Reply #7: yes and thank you [View All]

[sgxnk]

i am a firm believer that in situations like this, you have to hire good people (which is not as easy as it sounds of course), and give them discretion to use their good judgment and apply situational decisionmaking

now, of course, the drawback to allowing discretion is that if you hire morons or malevolent people, you can see abuses

but my point is that most people have common sense, and more importantly, the system can work (even with tenure, but that's another story) to weed out those who don't.

but creating greater bureaucracy and applying criminal statutes to schoolyard bullies is silly.

parents are the first line of defense and should feel that if they do use corporal punishment and/or common sense, that they will not be punished by the state, and teachers and administrators also need to have discretion and not feel that they need to call police and prosecute a kid who has a 2' long gi joe doll ak-47 in his pocket

one of the edifices of the nannystate (tm) is the idea that generally speaking, allowing discretion for individual actors is bad. there must be LAWS and rules. because if people are given choices, they will invariably choose the wrong one. iow, we need to be protected from ourselves

in general, i am most suspicious of govt. authority, not when it goes against external enemies and/or those who supposedly victimize us, but when govt. attempts to protect us from ourselves. that's why i have a libertarian (but not capital "l" ) orientation towards many topics. get the govt. out of bedrooms, our bloodstreams, etc. people should be responsible for their (bad) actions, but be free to make those choices.

don't sue fast food restaurants for offering crappy food to people, for instance. nobody is forcing you to eat 5 big macs a day, for instance. sorry, i digressed.

but put briefly, parents are the primary agents responsible for their children, and should have the discretion to discipline and make choices. schools, acting in loco parentis also need discretion

zero tolerance laws fail to give people the basic dignity and recognition that they can make decisions and instead try to apply a cookie cutter template to every situation.

and thanks you for the props