At least in a free market system I stand a good chance of getting the best health care I can afford. In a government run system the bureaucrats will get the best health care I can afford and I will get whatever they decide I can have. They will decide who lives and dies. There will be statistical outliers in both systems, but I would rather go with the free market.

Susanne - caveat: I was raised, after the age of 8, by a person who thought the solution to everything was a good whack. example: yeah, it's dumb, but one time I got a bead stuck in my nose. I worked and worked, couldn't get it out, and went to her, crying in pain and fear. She got it out and then hauled off and slapped my face - full force, rocked me into the wall. She did that 4 or 5 times and walked away, saying "I bet you won't ever do THAT again." The example is to help you understand my thinking on this.

I don't think it's fair to a kid to be required to follow every adult directive instantly. If you wanted him in the house at 1:15, you would have told him, and then said "It's 1.15, time to come in!"
No compliance? I actually think that's easy. Another choice: "Henrietta, you can come eat your lunch now or wait until your late afternoon snack. Which would you like?" and then DON'T CAVE.
I really think, after a kid is about 4, maybe 5, kids don't have to be hit unless the adult is being unreasonable. No talking about 16-year-olds, they aren't always human.
An end of my story? I was out shopping with my sister and stepmother, who said "Girls, look! This fishing pole is so big, I could hit you with it from here!" In the silence I summoned up that cold and dangerous tone of voice and said " You could try." No more "cute" comments!

I do not condone physical punishment in my own family. That said, I don't condemn a swat on the butt. I only think that it may not be the best way to cognitively change behavior. You can make your own parenting choice. Reason works with children...unless you've seen the halloween candy video...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NDkVx9Az...

The general redneck scene of smacking kids, calling the cops, cops mediating family and neighbor disputes is only short bike ride away but it's a world I don't know. My wife grew up a few blocks from it and knows it pretty well. I end up saying, "but why didn't they do XYZ?" and she says, "and _that_ is why they stay poor." She also says gov't efforts to come in and fix it are laughable. I'm fortunate to have been sheltered from it most my life.

I just realized there was more text at the bottom of this article. I reject her view. She's saying if she had been more authoritarian, her kids wouldn't struggle with issues of loosing candy. I think they'll struggle either way, so you might as well drop the authoritarian or life-is-fair model and just tell them the facts. Life is NOT fair, but that has nothing to do we me being authoritarian. I only got here 39 years ago; I can only tell the truth that I have observed that life's not fair.
And the parents *do* call the shots when they're little kids. When they're teenagers they'll want to call their own shots, and I'm trying now to give them the tools to go make their own decisions and money, do things I think are stupid, and move their little corner of humankind forward.

This article is like the caricatures of liberalism that rightwingers have. The caricature says that veiled authority must force us to share or overt authority must lord it over us. These aren't the only choices. Another world is possible.

True that... we as kids were given choices. If you behave in a polite and appropriate manner, you will be treated with respect and will have friends. If you behave inappropriately, violently, or antisocially, there are consequences that you will not like.

Swatting a kids rump if they misbehave is not abuse. beating them with a closed fist, hitting them with a bat, shaking them so hard they go into convulsions, or locking them in a room without food or water for a week-thats abuse. Yes, I have seen peopole do both, I was raised by loving parents who did not want me to grow up to be a future felon by letting me get away with inappropriate, antisocial behavior when I was young. I have also taken immediate, direct action against adults who are actually abusing their child, e.g. like the examples i gave above.

if one does not know the difference between what constitutes abuse and what constitutes correction, then society is, indeed, doomed to become one where people are raised by the government to hate and abuse their parents.

"Kid acts too big for his britches, the parent would dust them off, and child would learn an object lesson - you break the rules, there will be consequences"
Times and places where even mild abuse is tolerated are completely outside my experience. It's not even on my radar. The nearest place with people being rough and calling the cops on one another on a regular basis is only three miles south of me, but it never comes up in my life.

I believe RockyMountainPirate would suggest a Shetland. [Evil grin]
I agree. I think child-rearing is like horse training. One, you can never stop training and sometimes you have to un-train bad behavior. Second, you can prevent dangerous situations and earn respect by accepting you are in charge: be the Alpha. Finally, neither horses or children are ‘pets’.

so she's another instance of proof that public ed
is a liberal nightmare. -- j

but she was RAISED in public education...she's just applying what she learned..

she needs to go back to school on being an adult,
herself. -- j

and the u.s. is right -- government should have no
part of health care;;; hell, it can't even handle the
post office right. -- j

hear, hear

and when the US was founded it was the only Country in the world to take us from fledgling to the greatest and strongest. Harmonization is not a solution or an answer to deep philosophical questions. The US has been (in its past not in its socialist state now) singular-and successful. Why would we want to throw our hat in with mediocrity and failure?

Ditto, ditto, ditto, and ditto.

Yes, the word "Democrat" has been stolen and changed from what it used to mean the same way the word "Republican" has been altered from what it meant in my parents' day.

Jan

The great majority of the so called right wing could care less what Suzie Spreadlegs does with her reproductive system. They just don't want to pay for her or her Romeo's irresponsible behavior. The majority of so called right wingers want fiscal and personal responsibility. Left wingers want none of that, but want someone else to cover the costs at the point of a government bayonet.

The great majority of the so called right wing disapprove of chemical companies dumping bad stuff in the rivers, but the government program to halt that behavior (EPA) has expanded to where it is slapping small farmers and land owners around to justify its existence. Same for the FDA. Formed to prevent meat packers from unloading bad product on the public, but now slaps grandma around for not getting FDA approval to offer her apple pie at the church social. Regulation and regulators have gone too far. Left wingers fail to understand the distinction.

The Enron poke at the free market is a joke. In our free market society portfolio diversification should be taught in high school, but isn't. I'm sure high school grads nowadays can spew the Marxist share the wealth doctrine even if they don't know it's Marxist, but are clueless as to how to handle themselves in a free market investment system. Most retirement funds (trillions of dollars worth) weren't affected by the Enron failure or the Madoff fraud for that matter, but that little fact just doesn't make it into the consciousness of the leftist media.

"Universal Health Care" is pie in the sky utopian BS right from the get go. It could consume the entire GDP of the planet and still not provide for everyone in every way. In the end bureaucrats decide who gets care at what level and who doesn't.

khalling said what I have observed: that it is the left wing who wants to 'make people do what (they decide) is correct' as opposed to letting people choose what they want to do. Insofar as 'right wing...reproductive issues' - I doubt that the people on this list think that a woman should not be able to choose. This is one of the major differences between a Randist (or Libertarian or Objectivist) philosophy and modern extreme conservatives. (I will also point out that when I was a child, neither religiosity nor abortion was part of the 'Republican' agenda -these are not inherently part of the conservative platform.)

How does 'not want regulations' equate with right wingers 'diging deeper' into the pockets of Americans? It is the liberals who are stealing the money I have earned to provide for people who do not want to bother to work, for an increase in anti-business regulation, for underwriting police-SWATTing of vocal conservatives.

Most of those other countries are socialist too. I do not have to approve of their politics nor of their social systems...but I certainly do not want to imitate them!

Jan

Liberalism makes every one miserable. That is the lesson from this article ;)

The whole problem is the mom's acceptance of the notion of "fairness" in the first place. Fairness to a liberal is a moving target - a subjective inference. When you focus on making things "fair", all you are really saying is that you have absolutely zero principles on which to base your decisions. You pretend that only the outcome matters and not the process of obtaining it. You seek to disconnect choice from consequence in violation of natural law.

Nice article. +1

Thank you for this post. It is a sad experiment to demonstrate the fallacy of the 'liberal' (when did they steal the word?) philosophy. The mom expected different results, and she recognizes how bad the outcome was. How come she didn't conclude her philosophy was flawed? The real problem is that even good people don't know how to think clearly.