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>> champ, >> have read your further commentary. >> i'll retract my 'buffoon' comment- you seem reasonably intelligent, if a
>> little naive. >> nice piece of pedantry re the children having no choice, but as i'm a pedant
>> myself so i'll give you two points for that one. you're right, the children
>> themselves don't have a choice- what happens with them is determined by
>> their parents, subject to limitations prescribed by government. lovely.
>> now let's get down to brass tacks. >> there are a bunch of people out there with the intelligence of seaweed, but
>> with libidos like Shane Warne. they procreate. the government hasn't yet
>> done much to restrict that 'right'. so, they're going to get up the duff.
>> a baby pops out 9 months later. what happens next? >> in what seems to be your preferred scenario, the answer to that question is
>> wholly determined by the parent/s. Mr and Ms IQ-Of-An-Amoeba can hang their
>> kiddie off chandeliers for decoration if they so choose. poor little
>> munchkin gets burnt by the 100W bulbs but that doesn't concern you. Of course this concerns me. This example is child abuse pure and simple.
Whether a child wears a child harness or not is another issue. >> i don't agree with that. it's not my scene, not my bag- i think the
>> defenceless need protecting, at least to some extent. so, yeah, i believe
>> in governmental regulation. how far should that regulation go? well, how
>> long is a piece of string? but i have to say, i do think it should extend
>> so far as to require that people strap their progeny into child seats when
>> they drive on the streets. studies have apparently shown that doing so will
>> GREATLY reduce the risk of injury in an accident. and if the idiot parents
>> won't do it voluntarily, then the people who can't speak for themselves (the
>> kids, that is) need someone else to speak for them. The fact remains that there are times when a harness is appropriate, and times
where it is not. Let me give you an anecdote from last week: A colleague brought her 18 month child into work (she was sick), and then two
things happened: her husband needed the car, and we had an equipment failure at
work, and I needed to get the back-up unit from her place. The solution? I
drive her and her child home, and I pick up the replacement unit, right?
Wrong. I don't have a child-seat in my car, so she has to drag her sick
daughter out in the cold to wait for a taxi, while I drive her her place. Did the taxi have a child seat? No. But taking your kids in the back of a taxi
without a harness is perfectly legal. Apparently though, putting the same child
in the back of my car is a case of child abuse. I will point out at this stage that I have been driving for several decades and
NEVER had an accident, and I have seen the way most taxi-drivers drive. Do you see now why this story struck a nerve? It could have been my work
colleague and her daughter last week. Government legislation put people around me at risk. And this is not the first
time this kind of thing has happened. But, say the collectivists, that's OK because it's for the greater good! The
needs of the many shall drown out the needs of the few! For every child that
has its skull fractured by misunderstood mobile-phone-retrievers many children
are saved! Let me suggest that if someone wants to use force against someone else, the
onus is on them to prove their case. Taking away my rights to decide on the
best and safest choice for my children doesn't cut it. The person best qualified to decide what is good for my children is me. Just because you, or 51% of the collective think that there may be someone out
there who can't make good decisions about their children's lives is not
justification for putting my children at risk. As an aside, if you believe there are people out there like "Mr and Ms
IQ-Of-An-Amoeba", then you can't seriously believe in democracy. If people
are incapable of even making sensible decisions about their own families, then
how could they possibly be capable of making decisions for the rest of us via
the ballot box? Should we identify those people and take away their votes so
that only us "reasonably intelligent" people can vote? Or do we also
eliminate those who are "a little naive"? I don't claim to be any more intelligent, or any more capable of knowing what
is best for anyone, than anyone else. I don't believe in using notions of
greater intelligence as an excuse to control other people's lives. They have a
right to do what they will. I only claim to know one thing: it is my right to
defend myself and others against initiation of force. >> now, one other thing- why didn't you post my comment re the inaccuracy on
>> your site? Ah, yes. It is not only the human brain which is a fallible instrument - the
Internet is also prone to failure. A 13 hour outage on the part of my ISP
(added to a further 10 hour unavailability on my part) delayed the posting and
correction.
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