Because parents can’t be trusted to raise their own children without having a government bureaucrat looking over their shoulders, a Minnesota legislator has proposed the “Universal Newborn Visiting Program”, which would require a government-appointed agent to visit parents of newborns at the hospital or at home as soon as possible after birth. (Rest assured: the law would require that the visitors must “reflect the demographics of the community,” so you can be confident of receiving someone who looks just like you, racial hegemony being so important to liberal bureaucrats.)
This government visitor would provide a whole litany of information to parents, referring them to whole panoply of government-provided services. And since the success of the program will be determined by how many families are referred to a program, there is a built-in incentive to find a problem with every family.
Imagine the scenario: “Gee, Bob, your referrals are down this month. If we don’t make our referral quota, we’re going to lose funding.” The civil service mantra is always: “Don’t kill the job or underspend the funding.”
When we were in the hospital the night Melanie went into labor, I had to step out for a moment to get her bag from the car. While I was out, the nurse peppered Melanie with questions about whether she was being domestically abused. Of course, Melanie was offended at the suggestion, but apparently this—like offers to talk about birth control—that our government overseers have determined must become intrusions into the happy time of birth.
Seeing trouble where none exists
Technorati Tags:bureaucracy, law, Minnesota, newborn, parent’s rights
Opening scene from the movie, Serenity:
Alliance Teacher: And now, everyone can enjoy enlightenment and the comfort of true civilization….
Pupil: Why were the Independents even fighting us? Why weren’t they looking to be more civilized?
Alliance Teacher: So with so much social and medical advances we can bring to the Independents, why would they fight so hard against us?
River: We meddle.
Alliance Teacher: River?
River: People don’t like to be meddled with. We tell them what to do, what to think. Don’t run. Don’t walk. We’re in their homes and in their heads and we haven’t the right. We’re meddlesome.
Alliance Teacher: River, we’re not telling people what to think. We’re just trying to show them how.
(Stabs River in the forehead with pen)
.
This line says it all: Seeing trouble where none exists—because without trouble, what is the reason for these agencies’ existence?
Actually, why allow people to raise their own children at all? Really, a government agency would do a much better job, and you wouldn’t have to worry about children being indoctrinated with all sorts of troublesome religious beliefs. @@
For years, homeschoolers have been hearing recurring state claims that homeschooling families must be checked up on, because if your child isn’t in school, how is anyone going to know if you’re abusing him? Our response has always been: most abuse happens in the preschool years, so by this logic the state should be checking up on every family from a child’s birth until school starts. If you trust us to raise our children until school age, trust us to raise them after that.
Sounds like they took the logic and ran with it at last.
But it’s for our own good…
10 years ago, if anybody said that our future would be cameras on streetcorners, RFID chips in license plates monitored via toll roads, warrant-less searches of phone records and mail, DNA databases, and regularly scheduled visits by govt social workers, that person would be called a paranoid kook.
5 years ago they might be branded w/ the softer label of conspiracy theorist.
And yet here we are, with all these things being promoted as Good and Necessary for our Safety and Well-Being in our March Toward Progress.
Refresh my memory: who exactly hates our freedom?
The family and church are the government’s biggest competitors for control of society. Naturally, they seek to oppress those who would vie with them for such control.
It is our sacred duty and desperate need for survival to out-oppress them. To avoid civil war, which is written into our founding documents we must vigorously and constantly dominate our government, we must beat them into submission, flog them into despair and mold them into the obedient little public servants that they are.
Already some have predicted a bloody civil war to stop abortion, look what it took to stop slavery. Freedom isn’t free.
I’d like to know what idiot thinks parents of a newborn can process all this “helpful” information while still in the hospital. Especially after your first child is born.
I gave birth to my fifth child 11-3-06…I didn’t understand the domestic abuse stuff they asked until I read this here…I just laughed when they asked me and said “I couldn’t make him hit me if I tried really hard…believe me…” I thought it was odd and funny and then oh my another contraction…
I have been called at work though years before in reference to my 7 yr old. The school in our town called to inform me that they had MADE an appt to see my daughter to screen her for Kindergarten—she was 3 at the time and wouldn’t see school until she was almost 6.
I was blown away and VERY angry. What nerve. I replied that NO ONE made appts for me blah blah and what the heck—she wasn’t going to school for years and the woman ADMITTED they wanted to make sure she was OKAY!!! I informed the woman that we were not on welfare or enrolled in any government programs and my daughter was just fine…none of their business…she then LIED and said it was a legal REQUIREMENT to produce her at the school for them to check her out…I told her she was LIAR and if she EVER called me again she would be in MAJOR trouble.
I am sure this is coming…
Probably DRIVES them INSANE that they can’t control all of us…
Just posted above…I am in Minnesota!
I got into a big, hairy fight on one of my favorite forums about basic freedoms
http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.php?t=176305
(I’m Timpoet)
and was motivated to look up quotes on freedom and look what I found:
Kind of fits nicely with my previous comment above.