Quebec's provincial license plate carries the motto, "Je Me Souviens", "I remember..." Well, today Justice Suzanne Tessier of the Superior Court of Quebec has given Canadians from coast to coast something useful to remember:Don't try raising children in Quebec.
Justice Tessier decided that a father had no right to ground his 12-year old daughter for having disobeyed him:
The girl had taken her father to Quebec Superior Court after he refused to allow her to go on a school trip for chatting on websites he tried to block, and then posting "inappropriate" pictures of herself online using a friend's computer.
...
According to court documents, the girl's Internet transgression was just the latest in a string of broken house rules. Even so, Justice Suzanne Tessier found her punishment too severe.
...
The National Post reports the backstory that led up to the case:
The dispute between father and daughter began when he cut off her Internet access over her misuse. When she continued to find a way to use the Internet, he told his daughter she couldn't go on the three-day school trip.
The girl's mother allowed her to go on the trip, but because the school wouldn't allow the girl to go unless both parents consented, the girl, with the mother's support took legal action against her father.
According to [the father's lawyer Kim Beaudoin], the judge ruled that denying the trip was unduly severe punishment.
Has this judge thought about what happens to the family when the little girl gets back from her field trip? What if the budding teenager starts dating a boy much older than herself, and the father objects to that, as well? What can he do about it? What if the girl doesn't feel like going to school, and starts skipping class? What recourse does the father have to teach her right from wrong, as he values it...
...should he take her to court?
One place that he is not going to take her, thanks to the court ruling, is... back home:
The father, who is appealing the decision, was "devastated" by the ruling, and is refusing to take his daughter back "because he has no authority over her."
2 comments:
I've had occasion before to use the pun, "In Loco Parentis," meaning in the place of the parent, the state's position in taking care of children during school hours. This kind of story is one of those that brings to the fore the word "Loco." It makes one weep.
The entire project, as one sees above and below, is of infantalization of the population by the state. This is a seemingly conscious return to the feudal era, neo-feudalism. How can people tolerate such a state of affairs? How can people want this? Why do people want to be treated like children by a government? What makes it appealing to have a 19 year old receptionist at a government office telling a full-grown man ...?
I think this is an exercise in going down a slippery slope without a bit of thought involved. I think something became popular about telling people they should or shouldn't, and no one objected at the time. This kind of baby-sitter bullying has caught on and become the national identity in the West. Everyone wants in on the act, all of us sliding into a totalitarianism that is only to be got rid of by some really bad manners. "Hey, don't tell me what to do."
It seems to be a national pass-time to tell others what to think, what to say, how to behave. It's just habit. It's not deep or meaningful, just the automatic response of two people meeting on a street corner, each jockeying for a chance to tell the other not to do something.
People must become are of this infatuation with bullying each other. There needs be a public awareness campaign across the West that such behaviour is outrageous and unacceptable. As is, most don't get it. Most don't even know that to make crude demands on another's public behaviour is insulting and disgusting. No, not to say one shouldn't writhe on the sidewalk in a drug-induced frenzy, befouled and diseased; all that is fine in public, the drug-addicted garbage-eater and beggar being a victim, the ultimate child of the state. What is intolerable is a mature and normal person being accosted by a fool with a bully's attitude getting away with insulting the integrity of -- anyone at all. It's a national game, replacing soccer or hockey, and too frequently backed up by the state itself, as we see in these outrageous "Human Rights" courts.
It's all an attitude. People can, and I think they must if they hope to live as adults at all in any meaningful sense, learn to tell others to bugger off. Yes, it's impolite, it's impolitic, it's rude. It's necessary. The state in loco parentis, emphasis on loco. Unfortunately, now telling a state employee to bugger off can land one in gaol. It's a price free people can well consider worthy of themselves. Even better is to seek out politicians who will stand in government and demand an end to this out of control control of the micro-behaviour of everyone all the time, even in the privacy of ones own home. Time to grow up and tell the government and ones neighbour to bugger off.
Tell the judge, "Bugger off!" Adults of the West, grow up. You have nothing to lose but your nannies.
There is no possible legal theory I am aware of that would justify this court's holding. Amazing really. One wonders what is going on with insane judges this week as they seem to be scurrying out from under their poisonous rocks en masse. Linked. http://wolfhowling.blogspot.com/2008/06/interesting-posts-from-around-web-19.html
Post a Comment