Debate: DukeTwicep and Dustnite.

[australopithecus]

This debate is bewtween DukeTwicep and Dustnite, the subject of debate is:

"Should children be taken out of a home that is meeting their basic living requirements if the public at large disagrees with their parent's hate speech?"

Normal debate rules apply, if either party have any other criteria they have chosen to add to the debate I'd suggest they're included in the first post.

As DukeTwicep is arguing for the proposition I invite him to open the debate. As usual a thread for discussing this debate will be posted in General Discussion, and as usual both parties will be not be able to post in that thread until the debate has ended.

 

[DukeTwicep]

"Should children be taken out of a home that is meeting their basic living requirements if the public at large disagrees with their parent's hate speech?"

A little background before I start.
This debate started out from me watching the videos America's Most Hated Family IN CRISIS by Louis Theroux. Most of you have probably seen them. I got more and more upset for each part about how they were abusing their children psychologically, and refusing to let them play with other kids. Forcing or coercing them to join in on the picketing that the parents love.
This is something I've been thinking a lot about lately: the psychological abuse of children and the state doing nothing about it, mostly because of non-existing legislation and little insight from society/state into the state of families.
What Dustnite made me realize is that the legislation will have to be extremely clear and unambiguous on how to deal with these cases, were it to be legislated.
I don't assume that this is something that could be legislated in the next decade, least of all in USA, they seem to have more pressing matters to attend to. I realize that physical abuse is easier to detect and therefore easier to do something about, however, the psychological abuse may be as, or even more, damaging as the physical abuse (remembering also that physical abuse is very often coupled with psychological abuse). [1]

As assumed from the title, I'm debating for any possible legislation - legislation that will probably have to be drafted in a larger agency such as the UN because of its sensitivity - that will enable the state to remove "psychologically abused" children from the care of their parents.

I will try to define my intended use of the term "psychologically abused", there are two definitions to it that I find relevant here:
1.
An intended or unintended style of parenting which clearly interferes with the child's natural development of skills: social, physical, mental, etc.
2.
An intended or unintended style of parenting (upbringing) which heavily infuses detrimental moral/social values/views in the child.


My justification for removing children from the care of their parents is partly the following (My own view/opinion in green):
Children are more or less born to the human race and not to parents, for they do not choose their parents, and it is not their decision to be born. They are at our mercy when we create them and bring their minds into this world. Every child is seemingly born to a random set of parents (sometimes just the mother).
It is easy for humans to create life, so easy that we often take it for granted. We see it as one of our human rights to bear children. Rights? The right to bring an empty mind into this world and to shape it in any way you want? In my mind it should be a privilege to be able to have a child at all, and all the care in the world should be taken as to raise these children in the best way possible for them. But many humans are unreliable, uneducated, stupid and violent, undeserving of having children until they have fixed their own miserable lives. Unfortunately, many of these humans bear children and shape these children in their own image.
Children come out of bad upbringings, scarred for life, sometimes incapable to interact with other people, sometimes waste their lives away in criminality, some waste away in depressions or other psychological disorders. [1]


The solution would be to (ordered not necessarily after importance):
- Legislate against this abuse. Giving the state the ability to remove children from their parents' care after careful consideration.
- Inform the general public of the dangers and indicators of psychological abuse (informing also of the importance of reporting possible cases of abuse)
- Educating the general public on parenting



[1] http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/109/4/e68.full

 

[Dustnite]

Opening Statement​

I would like to thank DukeTwicep for agreeing to debate me on this topic and appreciate the time he has put into this debate thus far. I will be using brackets with numbers in yellow text to indicate citations and will post them at the bottom of each post. I will also be posting definitions and documents at the bottom of each post to allow ease of communication. DukeTwicep is from Sweden and that country mirrors the laws established in the US Constitution and Bill of Rights, but I will be arguing from an American perspective for reasons which become clear in the following.

Our discussion began in LoR chat about the children of Westboro Baptist Church and why the state doesn't intervene to remove their children from a hateful and possibly detrimental environment. Now, my opponent and I will agree that members of Westboro Baptist Church are despicable people and the hate speech that they spout against fellow human beings is deplorable, however what attacks my sensibilities is the notion of involving state law and legislation to intervene in the matter of the children. In a free society such as America or in Duke's case Sweden, it is a very slippery slope to legislate on the grounds of speech, even hate speech, in any way or form as I will make clear in this debate.

Allow me to clarify the criteria for child abuse where Child Protective Services can become involved in situations regarding child abuse for America (in this case this is the law on the books for my state of Arizona [ARS ,§8-201]):

"Abuse" means the infliction or allowing of physical injury, impairment of bodily function or disfigurement or the infliction of or allowing another person to cause serious emotional damage as evidenced by severe anxiety, depression, withdrawal or untoward aggressive behavior and which emotional damage is diagnosed by a medical doctor or psychologist pursuant to section 8-223 and which is caused by the acts or omissions of an individual having care, custody and control of a child. Abuse shall include inflicting or allowing sexual abuse pursuant to section 13-1404, sexual conduct with a minor pursuant to section 13-1405, sexual assault pursuant to section 13-1406, molestation of a child pursuant to section 13-1410.

[1]

According to the proposition we agreed to upon accepting debate terms, the argument in this case is not when physical or sexual abuse is involved as these should be obvious and Child Protective Services, or CPS for short, can intervene. This is not in question. We are also not arguing over whether or not the child has been neglected or is not meeting their basic requirements for living such as food, shelter, hygiene, etc. The question is does the state have the right to intervene in the lives of children if the public majority does not agree with the parent's speech, activities or opinions on parenting when the parents ensure the child such protection and care as is necessary for his or her well-being?

I will show that the state has no right and should have no right to interfere in such a situation and to do so invites a very dangerous precedent on the rights of free speech and the right to assembly as stated in the 1st Amendment of the US Constitution or in Sweden's Fundamental Law on the Freedom of Expression.

I urge the audience reading this debate not to appeal to the emotional response that Westboro Baptist Church and other groups or families that may mirror such hatred and vile speech and instead look at the grander picture being discussed here in this debate. To legislate against free speech even with good intentions could be disastrous for a free society and a discussion such as this must be approached with great care and reason.

Arguments​

"¢ It is dangerous to legislate based on speech, even hate speech, and barring actual criteria of child abuse being breached there should be no action on the state's part to remove that child from their family.

"¢ Even though we may find their speech offensive and possibly detrimental to the development of the child, if they are not breaking the criteria of child abuse, we should not intervene and break up that family according to known studies and statistics which will be revealed in the course of this debate.

Thank you for your consideration and let the debate commence. Duke, I invite you to take the first rebuttal!

Citations and Definitions​

[1]: Arizona Criteria on Child Abuse

1st Amendment of the United States:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Freedom of Speech Constitutional Law (Sweden):

Every Swedish citizen is against the public institutions entitled under this constitution that in radio, television and certain like transmissions, public streams from a database as well as films, videos, sound recordings and other technical recordings publicly express ideas, opinions and feelings, and otherwise provide information in any subject.

 

[DukeTwicep]

Color codes: Orange=My words, Green=Your words, Yellow=source

Thank you Dustnite for your kind words, it's nice for once to have a non-aggressive debate with someone, and it's a big plus that I don't have to feel I get stupider for answering (a bonus from debating with an intelligent and rational being ).
I apologize on before hand for my lack of brevity in this response; it's mostly due to quotes though. I felt that hanging on a single source would seem a little"¦ undiligent?

The question is does the state have the right to intervene in the lives of children if the public majority does not agree with the parent's speech, activities or opinions on parenting when the parents ensure the child such protection and care as is necessary for his or her well-being?

I feel I have to share my thoughts on how I view the question. ""¦children if the public majority does not agree"¦" While I agree that I don't agree with these people's way of raising their children, I feel that the emphasis should be on the matter that it is because what they are doing is detrimental to their children. I have no problem with families raising their children with differing opinions or views than mine. I might have a slight problem with parents forcing a religious belief on their children, but that's another discussion. However, if the religious belief is detrimental to the child then it falls into the category that we are debating. After all, not all religious beliefs can be accepted by society. For example, if people were actually following the stuff that's in the Bible, then we would have a big problem at our hands, with people stoning their children and over all taking the "law" into their own hands. We couldn't possibly accept that, and it is merely the fact that so many have modesty in the belief that stays society's hand from banishing religion altogether. But I digress.
I don't even know if that should be "the public majority". E.g. the UN child convention wasn't written by the public majority, and it wasn't agreed upon by the majority either, there was no voting involved on the part of the people, merely on the part of our representatives. And I feel that if what we are debating is legislated, it will have to be drafted by as many representatives as possible, from as many countries and cultures as possible. For as Dustnite says, there is great danger involved in something as sensitive as this, and isolated opinions can't be allowed to steer whom gets taken away.

To legislate against free speech even with good intentions could be disastrous for a free society and a discussion such as this must be approached with great care and reason.

Hate speech is an example of legislation against free speech I guess. And it was legislated with good reason. Hate speech is an extreme form of free speech and it is treated as such, with fining or putting the perpetrator/instigator in jail. Psychological abuse, or abuse at all, is a rather extreme form of parenting, and no person wants it to happen. There is almost zero-tolerance toward physical abuse against children, I'd say that the reason being that it is a so obvious and unambiguous form of "bad parenting" and because it would be a crime were it done to any other person. However, I believe that we are forgetting that a lot of the lasting damage from physical abuse is psychological, and more so with children receiving abuse from their parents, much because of the children being in their developmental stages and their child-parent connections. [1] There are also physical effects resulting from psychological/emotional abuse, an example being areas of the brain not developing as they should. [2]

Psychological maltreatment is a common consequence of physical and sexual abuse but also may occur as a distinct entity.

[3]

"¢ It is dangerous to legislate based on speech, even hate speech, and barring actual criteria of child abuse being breached there should be no action on the state's part to remove that child from their family.

I agree that the state shouldn't remove children from their parents if it can't be proven that there is child abuse. And so perhaps for this we should focus on the definition of what we mean by "child abuse". Here are some quoted examples.

Psychological maltreatment is a repeated pattern of damaging interactions between parent(s) and child that becomes typical of the relationship. In some situations, the pattern is chronic and pervasive; in others, the pattern occurs only when triggered by alcohol or other potentiating factors. Occasionally, a very painful singular incident, such as an unusually contentious divorce, can initiate psychological maltreatment.
Psychological maltreatment of children occurs when a person conveys to a child that he or she is worthless, flawed, unloved, unwanted, endangered, or only of value in meeting another's needs. The perpetrator may spurn, terrorize, isolate, or ignore or impair the child's socialization. If severe and/or repetitious, the following behaviors may constitute psychological maltreatment:
"¦

2. Terrorizing (committing life-threatening acts; making a child feel unsafe; setting unrealistic expectations with threat of loss, harm, or danger if they are not met; and threatening or perpetrating violence against a child or child's loved ones or objects).

3. Exploiting or corrupting that encourages a child to develop inappropriate behaviors (modeling, permitting, or encouraging antisocial or developmentally inappropriate behavior; encouraging or coercing abandonment of developmentally appropriate autonomy; restricting or interfering with cognitive development).
"¦

6. Isolating (confining, placing unreasonable limitations on freedom of movement or social interactions).
7. Unreliable or inconsistent parenting (contradictory and ambivalent demands).
"¦

[3]

Garbarino et al's influential work defines psychological maltreatment as 'a concerted attack by an adult on a child's development of self and social competence' (Garbarino et al, 1986, cited in Iwaniec, 1997, p.372). They propose five categories of damaging caregiver behaviours:
"¢ rejecting: behaviours which communicate or constitute abandonment of the child;
"¢ isolating: preventing the child from participating in normal social interaction activities;
"¢ terrorising: threatening the child with severe punishment, or deliberately cultivating a climate of fear or threat;
"¢ ignoring: where the caregiver is psychologically unavailable to the child and fails to respond to the child's behaviour; and

"¢ corrupting: caregiver behaviour which encourages the child to develop false social values that reinforce antisocial or deviant behavioural patterns (Garbarino et al, 1986 cited in Tomison and Tucci, 1997)."

"¦

Hart et al build on Garbarino et al's typology above, identifying six categories of adult behaviour towards children considered to be emotionally abusive:
"¢ spurning: both verbal and nonverbal degrading and rejecting of a child;
"¢ exploiting/corrupting: encouraging children to develop behaviours that are self-destructive or mis-socialising;
"¢ terrorising: includes behaviour that threatens or is likely to place the child or child's loved ones in danger;
"¢ denying emotional responsiveness: ignoring a child's attempt to interact, or interacting without emotion;
"¢ isolating: involves caregiver behaviours that prevent a child from interacting with children or adults outside the home; and
"¢ mental health, medical and emotional neglect (Hart et al, 1995 cited in Geffner and Rossman, 1998, p.2).

[4] (Emphasis is my own)

There'll be a lot more studies on child abuse in the future I reckon, article authors seem to express a hesitation to say that we understand what is happening, that we are merely beginning to understand this "phenomena". This tells me that eventually politicians will have to do something about this. It is clear that this is a serious problem to society, and even more so when you see that this kind of abuse transfers from parents to their children.
For studies show that children who have been abused are more likely to, in turn, be abusive to their own children when that time comes. [1][2]
Also:

According to a National Institute of Justice study, abused and neglected children were 11 times more likely to be arrested for criminal behavior as a juvenile, 2.7 times more likely to be arrested for violent and criminal behavior as an adult, and 3.1 times more likely to be arrested for one of many forms of violent crime (juvenile or adult) (English, Widom, & Brandford, 2004).

[5]
However:

Community approaches, such as home visitation, have been shown to be highly successful in changing the behavior of parents at risk for perpetrating maltreatment.18

[3]

"¢ Even though we may find their speech offensive and possibly detrimental to the development of the child, if they are not breaking the criteria of child abuse, we should not intervene and break up that family according to known studies and statistics which will be revealed in the course of this debate.

We are talking about extreme cases though. I'm not talking about a legislation that would force tens of thousands of kids to be dragged out of their homes. After all, supervision and educating, and probably warning the parents will go a long way in preventing/stopping future/ongoing psychological child abuse. When physical abuse happens there are usually very radical steps taken directly to try to get the children out of the abuse as fast as possible, but I think that the psychological abuse cannot be dealt with in the same manner, as it is not so unambiguous as physical abuse and the parents might often not even know they are doing something wrong.
The "dragging away" part should of course be the last course of action. It's maybe even possible that families could be forced to hire/receive a nanny to integrate and educate the parents and at the same time supervising the children. It would perhaps be interesting to discuss the manner of degrees of help/actions that could be taken in response to psychological child abuse another time.
I understand the concern of letting the state tell parents how to raise their children, but it is already being done, which the studies reveal themselves. But, as I claimed in my first post, children are first of all children to the human race and it is we who are guilty if we fail to take action against child abuse, it's not fair in any way to leave children to the uncertainty of what kind of household they will grow up in. I feel that it is our responsibility to provide, to our best ability without creating a police state, a safe environment for our and more importantly (because those who read this probably already know how to not be a bad parent) other children.


Well, this took some time to finish. I've gone back and forward in the text so I'm not sure that I responded to everything, but what the heck, I'm too lazy to be a perfectionist today.
The word is Mr. Dustnite's.


References/Sources:

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_abuse#Psychological_effects
(Redirect to Wikipedia for brevity. Referring not to the actual text but to its citations, there are about 14 citations in the paragraph on psychological effects)
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_abuse#Physical_effects
(Again referring to the citations)
[3] http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/109/4/e68.full
[4] http://www.nspcc.org.uk/inform/research/briefings/emotionalabuse_wda48215.html
[5] http://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/factsheets/long_term_consequences.cfm

 

[Dustnite]

I think we are already going to have disagreements in precedent since in Sweden they have legislated against hate speech in your country's constitution, which in America (the home of Westboro Baptist Church) this is not the case. We may have to agree on what context we are establishing legislation if it is in America, Sweden, or a global issue. Regardless, I think my point will still stand when we are finished as the right to free speech is inherent to any democracy.

While I agree that I don't agree with these people's way of raising their children, I feel that the emphasis should be on the matter that it is because what they are doing is detrimental to their children.

I have to remind you here that the topic remains taking children away from a household where the criteria of child abuse mentioned in my opening are not present. If it is, then we have no argument. The main thrust of this issue is should the state be allowed to intervene and take children out of a home if a parent's hate speech or ideology is extreme or considered extreme to society. For example, if one of the children of Westboro Baptist Church were taken to a health care professional and they saw signs of psychological abuse as reported by my state's child abuse law since it was my original example:

Emotional abuse is evidenced by severe anxiety, depression, withdrawal, or improper aggressive behavior as diagnosed by a medical doctor or psychologist and caused by the acts or omissions of the parent or caretaker (ARS ,§8-201). Emotional maltreatment includes blaming, belittling or rejecting a child, constantly treating siblings unequally, and persistent lack of concern by the caretaker for the child's welfare. Emotional maltreatment is rarely manifest in physical signs, particularly in the normal school setting; speech disorders, lags in physical development, and failure to thrive syndrome are physical indicators of emotional maltreatment. More often it is observed through behavioral indicators, and even these indicators may not be immediately apparent. While emotional maltreatment does occur alone, it often accompanies physical abuse and sometimes sexual abuse.

[1]

Again this should be no argument as we have cause to take the children away from that environment. We both agreed that "the children were being met with basic living requirements" and I believe the point where we will talk past each other is whether or not the criteria of child abuse are being breached by the parents. For the sake of argument, I ask that you and I assume that this is not the case and we are focusing on whether or not a parent's hate speech or ideology is enough to remove the child. Otherwise, we may have to concede the debate on this point.

For example, if people were actually following the stuff that's in the Bible, then we would have a big problem at our hands, with people stoning their children and over all taking the "law" into their own hands. We couldn't possibly accept that, and it is merely the fact that so many have modesty in the belief that stays society's hand from banishing religion altogether. But I digress.

This is discussion for another time, but we already have laws on the books to prevent murder, stoning. This shouldn't pertain what we are talking about in our current discussion.

I don't even know if that should be "the public majority". E.g. the UN child convention wasn't written by the public majority, and it wasn't agreed upon by the majority either, there was no voting involved on the part of the people, merely on the part of our representatives. And I feel that if what we are debating is legislated, it will have to be drafted by as many representatives as possible, from as many countries and cultures as possible.

For the sake of this debate, I assumed "public majority" referred to representatives of government since they are the ones who do the legislating (well in a democracy).

Hate speech is an example of legislation against free speech I guess. And it was legislated with good reason. Hate speech is an extreme form of free speech and it is treated as such, with fining or putting the perpetrator/instigator in jail.

This is where we part ways because of different cultures. In America, we do not legislate against hate speech unless it is used to obscenity [2], defamation, incitement to riot, and fighting words[3]. Most of the Western cultures do ban hate speech, but in America we have decided that we protect the 1st Amendment.[4] This is also very relevant if we continue to use Westboro Baptist Church as an example since as American citizens they are protected by the 1st Amendment to picket funerals or generate hate speech according to the Supreme Court in Snyder v Phelps [5] Whether or not this policy is wise is a debate for another time"¦

There is almost zero-tolerance toward physical abuse against children, I'd say that the reason being that it is a so obvious and unambiguous form of "bad parenting" and because it would be a crime were it done to any other person. However, I believe that we are forgetting that a lot of the lasting damage from physical abuse is psychological, and more so with children receiving abuse from their parents, much because of the children being in their developmental stages and their child-parent connections. [1] There are also physical effects resulting from psychological/emotional abuse, an example being areas of the brain not developing as they should.

We are not arguing this particular point. See Above.

Now that we are past that part, I will post the quote block hidden for people who have been reading the debate. This is referring to your definitions of child abuse:
[showmore=Garbarino Quote]Garbarino et al's influential work defines psychological maltreatment as 'a concerted attack by an adult on a child's development of self and social competence' (Garbarino et al, 1986, cited in Iwaniec, 1997, p.372). They propose five categories of damaging caregiver behaviours:
"¢ rejecting: behaviours which communicate or constitute abandonment of the child;
"¢ isolating: preventing the child from participating in normal social interaction activities;
"¢ terrorising: threatening the child with severe punishment, or deliberately cultivating a climate of fear or threat;
"¢ ignoring: where the caregiver is psychologically unavailable to the child and fails to respond to the child's behaviour; and
"¢ corrupting: caregiver behaviour which encourages the child to develop false social values that reinforce antisocial or deviant behavioural patterns (Garbarino et al, 1986 cited in Tomison and Tucci, 1997)."
Hart et al build on Garbarino et al's typology above, identifying six categories of adult behaviour towards children considered to be emotionally abusive:
"¢ spurning: both verbal and nonverbal degrading and rejecting of a child;
"¢ exploiting/corrupting: encouraging children to develop behaviours that are self-destructive or mis-socialising;
"¢ terrorising: includes behaviour that threatens or is likely to place the child or child's loved ones in danger;
"¢ denying emotional responsiveness: ignoring a child's attempt to interact, or interacting without emotion;
"¢ isolating: involves caregiver behaviours that prevent a child from interacting with children or adults outside the home; and
"¢ mental health, medical and emotional neglect (Hart et al, 1995 cited in Geffner and Rossman, 1998, p.2).[/showmore]

I want to reiterate that the issue at stake here is if a parent's hate speech or ideology is enough to act on in order to remove a child from their parent's custody. By breaching one of the criterias of child abuse listed above or given in my example and properly identified, then the argument is null and we should end the debate now. These criteria may be breached by the use of their parent's ideology, but that would have to be assessed by a professional. Barring this situation, are you promoting to act or legislate based on the perceived wrongdoing that must be happening based on the parent's hate speech or ideology?

There'll be a lot more studies on child abuse in the future I reckon, article authors seem to express a hesitation to say that we understand what is happening, that we are merely beginning to understand this "phenomena". This tells me that eventually politicians will have to do something about this. It is clear that this is a serious problem to society, and even more so when you see that this kind of abuse transfers from parents to their children. For studies show that children who have been abused are more likely to, in turn, be abusive to their own children when that time comes.

I agree, but I would not argue in favor of legislation as much as I would providing better education and parenting classes. Inviting more government control over the personal lives of its citizens is dangerous as I will show later in this debate. I will skip over your two studys since we are not arguing over the merits of intervention in child abuse cases.

We are talking about extreme cases though. I'm not talking about a legislation that would force tens of thousands of kids to be dragged out of their homes. After all, supervision and educating, and probably warning the parents will go a long way in preventing/stopping future/ongoing psychological child abuse. When physical abuse happens there are usually very radical steps taken directly to try to get the children out of the abuse as fast as possible, but I think that the psychological abuse cannot be dealt with in the same manner, as it is not so unambiguous as physical abuse and the parents might often not even know they are doing something wrong.

You may be talking just about extreme cases, but let me give you a lesson from history why legislation like this is dangerous. I share dual citizenship with Australia and I remember learning about The Stolen Generations in grade school. Children were removed from the aboriginal families in Australia from approximately 1910 to 1970 [6] based on several rationales. The government of Australia legislated to remove these children from their families to make them wards of the state under the guise of child protection, which arguably was based on racism or the fear of miscegenation .

Am I saying this could feasibly happen regarding pulling children out of homes from families likened to the Westboro Baptist Church which could extend to other groups like it? As a society that values legal precedent highly, if such a law were on the books I do not think it's unreasonable for history to repeat itself. Situations such as the "Stolen Generations" are what I wish to avoid.

I feel that it is our responsibility to provide, to our best ability without creating a police state, a safe environment for our and more importantly (because those who read this probably already know how to not be a bad parent) other children.

I just can't help but see that a police state is what you are advocating. It could most certainly lead to such a state of government if continued to be built upon.

Rebuttal is yours, Duke.





[1] Arizona Criteria on Child Abuse
[2] Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184, 197 (1964).
[3] 315 U.S. 568 62 S. Ct. 766; 86 L. Ed. 1031; 1942 U.S. LEXIS 851
[4] Hate speech or free speech? What much of West bans is protected in U.S.
[5] Snyder v Phelps
[6] Bringing Them Home Report

 

[DukeTwicep]

Color codes: Orange=My words, Green=Your words, Yellow=source

I think we are already going to have disagreements in precedent since in Sweden they have legislated against hate speech in your country's constitution, which in America (the home of Westboro Baptist Church) this is not the case. "¦

Indeed, it is part of our constitution. I was unsure at first, so I had to look it up, and there it was in the freedom of press, a list of crimes against the right to free speech as well as the free press. Such as "Treason", "Hate speech" (The rough translation though is "persecution against group/people"), "Espionage", "Revealing secret information", "Calumny "(Serious defamation), "Earnest threat" (To threaten with a weapon or to earnestly threaten to do something criminal)(The crimes of/against free speech are 18 in total and they are all listed in this source [1]). Most of them very obvious crimes but it's up to the court to decide (Word 2007 says it should be "it are" (why not it're?) instead of "it's", really Microsoft? A Swede has to tell you how to spell?). But maybe the big difference is that in Sweden the general rule in courts is to "rather set a (possibly) criminal free than to put an (possibly) innocent in jail", and in USA you have the reverse rule (or so I've learned). This makes a big difference in cases regarding free speech where you (mostly) only have witness accounts to go on. This general rule (or so I think) is not in the constitution and so you couldn't have known (I only realized this now).

I have to remind you here that the topic remains taking children away from a household where the criteria of child abuse mentioned in my opening are not present. If it is, then we have no argument. The main thrust of this issue is should the state be allowed to intervene and take children out of a home if a parent's hate speech or ideology is extreme or considered extreme to society. For example, if one of the children of Westboro Baptist Church were taken to a health care professional and they saw signs of psychological abuse as reported by my state's child abuse law since it was my original example"¦"

Barring this situation, are you promoting to act or legislate based on the perceived wrongdoing that must be happening based on the parent's hate speech or ideology?

I can tell you directly that I don't think that the state should be allowed to take the children away directly when it is discovered that the parents engage in hate speech and/or extreme ideology. But it certainly invites one to ask: "are they spreading this to their children?" and so I think that if these indicators are discovered in either the parents or the children, the family's state should be investigated, and then dealt with in a degree apropos to the state the family is in. If shown that this hate speech and/or extreme ideology is transfused onto the children then appropriate action should be taken, but never to remove the children in the first instance unless there is heavy evidence to support this action. E.g. the hate speech might lead to a family where the children are psychologically abused, or even physically abused (in both cases you and I agree that action should be taken).
But let's say the investigation (a person from child services/social services comes to visit at an unspecified time and maybe asks the children a few questions as well as the parents (I don't really know how they work)) leads to the realization that negative, immoral and/or asocial values/views are transfused into the children. We are then talking about stuff that doesn't count as child abuse at first glance, it might result in effects similar to child abuse later in life though. Immoral values (I'm not even sure if I'm using it right, it's late, do correct me if I'm wrong) might seem as a fuzzy term. Examples of immoral values: homosexuality is wrong, sex is wrong, masturbation is wrong, non-Christians are evil (if in a Christian family), etc. Although, many of these can be shown by a pediatrician to be harmful to the child later in life as these values will limit the child's social interactions heavily, as well as promote hate against these groups and (in the case of sex/masturbation) create psychological problems related to sexuality.
I feel that in many cases, pediatricians will only be able to advice the parents on how to proceed and warn them of what might happen, however this will not stop religious/ideologous parents. But I digress again, and perhaps pediatricians simply can't do much because it's not that dangerous to learn that homosexuals are evil (unless they turn out to be homosexuals themselves that is), I feel that it is many more times more dangerous that the children are taught that sex is wrong and to fear their own bodies, but this is a much clearer case of psychological child abuse.

To sum up the last paragraph and to partly answer your question on me wanting to create a police state: it should always be a last resort to take children away from their parents, it is always better to try to fix the problems in a less radical way, such as educating, warning, promoting, visiting, counseling, etc. but if there is simply no way to improve the state in the families I feel that the same actions as with physical abuse should be allowed.
And no, children shouldn't be taken away merely on an assumption based on the parents' hate speech or extreme ideologies. One simply cannot assume that they are transfusing these values/views onto their children.

This is where we part ways because of different cultures. In America, we do not legislate against hate speech unless it is used to obscenity [2], defamation, incitement to riot, and fighting words[3]. Most of the Western cultures do ban hate speech, but in America we have decided that we protect the 1st Amendment.[4] This is also very relevant if we continue to use Westboro Baptist Church as an example since as American citizens they are protected by the 1st Amendment to picket funerals or generate hate speech according to the Supreme Court in Snyder v Phelps [5]Whether or not this policy is wise is a debate for another time"¦

I think that one of the largest reasons, that hate speech and the like is in our constitution, is that the constitution is the hardest law to change and thus free speech is protected by the fact that changing or adding to the free speech crimes is Really hard. Had they been outside the constitution it would have been an almost trivial matter to add all sorts of weirdness, it's simply logical to put it all in one place.
(Had someone picketed a funeral here in Sweden, I would have gladly been the first out to dish out private justice to them, or not, mainly because here they are going to jail.)
I do not understand why you do not legislate against hate speech though, we don't seem to have any problems over here: people aren't going to jail by the thousand for engaging in hate speech (and we're not a police state), but perhaps this has to do with the "general rule" I was talking about earlier.

I just can't help but see that a police state is what you are advocating. It could most certainly lead to such a state of government if continued to be built upon.

""¦if continued to be built upon." I agree that if built upon in a specific way then it would lead to a police state"¦ but then where to draw the line? You point me to anywhere in the history of law though and I think both you and me can say that building upon that can lead to a police state.



Yours is the word, Dustnite.




References/Sources:

[1] http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tryckfrihetsbrott

 

[Dustnite]

But maybe the big difference is that in Sweden the general rule in courts is to "rather set a (possibly) criminal free than to put an (possibly) innocent in jail", and in USA you have the reverse rule (or so I've learned). This makes a big difference in cases regarding free speech where you (mostly) only have witness accounts to go on. This general rule (or so I think) is not in the constitution and so you couldn't have known (I only realized this now).

I think what you are looking for is, "Innocent until proven guilty." Yes, this is the basis of the US legal system. Is the presumption of innocence not the basis for theSwedish judicial system.

I can tell you directly that I don't think that the state should be allowed to take the children away directly when it is discovered that the parents engage in hate speech and/or extreme ideology. But it certainly invites one to ask: "are they spreading this to their children?" and so I think that if these indicators are discovered in either the parents or the children, the family's state should be investigated, and then dealt with in a degree apropos to the state the family is in. If shown that this hate speech and/or extreme ideology is transfused onto the children then appropriate action should be taken, but never to remove the children in the first instance unless there is heavy evidence to support this action. E.g. the hate speech might lead to a family where the children are psychologically abused, or even physically abused (in both cases you and I agree that action should be taken).

Two points to establish here.

First, you seem to be basically advocating profiling a certain group because of their ideology, which begs the question "On what grounds are you able to determine what is an extreme ideology and how is it possible to judge such a thing or put such a thing into law?" A free society abhors profiling and generalizing groups of people in any sense, so where do we draw the line? Can we? This is at the heart of the debate. What I'm saying is you cannot effectively put into law the ability to single out individuals or groups that stray from the status quo. This is how you get the Americanization of the Native Americans"¦ (see reference) [1] You may think I'm jumping the gun on this, but just read the Indian Removal Act of 1830 and use it as an analogy to this situation. It is eerily similar to what you are suggesting.

Second, I have a problem with "If shown that this hate speech and/or extreme ideology is transfused onto the children then appropriate action should be taken." What exactly is appropriate in this situation when a parent is raising their young the way they see fit? This is what is always comes back to because it is couched in the question. You keep trying to get away from this point, but there it is.

And no, children shouldn't be taken away merely on an assumption based on the parents' hate speech or extreme ideologies. One simply cannot assume that they are transfusing these values/views onto their children.

This is not a contradictory summation to what you said above. Am I understanding this statement in context?

I do not understand why you do not legislate against hate speech though, we don't seem to have any problems over here: people aren't going to jail by the thousand for engaging in hate speech (and we're not a police state), but perhaps this has to do with the "general rule" I was talking about earlier.

Really?

CBS News quotes a story that sums up my point succinctly from your own country no less:

And then there's Prime Minister Reinfeldt, who faced his own cartoon crisis less than a year after taking office. In August 2007, the regional newspaper Nerikes Allehanda published an editorial on freedom of expression and, to illustrate the point, included a caricature of the Prophet Mohammed with the body of a dog--a drawing initially slated for a Stockholm art exhibit before it was jettisoned at the eleventh hour by the hosting museum (and subsequently rejected by others) for fear of violent reprisals.

As the cartoonist submitted himself to 24/7 police protection after receiving death threats, including a $100,000 bounty on his head from Al Qaeda in Iraq, Prime Minister Reinfeldt moved swiftly to prevent a Swedish sequel to the Danish affair, which claimed over 200 lives. While he resisted Muslim pressure to prosecute the offender--blasphemy, unlike group defamation, is legal in Sweden--he invited Muslim ambassadors and local community leaders to a summit. Algerian envoy Merzak Bedjaoui hailed Reinfeldt's proposed get-together as "an excellent initiative taken in a spirit of appeasement." And that spirit pierced the air as the prime minister addressed the gathering: "I regret if people have taken offense or feel offended," he said. "I personally would never intentionally act in a way that could be perceived by other religions as provocative or offensive."

This time around, Reinfeldt has professed no regrets, nor has he expressed any desire to defuse the situation by meeting his Israeli counterpart. (Foreign Minister Bildt already cancelled a scheduled visit to Jerusalem.)
How, then, does Sweden handle hate speech? When does it prosecute the offenders, when does it merely apologize for them, and when does it rally to their cause while pretending that that's what the country always does? In short, whenever Sweden pleases and for whatever reasons suit the moment.

[2]

Do you agree this situation was handled correctly? I have about 30 of these ready from neutral sources without about 20 minutes of googling and cross referencing all across Western Europe with similar hate speech laws on the books. This is an example of legislation running amok. Am I painting a picture for you yet?

"¦if continued to be built upon." I agree that if built upon in a specific way then it would lead to a police state"¦ but then where to draw the line? You point me to anywhere in the history of law though and I think both you and me can say that building upon that can lead to a police state.

Stolen Generations example from the last post was suppose to illustrate it. I would look at the Bringing Them Home Report Let's not forget the Americanization of Native Americans as well. [3]

All done with the best intentions according to the culture of the day with the worst consequences that lasted generations...

[1] Indian Removal Act of 1830
[2] Sweden's Free-Speech Charade
[3] Wiki Link for Americanization of Native Americans

 

[DukeTwicep]

I think what you are looking for is, "Innocent until proven guilty." Yes, this is the basis of the US legal system. Is the presumption of innocence not the basis for theSwedish judicial system.

Very funny, no that's not the rule I was referring to. I think any usable judicial system has the "innocent until proven guilty". I was referring to the (paraphrased translation) "beyond all reasonable doubt" and, "it's better that 99 guilty are released than that an innocent gets a sentence" [1]. I believe that the judicial system in Sweden is kinder than that of USA.

Two points to establish here.

First, you seem to be basically advocating profiling a certain group because of their ideology, which begs the question "On what grounds are you able to determine what is an extreme ideology and how is it possible to judge such a thing or put such a thing into law?" A free society abhors profiling and generalizing groups of people in any sense, so where do we draw the line? Can we? This is at the heart of the debate. What I'm saying is you cannot effectively put into law the ability to single out individuals or groups that stray from the status quo. This is how you get the Americanization of the Native Americans"¦ (see reference) You may think I'm jumping the gun on this, but just read the Indian Removal Act of 1830 and use it as an analogy to this situation. It is eerily similar to what you are suggesting.

Here we go again with the "certain groups". I thought I made it clear that I'm not advocating profiling against specific groups. If I'm not mistaken, you were first out to mention "extreme ideology", I continued to use it, so perhaps you have some explanation ready which you are not willing to share?
I'm pretty sure that you can single out people that act in extreme ways through a fixed text. Isn't psychology already doing this by saying that psychopaths have certain traits? Traits that aren't going to change any time soon I reckon.
Here's a possible definition:
Extreme ideology is an ideology that may include: earnestly and repeatedly"¦
- engaging in and/or promoting the exclusion/profiling/killing of a group of people
- promoting/encouraging hatred toward a group of people
- engaging in the defamation/vilification of a group of people
- promoting lessened rights for a group of people
- engaging in and/or promoting/spreading, to children, ideas that can be classed as child abuse (such as, "your body is sinful", "sex is a sin", "homosexuality is a sin", "you will go to hell if"¦", etc. these can all be linked to one or several definitions of psychological child abuse)

There might be more important criteria, those are just some examples showing that extreme ideologies share similar traits, just like psychopaths (of course not insinuating that they are psychopaths).

Second, I have a problem with "If shown that this hate speech and/or extreme ideology is transfused onto the children then appropriate action should be taken." What exactly is appropriate in this situation when a parent is raising their young the way they see fit? This is what is always comes back to because it is couched in the question. You keep trying to get away from this point, but there it is.

""¦when a parent is raising their young as they see fit?" Fun fact, there are parents who physically abuse their children and think it's perfectly normal. Just because the parents think it's perfectly normal and good for the children doesn't mean that it is.
What should the state do? Well, inform the parents that what they are doing is damaging to both the children and to society. And if there are things in what they are teaching their children that can be defined as child abuse, then I am pretty sure that the state already has action plans.

What can be done about the extreme stuff that doesn't count as child abuse is to, add education in school that counters this, such as lessons in morality and ethics, social interactions, and so on. I agree with you that you can't take any action on opinions, unless it can be classed as child abuse.

And no, children shouldn't be taken away merely on an assumption based on the parents' hate speech or extreme ideologies. One simply cannot assume that they are transfusing these values/views onto their children.

This is not a contradictory summation to what you said above. Am I understanding this statement in context?

It wasn't supposed to be contradictory either. It would be a terrible summation if it was.

I do not understand why you do not legislate against hate speech though, we don't seem to have any problems over here: people aren't going to jail by the thousand for engaging in hate speech (and we're not a police state), but perhaps this has to do with the "general rule" I was talking about earlier.

Really?

CBS News quotes a story that sums up my point succinctly from your own country no less:

[showmore=Dusnites quote]And then there's Prime Minister Reinfeldt, who faced his own cartoon crisis less than a year after taking office. In August 2007, the regional newspaper Nerikes Allehanda published an editorial on freedom of expression and, to illustrate the point, included a caricature of the Prophet Mohammed with the body of a dog--a drawing initially slated for a Stockholm art exhibit before it was jettisoned at the eleventh hour by the hosting museum (and subsequently rejected by others) for fear of violent reprisals.

As the cartoonist submitted himself to 24/7 police protection after receiving death threats, including a $100,000 bounty on his head from Al Qaeda in Iraq, Prime Minister Reinfeldt moved swiftly to prevent a Swedish sequel to the Danish affair, which claimed over 200 lives. While he resisted Muslim pressure to prosecute the offender--blasphemy, unlike group defamation, is legal in Sweden--he invited Muslim ambassadors and local community leaders to a summit. Algerian envoy Merzak Bedjaoui hailed Reinfeldt's proposed get-together as "an excellent initiative taken in a spirit of appeasement." And that spirit pierced the air as the prime minister addressed the gathering: "I regret if people have taken offense or feel offended," he said. "I personally would never intentionally act in a way that could be perceived by other religions as provocative or offensive."

This time around, Reinfeldt has professed no regrets, nor has he expressed any desire to defuse the situation by meeting his Israeli counterpart. (Foreign Minister Bildt already cancelled a scheduled visit to Jerusalem.)
How, then, does Sweden handle hate speech? When does it prosecute the offenders, when does it merely apologize for them, and when does it rally to their cause while pretending that that's what the country always does? In short, whenever Sweden pleases and for whatever reasons suit the moment.[/showmore]

Do you agree this situation was handled correctly? I have about 30 of these ready from neutral sources without about 20 minutes of googling and cross referencing all across Western Europe with similar hate speech laws on the books. This is an example of legislation running amok. Am I painting a picture for you yet?

It is not for me to say what lead to Reinfeldt's decision, and I'm not sure you are the right person to judge either. The deal with the cartoons was an especially sensitive question, and Sweden wasn't the only country that made the decision to cower in the face oppression from Islamic leaders, apologetics and politicians. In fact, USA seemed to have an even bigger issue with reprinting the mohammed cartoons from Jyllands-posten (I cite Wikipedia because the source material has been removed, but there are many mentions of this source on Google so it seems legit):

"¦ Between October 2005 and the end of January 2006, examples of the cartoons were reprinted in major European newspapers from the Netherlands, Germany, Scandinavia, Belgium and France. Very soon after, as protests grew, there were further re-publications around the globe, but primarily in continental Europe.
Notable for a lack of republication of the cartoons were most major newspapers in Canada, the USA[48] and the United Kingdom, where editorials covered the story without including them. Several newspapers were closed and editors fired or arrested for their decision or intention to re-publish the cartoons, including the shutting down of a 60 year old Malaysian newspaper permanently. "¦

[2]

And doubt you can say that these events happened just because of our special legislation. It seems to me that corruption, lies and immorality in politics is not something that is isolated to Europe.
Perhaps we should also talk about the repercussions of actually allowing hate speech and other abhorrent acts of "free speech"?
"Do you agree this situation was handled correctly?" Oh, now we are comparing how good our politicians are at handling situations? How hypocritical, looking at the track-record of your own politicians.
But we are moving off topic. If you'd want to discuss this, I'd rather do it in the chat or in the general thread.

Stolen Generations example from the last post was suppose to illustrate it. I would look at the Bringing Them Home Report Let's not forget the Americanization of Native Americans as well.

Yes you posted that before, and I replied by saying that anything can lead to a police state. So we should cower in fear of the slippery slope, because past generations failed, and never change the system? Very progressive.

All done with the best intentions according to the culture of the day with the worst consequences that lasted generations...

Yes, any act by any human done in the best intentions can lead to disaster, which is why this would need to be carefully legislated and by as many people as possible, and watched over by human rights institutions. Just because past generations have failed at protecting the people doesn't mean that future generations will
In fact, wouldn't it just be easier to insert a law that said "No law shall be made that in any way denies the rights of a certain group of people" and "No law shall be used to deny the rights of any certain group of people"?


The word is yours, Dustnite.





[1] http://www.nkmr.org/bortom_allt_rimligt_tvivel.htm
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyllands-Posten_Muhammad_cartoons_controversy#Reprinting_in_other_newspapers

 

[Dustnite]

I request another 48 hours to respond. I'm getting bogged down at work and can't type a reply atm.

 

[DukeTwicep]

I request another 48 hours to respond. I'm getting bogged down at work and can't type a reply atm.

Phew, I just logged in and thought I only had 4 hours to respond, plus I didn't feel like responding atm. It's fine for me, I thought the 24h limit was kind of stressful anyway, seeing as it takes over 3-4 hours for me to respond, and I sleep around 12 hours.

 

[DukeTwicep]

I request a further extension of the time Dustnite has to respond, he seems to have a lot of work to do IRL. I don't think he wants to end the debate and neither do I.

 

[Dustnite]

Thank you, please give me another 48 hours I plan to make a response tonight or tomorrow night. I apologize for the inconvenience.