From: Dale Thorn <dthorn@gte.net>
Date: Tue, 17 Dec 1996 07:09:21 -0800 (PST)
To: blanc <blancw@cnw.com>
Subject: Re: permanent invasion of privacy
In-Reply-To: <01BBEBA9.4DE87160@king1-12.cnw.com>
Message-ID: <32B6B75D.4E1D@gte.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


blanc wrote:
> From:   attila
>         In his Society essay, Lykken writes, "I will testify in
>         support of a parental licensure bill to be introduced
>         at the next session of the Minnesota State Legislature.

Since nobody mentioned it here, it should at least be mentioned:

There are a lot of children who would, given the opportunity, opt to get
the government involved in monitoring their home situation quite closely.

There are times when you're a child (for some of them) that you can't
feasibly contact the government to interfere, i.e., when the govt.
isn't listening, but, when you know they are listening, and you could
use their help (however intrusive), sometimes that's a whole lot better
than putting up with parents from hell.

It's noteworthy that not a single person on this list has looked at this
from the children's point of view, considering that there are *many* of
them who could use the extra help (albeit bad for parents).

> Someone needs to remind this Senator Lykken what happened in Romania, when
> the beleaguered citizen-units finally took their 'noble', social
> engineering leader Ceausescu, put him up against a wall and shot him.
> History could repeat itself.
> Ah well, but really the most that this proposed bill would accomplish would
> be a lot of discussion and a lot of attention being brought to the general
> awareness about where individuals stand relative to their *elected*
> government (in 4 years - out!).
> Can you imagine the usenet discussions . . .all over the world.   You know,
> he could be doing everyone a favor by inciting fury in the savvy masses who
> would, in the process of complaining, educate the ignorant ones about the
> ethics of social engineering and the precautions against it, as well as
> about the character of people like this Senator.  A problem can be an
> opportunity in disguise!