When you see stories like this:
…A West Michigan woman says the state is threatening her with fines and possibly jail time for babysitting her neighbors’ children.
Lisa Snyder of Middleville says her neighborhood school bus stop is right in front of her home. It arrives after her neighbors need to be at work, so she watches three of their children for 15-40 minutes until the bus comes.
The Department of Human Services received a complaint that Snyder was operating an illegal child care home. DHS contacted Snyder and told her to get licensed, stop watching her neighbors’ kids, or face the consequences.
“It’s ridiculous.” says Snyder. “We are friends helping friends!” She added that she accepts no money for babysitting.
Mindy Rose, who leaves her 5-year-old with Snyder, agrees. “She’s a friend… I trust her.”
To be sure, legislation is starting up to stop this bit of nonsense – but since when do the authorities even have a reason to look in to such matters? And where do we get people like the stoolie who called the cops? And how did a government agency get the right to issue fines and threats before a trial and conviction? For all our alleged efforts to ensure free choice and privacy, it sure seems to me that our area of liberty is shrinking.
In a free society, all is permitted unless there is a specific law against it. The mark of a tyrannical society is that nothing may happen unless the government permits it – right now, for this kind lady to watch the neighbor’s kids for a few minutes she’ll either have to get permission from the government, or wait to see if the government passes a law allowing normal, human interaction.
When I first read this story I was outraged – and I mean really outraged. I seriously desired, just for a moment, that everyone involved be flogged. 10 lashes with a cat o’nine tails for the stoolie, the government officials and whomever originally wrote a law which worked out as a ban on being human. I’ve calmed down since then – but I’m still enraged over this…and very concerned. Because it occurred to me as I pondered the issue that there are a myriad reasons for the authorities to arrest and/or harass us in our daily lives. To be sure, not in our sex lives – government has kindly resigned itself out of that (thanks, liberals…really good job there, boys and girls), but every other aspect of our lives is ever more under the thumb of government.
Which of us, stopped by the authorities, could really say we feel confident that justice will be done? Someone I know had a summary judgment placed against him in a civil suit – he had never been served; the plaintiff had put a notice in the newspaper, which this person never reads, and that was considered sufficient notice by a judge…and then it was in to efforts at wage garnishment. Someone could denounce any of us, anonymously, and the way things are working out, we’d have to prove our innocence. And that is only if we’re given the chance – there’s no indication in the linked story that the lady was charged with a crime and then convicted by a jury…nope, just an anonymous denunciation, a drum head investigation by bureaucrats, and then “watch it, slave, your masters are after you!”.
We need a genuine civil rights movement – probably an armed one, in to the bargain. We need to curb the government and the busy-bodies who set government upon us. First off, we should end the use of anonymous denunciations – I know, the cops like them: all the more reason to ban them. If a person is not willing to put themselves out on the line with their accusation, then it simply should not be used. Secondly, we should ensure that no government entity can take any adverse action against a person absent a confession in open court, or conviction by a jury. Third, anyone accused of any crime should not have their name and particulars released to the public by the authorities until after a conviction is obtained – true, the MSM will dig out a lot of such names, but only in prominent cases…we certainly don’t want our government covering us in muck, especially if we turn out to be innocent of the charges. Fourth, impose severe penalties for false accusations and for prosecutorial/bureaucratic misconduct.
Our freedom is at stake here – we’ve allowed our liberty to erode for too long. Time to take it all back.
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