What price do we pay for government?

More disturbing, what price do OTHER people pay for government?

An article at OneZero.Medium.com entitled “The Human Cost of Your Smartphone” discusses the impact of getting the minerals needed for modern communications on the children and families of the Third World countries these minerals come from. What the article does NOT point out is one of the major reasons these materials come from Africa or Asia and not from the Fifty States or other First World locations.

That reason is government: laws, regulations, and policies that make it cost-prohibitive, if not just plain impossible, to mine those minerals. And often even more to process those into usable materials to manufacture the cellphones and other things.

Government, despite supposedly good intentions, permits and encourages the abuse of children who are forced to work to survive in Third World countries. American government, in particular.

But there is more. Zero Hedge recently reported that 30,000 children under the age of 10 have been arrested in the Fifty States in the last five years. Mostly at schools, and mostly for behavior that previously would have been punished by time-out, short suspensions, or a paddling. Why? Again, I blame government. Government rules and regulations and policy. Government-run schools. Supposedly preventing child abuse through evil, outdated practices like giving a misbehaving child a swat on the bum. And as a result? More abuse. Government-sanctioned and direct government-administrated abuse.

We hear a constant drumbeat about the abuse of youth by Catholic priests. And I certainly no supporter of the Roman Catholic Church and its perverted system of clergy and laity. (Perverted in many ways.)

But the epidemic of the abuse of youth by “public” (government-run, tax-funded) school teachers, while periodically showing up in headlines, is seldom so vilified and publicized at the “priestly” abuse. Not just calling the cops to deal with discipline that past generations of teachers were able to handle without the cops. And not just sexual predators doing little girls and little boys. I’m also including the lies and propaganda taught by public school teachers to developing minds about everything from global warming to sexual liberation to sex-change. And especially I am talking about the failure, more and more, to teach students basic, essential skills like reading, writing, and math.

All of which are not just tolerated by government (of course, most schools are themselves a form of government), but encouraged, promoted, and required. Indeed, it is government laws that put 95% of children into these institutions: targets not just for the rare mass-killer attacking a disarmed location, but for the daily exposure of children to abusers – not just teachers and staff but their own peers.

Parents are, sadly, the source of many types of abuse of children: their own children. Can we blame the father who kills his own boys and girls, his wife, and then kills himself? Absolutely. Can we blame the mother who one day drives her van or SUV and her children into a river or a bay in another form of murder-suicide? Completely. Can we condemn the father or mother or both who cage and starve their children, or beat them black and blue, or desert them? Certainly.

But why do we seem to be seeing more and more of these types of incidents? In many cases, the stress and lack of moral compass which leads to these tragedies have many causes. But in virtually ALL of the cases, we find that government is at the root of many of the causes, or is making the situation worse by laws, regulations, policies, and the cruel and unthinking acts of government agents. Not just limited to police and “child protection” agencies. Planning and zoning, tax policy, employment agencies, and constant conspiracy with business and institutions put intolerable pressures on families, and especially on parents.

This government abuse of children is hardly new. We can look at the Egyptian government of 1400 BC for one example (the killing of Hebrew children). We can point to Herod the Great and what he did to the children of Bethlehem about 2025 years ago. We can see how government-sanctioned slavery of children destroyed generations and families around the world. We can remember Chivington’s massacre of the Arapaho and Cheyenne: “Nits make lice.” Or government boarding schools for AmerInd children. And many more examples.

Sadly, there will always be child abuse, but it is more and more clear in the 21st Century that government is a leading cause and has always been.