I'll pass the article along... I'm not sure I wish to even comment on the two social worker do-gooders who are proposing [and have legislation introduced] something worse than Hillary's "It take a global village" other than $E^&*&@!!! the absolute ultimate on invasion of privacy imaginable. might as well add this one to: "...they get my weapon, still smoking, from my cooling hand." or maybe: "54-40 or fight" needless to say, any member of the cypherpunk list would be an automatic loser in this game of life. I for one believe ability and drive is signicifantly more genetics than social environment. -attila == I'll get a life when it is proven and substantiated to be better than what I am currently experiencing. --attila ************** forwarded article **************** LICENSING PARENTS REVISITED The December 1996 edition of the journal Society contains a symposium on the subject of "Licensing Parents" -- a totalitarian proposal with which regular readers of The New American may be familiar. (See "Whose Child Is This?" in our November 28, 1994 issue and "Are You Fit to Be a Parent? in our January 23, 1995 issue.) Included in the symposium were Dr. Jack C. Westman of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, author of Licensing Parents: Can We Prevent Child Abuse and Neglect? and Professor David T. Lykken of the University of Minnesota, author of The Antisocial Personalities. Westman and Lykken are the most prominent advocates of a system of parental licensure in which parents would have to be certified "competent" by the government before being permitted to raise a child. In his Society essay, Lykken writes, "I will testify in support of a parental licensure bill to be introduced at the next session of the Minnesota State Legislature. The only sanction proposed in this bill for unlicensed parents who produce a child is periodic visits by child- protection caseworkers who will do an annual audit of each child's physical, social, and educational progress." However, Lykken asserts, "Minnesotans and their legislative representatives will [eventually] recognize the need to take one further step. That step, I suggest, should be to take custody of babies born to unlicensed mothers, before bonding occurs, and to place them for adoption or perma- nent care by professionally trained and supervised foster parents." Nor is this the last step that Lykken would take toward the abolition of parental authority by the state. The December 17, 1994 Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported, "Under Lykken's system, if children were born to un- licensed parents, the state would intervene immediately. Licenses would be checked in hospital maternity wards. Unlicensed parents would lose their children permanently. Adoptions would be final and irreversible." Furthermore, according to Lykken, "Repeat offenders might be required to submit to an implant of Norplant [a surgical contra- ceptive] as a way to keep them from having another baby for five years." Source: Insider Report, p.12 The New American December 23, 1996