From: jamesd@netcom.com (James A. Donald)
Date: Tue, 2 Aug 94 21:30:04 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Children and the Net
In-Reply-To: <199408022232.AA14753@world.std.com>
Message-ID: <199408030430.VAA12681@netcom14.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Lately there has been much tedious back and forth concerning
child abuse.

This has very little to do with cryptography.

It has however something to do with privacy.  Should they
government meddle in peoples homes and make sure they
are bringing up children in the proper government approved 
fashion?

Regarding child abuse and Koresh:  The government was fishing
for stuff to get him on.  The Davidians were charged, came
to court, and were aquitted.  The infamous warrant that
led to the Davidian children being crispy fried concerned
guns, not child abuse.

If we look at famous child abuse cases in California they
are mostly cases of gross abuse by government.

Do children get abused:  Yep, almost always by step
parents, as in the wicked stepmother.

We are unsurprised when someone murders a rival.  We
take for granted that two women under one roof will
lead to grave trouble.

Yet a stepchild is a more formidable rival for a spouses
attentions than any lover could be.

In fact, step parents are more strongly motivated to murder
step children than they are to murder their wife or husbands
other lovers.

For this reason the evil step parent has for centuries been
a stock character to make the plot move along.  Until recently
anybody who read a book would take for granted that step 
parents were a hazard to life and limb.

And when I talk to a kid who is hanging out a long way from
home, a common reason is to avoid being alone with a step
parent.   Step parents are still a hazard to life and limb.

Yet in todays literature and TV shows and movies, it is
generally assumed that step parents and step children
will get along tolerably well.

For a reason that is very unclear to me, this obvious
fact is being systematicly denied in Western culture
generally, and in American culture in particular.

To support this fiction, it appears to me that "Child
Protective Services" agencies make a deliberate effort
to go after natural parents.  It appears to me that
they are trying to make some kind of quota so as
to create the appearance that child abuse is not
biologically driven problem.

Similarly, when a natural parent abuses their child,
this receives vastly more media attention than step
parent abuse, in a disproportion similar to the
extreme disproportion given to incidents of white
racial violence against blacks as compared to black
racial violence against whites.

Yep.  Its a conspiracy.  But what is the point of such
a conspiracy?