The death of childhood.
Just in case you thought you could parent whatever way you see fit in 2014 America:
A North Augusta mother is in jail after witnesses say she left her nine-year-old daughter at a nearby park, for hours at a time.
Here are the facts: Debra Harrell works at McDonald’s in North Augusta, South Carolina. For most of the summer, her daughter had stayed there with her, playing on a laptop that Harrell had scrounged up the money to purchase. (McDonald’s has free WiFi.) Sadly, the Harrell home was robbed and the laptop stolen, so the girl asked her mother if she could be dropped off at the park to play instead.
Harrell said yes. She gave her daughter a cell phone. The girl went to the park—a place so popular that at any given time there are about 40 kids frolicking—two days in a row. There were swings, a “splash pad,” and shade. On her third day at the park, an adult asked the girl where her mother was. *At work*, the daughter replied.
The shocked adult called the cops. Authorities declared the girl “abandoned” and proceeded to arrest the mother.
I could write oodles about how summer was for me in the dark, unenlightened years of the 60s — of poor, misguided, oppressed womyns forced to Stay At Home and who then abandoned their children to the wild outdoors for HOURS AT A TIME.
Bikes, roller skates, tree climbing, Red Rover, stickball, nailing nails into a board, catching butterflies, digging up earthworms, running through sprinklers, running after the ice cream man, hide-and-seek, making tents out of old sheets …
All without any adult supervision.
O.The.Humanity!
But if neurotic cautiousness was merely the result of media sensationalism, it is something we could combat. However, it is more. It is The State’s stance that children really don’t belong to parents that perpetuates this nonsense. From zero tolerance to Common Core, the State is in charge.
Children are taught that authorities beyond their parents have final say over their lives and they are being conditioned to accept it. To be the obedient sheep when they become adults.
That’s the illiberal Progressive endgame.
Obey.
But, “What if a man would’ve come and snatched her?” said a woman interviewed by the TV station.
that’s exactly what ended up happening you stupid whore
some inbred cocksucker from North Augusta’s backwoods version of child protective services snatched this little girl who’s probably right this very moment getting diddled silly in a squalid foster home
in failshitamerica
Mom Issued Misdemeanor for Leaving 11-Year-Old in Car
>Children are taught that authorities beyond their parents have final say over their lives and they are being conditioned to accept it. The letter argues that speeches by students are not private speech, because, “the District exercises control over the valedictory/salutatory speeches and only permits students to deliver content its administrators have deemed appropriate.” <
School Claims Student Has No First Amendment Right Against Censorship
My mother would be doing hard time today.
What the hell was that woman thinking?
Not the busy body, the mother.
Instead of working, she should be on welfare.
You’re right Ernst. With full-time funemployment she would never have had any such problems. The Obama way makes life so much easier. It tastes great and it’s less fulfilling too.
– Looks like the Frisco Witch was in such a hurry to assure her pearl clutching base that she had their backs she really stepped in it this time, unlike all the other multiple times that she misled the public by outright lies.
– Oh, wait.
– Too bad she wasn’t miss carried instead of miss spoken, but then if it wasn’t her it would be some other
crazy assed Lefty hag bitch.
The letter argues that speeches by students are not private speech, because, “the District exercises control over the valedictory/salutatory speeches and only permits students to deliver content its administrators have deemed appropriate.
One could argue that is not wholly unreasonable given the state of popular culture today, however, they then go off the rails:
California’s Brawley Union High School District insists it can forbid Christian students from mentioning their faith in Jesus Christ, claiming that if they allow a student to speak publicly, then that student is merely an agent of the California state government, and as such forfeits all First Amendment rights.
It is a given that “progressives” pay no attention to US or state constitutions, but California’s clearly says:
The Legislature shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. Ignoring the utter idiocy of claiming the kid would be an “agent” of the government, there is nothing in the California constitution that states that a government “agent” mentioning religion makes a law establishing a religion.
The CA constitution also states Every person may freely speak, write and publish his or her sentiments on all subjects, being responsible for the abuse of this right. A law may not restrain or abridge liberty of speech or press. Except when it is inconvenient, apparently.
Though the mental contortions these bozos go through are a wonder to behold, I really do not get their insane fear of religion. Linking to the topic of this thread, I went to public grade school in a southern state starting when Eisenhower was still president; aside from being truly free range and enjoying adventures like getting lost in the cavernous storm drains, and playing with knives at recess, we were required each day in school to recite The Lord’s Prayer and had parables from the Bible read to us on occasion. However, by some miracle, the Catholics didn’t become Southern Baptists or start handling snakes, the Jewish students remained Jewish, and a number of us became Apathetic Agnostics (We Don’t Know, and We Don’t Care), or outright atheists.
You can bet that once Islam openly becomes the official state religion (as opposed to it being merely protected over all others, as it is now) they will be teaching it in schools.
If you complain about it, they’ll send the FBI and IRS after you.
Freedom is Slavery!
It’s sad to me that all the soccer moms who cheered for the “it takes a village” line were too naive or stupid to see the logical progression into “you will commit your child to the village.”
Although I don’t know that I would have left my own child in the park alone for an entire workday, I also don’t know what percentage of other parents who frequent the park are people who the mom knew, and trusted to more or less keep an eye out for anything inappropriate. The difference in me and most progressives, at least in this case, comes down to my ability to not project my own experience upon the entire world; to not think that leaving a child in a small neighborhood park is the same as dropping them off in, say, Central Park.
But that’s splitting hairs. At the end of the day, it’s about coerced or forced dependency. To not see that takes a level of denial that I can’t even fathom.
Happy nailed it.
Yeah, I said it. My eyebrows hit my hairline, but, credit where credit is due.
I’m shocked too Blake. Somebody must have spiked his cupcake batter.
I would thin CPS looking into this would be a bit much, but the mom arrested? WTF! And how does this exactly help the daughter?
Whilst you two are enjoying what appears to be a temporary moment of lucency from The Yellow Peril, please note that it couldn’t make its point without its obligatory sneering condescension regarding the residents of a small southern town as if the same, or similar, thing hasn’t happened in whatever “progressive” burg it lives in.
Thais was easy – oh look some inbred cocksucker from some Californian version of child protective services snatched this little boy right from the parents.
Me and my two brothers, in the Kennedy/LBJ era, were latch key kids. From the time we were 8,7 and 6, we came home from school, did the chores we were assigned or not, ( appropriate punishment to follow), then went out to play in the neighborhood. Said neighborhood had a canyon behind our house where we would ride our bikes, build forts and play army. There was a series of flood control channels and huge storm drains we used to ride our bikes in. They went for miles under the city. Wherever there was a curb drain down spout, we could climb the ladder, crane our heads and see a street sign to see where we were at.
We also walked to school, crossing several busy streets. We walked to the store by ourselves. We walked or rode our bikes to little league practice. We even rode our skateboards down Spillman drive, a steep street with a sweeping curve at the bottom next to the little league field complex.
We also used to have the pledge of Allegiance everyday as well as the Lord’s Prayer. I don’t see how we survived.
I should also mention that there was usually a note on the table telling us to put whatever we were having for dinner into the oven on such and such temperature. Or set such and such on the stove on medium heat at a time in which it would be ready when the folks got home from work. Isn’t that considered child abuse these days?
Back then there were fewer CPS predators roaming the streets and canyons and storm drains looking for potential future self-sufficient Americans to abduct and re-educate.
In those days they had to hunt by driving to parks in windowless vans, claiming to have lost a puppy.
Rather than as in the 60s where we saw a parent who “abandons” their child during a given day for hours of unsupervised playtime with his or her childhood friends, only to gather the kids in prior to dinnertime, our society has blessed families whose adult male parent has abandoned the lot for a lifetime. And the shit rolls downhill.
I could write oodles about how summer was for me in the dark, unenlightened years of the 60s . . .
If nothing else, thanks for bringing back a lot of fond memories. Daily Summer agenda: Wake up. Eat Cheerios. Run around neighborhood unsupervised with everybody else’s kids until noonish. Come home. Eat bologna sandwich. Run around neighborhood unsupervised until 5:30 PM. (The only precise time on this schedule because that’s when Dad came home from working in the military industrial complex, and therefore, dinner was served.) Run neighborhood unsupervised until after dark and Mom came looking for us.
Lather, rinse, repeat until school started.
Good times.
Oh, and sometimes we took our BB guns with us, and nobody called the cops.
Run neighborhood unsupervised until after dark and Mom came looking for us.
The only change I would make is that Mom wouldn’t come looking, she would just stand on the porch and start yelling our names. Of course, the chorus was soon joined by other mothers doing the same thing, with the only actual variant being the names called, but we all knew it was time to go home and get yelled at for the state of our clothes (e.g., “What HAVE you been playing in, young man?”).
Somebody needs to distribute copies of Soup to the members of that community. Also, righteous beatdowns.
“It’s sad to me that all the soccer moms who cheered for the ‘it takes a village’ line were too naive or stupid to see the logical progression into ‘you will commit your child to the village [where he or she will be properly pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, and numbered!’]”
revised and extended that for you
Turning the dial up to “6” eh?
Soup? By Robert Newton Peck? Jesus-on-a pogo-stick, isn’t he the author ot that horrifying book where Pinky the Pig gets raped? Raped, I tell you! Have you no decency Squid?
Have you no decency, Squid?
If I had any decency, would I have spent the last decade hanging around this joint?
Shermlaw, it sounds like we lived in the same neighborhood.
Sometimes we took hammers, nails and scrap lumber and built forts to provide some cover during the BB wars. Run out of ammo? Dirt clods were a fine substitute if no one had any firecrackers left from the 4th.
Shoes? Shoes were for church and going to town. Other than that, our soles turned to rhino hide.
Good times.
Summer agenda: Wake up. Eat Cheerios. Run around neighborhood unsupervised with everybody else’s kids until noonish. Come home. Eat bologna sandwich. Run around neighborhood unsupervised until 5:30 PM. (The only precise time on this schedule because that’s when Dad came home from working in the military industrial complex, and therefore, dinner was served.) Run neighborhood
Same same. Neighborhood marathon “kickthecan” sessions where every kid in the neighborhood that was able to walk participated. 30-40 kids.They lasted till after ten easily.
Our instructions? Don’t go near the highway. Nobody said a word about the creek, the farmers field, Industrial park, or the railroad switch yard. All of which were explored in depth.
Wait a minute, isn’t this the place where the elite meet?
I spent many a fine summer’s day hammering an entire roll of caps with a ball pean hammer, setting fire to bugs with a magnifying glass, or pushing a stick into a nearby pile of poop and flinging said stick at the neighborhood tomentor (and potato-chip-covered-with-boogies-eater) George E.
Outlaw!
I was a free-range kid, too, in the 1970s.
Our neighborhood then was a cluster of houses at the end of a rural road, so there were no commercial areas nearby. Nobody came to our neighborhood unless they needed to.
We also had tons of construction sites available to play on, with those awesome huge dirt piles and rusty nails and stuff.
Plus empty fields and a creek with a rope swing (that some uptight parent cut down) and unfenced-in back yards and all day every summer to run wild.
Great fun, that. And a bit dangerous, but so what?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPKHas0Z4oE&feature=kp
At the end of the day, it’s about coerced or forced dependency. To not see that takes a level of denial that I can’t even fathom.
They see it.
They dig it.
That’s the problem.
Seems like all of us here at this joint were free-range kids. I suspect that this is no coincidence.
Damn straight, Norman.
We were outlaw before outlaw was code.
I loved summer — and up until I was 12 or so, I was always sporting an assortment of bruises and scabs from the adventures.
-I was a Free Ranger, as well.
I would just add whiffle ball [semi-urban area w/a lot of big old glass windows] and street hockey to the list.
-Cranky wrote: You can bet that once Islam openly becomes the official state religion (as opposed to it being merely protected over all others, as it is now) they will be teaching it in schools.
I still say: if the whole thing doesn’t collapse soon, ‘going Muslim’ will become the ‘in thing’ to do. It will probably start with the celebrities and spread from there.
It will be interesting to see how Islam cohabits with Scientology and Kabbalah (the latest Hollywood religions du jour), which actress shows up on a red carpet wearing a hijab (complete with niqab), and which of the various celebrities gets beheaded first.
My mom used a cowbell to call us all in of a summer’s night. Neighbors hated it.
Mine used fear. Despotism. No call was necessary, no bell, no outward notification whatsoever. It was a simple matter.
Hide and Seek after dark was popular in my neighborhood. We’d be out until 10 pm running around while the parents visited and knocked back a few.
Heck, as a kid, we used to grab our fishing poles and ride bicycles to the local fishing holes. We were Mayberry RFD in late sixties, early seventies.
Before we were old enough to drive, our parents would drop us off at a local ranch with our .22 rifles so we could hunt ground squirrels.