James Dobson made a career advocating for child abuse including physical abuse for “strong willed children”. Somehow it’s never Focus on the Family that these people want to ban.
The US fought a whole war with itself over whether people should be allowed to own other people. They shouldn't, we decided, except on certain circumstances.
Some parents, finding themselves owning a child, decide to push the boundaries of what they get to do with their possessions to the point that it runs afoul of other laws against how humans treat one another.
Conflating parenting with slavery and ownership is not only a category error but an offensive one. Parental authority isn’t ownership; it’s a duty to safeguard children’s developing autonomy and vulnerability.
Pretending otherwise betrays an indifference to children’s actual welfare, and a disturbing form of motivated reasoning deeply concerning in its implications.
It might not be consistent with slavery, but children as chattel was a thing.
It wasn't until 1874 that child abuse was documented with Mary Ellen Wilson and then later that rights and protections were accorded children. Now it's true that foster care and congregate care existed before 1874. But it was Wilson who started the ball rolling.
I'm not sure they're saying it's wrong more that the change was imposed externally by the victorious union rather than actually being arrived at so the question was never really settled. Looking at the history it looks clear it was. After reconstruction was halted and southern states weren't forced to allow black politicians and voting you get the decades of segregation, Jim Crowe laws, etc that followed until the civil rights act forced equal treatment under the law. Civil rights were never willingly given by the southern states.
That’s idiotic; as the amount of control parents are allowed over their children has never been lower compared to historical norms. We’re at the point a minor can get an abortion without parents being informed; which would have been unheard of and unthinkable 50 years ago, let alone the idea that a government would even mandate leaving parents unaware of a sexually active child. That idea didn’t even occur to the most rabid of socialist dreams.
No, that's not true at all. There are ample examples from the past of children being both more and less controlled by parents. It's mainly upbto the parents and how they choose to parent.
You're correct that recently the most overbearing, authoritarian parenting styles have received a minor legal haircut, where the worst abuses must be done either in secret or not at all. The parents who feel victimized by this new norm would like things to go back to how they were when no one asked why their kids had so many bruises on their faces.
If it weren't so often about denying them medical care or a proper education or about their ability to abuse them in various ways I'd be more sympathetic. Kids have rights too their parent's don't own them to get to violate their rights just because they're their kids.
Children are human beings who need growing autonomy as they mature, not property of parents. I have several (adult, to be clear) friends who have suffered serious damage due to overly authoritarian parenting.
In legal terms, children aren't full humans. They literally don't have fully formed brains and there isn't an expectation that they can make decisions that consider the consequences of their actions.
In the sense that a phrase like "growing autonomy" doesn't really mean anything, sure they should get that. Practically, they shouldn't have a lot of autonomy. The concept of childhood education is largely predicated on the idea that children have no idea what is going on and someone else should be inculcating knowledge, values and beliefs in them while making long term decisions on their behalf. And there is a pretty good argument that those values and beliefs ought be aligned with their family.
No, but the law is not a thing of subtlety and nuance. It is a thing of bright lines. It would be infeasible to have a law that says "children can make adult decisions when their parents think they're ready", so we have to pick a cutoff point which tries to strike a balance between giving too many immature kids power over their lives, and restricting too many mature kids from making decisions with their lives. Some kids will be unfairly held back because they are very mature at 15, some will ruin their lives because they are completely immature at 18. It's imperfect but no perfect solution is available.
My point remains unchanged: Strict parenting has killed far less people than lax. Strict parenting can generally be recovered from; lax parenting, you’ll be dead before you even recognize it.
Evil little fuckers. Who even thinks that the US Federal Government isn’t totally qualified to be in complete control of their children’s education and lives, anyway? Probably some racist Ruby Ridge types (/s)
> It’s an odd form of white supremacy that views whites as above having material interests of their own.
This is also an interesting way to explain the self-immolating Whites, which nowadays is most of us. Any sort of White group identity or collective interest is absolute heresy which must be opposed, while all things in the collective interest of non-Whites must be celebrated, encouraged, and helped along at our own expense. There's a certain paternalistic arrogance to it, an ethnocentric assumption that other races can't get on without us. And it's much more common and pervasive than the caricature of the like shaved head neo-Nazi we are all expected to imagine exists in large numbers, somewhere.
Absolutely. One time, I was explaining to this lady about immigration: that, if the shoe were on the other foot, folks from Bangladesh would’ve shut down the border long ago. She hissed at me: “well, we’re not Bangladesh!” White Americans are supposed to be above having normal human attachments to soil, kin, and clan.
Or they could just do it whenever they want to for whatever reason they want to. They are not responsible for the mental health of their users. Their users are responsible for that themselves.
Depends on what business OpenAI wants to be in. If they want to be in the business of selling AI to companies. Then "firing" the consumer customers that want someone to talk to, and double down models that are useful for work. Can be a wise choice.
Unless you want to improve your ratio of paid-to-free users and change your userbase in the process. They're pissing off free users, but pros who use the paid version might like this new version better.
Same. I support everything that's going on at DOGE. There's a certain type around here that needs to get used to the fact that their political views do not enjoy industry wide hegemony.
The thing about standards is they are able to be re-evaluated from time to time. I think it's worth examining what legitimate purpose spreading health misinformation serves, and how that is beneficial to society.
I don't think it's feasible to address individual users.
I think a good place to start is treating the falsification of data in research studies like fraud, potentially with criminal penalties.
Another avenue is requiring social media businesses to make reasonable efforts to flag health misinformation. If Facebook et al are making billions in revenue off false information, they should have a responsibility to combat it, at the risk of penalties.
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