Force-Feeding Children

On this day:

1690
Glorious Revolution: Battle of the Boyne (as reckoned under the Julian calendar).
1770
Lexell’s Comet passed closer to the Earth than any other comet in recorded history, approaching to a distance of 0.0146 a.u.
1858
Joint reading of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace’s papers on evolution to the Linnean Society.
1863
American Civil War: the Battle of Gettysburg begins.
1879
Charles Taze Russell publishes the first edition of the religious magazine The Watchtower.
1898
Spanish-American War: the Battle of San Juan Hill is fought in Santiago de Cuba.
1916
World War I: First day on the Somme – On the first day of the Battle of the Somme 19,000 soldiers of the British Army are killed and 40,000 wounded.
2004
Saturn orbit insertion of Cassini-Huygens begins at 01:12 UTC and ends at 02:48 UTC.

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The state has accepted a plea bargain in the Idaho murders; the perpetrator will avoid the death penalty. The families of the victims are outraged; they want the death penalty. They want justice. They want revenge.

But is justice the objective of the law? Or is law a social compromise, a system that allows for the resolution of complex problems in a way that avoids the personal and tribal demand for justice? Avoids blood feuds?

Is the law a "social construct?"

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The dollar has lost 10% of its value over the last year.

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This book (All Quiet on the Western Front) is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war. -Erich Maria Remarque, novelist (22 Jun 1898-1970)

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Raising taxes, substituting social workers for police, and inserting government into private business is a good way to cause the flight of the only people in NYC who can help. As always, the Left creates what it tries to prevent.

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Force-Feeding Children

The Giant-Brained Judge Jackson delivered an impassioned, wide-ranging dissent from the Supreme Court decision to limit LGBT reading material for children. It sounded more like a fundraiser.

Her two main arguments: first, that children could go elsewhere—implying parents have the financial means of a Washington politico—or that universal vouchers existed, which do not exist because the teachers' lobby and Democrats oppose them; second, that education should expose students to different views.

The latter raises an interesting point. We generally believe that a broad education is beneficial. But is this universally applicable? Should children, for example, be taught dialectical materialism and its inevitable, homicidal resolutions? Theories of eugenics? Socialism? Manifest destiny? Should such a broad curriculum have any boundaries? Perhaps students should at least be able to read.

Sexual ambiguity and confusion are challenging topics. Most adults cannot explain the difficulties; many physicians cannot. Definitions have changed and continue to change, and the older medical definitions no longer apply. How a child is supposed to understand all this is quite perplexing.

What is even more perplexing is why any adult believes a child should try.

And all this time, most people thought Giant-Brained Judge Jackson was just pretending not to know what a woman was.