At 10:11 PM -0800 2/21/98, Brad wrote:
It occurs to me that society has been restructured so that "the authorities" are the only ones permitted to fix many sorts of commonly-encountered problems which individual citizens used to be able to take care of themselves. Like spanking a spoiled 5 year old child instead of charging her with a felony. Further, said authorities have great and arbitrary powers to fix things however they want.
Combine this regular dependence on arbitrary authority with an Orwellian database of Good Citizens and Troublemakers in the hands of that authority and what have you got? A cowed citizenry, to say the least.
I don't disagree with the larger point. The solution is the one libertarians have argued for for many years: provide choice in schools. Then a school could pick and choose its pupils, and vice versa. But with the system as it stands now, a child who throws chairs, bites, kicks, and whatnot needs to be dealt with. One of the very few legitimate functions of a government is police action. Against assaults, by assaulters of whatever age. While we may think it is "ludicrous" for the police to be called in, consider the alternative. Is the teacher supposed to allow herself to be hit over the head with chairs, even if wielded by 5-year-olds? The system is fucked up, to be sure. But automatically arguing that the school should not have called in the police given the constraints they are under is foolish. --Tim May Just Say No to "Big Brother Inside" ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^3,021,377 | black markets, collapse of governments.