Texas: Police State
By William S. Lind February 28, 2002
According to the February 22 Washington Times, the Gestapo is alive and
well in the state of Texas: "Jerry Shifflet received a $300 ticket
last Friday. But it wasn't from a cop catching him speeding. The ticket
was written by an officer patrolling his child's school. The offense: his
15-year old son cursed at another student. Ticket-writing in schools is
nothing new, said Karen Olson, the district's Director of Security. She
coordinates nine to twelve city police officers and Department of Public
Safety troopers each school day... The fines they dispense range from
about $250 to $500. In 2001, police issued 132 tickets to students for
disrupting class and 182 tickets for disorderly conduct."
As my father used to say, sometimes I really regret the fact that Hitler
won the war.
Whatever happened to being sent to the principal's office? Or detention?
Or simple common sense? If a schoolboy uses a bad word, state troopers
stationed inside his school now ticket his parents? Why do we, the
public, put up with this sort of totalitarian nonsense?
Our ancestors, who evidently had more guts than we do, would have solved
this problem with tar, feathers, and a rail. We meekly allow ourselves to
be dragged through every absurdity, not even protesting. Since we have
decided to behave like sheep, we should not be surprised that we get
fleeced, then slaughtered.
What lies behind this bizarre policy in Texas schools? A few factors are
easy to identify:
We have stripped schoolteachers of the authority they need to maintain
discipline. If they attempt to do so, they face a myriad of rules, the
violation of any one of which puts their job in jeopardy. And, they face
civil suits from parents if Johnny's or Susie's "self-esteem"
is damaged. If the miscreant is a minority, the teacher's situation is
even worse. Most of them gave up long ago, and now just go through the
motions and wait for retirement.
Everyone is terrified to challenge any policy that is justified by the
magic word, "security." To oppose Gestapo tactics in a school
is to "put children in danger." (Dr. Johnson said that
patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel; today, scoundrels find
safety by hiding behind "children.") Few parents are willing to
stand up to the bureaucrats in the face of the "security"
claptrap, even when the policies are patently absurd.
Political Correctness, aka cultural Marxism, works at every turn to
condition us as to the words we can and cannot use, hence the thoughts we
can and cannot think. From the PC perspective, the sooner kids learn to
fear the law for speaking a wrong word, the better.
Finally, most Americans seem to accept without question that the state
can do anything to us it wants. Here too we have been conditioned, by one
absurd law after another: by tax forms that are incomprehensible but must
be filled out accurately, by "wetlands" legislation that keeps
farmers from plowing and builders from building, by "asset
forfeiture" laws that allow the state to seize your property without
a conviction or even a trial. We have accepted so much that we cannot
draw the line anywhere.
Sometimes it's hard to remember that 50 years ago, America was still a
free country.
William S. Lind is the director for the Center for Cultural Conservatism
at the Free Congress Foundation.
-end article-
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-InfoWarz
"Fundamental, Bible believing people do not have the right to
indoctrinate their children in their religious beliefs, because we, the
state, are preparing them for the year 2000, when America will be part of
a one-world global society and their children will not fit
in."
-Peter Hoagland, Nebraska State Senator, traitor, scumbag, control freak,
socialist, loser, 1983.
"Children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of
the collective society which is coming where everyone is
interdependent."
- John Dewey, Our "father" of education, traitor, scumbag,
control freak, socialist, loser, 1899.
