In December, 1993, a deranged racist named Colin Ferguson boarded a Long Island express train and began shooting people at random. When he was done, 6 people were dead, and 19 were injured. Thanks to New York's draconian anti-gun laws, no one else on the train was armed, and Ferguson was only tackled by some bystanders when he stopped to reload. Among the dead and wounded were the husband and son of Carolyn McCarthy, who was elected to the House of Representatives in 1996.Instead of working toward making it possible for law-abiding citizens to defend themselves by getting rid of anti-gun laws that disarmed only the law-abiding, McCarthy decided instead to spit upon the memory of those killed and injured on that train by becoming a tireless advocate for more federal anti-firearms laws that would render people even more defenseless and leave them at the mercy of criminals who have no compunction about violating laws that tell them they can't carry a firearm.
In the wake of the Heller and McDonald Supreme Court decisions, I don't know if McCarthy is giving up or just branching out. In her latest attempt to stay relevant, she has introduced a bill in the House that would make it a federal crime for a school to inflict corporal punishment on a student.
In the past few years, as the behavior of students gets more and more out of control, quite a few school districts around the country have begun to take a second look at corporal punishment, and have brought the paddle out of retirement. Representative McCarthy apparently can't stand for this, and has decided that there oughta be a law.
Never mind the fact that Article I Section 8, which lists the powers of Congress, grants no such power to the U.S. Congress to pass a law regarding this issue.
I realize that some of my readers may be in favor of banishing corporal punishment in schools (I say spank 'em!). However, there is a right way and a wrong way to do this. The question of corporal punishment in schools is one that must be debated and legislated at the state and local level, not at the federal level.
Ah, but when you read the article, notice something very important that you could easily overlook. If this bill were to actually become law, it would only apply to public and private schools that receive federal funding. That is where the feds trap you. They are really only one degree removed from the mafia in this regard. Once you take their money, you have to abide by their rules. If I recall correctly the last statistics I saw, the federal government only provides about 7% of the funding of our nation's schools. That's a lot of influence for such a relatively paltry sum of money.
Nevertheless, somehow, I don't think Carolyn McCarthy - or most members of Congress for that matter - could give a rip less about any limits imposed on the power of Congress.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was and never will be." -Thomas Jefferson
6 comments:
Just before I retired from teaching five years ago, I mentioned to my fourth grade class that I was allowed to paddle students when I began teaching. The reaction was amusing. One student asked, "When you paddled a kid, didn't you get a call from their mom and dad saying that you were going to get turned into the cops or sued?" I simply said, basically, that when the child got home and had to show that they had been paddled, their parents usually paddled them again for their misbehavior. I wish I could have taken a picture of the looks on my students faces.
An older teacher told me, when I first started, that sometimes paddling is the final try at bringing the kids back to reality.
I'm sorry, but spanking doesn't work. I remember, 50 years ago, the one year I was allowed to spank, there were two memorable miscreants. Upon seeing the paddle, one fell to the floor and cried like a baby. The other took his punishment stoically, because he had no doubt been beaten many times at home. The greatest discipline problem at that school was the principal. He gave the teachers no backing, and the kids knew he would listen to "their side of the story." (As if they had one.)
Sorry Don, but if you read the article, you will see that the district in Texas that instituted the corporal punishment policy is finding that it is working out just fine.
As someone who received a couple of paddlings at school, I think it probably works and I can say I deserved it. Kids have to have a respect for authority and corporal punishment is "one" way to achieve that.
I remember being spanked as a child in grammar school. Children need to know where boundaries are, without them they try more and more crap to test and see what they can get away with. Example the kid who gets told stop that Johnny, now stop it, I really mean it stop that and the parent who let's him do it. Next thing the kid is screaming and disrupting the whole store. Perhaps if some of the kids had been paddled as youngsters and our Judicial system held them accountable we might not have as many criminals in the jail system that we have now a days. Bring the paddles back....Spare the rod and you spoil the child.. Too many spoiled children end up as spoiled adults....
Thank you for your comments everyone. I always figured, touching a hot stove leads to a burned hand and an unforgettable lesson.
Running away from Daddy and toward the street results in a sore behind and an unforgettable lesson. It is certainly better than being hit by a car.
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