Re: A word needs to be stated for the intelligence GC

Oh yeah, the Branch Davidians were totally nice guys. Puh-lease. More oversimplified black & white nonsense. Furthermore, the government is not a self-contained, self-motivated entity; it is, in part, a product of it's people. That's true of any gov't but moreso for a republic. What I see day to day is not so much the gov't interfering in children's lives--by far the majority of youth oppression comes from parents, and not the liberal parents you detest either. Shall we then consider the vast majority of parents our enemy? No, it's much easier to scapegoat the gov't and blame it for all your problems, because, after all, you're not one of them. They are out there, removed from your life (except, of course, for their Orwellian puppet strings with which they apparently manipulate your every move.)

But parents . . . well, you have to interact with them, don't you? You know them, you're close to them, you are them. Maybe Sheepy's arguments don't confuse you, but what does confuse you are the intricacies and mundanities of real evil. It does not exist "out there" so much, or in grand expressions--it is all around you and it is subtle. Maybe most parents aren't beating their kids senseless, but many still spank. Maybe they aren't locking them in cages, though many still lock them in their rooms for infractions which children should never be punished for. And the worst thing is that they do it out of a misguided love.

What does it take to break a child's spirit? One punch in the gut, or a thousand little slights and slaps? Or the use of psychological warfare in the shape of religious brainwashing (Do this or burn forever.) In my experience it is the greatest numbers of children are harmed not by brutal abuse (though that does happen too--maybe not in your uppity neighborhood, but where us poor folks live, absolutely), and it is so widespread that the child grows up not even realizing their spirit has been broken.

Yeah, I know my enemy too. It isn't the gov't, and no, it isn't even parents per se. It is ignorance, oppression and fear wherever and however these things manifest.