Thursday, 6 April 2017

Who is the parent?

Do parents have any rights which are not subject to the arbitrary whims of the state? Or are children ultimately wards of the state, which benevolently grants their parents certain privileges when it sees fit? According to the UK's "supreme court," it's the latter: http://www.bbc.com/news/education-39504338

This is one of those petty tyrannies (a fine of £60) based on completely non-petty theories about the relationship between state and parents (that the state has arbitrary authority to specify the tiniest details of the timetable of how you should educate your children). The only sensible response to petty tyrannies, once they become widespread and systematic, is mass disobedience. i.e. They should be made unworkable by parents in a school co-ordinating to agree to withdraw their children en-masse on a specified day, and daring the authorities to take every single last one of them to court. Petty tyrannies only work because of
the salami-slicing effect - people say "this isn't my battle". But, a thousand petty tyrannies down the line, you find that after opting out of every battle, you lost the entire war by default. Legally, your children have become wards of the state, and faceless bureaucrats tell you what their will is for your children, and fine you if you differ on any of the details. The same arguments which justify this particular petty tyranny can justify just about anything the state pleases. And they will.

Christian parents in the UK need to be joining the dots if they haven't already done so. For example, with compulsory immoral, secularised sex education on the way, combined with a court favouring the Department of Education's viewpoint that removing your child from a state school for even half a day is an offence, what's your plan? This isn't a situation that just arrived last week. It's the outworking of the last few decades, in which we've inevitably progressed from A, to B, to C, to D. There's nothing alarmist about pointing out that the next step is certainly going to be E. What's our plan to ensure that our children are raised in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, as Scripture requires of us?

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