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Date:         Thu, 23 Jul 1992 14:25:17 -0500
From:         Jason Briggs Cormier <CORJB@RHODES.BITNET>
Subject: Re: hilary or carl? tough choice!

>>        Is it that the laws don't work or that condidtions in
>>        society make it harder for them to work?  Is it the
>>        fault of the law that society "frowns" on this type
>>        of behavior?
>>
>>        I know many people who advocate things like:
>>
>>        Children obey your parents. . . to the point that it
>>        would be sin for them to report their parents.
>>
>>        Furthermore, I don't think that making it easier to
>>        do something of this nature is going to help the
>>        situation, but will bring a plethora of problems of
>>        its own.

>Are you suggesting something along the lines of "the proposals being
>discussed treat the symptoms, not the disease"?  If so, I agree with you --
>we need to fix the underlying problems.  But I also think we need a way of
>dealing with current effects in the interim.  Now, I absolutely agree that
>we seem to be really good at coming up with "solutions" that cause more
>problems than they cure.  We therefore need to be really cautious in
>implementing new legal methods.  To me, that means looking at specific
>proposals and evaluating them carefully -- not just dismissing them out-of-
>hand.

>Kerry

I suppose I am discussing deeper problems, but what exactly are they?

I still think that the proposals of Hilary Clinton will just make more
of a mess.  At this time, some children almost look for the opportunities,
which these legal provisions would provide, in order to attack their
parents.

I do not believe that we should add more laws that will exacerbate the
problem.

I don't have a solution to the problems of abusive parents.  I think
that the issue runs so deep in our society that the only way of
adequately and effectively altering the circumstances in which we
find our society is to do some massive social restructuring.

There are a two ways of going about this, that I can see:

1)      The government (-either the existing one, or one replaced
        by revolution-) can totally twist society.  The only
        way that this can be done well, is by having a government
        which runs somewhere between authoriarian and totalitarian.

This won't happen, at least for a long while, because our society
is so thoroughly democratic and values its liberties and rights
too well.

2)      We can wait until our society goes through a transformation.
        This may happen sooner than we are thinking because of
        racial tensions.  The other issues that can bring this to
        a climax would be economics, war or something else that
        is bigger than individuals and bigger than the government.

Until something like this happens, I don' think that we are going
to see any substantial change in society.  Without substantial
change in society, however, societal values and social customs/
views will not alter to the degree necessary to fix the problems
we now have.

-j.b.
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