“When we’re forced to go off grid, will you advocate the government take everyone’s kids away? Most people on the planet live like this, should they have their kids taken away?”
Living off the grid on purpose takes planning to provide pure water and proper cleaning and heat for winter and medical supplies, etc. These two parents have put their children in danger, on purpose. They don’t even have pure water without getting it from someone else. With that many people needing/using water, the father can’t get that much there plus has to get water from neighbors. For that reason alone, those children need to be removed.
You say, “when we are forced to live off the grid”. That is entirely different as these parents have a choice. One can live off the grid and have sanitation and what is required to live, but these parents aren’t doing that. They choose to live in squalor, therefore, the children deserve a change to live and should be removed.
If the entire grid went down, no one has a choice. Millions would die within a month, or two if they are lucky.
I’m prepared to live off the grid and have a safe standard of living and it took planning to put that together. These parents have almost nothing to provide a safe place to live for these children.
You say most people on the planet live this way. We can’t save the world but this country is a Christian country and we can save children from this dangerous circumstance.
I was a counselor/psychological examiner at schools and all mental health workers have to abide by a law that says if we find a child is in danger, we MUST contact officials to save that child. If I knew about these parents and situation, I would be required to go to officials, and I would.
I live in the country-was born and raised there, too-and like just about everyone else, I’ve had to collect rainwater and/or buy water and haul it in my truck when a well pump is broken. Water can be bought and hauled every place I’ve ever been, so I’m not in favor of people stealing water from a neighbor or anyone else.
For my practicum in college (for a degree in social work), I was assigned to CPS, and that is where I learned to despise the agency, the arbitrary putting of kids into city foster homes that were usually ten times worse than the rural home they came from-I was told that each kid taken, then placed and/or adopted into a foster home brought the foster parents a check each month, and gave CPS an increase in funds when budget time came...
By the time I was done, I made it a point to only work with adults-as a workers comp case manager in the private sector-so that I never had to deal with that corrupt, heartless agency again-thank God...
A few years ago, four of my neighbors-one is a Baptist minister-and I fed, housed and hid the 16 year old son of a woman who lived on our road and was committed for 6 months after a psychotic episode, to keep the vultures at CPS away from him-we rotated him between our homes for several weeks until his uncle could come from NM to whisk him away-during the week, he went with the minister’s kids to the cottage school they were all enrolled in, like always.
The young man is now a career AF officer who has served in Iraq, and we are all invited to his wedding this coming July. A much better outcome than if he had been taken by CPS-we are all proud of that young man and he has thanked us for caring for him through a difficult time in his life-no one is sorry for what we did...
I joke with my family about the fact that if nanny CPS had been around when I was a cub, grabbing kids off remote rural ranches and such that had outhouses, ponds, etc, there would have been no more kids around there. I had no sibling, cousin, etc ever drown in a stock pond/tank, contract a disease, etc-we didn’t even have allergies. No one had any heat other than woodstoves, fireplaces-but some people used space heaters-which really are dangerous around kids.
People in outback Alaska still live like we all did 100 years ago, which is pretty rough by city standards-should CPS go abduct all their kids just because you or I consider the place cold, dirty, etc, as long as the kids are happy and fed good food?
Like you, I’m going full galt/off grid at the earliest opportunity-many of my neighbors already are. I think living in a rural are and living without city stuff and standards means we will survive-people in cities just might not...