We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
|
A victory in the Netherlands for freedom of expression:
A political party formed by paedophiles cannot be banned because it has the same right to exist as any other party and is protected by democratic freedoms, a Dutch court has ruled. The Brotherly Love, Freedom and Diversity party (PNVD) was launched in May to campaign for a reduction in the age of consent from 16 to 12 and the legalisation of child pornography and sex with animals, provoking widespread outrage in the Netherlands.
The Solace group, which campaigns against paedophiles, sought a ban on the group, asserting that the party infringed the rights of children, and that its ideas were a threat to social norms and values in a democratic state. But a court in The Hague held otherwise.
– The Times (from the Reuters report)
Good for the court. Even easy-going Dutch society is prey to populism, it seems. Without constraint on ‘democracy’, then eventually non-majoritarian views will squeezed out; not defeated in argument, but denied even consideration.
Worth noting (1): Solace [can anyone find a web-site? I will link it if so], who would rather nobody hear the views of the PNVD, made their claim based on some putative ‘rights of children’. I would like to know quite how it enhances anyone’s rights to exclude from the political sphere discussion of policy on the age of consent, pornography, the treatment of animals, or the use of drugs – those questions that have aroused populist ire. Have any actual children complained? And if so, how have they been injured by ideas?
Worth noting (2): What is causing most frothing at the mouth both there and here is the idea of lowering the age of consent from 16 to 12. But that is the most plainly arbitrary, indeed vapid, of all the fringe policies on offer. While opponents can not bear the idea of even discussing a change, the precise age (unlike in Britain or the US) has not been agressively and rigidly policed in the Netherlands, and prosecutions of cases without actual rape or breach of trust are very rare. Those exceedingly law abiding teenagers who can not wait until they are 16 can hop on a subsidised train to France (15), Germany (14), or Spain (13) for a dirty weekend.
(His Most Catholic Majesty’s Kingdom of Spain is not generally pointed out by moralitarians as on the brink of social collapse – but then 13 is a rise from the Franco era, so perhaps it is more democratic…)
Overseas readers often scoff at my pessimism about the state we are in in Britain. Scoff may be the wrong word. Scoffing is now under close supervision:
David Ashley, headmaster of Greenslade primary, says that pupils who bring in packed lunches “are allowed chocolate on a biscuit but not a Mars bar”. If such sweeties are spotted, parents are called in for a quiet word.
At Charlton Manor primary, the head, Tim Baker, says: “Children get stickers for healthy boxes . . . If a child brings in a chocolate bar, we take it out of the lunchbox and give it back to the parent at the end of the day.” Pupils give each other away, he confides: “They say, ‘Miss, he’s got sweets in his box’.”
Perhaps the scariest thing about the article from which that comes is the vaguely approving tone. Here is information about what is being done, no questioning that it needs and should have government attention.
If you were annoyed at the support being shown for state regulation of fashion modelling, check out what they want to do to cheerleading.
Texas Representative Al Edwards wants state funding of schools to be cut for those schools that knowingly permit “sexually suggestive” cheerleading performances. Because everyone knows how hard it is for a bunch of jailbait dancing around in mini-skirts and showing their underwear to be “sexually suggestive,” right? According to Edwards:
It’s just too sexually oriented, you know, the way they’re shaking their behinds and going on, breaking it down…And then we say to them, ‘don’t get involved in sex unless it’s marriage or love, it’s dangerous out there’ and yet the teachers and directors are helping them go through those kind of gyrations.
That the state should not be instructing any children when it comes to sex, marriage, and love in the first place would no doubt never occur to this politician. More discouraging is the reaction from constituents.
J.M. Farias, owner of Austin Cheer Factory, said cheerleading aficionados would welcome the law. Cheering competitions, he said, penalize for suggestive movements or any vulgarity.
[…]
“I don’t think this law would really shake the industry at all. In fact, it would give parents a better feeling, mostly dads and boyfriends, too,” Farias said.
Gosh, if making dads and boyfriends feel better isn’t a good excuse to create more laws, what is?
I am aware of the arguments in favour of home-schooling. The educational standards tend to be higher. Children are usually brought up as reasonable human beings and not part of a pack of savages. In principle, home schooling allows for an upbringing that is tailored to each child. The conscription of children in schools is removed.
And then something like this comes along.
There are two benefits of even the most useless schools. Children meet other children their own age, which is useful if one is not intent on becoming a hermit.
Of course there is plenty of unreported abuse that occurs in full view. In some schools abuse is ignored or even inflicted. But most basically of all, a 12 year-old child turning up weighing 35 pounds with burn marks and bruises in rags might be noticed. So having children turn up somewhere where their disappearance or injury will be noticed is a valuable function of schools. Perhaps they need to open twice a month for roll-call and then let them go home?
Although I may not live to see it, I am nonetheless very confident that the day will come when the idea of compelling children to attend schools will be regarded with the same contempt and revulsion that is now directed at the idea of slavery.
That day is hastening:
A school in Swansea is considering tagging its pupils because of a shortage of assistants who can supervise lunch breaks.
The idea is for children at Lonlas Primary to wear the tags all day, with a buzzer sounding if they leave.
I welcome this development and I sincerely hope it spreads because it will make it impossible to deny that state schools are anything other than day-prisons.
I have always endured a distinctly uncomfortable ambivolence on the subject of the physical chastisement of children. My rational inclinations are to disapprove of it as a whole. The law protects adults from being physically assaulted by other adults and I find the arguments that seek to exempt youngsters from this law to be flawed and unpersuasive.
That said, I know that there are many good and loving parents who sometimes smack their children out of frustration or a temporary flare of temper. It may not be beneficial thing but, rarely does this cause any real harm. Consequently, I view the engagement of the machinery of law enforcement with family life with the utmost trepidation:
Parents in England and Wales who smack children so hard it leaves a mark will face up to five years in jail under new laws in force from Saturday.
Mild smacking is allowed under a “reasonable chastisement” defence against common assault.
The purported distinction is not one in which I have any degree of confidence. Law enforcement in this country is often patchy, capricious and incompetent. I expect that truly serious abusers will slip the net while normally conscientious parents who lash out once in a moment of uncustomary anger will find themselves facing a custodial sentence and ruination.
Even if that were not the case (and it is very much the case) the new laws will result in an entrenchment of a culture of fear and suspicion. Children contrive to harm themselves all the time by flying off of their bikes, falling out of trees and sticking themselves with sharp implements. I have already heard far too many plausible accounts of parents who are scared of taking their wounded charges to a hospital in case they are accused of abusing them
In another age and in different political and legal circumstances, I would not be too concerned about these new laws. I may even (cautiously) approve. But it is not possible to see these developments as anything other than another step in the process of the gradual nationalisation of the family.
Nor will anyone’s life be improved by this legislation. It is enacted, in part, because it serves the interests of the professional welfare classes whose wealth and status is entirely dependent on this kind of state activism and partly because of the unfortunately fashionable view that people cannot be trusted to arrange their own affairs in a satisfactory manner without the external discipline of regulatory control.
None of this means that I necessarily approve of parents who smack their children. Generally, I do not. But just leaving matters be is probably the least worst solution. Over the coming years, that object lesson will be driven home.
Of all the criticisms of the War on Terror (and there are many legitimate ones), at least there appears to be no intention on the part of the prosecutors to deliberately target children.
Alas, the same cannot be said for the War on Drugs:
PUPILS at a secondary school will undergo random drug testing when they return from the Christmas holiday next week in what is believed to be the first state scheme of its kind.
Students as young as 11 at The Abbey School in Faversham, Kent, will have mouth swabs taken to detect the use of drugs including cannabis, cocaine and Ecstasy, Peter Walker, the headmaster, said.
Oh but why settle for all these namby-pamby, milquetoast, half-measures? There is only one sure way to stop children taking drugs: kill them.
Yes, that’s it! Kill the little bastards. Think of all the valuable police and court time it will save, not to mention precious and overstretched NHS resources.
Kill them all now. You know it makes sense. If it saves just one child from a life on drugs it’s worth it. It’s for their own good. It’s called ‘tough love’…etc…etc… (adding shopworn cliches infinitum).
I have always liked J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series (though I must confess I have only seen the movies and not read the books). She writes about wizards and magic and yet the world she creates is populated by characters who still act like real people.
Moreover she is the anti-thesis of the sugar coated Disney pabulum of recent years. Not only do her characters act like real people, when the story calls for it, they die.
l have long loathed Disney for presenting some of the classic children’s stories of Western literature in such a sanitised and castrated form that Disney’s use of the titles is close to being fraudulent (such as the completely inverted ‘Little Mermaid’). J.K. Rowling is made of far sterner stuff and she realises what the focus-group addled hacks at Disney do not… children are also made of sterner stuff.
It is so bloody infuriating when some ungrateful, selfish kids simply refuse to acknowledge the fact that they are ‘disadvantaged’:
Scientists have witnessed the birth of a new language, one invented by deaf children.
A study published today shows that a sign language that emerged over two decades ago now counts as a true language.
It began in a school for the deaf in Managua, Nicaragua, founded in 1977. With instruction only in lip-reading and speaking Spanish, neither very successful, and no exposure to adult signing, the children were left to their own devices.
Preposterous nonsense. They must be making it up. It is totally beyond question that things like this can only happen by means of an appropriate legislative framework, an appointed governing body and generous levels of public funding.
Newsflash time, people: Little girls like to play with makeup. Shocking stuff, at least if you read yesterday’s Guardian.
The inappropriate sexualisation of young children is, of course, nothing to encourage. But the predictable calls for government intervention to prevent female children from being exposed to the radical ideas that girls often like to make themselves look as pretty as possible and girls often like boys that way are as ludicrous as they are predictable. Once again, we are told, it is not acceptable to entrust parents with the care of their children – we must step in and make new laws to restrict commerce. The likes of Bliss magazine should only be purchased with proof of ID and age. If we can just keep these magazines out of the hands of our (and other peoples’) daughters, we can raise a generation of females who do not think about their physical appearances or their feelings for the opposite sex. And if we can achieve that, then we will be a little closer to “equality”.
The Guardian also files this first-person account of a 10-year-old’s experiences with cosmetics and perfume. All of it is the same standard stuff that I remember from my childhood in the ’80s: hijacking mummy’s lipstick, ill-advised experiments with blue eyeshadow, spending pocket money on pink nail varnish and playing beauty salon with friends. Perhaps not finding any of this quite shocking enough to spur Guardianistas into joining the fight against big, bad commerce, the piece concludes with little Joanna’s confession that:
I like Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears and I’d like to be one of them. I like the way they dress. I’d like to walk down the catwalk. I’ve got Christina Aguilera on my wall.
Finally, something truly disturbing – and yet also not up to the state to control. Even if the idolatry of trashy pop stars or the normal, healthy female enthusiasm for boys and lipgloss could be legislated against, who would dare suggest that we should do so? Scarily enough, more people than one might think. In a nation where parents do not think it unreasonable to demand the state foot the bill for their child’s minding, healthcare, and education right through university, is it any shock that even those who themselves have no children expect the government to do yet more to raise them outright?
Today’s edition of Britain’s Sun tabloid features five readers who demand: “End our childcare misery, Mr Blair“. That so many middle and working class people in this country turn to the state to solve any challenges they face in life is, if depressing, unsurprising when one considers the prevailing British attitude towards government’s role in individuals’ lives. This comment from PM Tony Blair sums it up succinctly enough:
Some mothers will want to stay at home and look after their children, and that’s fine. But if they don’t we have to support them.
Actually, Mr Blair, we do not have to support financially any person who chooses to have children and then chooses to rely on others to look after them while they go out to work. (You may feel you need to ‘support’ them in order to be re-elected, but let us not confuse what you do in the interests of your career with what is right.)
I understand the dilemma – one may want to have children but not be able to afford to do so without earning a certain income, which may require full- or part-time work – but one makes such choices and then deals with the consequences. I doubt seriously that any of the women in the Sun asking Mr Blair to ‘end the misery’ of having to struggle to raise children on limited budgets, whose ages range from 31 to 39, went into parenthood without realising that making ends meet would be a concern. Kids are expensive, and although there are ways to make them less expensive (even the wealthiest parents I know buy and sell baby gear and other children’s stuff on eBay or in consignment shops or at NCT sales), people decide to have them with the full realisation that this life they are creating will need to be looked after and cared for. With that comes expense, and the need to work out how to meet that expense. All pretty basic stuff, one would think. But reading the complaints of parents who think that the state should be easing their burdens – brought about by choices they have made – with other peoples’ money, it becomes clear that we have in this country bred a population of adults who think and behave like children. I will do what I like – it will be fine! (But somebody better be there to rescue me and kiss my boo-boos better if it is not.)
Perhaps it is a shame that life is not so easy that we cannot always have everything our hearts desire (children, enough money in the bank, personal fulfilment outside of stay-at-home parenthood, trendy, slightly politically subversive t-shirts for our babies), but that is not a situation that the state can change with any amount of money they may take fom you and me.
“But think of the children!” comes the usual plaintive wail. To do so is terrifying: a nation of babies raising babies can only end in tears. How much will we be expected to spend on cleaning up this spill before the idea that individual choices matter ceases to be answered with a “Yes, but…” and a tax demand?
From David Carr’s posting (quoting the Independent newspaper):
Childhood immunisation would provide adults with protection from the euphoria that is experienced by users, making drugs such as heroin and cocaine pointless to take. Such vaccinations are being developed by pharmaceutical companies and are due to hit the market within two years.
I have a cunning plan.
Immunisation is crude and easy to avoid, especially for immigrants and people who move. What is needed is a form of treatment that is visible and difficult to fake. Vaccines can be expensive and there is a whole problem of producing and storing them. The paperwork involved in ensuring that all children have been vaccinated is complicated and errors can creep in.
So the obvious solution is a full frontal lobotomy with a tatooing on the forehead. Consider a few benefits of such a scheme.
- The pharmaceutical companies lose some business, but they avoid being associated with any screw-ups from the scheme. (This could be spun as an anti-corporate greed measure)
- No more juvenile delinquency, except the occasional suicides. (Blamed on tobacco companies)
- No more worrying about education standards: all children will be morons.
- Arguing about teaching methods will not matter. (Peace at last!)
- Parents no longer need to pretend to raise their children.
- The law can be changed: leaving a child alone at home will be no more dangerous than leaving the television switched on.
What is a little puzzling to me is how many schemes are being done to children which would be considered highly objectionable if applied to say ‘black people’.
Part-birth abortion is virtual infanticide, we have NHS doctors calling for premature children not to be incubated. We have conscription into schools, prohibitions of all sorts, cameras in classrooms to allow parents to watch, ID cards for children. Child rapists and killers can get shorter jail sentences than a child has to spend at school, (and they sometimes gets jobs in schools). Child criminals are effectively told to “do it again, you have to kill someone before we do anything”, so the honest children get preyed on.
The only short-term way of preventing this sort of abuse would be if children had the right to vote. Would four-year olds come up with worse lunacy than that which they have to endure?
|
Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
|
