Posted on 04/25/2018 5:10:50 AM PDT by Kaslin
Former Republican Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas was fond of telling a story about his time stumping for educational change. "My educational policies are based on the fact that I care more about my children than you do," Gramm once said to a woman. "No, you don't," she replied. "OK," said Gramm. "What are their names?"
Gramm's fundamental premise is inalterably correct: Parents care more about their children than do the members of the bureaucracy. But parents are being gradually curbed in their authority by precisely those bureaucrats across the West.
On Tuesday, a British court condemned a not-yet-2-year-old child to die. Now, make no mistake: The child, Alfie Evans, is expected to die in the near future anyway; he suffers from an undiagnosed brain condition that has robbed him of much of his function. But his parents simply wanted to be able to transfer him from a British hospital to an Italian hospital to seek experimental care.
And the British court system refused.
Citing the expertise of Evans' doctors, the courts declared that Evans' best interests are not served by his parents' attempts to save his life. Instead, the little boy would be deprived of life support, left to die without oxygen or water. The ruling, the judge said, "represents the final chapter in the life of this extraordinary little boy." But that chapter was written by the British bureaucracy, not by his parents -- the ones who will have to engrave his epitaph and visit his grave.
This appalling result isn't the first of its kind; just last year, a little boy named Charlie Gard was taken off life support thanks to the British court system, which prevented his parents from sending him to the United States for further treatment. Again, the courts made the argument that the best interest of the child lay in his death.
All of this is the final result of a system of thought that places parental control of children below the expertise of bureaucrats on the scale of priorities. It's one thing for the government to step in when parents are preventing children from receiving life-saving care. It's another when the government steps in to prevent parents from pursuing potentially life-saving care. And yet that's just what has happened repeatedly in the United Kingdom.
Why? Why would British society place parents' wishes below the wishes of the state? Because a bureaucratic society of experts generally sees parents as an obstacle to proper development. Parents, in this view, treat their children as chattel to be owned and trained -- but the state can treat children with the dignity they are due. This means placing parental wishes to the side in every case in which those wishes come into conflict with the priorities of the state.
The bureaucrats of Britain don't merely usurp parental rights in the realm of life and death; they do so in the realm of upbringing as well. They have threatened religious Jewish schools for failing to inculcate children with LGBT propaganda; meanwhile, they have ignored the targeting of young women in Rotherham, Rochdale, Oxford and Newcastle because the perpetrators are disproportionately Muslim.
All of this is untenable, both morally and practically. Parents will not continue to give the power to control their children away to bureaucrats who do not know their children's names.
I wish I saw more evidence this was true. As long as the bread and circuses keep coming, the state will be good enough for the masses.
Socialized medicine is the government’s method of telling you it’s in your “best interests” to die.
If it was my son they would have to kill me first. I am quite sure they would do so...however some are going with me. I want to see them explain their actions to God.
Is her live less important to you?
This should be a “must read”.
It is not just in matters of death and health that the government is interfering, it is nearly every aspect of our children’s lives. And in our lives.
It is shocking that a government would be so brazen in its total control that it would condemn a child to a premature death. Governments used to be a lot more surreptitious about their evil controlling behavior. Now they have become so arrogant in their power that they feel no need to conceal it.
I agree. The only thing I see as potentially breaking the addiction to “free” daycare is if the institutions close so often for strikes, protests, and hoax threats that the users can’t count on them.
Gramm '96!!!!!!!!!! http://www.4president.org/brochures/philgramm1996brochure.htm
I had a Gramm ‘96 bumper sticker outside the door of my law-school dorm room. Gramm would have taken the fight directly to Clinton; it’s a shame that he never recovered from losing to Pat Buchanan in the non-sanctioned Louisiana caucuses, which resulted in Bob Dole being nominated.
I’m thinking conservatism would have been better off if Buchanan was never born.
I can’t even remember if I voted in the primaries that year, I was so ill during that period. I had to drag myself out to vote in November to try to deliver the state to Dole. We got close, but that jackass Pee Rot deprived him of victory. :-(
Even if Buchanan hadn’t been a factor, I don’t think Gramm could’ve beaten Bubba. When Newtie dropped the ball on standing up to Bubba in the government shutdown showdown, that delivered him a 2nd term on a silver platter.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.