Reason 344: Because A Child Needs Discipline, Not A Wrap Sheet

This article introduces a new concept I’ve not heard before: “overcriminalization“:

Burping in Class? You’re Under Arrest

Synopsis:

• Boy wouldn’t quit fake burping in class
• He was put into the hallway but still stuck his head in and burped anyway
• Police were called
• Boy was arrested
• Parents sued
• Made its way to the 10th circuit court
• Parents lost

This is a tough one and illuminates the problems with lawlessness and lack of recourse. If you’ve ever had charge over younger people, and you’ve had to deal with one who had figured out that there was nothing you could do to force him to do what he didn’t want to do, you understand the problem. Some children figure it out, and they simply disregard authority. They know you have no recourse. Why don’t you have any recourse? Because force is outlawed.

Enforcement always involves a measure of threat, which is why we’re told that  “Ceasor bears the sword”.  But look around. What happens when a few people don’t like something? Why they burn their neighborhood down? And what does Ceasor do? Nothing. Why?  He dares not use the sword because he fears that he will incite the wrath of the barbarian even further. Now where did they get such a notion? Certainly, the institution that indoctrinated them didn’t teach them any differently.

I just saw this video the other day. I think it must be taken from a movie or television show or something. But look at the expression on the second police officer’s face when the one “get’s out of line”, by threatening the use of force:

So what is a teacher to do? His hands are tied. The institution is impotent. It has tied its own hands. The government’s hands are tied. So what is to be done? Well, for now, since you don’t want to anger the barbarian, you go for the law-abiding citizen.  You play a game of up-the-ante with “criminalization” of typical boyhood behavior on those who still have a little respect for law and order. So I guess rather than corporal punishment administered by the institution, because it wasn’t administered at home, you bring in the police force. But the little future barbarian knows that he’ll be just fine. He knows that he can do as he wishes… because he’s a kid.  And a state that can’t even stomach applying justice to a murderer on death row will never be able to stomach applying some good, old-fashion, wood-shed discipline to a youth who desperately needs it, and is begging for it.

But in your house things are different. You’re not the state, and you’re the best person to apply the rod of correction, not because you hate your child, not at all. No, it’s precisely because you love your child that you teach him that there are consequences to actions. And you do it when those consequences can be applied by loving hand with short term affects, rather than the hands of reality doing it when the consequences will linger and taint.