrats. God gives them to their parents to raise. Perhaps the parents may not always do a good job, but it is not up to a Harvard doctor to sit in judgement.
That is the classic slippery slope; extreme obesity today, tomorrow it could be "psychological trauma" such as sending the kid to catechism school or having them attend Tea Parties. Every time society usurps the authority of the parents it ends badly.
How many parents have had the nightmare of losing children to family services over unfounded allegations of abuse? How many grudges by other adults lead to "friendly tips" that end with children being removed from good parents? How often do bratty kids punish their parents for punishing them by claiming abuse, then find they can't retract the charge after they face the consequences? I knew of such a case; the daughter was mad about being punished, and make accusations against the father. At first her mother believed her, but eventually she realized the child was a chronic liar and was lying in this instance. It didn't matter; Family Services put the girl and her brother in foster care, and the couple could not get them out. It's the modern version of the scarlet letter.
But that is a charge of actual abuse. As with all liberal concepts, deconstruction is occuring on the word, subtly changing it from meaning actual beating or rape into, well, something else. It is becomming a matter of abuse if a child is embarassed or made uncomfortable in the course of ordinary discipline. A few years ago a woman used an old family discipline on her child, making the child wear a little pig nose. Now, I would not advocate that, but it's not my place to judge. At any rate, Family Services swooped in and took the child.
And, of course, any form of corporal punishment is considered abuse these days.
I wrote about this a while back at Intellectual Conservative.
http://www.intellectualconservative.com/2009/10/23/dreams-of-their-fathers/
At any rate, start taking children for obesity and where does it stop? It stops when the public acknowledges the right of government to take children whenever it pleases. That is the endgame; to create the view that parents have no rights, that families are mere societies of convenience, that ultimately society and by society we mean the State is the ultimate owner of human beings.
They are not. Rights derive from "Nature and Nature's God" and not from the concensus of the public, not from the authority of kings, not from the brains of self-styled intellectuals. There is a simple principle involved here.
But the Left hates that simple principle. We exist to service THEIR pleasure.
This is the stuff of Orwell.
posted by Timothy Birdnow | 5:55 AM
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