Posted on
May 13, 2011 in
Who should decide whether your children may be spanked while at school?
- Your national government;
- Your state government;
- Your local government;
- Their teachers; or
- You?
Republicans in the Texas Legislature think the answer should be “your local government.” Allowing you to decide whether teachers are allowed to spank your children, in their view, represents “big government intrusion.”
Okay, Republicans, let’s review: parents are not government. You have been saying for decades that parents, and not government, should be in charge of children’s moral development. And now you want to put local government in charge.
Look, if I tell my kids’ school principal that if some teacher hits my children I will rain indelible public humiliation on him his family to the third degree of consanguinity in every direction, that’s not “big government intrusion”; it’s just a friendly word to the wise. You want to prosecute me if I have to carry through on the promise? Fair enough; I know how much you people like to prosecute people. Under your reasoning, though, a law allowing parents to home-school their children would represent “big government intrusion.” It’s not. Big government intrusion is not “me raising my children as fulfilled and successful leaders and members of society who will treat your children with far more compassion and respect than your children, the whipped serf offspring of morons, deserve.”
Big government intrusion is the government telling me, in any way, how to achieve that task.
Democrat Mike Villarreal of San Antonio gets it about right: “This is the most hypocritical (local-control argument) I have ever seen you make.” By opposing parental control, Republicans, you reveal your true agenda: not freedom but totalitarianism in the name of conservatism. You pretend that there is some magic in state and local government—that government becomes more benign the closer it gets to home. You love local government control, but local government is just as likely to steal your freedom as the state or national type. Often moreso, since local government agents are right here.
Rep. Phil King, R-Weatherford, and two other Republican lawmakers talked about the lickings they took as students. King said they “made a difference in my life.”
Zedler remembered vowing not to skip classes – in between his second and third swat.
Honestly, Messrs. King and Zedler, I’m not sure you should be using yourselves as corporal-punishment success stories, since you’re obviously highly stupid. But maybe that’s your point: “look at us; we should be serving time in a prison for the criminally vapid, but instead, thanks to the magic of spanking, we’re in the Texas Legislature.”
The Texas GOP and Perry’s “emergency” agenda this year is confounding. Yes, the party of “less government” is ram-rodding through, among other laws, the legislation you speak of above and a new round of tort reform. The latter continues Perry’s and the Texas Supremes’ scorched earth course of stripping away the rights of Texas citizens and making the courts less and less available. “Loser pays,” they call it. Except that the only loser that pays is the Plaintiff. In the increasingly unlikely event the Defendant (read: big business and insurance companies) loses, they don’t have to pay squat. I’m not sure how a law could be more patently unfair than that. In any event, I digress. HYPOCRITES.
How about the new DWI law requiring first offenders to get the Ignition Interlock device?
The Chronicle uses the work “spanking” or “spankings” five times in the article. Schools do not spank kids. They beat them with thick wooden boards.
Some of the Republicans said the beatings they received in school “made a difference” in their lives. I have no doubt this is true. When you have your head up your ass, a paddling is apt to cause permanent brain damage. Now I have a fuller understanding of Warren Chisum’s voting record.
Mark I think you’re spot-on with your remark on totalitarianism in the name of conservatism. The Republican party has largely departed from classical liberalism and embraced collectivism; some seem bent on a theocratic authoritarianism, others on a less determinate “because we SAY it’s moral” brand…both State-enforced by costumed thugs with guns.
Per the conversation we had this morning, I also think they’re using a “word-soup” of feel-good terms that their equally idiotic supporters will construe to mean they’re Against Big Government. I mean, they said it, right? That they’re against Big Government? And they’re going to make A Law that will make Everything All Right!