Children Fighting Back!!!

[Seth King]

Parents beware! Children can fight back better than ever!

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wl9y3SIPt7o" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wl9y3SIPt7o</a>

[Freya]

Parents beware! Children can fight back better than ever!

Wow, just.... I don't even know what to say...

Good thing he got caught on tape so the world can see what kind of monster this guy is.

[Seth King]

This sort of thing happens to millions of children every day all around the world. It's definitely a barbaric practice that I hope will soon be relegated to history. I am hopeful that the video camera will help put an end to it.

[oooorgle]

It is surprising there are not more of these and I hope this one will inspire victims. Much respect to the girl for releasing this. This is how I and my siblings were raised then. The wrath of the belt and wooden spoon. This is not how I or any of my sibling raise our own children now. We raise Anarchists! 

[JustSayNoToStatism]

There are thousands of children who wish their beatings were this short and bloodless. That being said, I still had chills going down my spine as I watched this.

[JustSayNoToStatism]

Folly is close to the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline will drive it far from him.
(Proverbs 22:15 NAB)

Blessings are for the head of the just, but a rod for the back of the fool.
(Proverbs 10:6 NAB)

Withhold not chastisement from a boy; if you beat him with a rod he will not die.  Beat him with the rod, and you will save him from the nether world.
(Proverbs 23:13-14 NAB)

"Happy those who seize your children and smash them against a rock."
Psalms 137:9 NAB

Chastise your son, for in this there is hope
(Proverbs 19:18-19 NAB)

He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes.
Proverbs 13:24

For many more...go here

And now, someone is going to go and look all these up, and say, "oh, no, you see the literal translation rod means stick less than a quarter inch, and probably actually refers to pretzel rods of some sort." Don't. Don't fight it. This stuff is unbelievably disgusting. Selective reading of a book about beating children, stoning women, and massacring civilizations is kind of ridiculous. Calling it the word of a magical benevolent omnipotent being who loves you is delusional.

The argument that religion is something we can just ignore is not okay. I agree with Stef here. The fact that that father is a backward, childbeating control freak has to do with the bible. I guarantee it. He lives in the bible belt, and I'll bet you anything he's a christian and goes to church.

The gross, violent, twisted superstitions of religion and statism are exactly the same. Faith is anti-reason. People have faith in gods, and faith in governments. It's the same phenomenon. Why do we still have a state? Because people are faithful (ie delusional). They are content to "believe." It's this intellectual sloth that lets people believe in god or government. It's the same cause. Strike the Root!! The root is faith. The root is lack of thought. Give up on all manifestations of it. Free your damn minds!

[Will]

And now, someone is going to go and look all these up, and say, "oh, no, you see the literal translation rod means stick less than a quarter inch, and probably actually refers to pretzel rods of some sort." Don't. Don't fight it

Sorry, I'm the rebellious argumentative type and have to. I understand this is what you believe and that's okay we can disagree. I don't want this to get all inflammatory, but just want to share some thoughts on this. Not to take anything away from the disgusting show of human filth shown in the original video.

Instead of the pretzel rod you're suggesting it is a scepter, literally that is what the word means in Hebrew. Scepter, you know the golden wand kings wave around to symbolize their authority. What's going on here is a metaphor, something extremely common in ancient poetry of Proverbs.

Folly is close to the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline will drive it far from him.
(Proverbs 22:15 NAB)

This does not mean beating or physical violence. It does however mean that parents have the responsibility to discipline their children. This means that if a child initiates force against someone else, the parent needs to communicate to the child how their actions have consequences, and then have the child makes up for their bad behavior in a controlled and helpful manner, such as through restitution. This makes sure the child is prepared for the real world where you don't get off so easy for punching your boss, as you do on the play ground.

Blessings are for the head of the just, but a rod for the back of the fool.
(Proverbs 10:6 NAB)

The Hebrew word here translated as "rod for the back" is literally violence, the NAB is taking some serious liberties here; most translations read something like, "violence overwhelms the..." But anyways the language here is not commanding us to dole out the punishment, but rather that the violence is a result of the person's own actions, in other words the fool has brought this on himself.

Withhold not chastisement from a boy; if you beat him with a rod he will not die.  Beat him with the rod, and you will save him from the nether world.
(Proverbs 23:13-14 NAB)

He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes.
Proverbs 13:24

Same deal as before with the rod being metaphorical and not violent. Chasten in both places is a translation of the Hebrew for discipline.

"Happy those who seize your children and smash them against a rock."
Psalms 137:9 NAB

First some background, this Psalm was written after the Israelite nation had been taken over by Babylon. This song/prayer is from an Israelite angry that God had allowed them to be treated this way, asking God to deliver them. If we read the verses immediately preceding this quote:
 "Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction,
   happy is the one who repays you
   according to what you have done to us."
The Bible isn't saying lets go throw babies off some cliff, or even throw some Babylonian babies off of a cliff. It is one man crying out to God for retribution (similar to what we find throughout the book of Job), not God commanding retribution. Only God had a different plan that didn't involve murdering babies, but that's another discussion.

Chastise your son, for in this there is hope(Proverbs 19:18-19 NAB)

From the ESV, "Discipline your son, for there is hope; do not set your heart on putting him to death."

The argument that religion is something we can just ignore is not okay. I agree with Stef here. The fact that that father is a backward, childbeating control freak has to do with the bible. I guarantee it. He lives in the bible belt, and I'll bet you anything he's [claims to be] a christian and goes to church.

I agree almost completely with what you say here, with that one small change; anyone who actually lives by the golden rule could not treat a child like that. The fact that the man was (is?) a Judge drives the point home. Organized religion where people just sit back and accept whatever the Preacher spews out at them is just as dangerous as the people who listen to the despots.

One needs to read and look at things from all sides. That was the way I was raised: to look at everything skeptically and draw my own conclusions. Luke even commend this in Acts where he speaks of the Bereans who didn't just accept what Paul taught them, but checked for themselves to see if it was true. Through healthy doses of Marx, Plato, and Rothbard I eventually found anarchism. In the same way through Rand, Nietzsche, Lewis, The Koran, and The Bible, I made the decision to be a Christian, it is the only view that makes sense to me. It may not to you, and thats okay, I'm not going to try and force you to do anything.

Like Stef said the antithesis to liberty isn't government, it is the initiation of force. In the same way the antithesis of liberty isn't religion, even though religion can be (and certainly is in many cases) involved in the initiation of force, it doesn't have to be. "Those who live by the sword, die by the sword."

Sorry for the long rant, hopefully it didn't come off as too argumentative, I just wanted to share my thoughts on the subject. I'll leave you with this:

Ephesians 6.4 "And the fathers! provoke not your children, but nourish them in the instruction and admonition of the Lord."

[Freya]

What's going on here is a metaphor, something extremely common in ancient poetry of Proverbs.

The problem is the meaning of many of those metaphors and sayings is lost over time as expressions change. Then there is the fact that the bible has been translated countless times. So I completely agree with you here that it is usually people misinterpreting the bible.

I agree almost completely with what you say here, with that one small change; anyone who actually lives by the golden rule could not treat a child like that. The fact that the man was (is?) a Judge drives the point home. Organized religion where people just sit back and accept whatever the Preacher spews out at them is just as dangerous as the people who listen to the despots.

This is the essence of the issue. When people stop to question their leaders, those leaders can pretty much do with their followers as they want.

I also don't get why Christians would want to follow a religious leader anyway. Isn't god supposed to be the highest authority? How do you communicate with god? Through religious leaders? Or through prayer?

I'm not Christian or theist myself. But I do believe god is real, in a sense. I believe that when people pray they do not communicate with some invisible sky man. I believe they are conversing with their own morality. They are questioning themselves: what is the right course of action to take. This is my view on religion of course, doesn't mean people have to agree.

[JustSayNoToStatism]

You can selectively decide that everything bad in the bible is a metaphor. I can't stop you from claiming this to be so. Let me guess, all instances of child abuse are metaphors, and all instances of loving your neighbor and jesus rising from the dead, those are where god was serious, right? And all the instances of killing children, like the magical offing of the first borns in Egypt, were metaphors. Same with the butchering of Canaanite tribes, specifically the Amalekite genocide.

One needs to read and look at things from all sides. That was the way I was raised: to look at everything skeptically and draw my own conclusions....I made the decision to be a Christian, it is the only view that makes sense to me.

I have to challenge you here. No one logically draws conclusions about holy ghosts anymore than they do about casper the friendly ghost. No reason, no evidence, no sense, just belief. There is no way to test these things, so there is no evidence. There is no form of a priori reasoning that can lead you to conclude these things, so we throw out reason. No reason, no evidence.

Why am I repeating this over and over? My point is to help people understand why we have a state. It may be true that they use violence to prop it up, but it's important to understand that if people knew how to think, it would die tomorrow. They wouldn't kill us all.....So now, why do people respect the state? It's a belief. It's a belief, based upon indoctrination, that ignores reason and evidence. The a priori economic arguments against the state are obvious. The historical evidence is overwhelming. But people don't care. They believe. They don't think. That's the root.

Government and religion are two branches of the same thing. To oppose one and not the other is to strike at the branches of evil. These are just manifestations of human ignorance. Hack at one and support the other, and it just looks foolish.

Point: The reason government exists is the same reason religion exists.

Sorry for the long rant, hopefully it didn't come off as too argumentative, I just wanted to share my thoughts on the subject.

For the record, no one ever needs to apologize to me for anything. You cannot "hurt my feelings." If the conversation does not come off as a little bit argumentative, then we probably weren't trying very hard to sort through the ideas. Brutal honesty and civility need not be mutually exclusive.

[bastiat]

 I wonder if the translators were imputing there procorperal punishment biases into the generic punishment it could also be that they just view physical punishment as the only way of punishment as opposed to ostracism and creating guilt.
Also relevantly passing children through the fire is not just condemned but done so repeatedly.

And all the instances of killing children, like the magical offing of the first borns in Egypt, were metaphors. Same with the butchering of Canaanite tribes, specifically the Amalekite genocide.

That is literal( just look at the way it is written) but not anti child so much as generally giving justice earleir than most; we all have transgressed and God may reprocess are lives himself or may request others to do so. 

[JustSayNoToStatism]

That is literal( just look at the way it is written) but not anti child so much as generally giving justice earleir than most; we all have transgressed and God may reprocess are lives himself or may request others to do so.

This is totalitarian, right? So if god told you to kill me for being unfaithful, that would be ok? This is the same logic people use to kill doctors and what not. I'm going to assume this is a more radical christian position and that most people on this forum don't think that way. I still would like a more moderate christians' take on my previous post though.

[bastiat]

Totalitarian in theory maybe, but not so much in reality. The proof of identity needed for convincing me to kill someone is greater for claims of deity than from claims of communicating from the future. But if these are met I would kill you but also myself, my pastor, the pope, or a failed artist recovering from a gas attack. But in the absence of a specific request I can no more claim to be God's defense agency then yours. And actual as you might die or become unconscious I would be willing to say capture your mugger with out expressed request. I have no idea what actual theologians think about this subject  so anything I say on this subject is only my veiws and the result of introspection not research. But in part it is my answer to the problem of suffering made general. 

[JustSayNoToStatism]

Totalitarian in theory maybe, but not so much in reality. The proof of identity needed for convincing me to kill someone is greater for claims of deity than from claims of communicating from the future. But if these are met I would kill you but also myself, my pastor, the pope, or a failed artist recovering from a gas attack. But in the absence of a specific request I can no more claim to be God's defense agency then yours. And actual as you might die or become unconscious I would be willing to say capture your mugger with out expressed request. I have no idea what actual theologians think about this subject  so anything I say on this subject is only my veiws and the result of introspection not research. But in part it is my answer to the problem of suffering made general. 

Yikes. I hope you see how this is actually a point in my favor in the discussion I was having with Will. I'm arguing the parallels between government and religion, and you note that in theory, if told to kill me or yourself, you would do so.

[bastiat]

But then are time are time travelers government?
More seriously, the difference is that if government left us alone, pursues inaction, shrugs we would be better off. If God did likewise the universe would end. Ironically, given your abortion reference, I think evictionsim is the best moral analogy to this scenario. Though our souls merely get transferred to a form of existence not owned by God.
Still I see how the parallel could be drawn but to equate the two would also render a  substantial landowner the government in his own land two the extent he threatened to kick people off his land to inferior unappropriated land.  Also assume the landowner called forth the land with his own labor and molded it to what it is now and so there is no doubt about the land being his. Also the owner has allowed the visitors to gain secondary property rights through homesteading because he is a nice guy and wants to improve production. But if the landowner wanted to eject someone he would totaly be within his rights so to do or to ask someone else to do it for him.

[Freya]

Totalitarian in theory maybe, but not so much in reality. The proof of identity needed for convincing me to kill someone is greater for claims of deity than from claims of communicating from the future. But if these are met I would kill you but also myself, my pastor, the pope, or a failed artist recovering from a gas attack. But in the absence of a specific request I can no more claim to be God's defense agency then yours. And actual as you might die or become unconscious I would be willing to say capture your mugger with out expressed request. I have no idea what actual theologians think about this subject  so anything I say on this subject is only my veiws and the result of introspection not research. But in part it is my answer to the problem of suffering made general.  

As a voluntaryist you believe that initiation of coercion is immoral. But you admit that if god would command it, this is exactly what you would do. These views are contradictory and don't seem very voluntaryist to me at all.

I still do not believe christianity and voluntaryism are necesarily conflicting, but you certainly aren't making a good case for it .