Isqua Istari

I rummaged around on Yahoo! and Google a bit, and found a cache of this post. I will also include a few of the comments (8 of 21) after the post itself.

In order to properly understand the context of this post, you will need to read this post on Scholl’s blog, and the following comments. I wrote this originally as a comment for that blog post, but when I saw how long it was, I felt it would be better treated over here.

I believe that children should be protected, even �pre-emptively,� even if that protection must be from their parents. The Government, however, has no place in that protection. The Bible tells us as Christians to care for widows and orphans, and I would suggest that unfortunates such as the children of mentally unstable individuals could/should be considered such for the purposes of our care. That said, we as Christians do indeed lack the legal capacity to exert such care in many situations, since, as Ziggy pointed out, taking another�s child is kidnapping, even in our legal system.

The issue at hand is indeed something like what ryoga mentioned: we can�t stop bad parents from happening. The murder of Ronnie Paris Jr�s son would never have happened if Ronnie Paris Jr. never had a son. In a world where everyone was accountable to each other, that might not be so hard to prevent. In that world, too, in the unfortunate eventuality that such prevention failed, classification and care as an orphan for such children would not be a difficult concept. In that statement, we see the root of our problems: ��where everyone was accountable�� Our world has distanced itself and all of its constituents from accountability in a very effective manner. Not only is nothing �your fault� (poor Ronnie, he has a mental disorder. He didn�t want to kill his son, he just couldn�t help himself!), but anything that MIGHT be your fault somehow falls to the Government to amend, whereas Governments should in fact have little to no intervention on such levels, ever. The idea of Government as a protector of liberty has been twisted into the Government taking blame for us, and making laws in vain attempts to inhibit stupidity.

This is the reason that Ziggy�s position seems so far fetched to so many people. �What? How could the Government NOT save the children of the inept? How could it be so careless?� The answer obvious in Ziggy�s (and my) mind is that the Government has NO PLACE in such situations, ever. Any place that they do have there should be removed. God never intended for an impersonal entity to �care� for the unfortunate. God never intended for the Government to feed, clothe, and protect us. THAT�S OUR JOB. God DID intend for his people to care for their own, and for their neighbors. It is this example that we see repeated throughout both testaments. If I notice that my neighbor�s child is not being cared for, I should confront my neighbor about it. And if he does nothing, I should take that child in as my own and care for it myself. That doesn�t work anymore. The Government is too entwined in the minutia of private life for good people like Ziggy to even suggest that things should be different without being mocked and challenged by the intellectual elite, even other Christians.

Do I think it realistic to expect a return to the people caring for each other, as God intended? Certainly not. That will never happen; such is the extent of Satan�s victory over our society. Does that mean I can condone Government taking a role in raising children? Certainly not. Just because things are a certain way does not mean they are right. Just because such is inevitable does not mean I have to let it come with no resistance. Our system of government is itself a willing and useful tool for Satan to strike at the people of our world, and as I experience more of it, I am only more convinced of the evil that a once-great ideal has become. No, Ziggy is right. The Government has no place in our families, or in the lives of our children. Governments are for military protection and legal mediation; not parenting.

This begs the question, though, �what SHOULD we do in today�s society?� I don�t know. I do know that we should try to affect those that we can, those that we do exert influence over, towards the right thing, and try to do the right thing ourselves. I am forced to forfeit the battle for our country and our society as a whole, but it is my hope that when it falls, for fall it will, there will be those left who think like Ziggy to start things over.
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Okay, so it’s probably actually old and dusty. Regardless of its hygiene, however, I found a backup that I made that was surprisingly more up-to-date than I expected. I remembered the occasion on which this backup was made, but thought that I had opted not to make it (don’t ask me why). Turns out that I did make it, I just had to find it. Find it I have, and now all but two or three of our old posts are once again available for your perusal.

The request for the text of any missing posts still stands, especially the post “Governmental Parenting.” If you have that, feel free to e-mail me or comment it here. Also, the backup was a database backup, and did not include the customized style sheet, so I think we’ll be sticking with the new look. Suggestions, comments, and so forth are always welcome!

Well, the latest is in from all fronts: apparently, spykids hosed the forum system I use for my WoW Guild as well (which fortunately was an easy fix, and gave me a good excuse to update to the newest phpBB), and Jav doesn’t have any backups for my database. So, we start over. I found this theme, LastRegrets, and Jeff and I rather like it, but if you find something else that you think we just must take a look at, let us know and we will do so. Bear in mind that I’m quite the fan of a left-hand sidebar, so if you tell me to look at something with a right-hand sidebar, it would have to be really good to get more than a glance from me.

If you happen to have any of my old posts cached, I’d gladly take them (particularly some of the more recent ones). The Araben story I have, and I’ll repost it when I’m less angsty.

Sometime during the night, a “clever” individual saw fit to replace several of the blog files with the phrase “spykids pwnz you”. While the movie by the same name is entertaining, especially for, well, kids, I was unappreciative of spykids’ apparent “pwnz”ing. I took the opportunity to upgrade to WordPress 1.5.2, and all should have been right in the world again.

However, the upgrade tool hated me. And if it wasn’t the upgrade tool, I don’t know WHAT it was, other than that it wasn’t me. When I got the Blog back to something that would actually load up and look like something intelligible, the database was, well, empty, and all was NOT right in the world again. There may have actually been wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Sadly, I have not lately been a clever Toad, and my database backups are sorrowfully outdated, and restoring to them would be not unlike starting over with nothing on the blog. I’m getting in touch with the server admin, and hoping he has something a bit more up-to-date than I do. I’m also a lazy Toad, and an angry Toad, and don’t really feel like piecing my exquisitely altered simple-green style sheet back together color by color, and am hoping Jav has a backup of that file, since apparently I never made one. This, too, causes me bitterness. Just in case Jav does NOT have a backup of my style sheet, any suggestions as to a new theme would be greatly appreciated, because getting all those colors the way we had them took Jeff and me a good couple hours of edit, upload, refresh ad nauseum. You can search for such themes by googling phrases such as “wordpress themes.” Figure that one out.