Simple-Minded Solutions

You have to read this story in a South Carolina newspaper. (PDB has supplied the impetus for this whole posting, so go read his posting on the same topic.)

In essence, a local politician calls for sterilization of parents of misbehaving children. I stand corrected; he only singled out mothers for "spaying" if they cannot control their offspring. Let the deadbeat dads go on searching for fertile women. I'm not sure why he left out the male parent. Perhaps the thought of nipping gonads cuts a little too close.

The other simple-minded solution from another local politician was to provide some recreational equipment and programs for the poor little bastards out of taxpayer funds.

Guess which side of the political spectrum each dope is from. Generally, I can tell who is who by their proposed solutions to complex problems. The conservative answer is usually simple and cheap:

"We pick up stray animals and spay them," Larry Shirley said in a story published Saturday by The Post and Courier of Charleston. "These mothers need to be spayed if they can't take care of theirs. Once they have a child and it's running the street, to let them continue to have children is totally unacceptable."

Now, equal time for the dope on the left:

State Sen. Robert Ford, a Charleston Democrat, agreed that the crime highlights a societal problem but dismissed Shirley's suggestion to sterilize people as "crazy."

"What Larry Shirley needs to talk about is getting City Council to provide some recreational facilities and activities for these kids and creating an atmosphere conducive to a normal society," said Ford, also a former councilman.

What both sides are missing is the realization that no amount of "good" parenting or government programs will correct a bad kid. For whatever reason, some kids are just plain rotten. We all have known them. I don't know the reason, but here is some speculation. The child doesn't feel loved for whatever reason. The child has a genetic defect. The child's environment sucks. Too much TV, video games, advertising have all been blamed. Check out this book for a most thoroughly researched, and exhaustively explored thesis on bad kids: A is for ox : the collapse of literacy and the rise of violence in an electronic age / Barry Sanders. You can find it at any Major University Library. He offers no solutions, just causes. Most seem just as reasonable or as looney as others who have written on the subject.

Back to tell who's conservative and who's liberal. In general, conservatives have simple solutions for complex problems, and liberals have complex solutions for simple problems. The guys in the above story cut true to form, and both are equally as stupid as their solutions.

BRB is Write(and has spoken)