Out of control, bullying public school officials continue their deplorable acts of violation against young children over incidents that puzzlingly seem to typically originate in the school lunchroom.
Recall the recent story of a boy who was suspended from school for five days after being interrogated in the Vice Principal’s office for hours on end, told he was carrying an “illegal” substance, threatened with transfer to another school and warned that he would be enrolled in a teen alcoholics support group after being called out by the lunch police for bringing a simple bottle of kombucha in his lunchbox packed by his own Mother!
Then there was the story earlier this year of a preschooler at West Hoke Elementary in North Carolina who was given a highly processed, cafeteria lunch containing pink slime chicken nuggets because the lunch police inspecting her lunchbox decided that the turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips, and apple juice her mother packed were not nutritious enough.
Apparently, North Carolina school officials did not learn their lesson from the huge negative publicity and backlash from that stunt because an even worse lunchroom incident has been revealed in a recent lawsuit by The Rutherford Institute.
According to the complaint Cox v the Sampson County Board of Education filed on December 6, 2012, Union Elementary School Assistant Principal Teresa Holmes allegedly strip searched 10 year old J.C. Cox as a result of the chivalrous act of helping a classmate retrieve her dropped coins from under the lunchroom table.
A press release by The Rutherford Institute on the matter describes in detail how the lunchroom incident went down all without a parent or guardian present at any time:
… on Friday, June 12, 2012, J.C. Cox, a fifth-grader attending Union Elementary School in Clinton, N.C., was in the school cafeteria eating lunch when a female classmate dropped money onto the floor.
J.C. went under the table, retrieved the coins and returned them to the girl. Upon approaching J.C.’s table, Assistant Principal Teresa Holmes, who was also in the cafeteria at the time, was informed that someone had dropped $20 on the floor, that the money was missing, and that J.C. had gone under the table in search of the missing money.
Holmes asked J.C. if he had the money and told him that unless he returned it, she would have to search him. J.C. told Holmes he did not have the money.
Holmes then ordered J.C. to come with her to her office. Holmes also called a school custodian and asked him to meet her at the office. Once there, Holmes again asked J.C. if he had the money and again, he told her “no.” J.C. even pulled out his pockets to show that he had no money.
The assistant principal then told J.C. she had no choice but to search him, and that she was within her legal right to do so. Holmes allegedly ordered J.C. to remove his shoes, socks, pants and shirt.
With J.C. stripped to his underwear, Holmes ran her finger around the waistband of his undershorts.
Holmes did not find any money on J.C. While in Holmes’ office, another teacher arrived to report that the $20 had been found on the cafeteria floor.
When J.C.’s mother later contacted the school to voice her concerns about the strip search, she was reportedly told that school personnel have the right to perform strip searches and that the assistant principal was within her rights in doing so.
Attorneys for The Rutherford Institute accuse Ms. Holmes of violating J.C.’s Fourth Amendment rights when he was inexplicably strip searched for stooping down to help out a classmate. In addition, they cite the 2009 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in Safford Unif. Sch. Dist. # 1 v. Redding which ruled that school officials such as Ms. Holmes absolutely do not have the right or authority to strip search a student unless there is evidence that the child is in possession of a dangerous item.
These frequent acts of violation against children and flagrant ignoring of parental rights by public school officials must stop and hopefully with this lawsuit, The Rutherford Institute can make some positive headway in this area.
The lunchroom has clearly become a warzone in many public schools instead of a healthy environment for eating and sharing with classmates that it is intended to be.
Do you have an act of lunchtime bullying by school officials to share? Please chime in with a comment.
Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist
Considering the news, I’m wondering who here that posted hysterical rants against “all” teachers and administrators (“thugs” and “armed thugs”, for example) might want to take a deep breath and apologize.
The principal in the CT school ran TOWARDS the shooter to try to stop him from harming her children. Teachers put their bodies between their children and the bullets, and some died. If I had written any of the anti-teacher rants in this discussion, I’d be very embarrassed.
Writes Melinda: “The principal in the CT school ran TOWARDS the shooter to try to stop him from harming her children. Teachers put their bodies between their children and the bullets, and some died. If I had written any of the anti-teacher rants in this discussion, I’d be very embarrassed.”
Yeah, and those teachers were statutorily disarmed (forbidden by law the exercise of their unalienable right to keep and bear arms) under the wonderfully insane premise that firearms themselves were an intrinsically “evil-bad-awful-horrible” category of things with magical qualities such that little children should be preserved from their influence by prohibition.
The individual schoolteacher – apart from being an apparatchik of the government “education” systems and therefore complicit in the whole hideous edifice of abuse and waste that comprises the politicized pork programs these educationalist gulags actually are – is to some extent just another victim of what John Taylor Gatto terms “the meatgrinder classroom,” and the comportment of the teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School, while valiant, was made largely futile by the administrative policies of the politicians who ordained the rules and laws under which those pedagogues were obliged to operate.
It isn’t the teacher in the classroom who should bear even the greatest part of the condemnation due our government “education” systems, but there is no hope for even the best of these front-line teachers to achieve what we all know they can achieve for their pupils as long as they must operate in the coercively-funded, politically-curriculum’d, compulsorily-attended bureaucracies responsible for imposing upon America’s children the mind-ruining stultification propounded and practiced by our educationalists.
Would these same teachers be able to perform as well – or better – in schools established as private-sector alternatives to the government Eloi factories?
Not much doubt about that, is there?
Okay, so why the hell don’t we shut down the public “schools” and free the teachers to teach?
Melinda – you comment on there being a “nasty” rant, and then you go on to name call yourself – “you self righteous rightwingnuts”……seriously the best defense for your argument?
Christina, you are correct. I should not have used the term “rightwingnut.” However, I wonder just what exactly IS an acceptable level of outrage we can express after viewing blatant racism?
I would assume the correct response would be…to ignore it. Seeing as this is the internet and usually when people jump into arguments that are wayyyyyhayhay in over their heads they usually end up making the point they are standing for look idiotic. The bigger person would simply laugh at what they consider to be ignorance and, if they are the type of person, pray for the ignorance, and be on their merry way.
Or they can allow themselves to become riled up whilst having no chance of winning a completely meaningless argument.
Oh wait, was that a rhetorical question?
Lala, maybe you should ask a person of color if they think it’s fine to laugh off or ignore racist remarks. Or a gay person if homophobic slurs are OK. What do you think their answer will be? What category of hateful behavior is serious enough to merit your objection? So, yes, it was rhetorical in the sense that I assume most people are troubled by racism, especially as overt as this is.
Ignoring bad behavior encourages more bad behavior, don’t you think? I mean, there are a couple of perfect examples of that right above your post …
Writes the running-for-her-life Melinda: “I mean, there are a couple of perfect examples of that right above your post …”
You mean the comments about your beloved Illegal-Alien-in-Chief? The “examples” presenting observations of plain fact that an utterly hammered libtard like you simply can’t confront?
Run away, Melinda. Run like hell. Reality isn’t anything you can handle, that’s for sure.
Lol. Melinda. As an over-achieving stay at home christian submissive wife soon to be homeschooling mother of young age I’m fairly certain I hear my fair share of “unfair” and rude remarks. And yes, I laugh it off, because engaging in ridiculous arguments encourages such behaviour. It’s called….reaction. No, I don’t think ignoring bad behaviour encourages more. I think that is the stupidest remark I’ve ever heard. If my kid decides to push my buttons to get a reaction, and I ignore the acting out, he stops. Adults are like children. If people make fun of me, offhand remarks about the way I cook or raise my child, what I believe and what-not, yes, I laugh at them and ignore them. And I am much happier. Being troubled by racism has nothing to do with avoiding arguments like a grown adult. Especially on the internet. Just sharing something I have learned, ’cause you sound like you could use some advice. And I have to agree, you are not being bullied. You are encouraging an argument. Trying to uphold your point of view. Give it up, it will be okay.
To Tucci78 who wrote: “…neither does anything else worth a damn nor really resorts to any other method in ramming down peaceable citizens’ throats the commands of the politicians, the bureaucrats, and the rest of the goons on the government payroll – ”
I have no dog in this fight over schools, although I think there’s a lot of hysteria and ignorance being voiced here. But anyone who thinks government is “not worth a damn” should visit NJ and NY and CT and ask them where they’d be after hurricane Sandy WITHOUT THE GOVERNMENT. You may be confused because typically Republican administrations are both inefficient and useless at helping citizens in an emergency, but Democrats are committed to the idea that government can AND SHOULD be helpful and responsive, and we run a FEMA that works.
Don’t know if you’re old enough to remember the mid 1990s when Republicans worked hard to persuade Americans that government was not only useless, but their enemy – as you seem to think. Then the government shut down and people got to see how much they relied on things like the passport office, and post office, and veterans affairs, etc. The attitude in the country changed pretty darn quickly. It is a shame to see these tired and erroneous old attitudes still being peddled to people.
@Melida: “…visit NJ and NY and CT and ask them where they’d be after hurricane Sandy WITHOUT THE GOVERNMENT….”
I live in New Jersey. I was present throughout “superstorm” Sandy (it wasn’t a hurricane when it made landfall), and I watched the barrier island towns take the usual pounding we get every ten years or so. We’ve had worse. The ways in which local, state, and federal government regulations have induced building where no genuine – i.e., unsubsidized – insurance could or would be underwritten very effectively set up the people on the coastlines both above and below New York Harbor for the damages they suffered, and its less a question of what government-as-Santa-Claus has been doing in the wake of tropical storm Sandy and more appropriate to ask what government-as-real-estate-developer had done before this entirely anticipated autumnal storm smashed into homes and businesses constructed like a sparrow’s nest in a rainspout.
Crediting the National Socialist Democrat American Party (I can’t bring myself to call them “democratic” since in 2010 they enacted Obamacare over the vociferous opposition of majorities among their own core constituencies) for a better response to Sandy in the Mid-Atlantic states as opposed to the goat-rope the city government of New Orleans made of the emergency response to Katrina in 2005 blurs the realities of these two situations.
In 2005, for example, the local government in Mississippi – hit much harder by Katrina than New Orleans had been – responded swiftly and effectively, whereas Ray Nagin’s corrupt and incompetent “Chocolate City” administration foundered, fouled-up, and generally proved itself abjectly “Liberal” in a crisis.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency in 2005 was operating under rules which subordinated federal resources to local control, on the premise that local and state and regional governments will have a more proximal appreciation of vulnerabilities and priorities. Dubbya’ administration deferred to the people on the Gulf Coast, and everywhere else in Katrina’s path, and except in Mr. Nagin’s Crescent City, that worked out pretty well.
How was FEMA supposed to know that the legally elected government of New Orleans was so utterly and completely diddled?
Fast forward to 2012 with tropical storm Sandy, and we get to see the Noo Yawkuhs screwing up by the numbers (much as expected) while down in Delaware and West Jersey – where the storm actually made landfall – we responded, adapted, and overcame.
If the administration of your Indonesian-in-Chief is so much better in dealing with acts of Allah than Dubbya’s boys, how come he didn’t get those execrable Mets fans all tidied up and tickety-boo as quickly as we managed the job a few dozen miles south?
Answer (of course) is that response in these kinds of emergencies depends far more on local expertise than you abject drooling Obamaphiles would like to peddle the notion. Your Messiah ain’t the Messiah. He ain’t even the Mahdi.
Happens that New Jersey had a Republican governor in Drumthwacket when Sandy struck, and little though I like him, he was able to get his hands on the resources and coordinate the response to the damage more effectively than would have been the case if we were still stuck with the MF Global embezzler Corzine when this mess happened.
Noo Yawk? Well, not so effective. But, hey, they’re Mets fans. Diminished capacity defense.
As for the federal government “shut downs” in late 1995 and ’96, for all the rucken and mucken (and I was witness to that gaudy demonstration of bipartisan bluster, too), are you mistaking me for a Republican? For a fan of Newt Gingrich?
Perish forfend! In the words of writer L. Neil Smith:
Your posting is a nasty, racist rant, and unfortunately that drowns out any argument you might be making.
For people like you it’s never enough to just disagree with someone’s policies or politics. You have destroyed political discourse by deciding that if you disagree with us it’s not just because our ideas are wrong. No, you’ve decided our ideas are EVIL and therefore not worth considering, much less compromising with. You self righteous rightwingnuts are the ONLY Patriotic Americans. The rest of us are not just WRONG, but we HATE AMERICA. After all, the (black and therefore “different”) President is not even AMERICAN! Well, look around you and see the government that has created in DC – happy?
@Melinda: “Your posting is a nasty, racist rant, and unfortunately that drowns out any argument you might be making.”
Translation of Melinda: “I can’t possibly respond to the fact that because the effectiveness of emergency response depends far more upon the competence of local government than it does on any federal administration, and it’s baldly obvious that New Orleans’ clustercopulation in 2005 was the proximal responsibility of Ray Nagin and his preponderantly Black, totally National Socialist, spectacularly incompetent political regime, I’m gonna squeal ‘Racist!’ and refuse to address this glaring, uncomfortable aspect of reality!”
And of course I’ve ” destroyed political discourse” for people like you, Melinda. I related the facts. “Liberals” like you don’t handle facts, don’t have “ideas” which correlate with reality, and can’t do anything but scream and jump up and down in a tantrum when disputants are conscientious about keeping focus on the consequences of political gormlessness like yours.
Of course, no acknowledgement by Melinda of the ways in which responses to Hurricane Katrina were handled competently by local governments in much harder-hit areas beyond the political control of Mayor Nagin, or how sound emergency management in New Jersey enabled mitigation of damages and more rapid recovery than in Noo Yawk and Lun Guylann. .
Of course, the ethnic mix in Noo Yawk is about the same as in New Jersey, but there’s gotta be something “racist” to carp about, right? It’s the only card a “Liberal” can play these days.
The “acceptable level of outrage we can express” when confronted by a dead-from-the-neck-up statist like you is simply to observe that you’re both unwilling and incompetent to attempt a supported argument in the face of informed opinion to the contrary (hey, you brought up emergency management; I was talking about the intrinsic and inescapable inappropriateness of having government goons running schools) and are therefore to be regarded only with contempt.
OK, let’s start with your first rant:
“With it understood that government is the agency in our society to which we entrust the exercise of our inalienable right to defend our lives, our liberties, and our property with deadly force — that government is in the business of “breaking things WHAT THE HELL DOES THAT MEAN?
and killing people,” and neither does anything else worth a damn SAYS WHO? MILLIONS OF YOUR FELLOW CITIZENS ADAMANTLY DISAGREE WITH YOU, SO I’D BE CAREFUL IF I WERE YOU, OF MAKING ABSURD CLAIMS LIKE THIS. ASK AN OLDER PERSON IF SHE LIKES SOCIAL SECURITY KEEPING HER OUT OF POVERTY. ASK HER IF SHE LIKES BEING ABLE TO SEE A DOCTOR. ASK SOMEONE WHOSE CHILD IS ON MEDICAID THE SAME THINGS. CHANCES ARE THEY VIEW THESE THINGS AS BEING “worth a damn”, REGARDLESS OF YOUR SWEEPING – AND ABSURD -GENERALIZATIONS.
nor really resorts to any other method in ramming down peaceable citizens’ throats the commands of the politicians, WHO ARE ELECTED EVERY COUPLE OF YEARS. YOU DON’T LIKE THEIR POLICIES, VOTE THEM OUT! THEY’RE NOT IN OFFICE FOR LIFE!
the bureaucrats, WHO ARE YOUR NEIGHBORS, THE PEOPLE IN YOUR CHURCH AND WHO YOU SEE AT YOUR KIDS’ SCHOOLS. ARE THEY HIDING HORNS UNDER THEIR HAIR AND A TAIL UNDER THEIR PANTS? DEMONIZING THEM IS A VERY FOOLISH ARGUMENT. THE SCHOOL BUREAUCRAT IN THIS STORY DID A VERY STUPID THING, BUT TO EXTRAPOLATE FROM THEM ABOUT ALL OTHERS IS ILLOGICAL.
and the rest of the goons on the government payroll NICE WAY TO REFER TO YOUR NEIGHBORS AND THOSE YOU ELECTED!
— just why the hell are these armed thugs imposing any kind of educational system on our children and adolescents? WHAT “ARMED THUGS” ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? IF ONLY THERE HAD BEEN “ARMED THUGS” IN THE FORM OF POLICE OFFICERS AT SANDY HOOK TODAY, THERE’D BE 25 PEOPLE ALIVE NOW. PLEASE TELL US HOW “ARMED THUGS” ARE “IMPOSING … EDU. SYSTEM?” THIS IS ABSURD.
Any kind at all?
If we can’t engage them in open combat, THIS IS THE KIND OF UNWARRANTED, HYSTERICAL RHETORIC THAT CREATES TRAGEDIES LIKE THE ONE TODAY. YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED.
let us at least deny them even the illusion of legitimacy, and treat them as an occupying enemy power.
They’re not us. We’re not them. They harm our children. We know it.
What do they deserve from us?
Let’s deliver.
And as to your second,
ranslation of Melinda: “I can’t possibly respond to the fact that because the effectiveness of emergency response depends far more upon the competence of local government than it does on any federal administration, SAYS WHO? PLEASE PROVIDE US WITH YOUR CREDENTIALS OF EXPERTISE (OTHER THAN SIMPLY INHABITING A PLACE)
and it’s baldly obvious that New Orleans’ clustercopulation in 2005 was the proximal responsibility of Ray Nagin and his preponderantly Black, totally National Socialist, spectacularly incompetent political regime, I’m gonna squeal ‘Racist!’ and refuse to address this glaring, uncomfortable aspect of reality!” PLEASE TELL US HOW MAYOR NAGIN AND HIS REGIME CONTROLLED THE FAILURE OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT UNDER W TO DROP MEALS, WATER AND MEDICAL SUPPLIES TO FRANTIC PEOPLE SUFFERING AND DYING IN THE NO CONVENTION CENTER, WHILE THE WORLD WATCHED. THEY WERE DROPPING THEM IN FREAKIN’ IRAQ, SO FORGIVE US FOR THINKING OUR GOVERNMENT MIGHT ACTUALLY USE THOSE SKILLS TO HELP ITS OWN CITIZENS. SINCE YOU CAN’T DEFEND THIS, THE USE OF THE WORD “RACIST” TO DESCRIBE YOUR COMMENTS IS APPROPRIATE AND BASED ON REASON AND LOGIC.
And of course I’ve ” destroyed political discourse” for people like you, Melinda. I related the facts. “Liberals” like you don’t handle facts, don’t have “ideas” which correlate with reality, and can’t do anything but scream and jump up and down in a tantrum when disputants are conscientious about keeping focus on the consequences of political gormlessness like yours. I BELIEVE THIS PARAGRAPH COMPLETELY MAKES MY POINT. YOU DON’T JUST DISAGREE WITH ME, YOU HEAP INSULTS ALONG WITH YOUR DIATRIBE. DO YOU THINK THIS PROMOTES “POLITICAL DISCOURSE”?
Of course, no acknowledgement by Melinda of the ways in which responses to Hurricane Katrina were handled competently by local governments in much harder-hit areas beyond the political control of Mayor Nagin, or how sound emergency management in New Jersey enabled mitigation of damages and more rapid recovery than in Noo Yawk and Lun Guylann. . REGARDING KATRINA, WHAT I DO KNOW IS THAT THE GOVERNOR OF MISSISSIPPI WAS A POLITICAL CRONY OF W, AND THE REPUBLICAN SENATORS FROM THERE WERE POWERFUL MEN WHO EXERTED PRESSURE ON THEIR COHORTS IN GOVERNMENT TO PROVIDE MORE FUNDS AND MORE RESOURCES TO THEIR STATE THAN OTHERS.
Of course, the ethnic mix in Noo Yawk is about the same as in New Jersey, but there’s gotta be something “racist” to carp about, right? It’s the only card a “Liberal” can play these days. I SAID NOTHING ABOUT THE RESPONSE TO SANDY, OR THAT IT MIGHT BE RACIST. YOU’RE DELUSIONAL. WHAT I FOUND RACIST WAS THE DISRESPECTFUL AND ABSURD WAYS YOU REFERRED TO THE PRESIDENT (not even American!) I FOUND THIS VERY OFFENSIVE, AND I BELIEVE OTHERS DID AS WELL.
The “acceptable level of outrage we can express” when confronted by a dead-from-the-neck-up statist like you is simply to observe that you’re both unwilling and incompetent to attempt a supported argument in the face of informed opinion to the contrary (hey, you brought up emergency management; I was talking about the intrinsic and inescapable inappropriateness of having government goons running schools) and are therefore to be regarded only with contempt. THERE YOU GO AGAIN, WITH THE HYSTERIA, INSULTS AND DERISION. PATHETIC. TAKE A LOOK AT THE NEWS TODAY AND ASK YOURSELF HOW ATTITUDES AND ACCUSATIONS LIKE YOURS FEED THE LUNACY THAT DOES US SO MUCH HARM.
Rather than writing a coherent post (something akin to “getting it in one sack), Melinda goes “ALL CAPS” without much of an attempt to voice something that can charitably be called an argument. But what the hell. You work with what such critters give you, right?
Yet another of those aspects of reality with which “Liberals” aren’t capable of consciously or purposefully coping is the fact that (in the words of Mao Zedong) “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” This is one of those inescapable truisms so baldly, obviously correct that no matter what else one says about murdering statist monsters on the political left, you’ve got to cede them points for making themselves so plainly understood that only a “Liberal” is willfully stupid enough to deny their evil.
Now, with it understood that governments – even when their minions and machinators give the illusion that they’re nice, churchgoing, community-minded, cuddly public servants – rely first and last upon legal usages which confer upon them a functional monopoly upon the use of deadly force to compel from their neighbors obedience to these government thugs’ orders.
And thugs they most certainly are. When they’re fulfilling their roles as George Orwell’s “rough men” who stand ready to do retaliatory violence to protect the individual human rights of their employers – the members of the public at large – these government officers are engaged under strict rule of law in an arguably necessary function. They pose a deterrent against aggressive violations of the rights of the human being to life, to liberty, and to property.
That’s the “breaking things and killing people” business. Any honest cop, every thoughtful military serviceman, understands this. It’s part of the job they contract to do, why they swear their respective oaths of commitment to these deadly purposes under the clearly articulated constraints of regulations and laws structuring their authorities and responsibilities not as citizens with rights but as servants with duties.
It doesn’t matter how these “public servants” got into the roles they actively sought – to gain the power of life and death (and that’s meant literally) over their neighbors – or how “nice” a hapless idiot (like Melinda) might want to assume they are. Their ostensible intentions, stated objectives, smarming protestations of bonhomie, patriotism, charitable warmth, or high-mindedness matter not at all. What’s confronting you, like it or not, is that these people want the power to point deadly weapons at their neighbors, to make those neighbors helpless in the face of violent force, and to command those neighbors to obey.
This is one of the rude facts about the institution of civil government which “Liberals” (and almost all “social” conservatives) emphatically do not want to confront.
Whether these armed thugs get their access to power by passing a civil service exam, through nepotism, or by winning a popularity contest (those “elections” in which nose-counters vest some sort of sanctification), they rely upon aggressively threatening the lives, the liberties, and the properties of their fellow citizens in order to serve their personal purposes, whatever they might in fact be.
Maintaining focus upon this underlying foundation of deadly violence as the essential quality of all government is what keeps attention upon the inescapable dangers of these agencies escaping the controls necessary to prevent an ugly but arguably necessary “servant” from becoming a hideously destructive “master.”
The average political “Liberal,” enamored of the allegedly neat stuff he can do if only his stubborn neighbors can be persuaded – at gunpoint – to obey the will of the enlightened, good, and all-around swell social sensibilities of the “Liberal” authoritarian.
Heck, you “Liberals” only want to do it to us (against our better judgement, in spite of our will to the contrary, and facing the explicit refusal of our consent) for our own good, don’tcha? And you’ll be the judges of what’s good, of course.
In the imposition of school systems by government fiat, we see exemplification of the authoritarian impulse pervasive through all civil government. The little tinpot tyrannies of the schools give us the very model of the total state. That’s what it was designed to do when Horace Mann and his correspondents set out their agenda more than a century and a half ago.
Now we’ve got a massacre in yet another “gun-free school zone,” this time in Connecticut, and the “Liberals” are predictably squealing for increased levels of victim disarmament (as if the advertisement of the government schools as target-rich environments weren’t enough). Jeez, didn’t writer William Burroughs put it perfectly?
Another of the aspects of reality that “Liberals” don’t handle at all well is the fact that the armed goons of government can’t be everywhere at all times. Their function is retaliatory, remember, and their purpose is deterrence.
By definition, deterrence after the fact doesn’t work against suicidal psychopaths intent upon massacre, and slaughters such as this one cannot be prevented by the sorts of pre-emptive legislation inflicted upon the polity by “Liberal” magical thinking. The initiative is always with the aggressor, including choice of weapons, and even a “Liberal” can’t be stupid enough to claim that “There Oughtta Be A Law!” can make all death-dealing implements magically disappear.
The exercise of the law-abiding private citizen’s right to keep and bear those weapons which suit his or her personal self-protection (and the protection of those around them) is the only real counterforce capable of quick response to attacks such as took place in that “gun-free school zone” at the Sandy Hook Elementary School earlier today.
In this case we have a glaring example of how government thugs FAILED in their essential “breaking things and killing people” function, while at the same time they imposed upon the people of that community in Connecticut impairments to the exercise of the citizen’s own due diligence in providing for the defense of that school and the children inside it, removing from the malefactor’s consideration even the supposition that he might meet armed opposition in his course of action.
Yours is a kind of psychotic hoplophobia widespread among “Liberals,” compounded by your never quite consciously acknowledged understanding that you have much to fear from your law-abiding fellow citizens who, in exercising their rights to take up protective measures for the preservation of their persons and property, make of them both psychologically and materially the sorts of “hard targets” neither you nor any other coercively-minded authoritarian can move against with impunity.
At 9:20 PM on 14 December, Melinda continues sputtering incoherently. Well, you can’t be a “Liberal” unless you’re incompetent, evil, and/or insane. Bets can be taken on all three characteristics when it comes to Melinda.
For instance, now she’s showing incompetence in debate by demanding a disputant’s “CREDENTIALS OF EXPERTISE (OTHER THAN SIMPLY INHABITING A PLACE)”
which is the logical fallacy of argumentum ad hominem. That’s simply an attack upon the person voicing an observation or opinion rather than on the facts he has advanced and/or the conclusions he’s drawn from those facts.
Yes, I know. You’re a “Liberal,” you’ve never engaged in referee’d debate, you have no education whatsoever in logic, and you think that argumentum ad hominem is nothing but a fancy-schmancy Latin synonym for “nasty.” In this – as in so much else – you’re wrong. But pointing that out won’t help you to educate yourself, will it? Heck, you wouldn’t be a “Liberal” were that not the case.
Little hint, Melinda: you can use limited hypertext markup coding in these comments boxe, including “boldface,” “italics,” and the “blockquote” function, so your “ALL CAPS” idiocy is not only inappropriate but profoundly demonstrative of your failure to understand the tool of expression available to you.
Ray Nagin and his National Socialist corruptocrats masquerading as a legitimate city government in New Orleans at the time of Hurricane Katrina had legal jurisdiction in the Crescent City, with specific controlling authority over city and parish resources which could not, in law, be usurped by the state government in Baton Rouge or by the federal government in Washington.
This isn’t the place to discuss the fact that the FEMA operating model isn’t the best means of coordinating large-scale responses to major emergencies. I recommend instead writer Jerry Pournelle’s comments on the Katrina response overall, uttered in media res during and shortly after Katrina, and which can be found online. Pournelle had some considerable experience in California state government emergency planning, and applied that to his consideration of what went right, what went wrong, and how it could have been done better in the Gulf Coast region before, during, and after Katrina.
Suffice it to say that had Dubbya’s federal bureaucrats acted (for instance) “TO DROP MEALS, WATER AND MEDICAL SUPPLIES TO FRANTIC PEOPLE SUFFERING AND DYING IN THE [New Orleans] CONVENTION CENTER,” they would have had to take such actions without coordinating with whatever in hell it was that Nagin’s hapless idiots on the city payroll were doing.
And, remember, those hapless idiots of Nagin’s were not only the local authorities, they were also the people supposedly with the special knowledge of what was happening and what measures had to be undertaken to meet those challenges. Savvy “jurisdiction,” Melinda? No? Well, that’s not surprising.
As I’ve observed, where FEMA moved in accord with its operational model to support the local governments in Louisiana, east Texas, and Mississippi outside of New Orleans and the National Socialist satrapy run by Ray Nagin, the federal efforts worked about as well as bureaucracy ever does. It coulda been done better, but we’re dealing with politicians here, and their only real expertise is in winning popularity contests. Competence in a crunch comes way down the list of priorities.
Speaking of military operations in Iraq (not that I’m defending Dubbya’s playtime in the Sandbox), consider that those responses to the “emergency” that is warfare were in 2005 being carried out under painstakingly explicit rules of engagement by officers and officials in a well-defined chain of command.
It’s in “chain of command” that Ray Nagin and his deer-in-the-headlamps New Orleans city administration screwed the pooch during and after Katrina. Chain of command is why a federal government emergency response guy doesn’t simply shoulder an incompetent schmuck like Ray Nagin aside and preemptively take over.
Had FEMA done that in “Chocolate City” when Katrina was on its way to landfall, you “Liberals” would have howled “RACIST!” at the tops of your screeching voices, wouldnt’cha?
Ray Nagin and his affirmative action political machine – high in melanin content, low in real ability – had to hit the wall before their failures were proven. The private citizens screwed by Nagin’s inadequate planning, poor implementation, and blazing lack of common sense had to suffer for it.
First, understand that there’s nothing magical about government – and much that is sordid, disgraceful, and catastrophically bad, no matter what level you’re looking at. Second, though I abjure the concept of “collective responsibility,” the people of New Orleans had acted politically to ensure that they got Nagin and his ilk in control of their city and parish government.
They didn’t want good government. They wanted Ray Nagin and his buddies. Ray Nagin – and the spectacle of failure in emergency response – is what they got.
To quote Jerry Pournelle in another context, “Think of it as evolution in action.”
Oh, yeah. You don’t like “INSULTS” (more precisely, assessments of your wonderfully “Liberal” idiocy). Jeez, that’s tough. Try practicing lucidly reasoned thought, expressing it in your online posts, and – above all else – renounce your leftie-luzer approach to life, the universe, and everything. Who knows? You might learn something about reality which will help you to become less of a burden to your fellow citizens, if only by shutting your yap once you’ve realized that you’re just digging yourself deeper into a hole.
As for our POTUS-With-An-Asterisk (the guy who couldn’t pass a security background check for a low-level job at the Federal Emergency Management Agency with the documentation he’s presented as proof of identity thus far), that is a sore point with you Obamaphiles, isn’t it?
It’s “DISRESPECTFUL” to observe these plain facts about Michelle’s Metrosexual Meatpuppet? Just what the hell is supposed to sanctify this Cook County corruptocrat, anyway? His track record is sketchy, what there is of it is odious, and to the extent that trained, experienced forensic evidence examiners have been able to get access to the critter’s documentation (blocked by the National Socialists at great expense, including the sweaty shystering of the law firm of Perkins Coie, who have collected millions of bucks from your Messiah’s campaign funds after the elections of 2008 were concluded) there’s ample support for a full-bore criminal investigation that could not only see this guy stripped of public office – permanently – but spending the rest of his life in a federal penitentiary.
Pursuing nothing more his alleged 1980 (actually a “2008” date stamp clumsily carved in half and inverted to read “80–“) Selective Service registration would be enough to march Stanley Ann’s little red diaper baby out of the White House and off the federal payroll for the rest of his life.
Observing these plain facts is supposed somehow to be “DISRESPECTFUL”?
Melinda, he’s a politician. Moreover, he’s a product of the Cook County machine, and dirty even by the standards of Illinois. The fact that he’s got a cutaneous albedo about the same as that of the average Sicilian doesn’t put him beyond examination as yet another specimen of crook, simply because you “Liberals” are consumed by incoherent guilt over matters for which you bear no responsibility.
And I’ve got news for you. Neither do those of your Caucasian neighbors who think that Barry Soebarkah (or whatever in hell his legal name actually is) really ought to be bounced out of the White House and into the Big House until his multiple consecutive sentences “max out” some time in 2217 A.D.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/12/14/police-respond-to-shooting-at-connecticut-elementary-school/
Since we all seem concerned about the well being of young children, I posted this on over here to ask each person to pray for all these families involved in this event today. I know this will be a terrifying & tragic day that will be remembered by this community for a long time.
Government is the police power in society.
Correctly attributed to George Washington or not, there is no denying that “Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; and force, like fire, is a dangerous servant and a terrible master.”
With it understood that government is the agency in our society to which we entrust the exercise of our inalienable right to defend our lives, our liberties, and our property with deadly force – that government is in the business of “breaking things and killing people,” and neither does anything else worth a damn nor really resorts to any other method in ramming down peaceable citizens’ throats the commands of the politicians, the bureaucrats, and the rest of the goons on the government payroll – just why the hell are these armed thugs imposing any kind of educational system on our children and adolescents?
Any kind at all?
Government schooling has proven over the past half-century to be the hog trough of career politicians, their “campaign contributors,” and their fellow authoritarians, and the quality of “public” education in America has suffered to the extent that if a foreign country were to settle such a hateful regime upon our children much at gunpoint as our own politicians have done, we’d consider it an act of war.
So why not consider it an act of war?
The politicians shafting us with the government school systems have proven themselves to be the enemies of the American people.
If we can’t engage them in open combat, let us at least deny them even the illusion of legitimacy, and treat them as an occupying enemy power.
They’re not us. We’re not them. They harm our children. We know it.
What do they deserve from us?
Let’s deliver.
The public school system will be stripped of its appearance of legitimacy when majority of school-age children are removed from the system. If 25% were pulled out, the per-student $ allotments for the local schools would shrink drastically. That would lead to programs being cut as a result, teachers, amenities, even school days (the move to 4-day school weeks is already happening in some districts). Districts would deflect more of the operating costs to parents. More parents will question this system, and they will pull more students out. The cycle will repeat, then you will have a majority of school-age students who are not in the State(ist) program, thus de-ligitimizing it.
Home schooling is ridiculously cheap once you have a computer and decent internet access. Google books, Gutenberg project, Khan Academy and a hundred online sites will give you free resources, only an Google search away. If you have a library and local home school group (for material swaps), so much the better. Every year the resources get better and access gets better.
Making the adjustment will be hard, but is completely do-able even on low incomes. Maybe one parent will have to give up their job, and they’ll have to rent out their underwater-mortgage home to move into a smaller home, to save money. It can be done. Maybe mom and dad can get jobs w/ alternating shifts or tele-commute so one parent is always home. Maybe mom can tag-team w/ a neighbor who needs help w/ the kids due to her part-time job. It is worth it. We go at our own pace: fast when the material comes easily, slow when it’s hard. No pre-programmed pace. We go to museums on the discounted days, or during the week when no one’s there. Sometimes we get to take vacations that we otherwise wouldn’t get to because we can go in the off-season (this applies to fancy vacations or cheap trips to the nearest beach). We stop for jumping jacks or a trip to the park (w/ other home school kids) when we’re hyper and nap if we’re cranky, and no one says the kids are bad or have “behavior problems” or need medication. It’s lovely.
–
@Mina: “Home schooling is ridiculously cheap once you have a computer and decent internet access. Google books, Gutenberg project, Khan Academy and a hundred online sites will give you free resources, only an Google search away. If you have a library and local home school group (for material swaps), so much the better. Every year the resources get better and access gets better.”
I’ve had increasing exposure to homeschooling over the past several decades, and I have to go along with you. Having had a role in the lives of my grandchildren, I’ve taken note of the ways in which the Internet and other information technology assets can be leveraged, and one of the interesting aspects of the grandfathering made me responsible for getting my oldest granddaughter to most of her Tae Kwan Do training sessions from the age of 5 through high school.
The school became a local center for homeschoolers, many of whom were looking for healthy structured childhood instruction in physical exercise (in which our Sensei excelled), and I got to know homeschooling families – children as well as adults – quite well.
The kids were uniformly bright, confident, and extremey well-“socialized” (the carpings of the government educrats notwithstanding). If anything, they fitted more comfortably and humanely into the company of their age-peers, their elders, and – perhaps most importantly – younger children.
I’ve never seen a homeschooled kid comport himself abusively in the company of a younger or smaller kid. Might have been the effect of the school’s discipline, but as I’ve looked further into the subject I’ve found confirmation of the reports that homeschooled kids are actually – if anything – better “socialized” than are the victims of the government educationalist gulags.
According to the homeschooling parents with whom I’ve interacted, achieving good outcomes with homeschooling is far less difficult than one might surmise. With the establishment of even moderately structured routines, the inculcation of skills moves far more quickly and effectively than in the classroom environment, which is by turns noisy and distracting and stultifying.
All it really takes is a respect for learning and a liking for your offspring as human beings.
Tucci78, thank you for sharing your observations of home schoolers. What an asset you’ve been to your family! I hope that in many of those drives you were able to chat w/ you granddaughter about politics and libertarian ideals. I wish I’d been more exposed to them in my teens.
I know a bright, friendly boy, eleven years old, who never heard of David and Goliath. He has never been to church or Sunday school. But he does know that “Communism has a lot of good ideas,” because his unionized teachers in public school have taughthim so. He also knows a lot about zombies and snipers, learned from video games; and he knows whatever else he’s picked up from movies and TV.
No one has ever read to him from the Bible. He doesn’t pray. His father took off when the boy was born. His mother lives in a fog of self-absorption. She hasn’t taught him anything.
http://www.newswithviews.com/Duigon/lee178.htm
That’s funny. My unionized teachers never taught me that “Communism has a lot of good ideas.” Oh, and my parents are still married even though they don’t regularly read from the Bible and never enrolled me in Sunday school.
It seems to me you live in a fog of self-absorption.
I apologize for going off topic, but I don’t think I’m the only one.
What happened to this little boy is unacceptable and horrifying.
A number of responses here that comment on public schools in general are troubling. As a teacher, I am proud of the work I see happening in school every day. The people I work with are dedicated professionals who are constantly working to help kids. We work nights and weekends trying to better ourselves so we can better support our students’ learning while raising our own families as well.
One of the things that makes this country great is that every child has a right to an education, regardless of socioeconomic status, race, or disability. That is a huge commitment on the part of our country, one that is not always backed up with the resources required.
To generalize an awful incident like this as the norm across the country in public schools is insulting. Teacher bashing is a big part of the zeitgeist in the country right now, and the only purpose it serves is demoralizing the people who are trying to make the next generation of leaders capable of taking on that mantle. One of the things I teach my kids is the importance of objective judgement and looking at subjects from different perspectives in order to gain a fuller understanding. Many of the one-sided comments here have served only to make me feel unwelcome in this community. The tone keeps thoughtful meaning and dialogue from emerging.
I get that they were suspicious about the boy who was really trying to help her find the money but why did the little girl’s parents send her to school with that money without teaching her how to take care of it. Why did she have $20 in the cafeteria? If I send my kids to school with ANY money, I put it in an envelope with their name on it and what it’s for and then I put it in their folder for their teacher to receive. If I sent my kid with $20 and they lost it, I would never want a child to go through that even if they did take it. We would just have to take it as a loss. These “teachers” had an opportunity to teach these kids a valuble life lesson about being responsible with money and to be grateful to someone helping them try to find it. Instead, they blew it on all levels. Maddening!
And yes,,I totally get abuse occurs and they were proper in being suspicious, but the way they did it was all wrong!
Roxie,,years ago this happened to me and I lost it so bad, I swear I didn’t even have control over what I did! In my case, my son had a bruise on his cheek, which he told the teacher what happened. He wasn’t even home when it happened. They stript him to see if their were marks on his body! I called the cops, social services and many school officials! The County actually said I had a case against them! It was terrifying what my son was subjected to!