thedrifter
03-27-05, 01:54 AM
The Tyranny of the Children
March 26, 2005
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
by Rudy Takala
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The legitimacy of certain performance-enhancing drugs has recently been a popular subject in the news, crusaders of government action as usual asserting the beneficial effects that regulation will have on “the children.”
“Children” have a tendency to idolize baseball players, they say, and because some of the practices baseball players partake in have a bad effect on their health, those practices must be prohibited. The possibility of children idolizing harmful practices is the case most frequently made in favor of steroid regulation.
If that argument prevails, of course, future bans will inevitably come to prohibit sport figures from consuming similar products, such as tobacco. The values of socialism hold the length of life to be more valuable than the quality of life, and the adherents of socialism feel a compelling need to instill those values into children. Because many may not agree, the only means by which they can create a people homogenous in its condemnation of such things is by using government to induce them through force. There is indeed more at stake in this debate than the simple regulation of steroids; the future disposition of government towards all products and practices detrimental to one’s health is at stake.
The most absurd argument put forward by the people who advocate for such action is that government manipulation of sport figures will somehow make them into better role models. So it isn’t their character that makes them bad role models; it’s their steroid usage. What sport figures decide to consume is thought of as a threat more imminent to society than is their proclivity to rape, riot and murder, which we presently have many laws prohibiting but which are nonetheless disregarded. Still, it is insisted, steroid users pose a great threat to America.
Even the Democrats who didn’t believe Bill Clinton should have been “suspended” from the presidency for committing perjury believe players should be suspended from baseball for using steroids. They often espouse the credo that people should be “allowed to do what they want to their own bodies,” but when it comes to people doing things to their bodies that Democrats don’t like, the same principle no longer applies.
Meanwhile, John McCain, the liberal Republican Senator of Arizona, began talking about “ the absolute insensitivity of both the owners and the players to the American people." Since when did it become McCain’s job to ensure that people are “sensitive”? The Constitution hasn’t delegated to government the task of making our society a sensitive one.
But as has become the customary cliché, regulation must proceed for the sake of “the children.” Without it, adolescent males may hurt themselves by making unfortunate choices of what individuals to mimic. Because I am myself a constituent of the demographic that our paternalistic bureaucrats purport to be protecting by enacting regulation, I find the intended effect of their legislation puzzling. I possess the ability to discriminate between the destructive and the non-destructive; I must question why my peers do not, and I must also question how regulating the actions of unrelated figures will aid the young in their abilities of discernment
It could be argued that they lack guidance, but that is a lamentable fact of our culture, not a fault resulting from the lack of government action. Jeff Weise, the seventeen-year-old who killed ten people in a recent school shooting in Minnesota, idolized Hitler and called himself a National Socialist. Perhaps it would be more effective to stop teaching students about Hitler than to prohibit steroid usage.
But even though Jeff Weise called himself a National Socialist, there has been no call to outlaw socialism. There’s been no significant outrage over the deranged socialists who target America’s youth. If it had been a video game that Jeff Weise claimed he was emulating, there would have been an immediate outcry asserting the need to outlaw the game in question and to impose penalties on anyone who sold violent video games to people under the arbitrary age of eighteen.
But of course, it isn’t about banishing every insidious force in America that children may wish to emulate. That’s obviously an impossible, ludicrous quest to embark upon, and anyone who’s pondered it however briefly has realized that. It’s about the imposition of values and the nearly universal quest of bureaucrats to establish the precedents necessary to impose the values that they haven’t yet had the consensus or power to enact.
Those of profligate character will never be good role models, and government regulation will never be capable of transfiguring people’s character. Government cannot take away all of the tangible weapons with which people may mistreat each other, and it cannot mysteriously dissolve the abstractions with which they may harm themselves. Abstract matters of principle exist, and government cannot obliterate them.
Governments of the past burned books, calling them detrimental to civilization; similarly, the governments of today can destroy whatever practices society wishes to use as scapegoats for human behavior. But as in the past, their destruction will do nothing but corrode the veneration of rights.
Children may one day cease idolizing the disreputable figures of professional sports; but unfortunately, it will probably come only in exchange for their respect of something of a much more despicable nature, which is the power of government and the paternalism it provides.
© Copyright 2005 by Rudy Takala
Rudy Takala
Ellie
March 26, 2005
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
by Rudy Takala
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The legitimacy of certain performance-enhancing drugs has recently been a popular subject in the news, crusaders of government action as usual asserting the beneficial effects that regulation will have on “the children.”
“Children” have a tendency to idolize baseball players, they say, and because some of the practices baseball players partake in have a bad effect on their health, those practices must be prohibited. The possibility of children idolizing harmful practices is the case most frequently made in favor of steroid regulation.
If that argument prevails, of course, future bans will inevitably come to prohibit sport figures from consuming similar products, such as tobacco. The values of socialism hold the length of life to be more valuable than the quality of life, and the adherents of socialism feel a compelling need to instill those values into children. Because many may not agree, the only means by which they can create a people homogenous in its condemnation of such things is by using government to induce them through force. There is indeed more at stake in this debate than the simple regulation of steroids; the future disposition of government towards all products and practices detrimental to one’s health is at stake.
The most absurd argument put forward by the people who advocate for such action is that government manipulation of sport figures will somehow make them into better role models. So it isn’t their character that makes them bad role models; it’s their steroid usage. What sport figures decide to consume is thought of as a threat more imminent to society than is their proclivity to rape, riot and murder, which we presently have many laws prohibiting but which are nonetheless disregarded. Still, it is insisted, steroid users pose a great threat to America.
Even the Democrats who didn’t believe Bill Clinton should have been “suspended” from the presidency for committing perjury believe players should be suspended from baseball for using steroids. They often espouse the credo that people should be “allowed to do what they want to their own bodies,” but when it comes to people doing things to their bodies that Democrats don’t like, the same principle no longer applies.
Meanwhile, John McCain, the liberal Republican Senator of Arizona, began talking about “ the absolute insensitivity of both the owners and the players to the American people." Since when did it become McCain’s job to ensure that people are “sensitive”? The Constitution hasn’t delegated to government the task of making our society a sensitive one.
But as has become the customary cliché, regulation must proceed for the sake of “the children.” Without it, adolescent males may hurt themselves by making unfortunate choices of what individuals to mimic. Because I am myself a constituent of the demographic that our paternalistic bureaucrats purport to be protecting by enacting regulation, I find the intended effect of their legislation puzzling. I possess the ability to discriminate between the destructive and the non-destructive; I must question why my peers do not, and I must also question how regulating the actions of unrelated figures will aid the young in their abilities of discernment
It could be argued that they lack guidance, but that is a lamentable fact of our culture, not a fault resulting from the lack of government action. Jeff Weise, the seventeen-year-old who killed ten people in a recent school shooting in Minnesota, idolized Hitler and called himself a National Socialist. Perhaps it would be more effective to stop teaching students about Hitler than to prohibit steroid usage.
But even though Jeff Weise called himself a National Socialist, there has been no call to outlaw socialism. There’s been no significant outrage over the deranged socialists who target America’s youth. If it had been a video game that Jeff Weise claimed he was emulating, there would have been an immediate outcry asserting the need to outlaw the game in question and to impose penalties on anyone who sold violent video games to people under the arbitrary age of eighteen.
But of course, it isn’t about banishing every insidious force in America that children may wish to emulate. That’s obviously an impossible, ludicrous quest to embark upon, and anyone who’s pondered it however briefly has realized that. It’s about the imposition of values and the nearly universal quest of bureaucrats to establish the precedents necessary to impose the values that they haven’t yet had the consensus or power to enact.
Those of profligate character will never be good role models, and government regulation will never be capable of transfiguring people’s character. Government cannot take away all of the tangible weapons with which people may mistreat each other, and it cannot mysteriously dissolve the abstractions with which they may harm themselves. Abstract matters of principle exist, and government cannot obliterate them.
Governments of the past burned books, calling them detrimental to civilization; similarly, the governments of today can destroy whatever practices society wishes to use as scapegoats for human behavior. But as in the past, their destruction will do nothing but corrode the veneration of rights.
Children may one day cease idolizing the disreputable figures of professional sports; but unfortunately, it will probably come only in exchange for their respect of something of a much more despicable nature, which is the power of government and the paternalism it provides.
© Copyright 2005 by Rudy Takala
Rudy Takala
Ellie