When our first child was born, and again after the second, a state case worker was assigned to visit us, inspect our new house, ask us a list of questions and determine whether we were deemed by the state to be fit to keep our own child. We were allowed, but only after installing fire extinguishers and making a few minor changes around the house, which I had planned anyway. I had almost forgotten about that small, (to me then) but at the same time insidious, outrage.
Fast forward 14 years, to a post I’d already been working on:
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Your Doctor as a Politician, Politicians as Doctors
My wife took our son in for a sports-physical the other day. The kid's as healthy as any. I can almost be persuaded to go along and agree with the school's requirement, but only in empathy with the administrators, in light of what the trial lawyers have done to our society. Football is strenuous, sure, but so are a lot of things. We don't get a checkup every time we plan a bicycle trip, or for doing farm work, which he did this summer, or shoveling the snow...
The typical string of health related questions was asked, then this question, tagged on at the end:
"Are there any guns in your house?"
"Yes, several"
"Are any of them loaded?"
"Uh, I don't think so."
"Well.......stay safe!"
Aside from being completely irrelevant to a sports exam, it’s a bit of a trick question, isn't it-- are any of them loaded? We teach our kids to treat every gun as if its loaded, never to assume it is unloaded, but I digress.
I wish I'd been there, so I could have explained my point of view to the good doctor, preferably while holding a baseball bat, you know, just to demonstrate that although we keep baseball bats in our house, we keep them for sporting purposes only.
We all need a medical doctor once in a while. Sometimes our lives may depend on it. This of course is why people who desire control over other people are trying so desperately to get hold of the medical industry. Our doctor had ceased being a doctor with those gun questions, and had become a schlep/tool for anti-gun activists, fishing for potential leverage against gun owners. Remember during the 1990s when they were defining "gun crime" as a "public health" issue? That was about the same time our co-president was pushing for full nationalization of health care (I say “full” because we’re already halfway there).
Our doctor asked no questions about any of several more common and statistically far greaterd dangers found in a typical home. "Do you have any insect poisons? for instance, was not asked. Nor was anyone in the medical field interested in how much time our kids are spending on bicycles, around a swimming pool, around matches and gasoline, in the sun without sunscreen, or whether there are stairs in the house, or unlocked liquors (which there are, by the way). They didn't ask about access to sharp knives, time spent on the highways, running with scissors, unprotected sex, or the condition of our house wiring. Therefore the gun questions can without hesitation be said to have been motivated exclusively by politics.
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After writing that, I came across the following, courtesy of K. Dutoit. The Britts are taking kids away from parents by the thousands, it seems:
He tells Mrs Brookes: "I would like you and your baby to stay in hospital until the courts have made a decision."
As though they were being given a choice. That's cute. Its also dishonest and sickening.
The social worker says the two or three days the mother has with her baby in hospital will allow her to begin breast-feeding and that once the infant is taken away, social services will pick up expressed breast milk from her home and deliver it to the foster carers (sic) for bottle-feeding.
I can imagine the Social Services (SS) worker speaking in a German accent: Vee haff come for zee breast milk. If you haff not met zee quota, schnell! (Those of you with children will understand. The rest of you will think I'm trying to be funny.)
The social worker admits to the couple that a back-up plan is being drawn up in case the judge refuses the application for a care order. He says: "What we also have to think about is a child protection plan that looks at you, at home, with your baby. There is no immediate risk to your child from yourselves, that's my understanding from reading documents."
Throw 'em a bone of hope in an insane situation, like you're on their side. F*<%ers! Those of you with children will understand. Those without children: You can never understand the extent of the pure evil of this. Its how they get you. You cannot fight them. You cannot do anything but hope you can have your child back. Its all that matters to you, and you won’t do anything to risk upsetting those in charge of your baby’s fate. It is a hell like you cannot imagine. Nothing alleged to have happened at Abu Ghraib under U.S. control comes anywhere close. I am not kidding.
Juxtapose the UK story with our doctor's incongrous gun questions for my son here in the U.S., and I submit that unless we stop this sort of thing, smack it down wherever it pops up, we'll end up with our very own police state, with the medical profession, social services, and lets not forget education, as integral parts of the enforcement system. All acting very polite of course, saying, "Please do this" and, "Please do that" while they have absolute power over you.
Hillary-Care anyone?
No. I'll opt for Liberty, thank you very much.