I'm sure there's a title in here somewhere
Omega133 said:
Maybe a "study up you dummy"? 
That was a pretty big mistake on my part.
And those things happen. As to studying up, it's like anything else: the more information you have, the more nuanced your outlook becomes.
I'm sorry. I caught my error just now. I meant to say First.
I figured as much, but with the one-two of those slips, I figured to ask instead of presume.
The song was: Darling Nikki, off his Purple Rain album. Mrs. Gore heard the lyrics and said she was embaressed. (The song referenced/described masturbation) Funny thing is, shouldn't she have previewed it to see if the CD was appropriate? Yeah. Did she? No. And then she blames the artist.
Fucking great story, isn't it? That was another reason her husband didn't get my vote in 2000. Had he lost my state, I might have felt badly about voting off-ticket, especially given what the Bush presidency brought. But it would have been hard, after all that, to vote for Al Gore.
Those are troubling questions, but shouldn't we take it the way it's written?
This is a problem that will probably never be resolved. Even accepting, as I do, the classic limitations on free speech—slander/libel, clear and present danger, &c.—we've never really adhered to the First. And what does the Second actually say? The NRA and its supporters, for instance, tend to ignore half of it. Some would suggest a standing army violates the Third. What constitutes the boundary of "unreasonable" according to the Fourth? What constitutes "due process of law" according to the Fifth? Texas, as an example, must face the issue of whether the right to assistance of counsel in the Sixth means that counsel should be competent; and how does that amendment affect Article I, Section 9? What is twenty dollars worth, compared to the Seventh? What constitutes excessive, cruel, or unusual according to the Eighth? The Ninth and Tenth are these weird rhetorical alternate dimensions that nobody can definitively figure, over two centuries later. What constitutes equal protection under the law according to the Fourteenth? Why weren't women considered citizens or people according to the Fifteenth (e.g., why was the Nineteenth required)? Why do some still argue that income tax is unconstitutional, despite the Sixteenth?
He was probably just trying to get money while not working. Or maybe he was that confused.
Perhaps, but in the larger context, what do we say to those who would count the incident as evidence of how Christians are being persecuted in modern society?
Well, the thing is, that parent has the right to educate their child. Sure, public education is available, and yes it would be the smarter decision. But what road do we head down, when we start deciding that that parent doesn't have the right to choose what's best for their child?
That is a sticky, even creepy issue. To take the creepy, for instance: Most parents are aware to some degree of a child's sexual development. I would suggest, for instance, Norman O. Brown's
Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytic Meaning of History, a 1959 landmark, and its discussion of the polymorphous sexuality of infants, as a route to become familiar with the creepier boundaries of the discussion. But, to take a real-life example, I've been aware of my daughter's polymorphous sexual expression at least since she was three. I haven't intervened because I don't see the harm in her behavior. I must be vigilant, though, to the one, but to the other, I draw the line somewhere before I arrive at counseling her on proper methods of masturbation. As she gets a little older, sure, I'll have to have some sort of talk with her, but she's seven, now, and I'm simply not going to go there. As a parent, how do I balance that risk? Creepy, indeed.
A theoretical issue I'm going to have to face wih my daughter in the coming years: drugs. She knows damn well that I smoke pot. She even
adores the "
Bag of Weed" song. But what am I going to do in several years when she faces her own choices? I generally acknowledge that, at some point, I'll probably find myself sitting down and smoking a bowl with my kid, but I can't say for certain that will be the outcome, and what ethical questions does that invoke? Thirteen? Fourteen? Sixteen?
And what if it's not just marijuana? Should I get drunk with my kid? How about snorting some rails?
For now, the one thing I can say is that these are certainly different considerations than creationism and racism.
As some have pointed out, as well, there are the questions of education, mis-education, and the rights of the child as an individual. There was a documentary a few years ago about racist children; I forget the name. But some of the footage from that is stunning insofar as I would not blame someone whose first reaction was, "Why are these people allowed to have children?"
Last week a strange case emerged from West Virginia, a
Christian preacher encouraging his flock to murder homosexuals. Turns out the sermon is fifteen years old, and the preacher repents in the face of public exposure, he's sorry, no longer believes that, and such. In addition to the question of where that stands in regard to the First Amendment, there is also a parental issue involved, because whatever else his family values might have preached, one of his sons—who would have been about seven at the time—received two sentences of one to five years in prison and ordered to pay over ten thousand dollars in restitution after
pleading guilty to two counts of sexual assault against a minor. Additionally, he served a three year probation for possession of stolen property connected to a series of buglaries in Indiana, and escaped indictment in Kentucky, for lack of evidence, that he had sexually abused a teenager at a Lexington school where he worked as a janitor. Is his dysfunction congenital, or is it partially a result of his upbringing? That is, what are the causes leading to certain effects?
Certainly, a parent has the right to educate their child, but what, as Quadraphonics noted, are the obligations involved?
But, more than that, the long example was intended to consider the question about the long-term relationship between individuals and society. In the twenty-first century, it is very difficult for some people to understand—and, often, equally difficult for others to explain—the connections between the American heritage of racism and the troubles facing the black community. Many disdain the efforts made to equalize and integrate blacks into the mainstream culture from which they were, previously, deliberately and forcibly excluded. Comparatively, if in some future it is "Christians" who suffer economic deprivation, will they blame society? And for what will they blame society? Will they say, "It's
society's fault for allowing our parents to fuck us up"? But, more to the point, how will society address the challenge? Obviously, the real answer depends on circumstances yet to occur; all I'm after is that a pure individualist outlook can create individual dysfunctions within society that, at some point, the community must address.
Anecdotally, a friend and I both went to different private schools. I went to a Jesuit school of high reputation in Tacoma, Washington, and during my short, ill-fated adventure in college, I found myself writing papers for my girlfriend on occasion, and she was an AP student in public high schools. To the other, of course, I eventually dropped out. To yet another, though, my friend was raised in the Seventh-Day Adventist community, and believed she went to excellent schools. She skipped college, though, opting for marriage. After the divorce, she attempted to go back to school. It didn't go well, and about the only thing I can say about that is to recall one night when I was helping her study for her organic chemistry class. At one point, she stopped me in the middle of explaining a concept and asked, "What's a centimeter?" And her parents paid a hell of a lot more for that education than mine did for the Jesuit school.
Obviously, I won't pretend there is an easy answer to the rights and obligations of parents in the education of their children. But I would certainly suggest that a purely individualist outlook can create all manner of problems in how one relates to the community at large. For instance, you note public education. And, 'tis true, you have established yourself as not being an extremist libertarian, but some would dispute the issue of public schools entirely. For our purposes, it is enough to note that your acknowledgment of public education, such as it is, also drives a boundary stake marking a limit of your view on individualism. I suspect that, as issues and circumstances compel you to consider other aspects of life, you'll find yourself plotting a more defined boundary. Try to be proactive in that, of course, and not so passive as many who have come before you. But, to the other, don't get carried away with the calculations, either. I, for one, can be said to be an example of one who has spent so much time defining and quantifying the living experience that I often forget to actually live my life. And that is, in its own right, dysfunctional.
