So reports the Winnipeg Free Press: "Child and Family Services recently seized two young kids from a Winnipeg home based on concerns their father -- an alleged neo-Nazi -- was filling their heads and marking their bodies with messages of hate, the Free Press has learned."
Child and Family Services is apparently arguing that "The children may be at risk due to the parents' behaviour and associates. The parents might endanger the emotional well-being of the children." (It's not clear who made the markings and why the girl didn't cover them up, but it is pretty clear that the parents were teaching the girl the message behind the markings.) CFS seems to be willing to return the children, but apparently just because the mother, something of a white supremacist herself, had "recent[ly] separat[ed] from [the white] supremacist husband."
Now the parents here may be poor parents for various reasons. Among other things, "[t]here are also concerns about parental drug and alcohol use in the home," and apparently a good deal of missed school supposedly caused by the parents' liking to sleep late.
Nonetheless, the article -- and other press coverage I'd seen -- does suggest that a big part of this matter turns on what the parents are teaching the children. (According to the CFS, "Religious (and) political practices that would be harmful to children and cause them to be at risk would be one of the considerations when assessing risk to a child," and CFS's definition of harm seems to go beyond imminent danger of physical harm, such as when a religious practice leads parents to refuse to treat their children's illnesses.) And while I agree that children can indeed be harmed by their parents' teaching them bad ideas, it strikes me as very dangerous for the government to be able to take children away from parents on these grounds. Imagine whom the government might decide to turn against next.
That's easy. Christians who teach their kids that homosexuality is a sin.
Or imagine that the government is Nazi, and the parents are trying to teach their children that Jews are actually OK and don't secretly rule the world.
But that would never happen, huh? To weird to be imagined.
First they came for the polygamists' children, but I didn't speak out because I wasn't a polygamist; then they came for the neo-nazis' children ...
1. Live in a 5-bedroom house with a big swimming pool;
2. Earn more than $12,500 per month as compared to the parent, a new law school grad;
3. Afford vacations 3-4 times per year, including annual Hawaii trips;
4. Ability to give the grandchild $3000 cash per week;
5. End the parent's idea of raising the child in the Catholic religion and remove the child from parochial school.
California is one of the few jurisdictions in the U.S. that claims its grandparent visitation statute is constitutional, but as applied, the only thing California judges consider, in actual fact, is the grandparent's wealth in light of the "bests interests" of the grandchild.
They like to call it "grandparent visitation," but California courts award wealthy grandparents up to five days per week of grandparent visitation, more than 1/2 the summer, 1/2 the holidays, and impose non-move orders on the parent to prevent the parent from obtaining post-law school employment in another geographic area.
Hon. Ming Chin is the only one who got it right in the most recent Calif. Sup. Ct. "grandparent visitation" debacle, and really, the Supreme Court needs to grand cert on one of these cases coming from Calif and reinforce Troxler.
Because the way Calif. is headed, if a parent gets the bautician to give the child the wrong haircut, the grandparents who constitute the majority of the Calif. Sup. Ct. and Superior Ct. Bench in the State, will hire several attorneys to obtain an award custody under the guise of a "grandparent visitation" to a grandparent who files a Petition alleging it is in the "best interests" of the child that he or she will give a better haircut and a host of other Foo Foo Dust under the care, direction, and control of the grandparents.
Wait until YOU lose custody of your children to the grandparents who nit pick how you raise your own children ...
"anyione" = anyone
" bautician" = beautician
" ... the grandparents who constitute the majority of the Calif. Sup. Ct. and Superior Ct. Bench in the State, ..." = ... the grandparents, who likewise constitute the majority of the Calif. Sup. Ct. and Superior Ct. Bench in the State, ..."
At least I can say, grandparent visitation is the ONE subject the FLorida Supreme Court got right.
The State is not your friend.
More worshiping of slippery slopes.
Basically, I think that a lot of Volokh's ideas spring from an irrational fear of slippery slopes.
By the way, a poorly argued Harvard Law Review article does not transform irrational fears into rational fears.
In other news, the Gaede twins are almost legal...
Yes, and a snarky claim that a Harvard Law Review article was poorly argued does not make it so.
Hey, I like this game!
The point about slippery slopes is that the people who deny them are the ones trying to get behind you.
Then, when you're at the bottom, it's "Too late, chumps. You were dumb enough to believe me."
Coming to a Federal Government near you... soon.
The US is not very far behind our northern cousins. Perhaps 7 months. Give or take.
noted that the santayana famous quote, so often used in internet argumentation... "first they came for..." IS slippery slope in a soundbite...
And if there's anything the Texas debacle taught us, it's that you can't believe what spokespeople in my industry say about what's going on in the home anyway.
*Martin Niemöller*
I believe there is a difference between an idea such as "Jews are moneygrubbers." (Just an example, not my personal opinion...) and encouragement to action, ie teaching her to murder Jews...
Just my two cents worth.
Where I see a little more room for concern is the alleged tattoos. Permanently marking a child with, say, a swastika on the forehead would seem to me to come much closer to the type of real, physical harm that the state could legitimately intervene. On the other hand, I wouldn't want to see the state getting involved because some parent is willing to allow their 16 year old daughter to get a "tramp stamp" tattoo just above her rear end, or because the parents are willing to consent to their minor son getting some kind of vaguely thugish tattoo on his arm. What do you think about the tattoo aspect of the case?
- seven-year-old girl and two-year-old boy.
- she showed up one morning in class with disturbing scrawlings on her body, including a swastika and the common white-supremacist tag of "14/88." The number 14 refers to a familiar slogan containing 14 words -- "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children." The 88 represents the letters HH (the eighth in the alphabet) to mean "Heil Hitler."
It doesn't say anything about tattoos, and I'm not sure if I'm necessarily convinced by the "emotional well-being" angle. So based on the article, I'd say the government was wrong, but I'm not sure if they were wrong enough to warrant moral outrage.
That's how to earn tolerance these days.
http://www.infoukes.com/history/internment/gallery/
It is my wont to believe that as long as all ideas get equal treatment under the law, the marketplace of ideas will prevent bad ideologies from gaining traction. But then I read about the latest Stalinism on a US college campus and Finland tugs at the back of my mind. Now the isolated campus phenomenon has made the jump to civil government in an English-speaking, common-law country. What next?
I am thinking of a horrifying scifi short whose refrain was "It's a GOOD day!"
Anybody remember the plot?
Actually, we were interning our native peoples by the mid 1800's. Our treatment of the Apaches was particularly harsh and became a tool of war as we used internment in order to starve out the warriors in Arizona in the 1880s. The British actually coined the term "Concentration Camp" during the Second Boer War (where at least 35,000 people, mostly women and children, died of disease and privation) for their internment camps.
And it was not just the Canadians who took their native children away from their parents in order to destroy their culture. The Australians did it to the Aborigonies (until the 1960's). The U.S. did the same thing. As late as the 1960's at Indian Boarding Schools in this country speaking in a native tongue was a cause for harsh punishment as the U.S. government tried to destroy pride in native culture and traditions.
"The relationship was wrought with financial difficulties and brushes with the criminal justice system"
Also keep in mind that any time kids are seized in Cnada, parents have free legal counsel appointed and the right to have custodial issues tried in court. The article is intriguing, but I wouldn't jump to conclusions about whether or not Canada is a free society without having all the facts!
How many families qualify under that?
Of them, how many....?
You can figure that out, I expect.
Not irrational, but rational concerns. Just take a look at history. Its filled with instructive examples of escalating threats. People didn't want to rock the boat, didn't want unwelcome attention, were too busy to speak out - and bad things happened.
I don't know if anyone was farseeing enough to warn that legalizing homosexuality in California back in 1975 would lead to the California Supreme Court overturning the voters about the definition of marriage, but that slope was greased up pretty good because of who benefited from it.
It must be wonderful to be 3% of the population that always gets its way.
You're all missing the point - this is the latest abuse by "morning people" of my favorite not-yet-protected class, the "night people".
Ooo, those darn lucky duckies!
I may have been better had the provincial government used some other method of intervention, but it would have been worse for everyone had it just ignored the situation.
Yeah Clayton, its a good thing gays don't like guns. They would be an unstoppable force.
Aren't you the same crowd that seems to think the fetus has a right to life? How come the kids don't have any rights against their parents once they are born?
At the point where they are 18 years old. And these particular parents' teachings may be wacko to you, but to Clayton a homosexual parent's teachings are wacko, just like a Muslim would see Jewish teachings as wacko, Baptists see other Baptists's teachings as wacko, etc. Who's in charge of the government today? Tomorrow?
The argument really isn't 'slippery slope' so much as that letting the government into the business of deciding wacko-ness presents potential for abuse vastly beyond any damage the odd neo-nazi household is capable of inflicting on liberty.
When they turn 18.
Be careful - your "wacko teachings" might be next on the government's list of things children should not be taught.
So, let me get this straight: the fetus has rights against its mother. But as soon as it's born, it has to wait till age 18 for those rights to reinstate? Huh?
"50 office-speak phrases you love to hate"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7457287.stm
The name of the article says it all, and still reflects British understatement.
I think you should let VC readers submit their least favorite legalese phrases -- and see if VC can top the BBC for finding common, truly horrid phrases used by lawyers and judges.
"... thought police? I am thinking of a horrifying scifi short whose refrain was 'It's a GOOD day!' Anybody remember the plot?"
That was the 1954 Jerome Bixby horrifying scifi/fantasy story "It's a Good Life", which did use as a refrain "It was a good day"..
A child who could do anything made his small town disappear out of the real world into a grey void. Everyone had to only do things he liked, or be killed or transformed into something horrible. And since he could read emotions you had to always think happy thoughts whenever you thought he was around.
That was also made into a Twilight Zone episode (the original series).
And as others have pointed out, gays are already a nearly unstoppable force. It is not just that judges are ruling in their favor in areas that are ambiguous; they are ruling in their favor where the majority has clearly spoken, and there is no plausible claim that the constitutional provisions in question were intended to prevent discrimination against homosexuals.
I keep having this fantasy of writing a novel where conservatives somehow end up back in power, and judges use their secret decoder rings to find a constitutional right to live in a society free of homosexuals, and pornography, and alcohol--and the majority fusses about it for a while, but eventually recognizes that it doesn't matter what the majority wants, because the judges are in charge.
Damn. The folks at VC know everything.
Anyway, it strikes me that, in Canada, one might have to monitor one's thoughts for fear of one of them leaking into speech.
So, "it's a GOOD day." will be the new Canadian motto.
Right after Dave Barry's offering, "Technically, a country."
So much for the fundamental right of parents to direct the upbringing of their children.
In any case, those who do not fall into the liberal "approved" category better stock up now on food, ammunition, guns and supplies, as the day is inevitable.
I can only speak for myself, but I suspect that this type of action in the United States would result in the exercise of the "reset button" contained in the Constitution via the 2nd Amendment.
"Whenever any form of government becomes destructive ... it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness."
I know, I'll just use this magic marker to make a swastika on my arm...later mom, HAA!!!!
An even more important question: why should the right to be free of beliefs the state considers wacko END at 18? Shouldn't adults have the right to free and compulsory goodthinking too?
No, I'm pretty sure that children retain their right not to be killed by their parents, no matter the age. What sort of cheap point are you trying to make?
Too late, Margaret Atwood already beat you to it with The Handmaid's Tale.
As for banning alcohol. We all know how well that worked out last time morality reigned in this country and we took the bold step of banning demon rum.
There was actually quite a bit more to the situation than that.
I'm not arguing for it. I'm just pointing out the absurdity that would result if conservatives operated like liberals, finding constitutional rights that do not exist.
WRT slippery slopes...take a look at the arguments from social conservatives 100 years ago. See what social consequences they predicted. See which came to pass.
I'm thinking that slippery slopes are pretty well supported by the evidence.
And after all that, they still want us to believe there's nothing further planned.
Jeez.
Not all gays. Ever hear of the Pink Pistols?