Lethal Injection Under Fire Again

[Chaerophon]

Yes, essentially, we live like this: You can do whatever you want, as long as you do exactly what we(those in power) want you to.

I can't speak for the U.S., but in Canada, we don't dictate religion, child-rearing strategies, or any other such thing to citizens. We're free to believe what we want, within certain limits that exist on the far edge of the "reasonable". The limits are intended as protection for individuals. Those who want to, e.g. CHANGE religions should be free to do so.

To address the point more specifically; in our society, children are not property - they are human beings, and so have certain (albeit limited) rights that are inviolable. You can spank your kids. You can raise them as Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Jews or any kind of Christian that you like. You can even raise them as atheists. Child-rearing is NOT prescribed to parents. Parents have wide freedoms in that respect.

However, you can't force them to marry someone, you can't pull them out of school to go work in the mines, and you can't beat them when you're angry or disappointed with them. In this case, it's not about "what the people in power want", its about what are considered the "reasonable" OUTER (double emphasis!) bounds for parental behaviour given the rights generally ascribed to children (as individuals) in our social context.

Yes, and ironically the ones that need it the most, ones treated extremely poorly in horrible conditions are often not helped because of the low standards in them, while people with comparitively minor problems outward, in the suburbs and the like, are essentially harassed in some cases by social workers that are know-it-all control freaks.

So instead we should do nothing at all? How does this fact (or your anecdotes) contribute to that conclusion? Whether or not there are some bad social workers, or even bad institutions is not the point - the solution is not to remove all limits and sweep the unlucky ones under the rug.

As in Drasca's post: this is contentless propaganda.