. . . but to really mess things up, you need government.
CassDaddy, there are several beneficial ideas and initiatives I would not want to see in the hands of government.
I have some ideas for education and kids that I would love to be able to implement -- in a private school -- but which I would never entrust to anything as capricious and corrupt as government.
Compulsory anything is tantamount to tyranny.
Discipline used to be something parents could administer and parents had no problem with schools implementing an extension of that idea.
Over the last forty years, with the infiltration of psychiatry and psychology into the system, working as a carrier wave for the values of socialism, the natural authority of parents within their own families has been nearly completely undermined, and the government and its surrogates have "become the parents," to the point where kids are instructed that any discipline at home which they feel is oppressive can be reported as "child abuse." (I got to experience that with my youngest daughter. "You can't ground me any more, or I can report you for child abuse." You just have to experience that some time, just to appreciate the sensation.)
"Treatment" is the new punishment. Failure to comply with "norms" indicates some kind of "syndrome" or "disorder" even unto "mental illness."
Look for this trend to accelerate. "Teen Screen" is a program where teens in school are isolated, questioned (with asinine things like, "are you ever nervous in front of your peers") and then assigned a regimen of the psychotropic drug du jour.
Our current vector -- if it goes unchecked -- leads to a fascist implementation of socialism.
When the majority of the nation is willing to vote for security-by-government rather than liberty and responsibility, that curve leads first to "tyranny of the majority" followed by a blatant centralized tyranny (imposed to "bring order" from the chaos that ensues from direct democracy).
I don't know if a rollback is possible. It may require decades of a different kind of infiltration of the system.
However.
When disagreeing with the dictates of the system is assessed as "mental illness" and commitment does not require due process (or the "due process" relies on "medical expertise"), now you have a system that defends itself against correction.
Soviet Russia used this model.
We're in the awkward position today of having a system that -- until now -- has been open to change (and infiltration), but which is on the brink of becoming opaque and self-defending.
SkyNet as government. (Awful metaphor, sorry.)
The more compulsory stuff we permit from government, the more we establish the precedent for compulsory stuff from government. Past a certain threshold, we no longer "permit" it.
Therefore, at every opportunity, discourage compulsory government programs, deny them your approval for anything of the kind.
When I'm trying to to fix something in my life, I MAY make a mess, with the government undertaking that same effort, they WILL make a mess.
I'll take my chances with my own bumbling.
I want to own my own life, the good, the bad, and the ugly.
I want my kids to own their own lives.
That's the source of freedom & liberty.
And I'm a big fan of that.
