Strike the Root:: Individual Responsibility, Not Group Rights

Mia,

Thank you for the correction. Admittedly, I haven’t really paid attention to his ancestory, because his color/race doesn’t matter to me.

Maybe I used the term “ancestors” a bit too loosely; he is hailed as “our first black president” and is assumed to fight for their previous oppression, so the inference that “his ancestors were slaves” simply meant that “black people in history were slaves”, and I find it ironic that the issue of race is present, but no one is making the connection between the injustice of slavery and the injustice of abortion.

BTW, I didn’t purposely use unfactual statements to make a point 😉

Also, Obama’s ancestors *owned* slaves, so the irony stil exists, though my facts may have been off.

With privelage comes personal responsibility. We must be responsible to uphold the moral values this country was founded on.

Hi Kelly,
Yes, Michelle counts. 🙂 Good points, as usual!

Tami,

Which blog is it on? I can’t find it 🙂

Hmmm…I don’t see a picture of a toy…there are three boxes above the “I love your blog” button that for some reason are not “opened”…I can tell something is supposed to be there, but they are not showing. Perhaps that is it.

Hm…I don’t know. I greatly dislike the sort of rhetoric found in this article. The whole slippery slope argument usually just gets the accusing group riled up and the group getting accused to roll their eyes or to fight back without listening properly. I don’t find this sort of writing or speech to be effective in propogating dialogue or change; rather it seems to continue to entrench and divide groups with already formed opinions.

I would also be curious about the writer of the article. Is he or she a minority? Has he or she ever needed his or her rights defended when large numbers of people or various institutions were stripping him or her of those rights? Specific groups have needed certain “rights” through time and history to protect them from crimes specifically against their group. In the pro-life movement, we are advocating for the RIGHTS of the unborn to life OVER the purported right of women to terminate a pregnancy. We are still dealing with the rights of a singular group. Many of the poor and underrepresented worldwide need legal advocacy on their behalf because humanity is simply NOT taking care of them any other way. I don’t think this is communism; we’re not talking about everyone being equal, but everyone having the ability to survive. This is mercy–forced mercy, perhaps, if it can be had no other way. African Americans, among other minorities, have required certain rights in order to protect and enable them in our country’s history. While the PC-mania of these rights can sometimes get overblown, I don’t think we should be throwing the baby out with the bath water.

I am staunchly pro-life, and I agree that personal responsibility needs to be a major part of the picture, not just legislation for various groups. I would also like to see the day when we could just have basic rights for all citizens and didn’t have to fight for the rights of certain groups who are being marginalized or in some other way degraded or victimized. But, unless you know what it’s like to experience the hopelessness and powerlessness of being marginalized, I don’t think I can take seriously a pointe-blank argument against this kind of “group rights” legislation.

Anyway, that’s just my two cents.

~Bethany

great blog on an interesting article. I sent a link to the whole article to my libertarian friends.

Actually, children are property, to a certain extent. That’s why kidnapping is both sin and criminal. The question is just what rights should they have. And worshipping God is both a right and a duty.

Even if someone thinks children are not property, that won’t stop the government from disagreeing with you. You see, things like homeschooling weren’t always perceived as parental rights. State governments have, in the past, taken custody of children claiming, essentially, “eminent domain”. Homeschooling is illegal in some European countries such as Germany and Austria. Now, we know that parents are commanded to teach our children God’s laws and precepts all day, therefore, it is our God-ordained right as well as duty, in any country. The fact that it is not a civil liberty in some countries is just an example of state (“state” being an abbreviated and accurate way to refer to civil gov’t) claiming the children as its property.

Now, does this mean that parents may do whatever they like with their children? No, because those children do have God given rights. Not just the right to life, but many more. For example, they are commanded by God to chastity, therefore they have a right to chastity, and a parent may not sell their child into prostitution for any reason. An extreme example, yet a common enough occurrence.

I believe that anything that God commands us to do is a right, as well as duty, not just a priviledge. Anything God gives us permission to do is a right, not just priviledge. Whether it is legal or not just shows where our rights are being violated. I’m not saying that these things are not priviledges, because it is most certainly a priviledge to be invited into the holiest of presences, but it is also a right. I suppose Angela was trying to say that not all priviledges are rights. If so, then I certainly agree. But some things are most certainly rights, whether or not those rights are legally observed.

Germany – “ruled that two Baptist couples lose their parental authority over their own children in educational matters. The court said it was interfering “in order to protect the children from further harm.” It stated that the parents had shown “a stubborn contempt both for the state’s educational duty as well as the right of their children to develop their personalities by attending school.” “

http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/139

New Jersey – “

HOLLAND TOWNSHIP, N.J. – Three New Jersey siblings whose names have Nazi connotations have been placed in the custody of the state, police said Wednesday.”

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28655143/

(To be clear, I am as appalled that parents would name a child Adolf Hitler as anyone, but it is their right. This is not a breach of any crime, and does not warrant of state removal of children.)

Lori,

Let me try to clarify my statements. I completely agree that we have God given rights. And yes, at the founding of our country, our government gave us certain Constitutional rights which I still believe these are privelages. Look at other countries and their lack thereof. However, people have taken these rights and have twisted them to fit what ever their selfish desires require at any given moment.

In reference to my statement that children are not property, that was directly related the comment comparing abortion to slavery.

This not directed at anyone here, but just so you know what some people are thinking about our christian children (pay special attention to the first and last sentances):

“But in our culture, a very strong presumption in favor of the parents’ rights to control their child’s upbringing has developed. It is so strong, that we let them teach the children anything they want, take them anywhere they want, and in effect indoctrinate them in any way they see fit. The parents’ treatment of the child has to reach extremes before we will intervene. If there is outright physical, sexual, or emotional abuse, we legally intervene.

But consider educational child abuse…Every time a parent passes some of that (Lori’s note – religion, superstition) to a child, the child has lost the opportunity to find out the truth, she’s less equipped to deal with the real world as we know it, and her life will be filled with more ignorance, fear, and superstition. And she goes on to propagate those ideas, miring all of us in the past.

When parents impart a religious worldview …they do a grievous harm to that child”

Matt McCormick
Professor, Sacramento, CA

http://atheismblog.blogspot.com/2007/02/is-religious-education-child-abuse.html

Sometimes I think some of these professors and studies, or German lawmakers…..think that religion is forced on a child. To an extent, they are correct. A young or sometimes even teenage child often has no rights or say in what they want to beleive, or how they want to pratice it….for instance, if a parent makes their child attend catechism, the child must. If a parent makes their child join the Klu Klux Klan, they must. If a parent demands the child go to church and sunday schhool and youth group weekly, the child must. Most times children wont vehemently disagree with these practices; it is expected of them and they see their parents do it, so they follow in their footsteps. Perhaps this is what is so frightening to the child counselors, professors, and physchiatrists.

Eventually, the childs right to choose makes its debue. The may start exhibiting these characteristics as a teen….or young adult. They question. They wonder. And eventually they take on some sort of ‘owned’ faith. it becomes theirs, all theirs, and they realize that as a conscious older child or adult, this is what *they* want. If it happens to mimic the parents doctrine, so be it. If it doesnt, the child makes his or her choice.

My point is that spiritual education given to a child does not hold the power to not present CHOICE to that child. The day will arrive when the childs lifelong teachings either settle in and find a permanent home, or possibly the child will need to restructure, and go through a process to settle into their owned belief system. I mean, most kids dont believe and resign to every last detail of doctrine their parents subscribe to….somewhere along the line, the child finds their own religion, all their own.

The only time IMO this ddiffers is when the religion is taught and the parents are hypocritical, abusive, or perfection-aholics—-we see this often in adults who were forced into a religion that the very pushers of it, abused.

German authorities have relied on Nazi-era legislation that outlawed home education to prevent parents from keeping their children out of the public school system for religious or social convictions. The law forbade home education in order to prevent “the emergence of parallel societies based on separate philosophical convictions.”

http://www.freedominion.com.pa/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=68846

Education can be seen as methodical socialization of the young generation (Durkheim 1956). Education must assure, among the citizens a sufficient community of ideas and sentiments, without which any society is impossible (Ibid). Sufficient community is for Durkheim solidarity and the meaning of social integration. Social integration includes systems of integration, but also reciprocity of practices and communication between either actors or collectives (Giddens 1988).
Home education is increasing in Norway and other modern countries (Beck 2006). If school attendance is considered important to social integration, non-attendance due to home education can be viewed as a threat to integration…

The ruling expresses concern about the development of parallel communities comprising distinct ethnic groups and immigrants in European countries. To avoid such social fragmentation, the Human Rights Court put the child’s right to an education above parental rights.

http://folk.uio.no/cbeck/Home%20education%20and%20social%20integration.pdf

White Humanist Europeans fear the subcultures rising up from the religious, and ESPECIALLY the immigrant religious, who keep having babies that will outvote them in 18 years or so.

Eurocentric snobbery, Eurocentric Liberalism. (Not all Europeans fit this bill, but it’s majority)

Lori,

Thank you for that research…precisely why I don’t shy away from saying the things I say about government education being a vehicle for social reform.

All us comfortable Americans sit back in apathy and say “hogwash”…we’re not too far. This stuff happens “slyly” as you said…so slyly that our undereducated masses don’t even get it.