In Germany you have a choice: Let the state indoctrinate your kids or face the consequences:
Four children, ages 7 to 14, have been forcibly taken from their Darmstadt, Germany, home by police armed with a battering ram, and their parents have been told they won’t see them again soon, all over the issue of homeschooling, according to a stunning new report from the Home School Legal Defense Association.
The Romeike family had been granted asylum in the U.S. by an immigration judge, but the Obama administration appealed the decision and won a reversal:
The U.S. Department of Justice earlier revealed in a court filing…that it agrees with the philosophy of the German government that bureaucrats can punish homeschooling parents. The agency contends parental rights to keep children free from instruction that violates faith essentially are negligible when the government’s goal is an “open society.”
The HSLDA is appealing the DOJ’s ruling to the Supreme Court.
h/t
Home schooling is too expensive for the State. All a child needs is the Kindle version of Mein Kampf…
Everybody must be educated by the government so that they know that the government is always right!
One of the few things that Stalin, Mao, Hitler and assorted dictators all agreed upon.
See,this is why we have to get involved in Middle East civil wars,it’s to bring DEMOCRACY to those backward people!
Er,Germany isn’t in the ME?
Oh.Never mind.
Can Canada be far behind when we have “educators” claiming “co-parenting” of our children. This is chilling.
More government, more tyranny.
in their defence, they’ll wail to you, “you want roads don’t you”? … Don’t you like roads?
Canadians all claim that we have democracy. Unfortunately we don’t have death-with-dignity — banned by the Supreme Court. We don’t have binding referendums like the Swiss. We don’t have binding election dates so all politicians maneuver around it. We don’t have an elected Senate — hundreds appointed until they are seventy five.
Interesting, which side Obama took in this, against the Christian parents. So this is what the Democrats mean when they brag about how ” pro-child ” they are? Yup. It takes a village, or a pitiless liberal bureaucracy’s SWAT teams, to raise a child.
Well, really, how else is the state going to create the new socialist atheistic man.
The response from Obama’s goons is not surprising.
I’m agnostic as to home schooling, but have known a few that were home schooled, they always seemed ahead of their state schooled peers.
You don’t have to scratch a “progressive” very hard to reveal the fascist beneath.
Nice to know our grandparents died in two world wars on euroweenie soil just so’s we’d end up with this.
As for the US Dems and their frontman and their rino enablers…what a flippin’ mess.
Expect it to be on the upswing as the number of home schooled kids increases, especially in Ontario. In my neighborhood(60 families) just shy of 3/4’s of the people homeschool their kids. I live in a community of sub-30k. Back in my old home town it’s around 40% of people are homeschooling their kids, but more are doing it every year. My old next door neighbors kids, who are 9 and 12 respectfully, moved out of public to homeschooling this year. For interest I live in the SWON.
Just curious if the new German Gestapo carries out the same type of raids on Madrasa’s? Those islamofascist schools don’t seem to be doing a very good job at integrating students into society.
Jonah Goldberg has a good description about the difference between liberals and libertarians. Libertarians think people should have the freedom to do as they please, as long as it doesn’t harm others. Liberals insist that people should have the freedom to do things liberals approve of, everything else should be forbidden. Education falls under that general rule but adds hypocrisy: school vouchers are bad, homeschooling is worse, public schools are great but private schools is where they prefer to send their own kids. I think that Louisiana is bring sued by the federal government in order to ban the very successful school voucher program in that state.
As for Germany, well, does anyone still think Europe and liberty belong in the same sentence? They’re all about control and unrepresentative democracy.
Commies all.
It certainly is! Let’s keep our antennae up. Cheers;
Germany never stops being Germany.
They just can’t stop being control freaks.
Yep, but my field research has indicated that libertarian chicks do indeed shave closer than liberals, ifyaknowwhatimean.
If people keep electing more Democrats, in a few years even blogging will be illegal (unless the content is approved by the leftist establishment).
I give it about 10 years and then they will start closing down ( or whatever the correct word is ) blogs just as they do in China.
A country with one of the best education systems has no requirement for childhood education at all — Singapore. Yet, it is exceptionally rare for a family to not educate its children. Since one of, if not the major determinant of success in education of children is parental attitude, it’s very doubtful that in this day and age, particularly with unionized education professionals and the absence of school choice, compulsory education achieves the objectives for which it was initially conceived. If one wishes to regulate education then standardized testing in secular subjects, math, reading, composition, the sciences for example can provide a benchmark by which the effectiveness of home schooling can be judged. Since, ironically (or maybe not) unionized educators seem to object strenuously to standardized testing, they are in no position to object to home schooling since they reject any objective criteria by which its success or failure can be judged.
The socialists have to indoctrinate your children because they aborted theirs.
As everything begins in the home, it is imperative for leftists/liberals/fascists/communists (pick your term) to separate a child from his parents. Whether a parent chooses home-schooling or any other alternative form of education, it is a snub to the liberals. What is the greater insult- that parents are the primary providers for their own children or that they see something wanting in public education- is a matter of degree.
One would have thought that Germany would have learned a thing or two about the benefits of freedom as opposed to totalitarianism following that little dustup of 1939-45.
Apparently not.
What Oz said.
In Ontario, homeschool is tolerated, because the local schools still receive tax dollars on those children whether they attend or not.
I can sympathize with the parents, but they would have been smarter to send their kids to school and not see their family torn up. Kids can be taught the truth about their teachers’ lies, but it will take time. The children’s homework from school must be carefully read and countered. This takes time, but I wish they had kept the family together while they bought some time to flee to a friendly country.
The family that fled to the US might do better in Canada, actually.
For those who are forced to send their kids to public school, keep this in mind: The schools do just as bad a job teaching socialism and leftism as they do teaching math, science, history and languages. Some time spent each day with children can shield them from the neo-Marxist garbage taught in the schools. Truth is stronger than lies, parents really do have more influence than teachers.
Ken, IMO you win this thread. By stating the real motive behind the behavior of the German gov’t, the Fwench gov’t and the OH! bama outfit in the USA you have answered the questions. The motive explains the actions.
Everything you say is agreeable, except for the part where you don’t explain why teachers aren’t swinging from lampposts across the western world.
The answer to that is simple: daycare. When the primary function of school becomes daycare, an awful lot becomes tolerable.
This kinda thing is why the Left loves gun control. One way and only one way to deal with the crazy Xtians and their invisible friend, stick a gun in their face.
http://phantomsoapbox.blogspot.ca/2013/08/why-does-left-love-gun-control.html
In other news, Europe has proposed “speed limiters” be fitted to all cars. Not a max speed/rev limiter, we’re talking a full-on mad scientist control system that won’t let your car go faster that the posted limit.
Taken together, these home schooler types are lucky not to be in a stalag someplace this morning.
Look for this coming to a school board near you. You know they want it. And you know they’re just aching to stick a gun in some Xtians face. The frickin atheistic hate fairly boils off some of them.
Still, as Scott said above you have to wonder about a family so stupid they will let the Gestapo take their kids rather than let them attend school. There are smarter ways to handle that problem than sheer intransigence, or by throwing yourself on the non-existence mercy of the American immigration system. The only thing we have going for us is the crappy nature of Big Government created loopholes. Like bribing a school board official or two. Corruption does have two sides, like everything else.
Please note that these people were being oppressed by the DHS – not immigration or CPS but the fed agency which was set upon them by the Holder regime in the USJD. Holder has said many times that he belives in political brainwashing and wants the schools used as indoctrinating tools – I mean the intent is right out in the open folks.
http://dailycaller.com/2012/03/18/holder-in-1995-really-brainwash-people-to-be-anti-gun/
In a land mark USSC case 3 years ago the court ruled that essentially parents “abandon their authority over their children by putting the public system in charge of them” That’s how these statist scum think now, your children are state wards because you can;t be trusted to indoctrinate the properly into state servility – you thought you were dealing with boy scouts? This aggressive intrusive statism has no limits except where the people set the line by rejecting/resisting this belligerent technocracy.
There is no reason why they need to come to the USA. There are 190 other countries on the planet that they could go to including about 20 in Europe. This isn’t an asylum issue. It’s a matter of obeying the laws in their own country. Those laws have been in existence since long before these people had children and they intentionally chose to bring children into that situation.
Consequences… Not my problem.
Europe isn’t America. They don’t have our freedoms and they don’t deserve them.
“It’s a matter of obeying the laws in their own country.”
Tell that to women in Muslim countries who defied Shariah law by being gang-raped, and were then lashed and/or stoned: “Hey, it’s the law in your own country. You should have obeyed the law by not being gang-raped.”
For the state to take someone’s children away simply because the parents don’t want them forcibly indoctrinated into statist, atheist, “progressive”, relativistic, sex-ed-heavy “secular humanist” values is beyond an outrage. Whose children are they, the parents’, or the state’s?
The socialist state has first dibs as it is the co-parent.
But we’ve had the same sort of selective enforcement here in Ontario, haven’t we? Children will be allowed to stay with drug addicted criminal parents but will be yanked away from Mennonite parents who reserve the right to spank their kids.
Tell that to women in Muslim countries who defied Shariah law by being gang-raped, and were then lashed and/or stoned: “Hey, it’s the law in your own country. You should have obeyed the law by not being gang-raped.”– EBD
Ouch. You got me there. Such irrefutable logic. Obviously, the only solution to Germans obeying German education law is to permit every Moslem women to immigrate to the USA for Asylum reasons so she doesn’t get raped. Their own countries suck so bad that we have to pay any price to fix it. And don’t forget all the women in Africa. I hear it sucks to live there too. And all those men in South America are a bit too touchy-grabby and certainly violate our North American sensibilities so they should all get free passes to come here too. Or maybe we could just bomb them all until they change and behave the way we want them to, starting with Germany, of course.
Before I start trying to fix Germany, there are a lot of things I would like to fix about Virginia. Personally, I am getting pretty tired of people from New York and New Jersey immigrating here after they ruin their own states.
to ‘professor Hale @9:33
Maybe you will be clamouring to enter their country when your lack of freedom eclipses theirs. Then the shoe will be on the other foot. Open your eyes to the dynamic history of the world which includes the crumbling freedoms in your own country.
Professor Hale said: “This isn’t an asylum issue.”
Actually, it is. Reason being, all your non-White, non-Christian third worlder has to do to get “asylum” (aka a free ride for life in the USA), is show up at a border point or airport and beg. Poof, they get in. Mexican border is even easier, just say a special keyword these days and the Gates of Oz swing open. Or just walk in, as hundreds do every single day. Its all good.
But now a White Christian Conservative who’s in danger of having his kids taken away receives asylum (duh)… then the Justice Department spends a whole bunch of time and money in court getting it taken away again? There’s your issue.
Personally I think the guy’s an idiot, he should have arranged immigration to someplace the normal way. Hell, he could just move to France and be ok, Eurozone has open borders. But he’s not being denied asylum because he’s an idiot, right?
Barry and friends are going to implement mandatory public schooling in the USA too, to go along with the single payer medical system and gun control you’re going to get. You guys will be living in Europe before you know it, you’re already half way there.
Nice attempt to redirect the issue by missing the point in bold print.
I used the example of Shariah law to address the inanity of your dumb catch-all dictum to “obey the laws in your own country,” not to suggest that the U.S. grant asylum to everyone in the world.
Would you advise people to “obey the laws in (their) own country” if the law commanded them to turn in their Jewish neighbours, or report their neighbours’ anti-government jokes to the Stasi? Or is it simply the case that you support German law in this particular case?
The issue here is the state taking away someone’s kids simply because the parents don’t want their children indoctrinated by statist, “progressive” moral relativists. You can support or disagree with the state’s position, but at least stick to the point.
Would you advise people to “obey the laws in (their) own country” if the law commanded them to turn in their Jewish neighbours, or report their neighbours’ anti-government jokes to the Stasi? Or is it simply the case that you support German law in this particular case?
No. I would be minding my own business and let them mind theirs. I also would not be offering all of them asylum for every and any reason. The USA is not the only place people can come to to escape persecution. We have 310 million people here. We are full. Go somewhere else.
Context: The German state has had this education law since Hitler and never seen fit to change it. All the other Germans are fine with it. It is a German problem that has been solved by Germans the way they like it. It’s called self determination. It’s not just for when you approve of the outcome.
But go ahead and bomb them if you like.
Professor Hale, after reading your comment in which you (in effect) support the right of the German state to take away someone’s kids simply because the parents don’t want the state to indoctrinate the children with what they considered to be overly-sexualized, leftist propaganda, I went to your site expecting to find another big-state supporting, anti-gun, anti-constitutional progressive.
Instead,
That’s right, your forefathers, whom you clearly respect, didn’t obey the laws in their own country. They disobeyed. They resisted.
You were referring to big government, no?
Do you honestly believe that categorical statement?
When reading your site it’s evident that you’re a gun buff, and clearly a big supporter of the Second Amendment. Question: If your right to bear arms was taken away by a Constitutional amendment that had the support of a leftist/progressive majority, would you hand over all your weapons and blithely say –
I’m guessing you wouldn’t.
Shot in the dark: Ron Paul fan?
EBD,
Are you seriously not able to understand that America is different than Germany? Can you not understand that what is right, legal, and moral here is different than what is right, legal and moral there?
WRT my guns: No I would not hand them over. I would hide them. And If I got caught, I would expect the Govt to seize them and jail me. I would not go running to Australia and claim asylum because my own government changed the rules. I would know that I was choosing to break them anyway and gamble on not getting caught. But this isn’t likely to happen since I lost all my guns in that tragic boating accident. 😉
But these people don’t have that excuse. They KNEW ahead of time that if they had kids, those kids would belong to the state. So they had kids. They gambled and lost. It is a totally predictable outcome that they could have avoided by immigrating somewhere else (not the USA) at any time before the kids were seized and by using the reason for immigration: Nicer weather.
Our own country is going down the tubes. You are spinning your wheels worrying about preserving rights that Germans don’t have while rights Americans have are taken away in COSTCO-sized crates.
Oh. And I don’t give a rat’s ass about Syrians either.
Yeah well, I suspect that back in the early 19th century, in the US, that most of the mountain men were more motivated by dropping out than a sense of adventure. In Canada, we early on, during French colonial times, had a similar element…the cours de bois….
Come ta think about it….the “mountain man” era only lasted about a coupla decades while the cour debois era spanned centuries.
Most are unaware the Russians have/had a similar element….the Cossacks……just more folks seeking freedom in the wilds….
You are missing several points in this debate.
Should people never have children because some dictatorial state has dibs on them in utero? Really? Would North Koreans never fit the bill as to who is a refugee or not (or is there such thing as a refugee)?
How do you think the New World populated itself? If not with people who were drafted into service, so to speak, then with those who wanted a new life and by those who sought refuge from persecution. For many people, America still is that refuge.
Regardless of what you or I think, it is the parents who decide how children should be schooled, not civil servants whose mandate it is to perpetuate their jobs.
Your indifference to the plight of others is quite telling (“I would be minding my own business and let them mind theirs.”). It serves to make sure you never take a stand on any issue. How brave.
You’re the one spinning your wheels, Professor Hale, because you’ve been making one single, very narrow point over and over again: America isn’t Germany (which isn’t Vietnam, which isn’t Zaire, etc), ergo the issue of what happened to the Romeike family and their children is irrelevant and off the table for discussion; the Romeike’s were born in Germany, you correctly point out, so they have no grounds for dissenting with a government that wants to take their children away from them.
They “gambled and lost”, as you put it, by having children while living in Germany, and must therefore suffer the loss of their children. The German state’s rights takes precedence over the family’s right to raise their children according to traditional, as opposed to the hideously time-bound “progressive”, big state morals of the last few decades, because the Romeike’s live in Germany. Germany isn’t America, you keep pointing out, therefore the German state gets to set all the rules.
On your own blog, though, you categorically assert, in your own words, that some rights are not given by the state:
First question: Do inalienable, “god-given” rights exist only in the USA?
“takes a village” really means “takes the government”. What do parents know about raising – and educating – children anyway?
You are missing several points in this debate.
Should people never have children because some dictatorial state has dibs on them in utero? There are lots of choices they can make but they knew the rules when they started. They chose to have kids knowing that the consequence would be sending them to German schools. they accepted that reality Really? Would North Koreans never fit the bill as to who is a refugee or not (or is there such thing as a refugee)? No. There isn’t. No other person has a right to immigrate to the USA by virtue of their own need. Those people and cases that we now consider suitable for Asylum are temporary as the tastes of our political class changes it’s fashion every couple of years. But as for North Koreans, I suggest they go to South Korea. They should fit right in. Same language. Same culture. Same last names. The Cold War is over. Asylum rules that were invented to undermine the Soviet Union no longer make sense.
How do you think the New World populated itself? I don’t care. How things were done 200 years ago is no longer relevant to how things are done now, nor should any generation of citizens be eternally bound by what was sensible in previous generations. Each generation needs to use its own collective brains to determine its own future If not with people who were drafted into service, so to speak, then with those who wanted a new life and by those who sought refuge from persecution. For many people, America still is that refuge. Too bad. I hear Switzerland is nice. Modern Americans have ZERO obligation to share what we have with the rest of the world. Find another sucker. The winning entry in a poetry contest a hundred years ago is insufficient basis for a national policy today.
Regardless of what you or I think, it is the parents who decide how children should be schooled, not civil servants whose mandate it is to perpetuate their jobs. … unless you live in Germany, regardless of what you think. It is their law. They enforce it. Their elected officials uphold it and fail to change it. There is no massive upheaval in Germany to change it. If anything, with the Turkish problem, average white Germans are more likely to insist on Government schooling as a way of socializing the Eastern savages.
Your indifference to the plight of others is quite telling (“I would be minding my own business and let them mind theirs.”). It serves to make sure you never take a stand on any issue. How brave. How noble of you to “care” about the billions of people on the planet who are not American. There are more of them than I can possibly lift to my own standard of living. I can’t even ensure everyone here in my home state gets all the rights they deserve. How can I or anyone else reasonably be expected to also care about everyone else on the whole planet? If you do, I say your virtue is cheap, since you have so much of it.
Look, the German policy is obviously nuts, and obviously wrong. But it’s not the kind of oppression that justifies treating somebody as a refugee. This guy has an excellent reason to leave Germany, and if he can get into the USA as a regular immigrant, more power to him. But he shouldn’t be gaming the refugee system.
The Romeike family can seek mitigation within their own system. They can even run for Chancellor and overturn the rules. They can sue the German government. They can even rebel for all I care. That is their business. It is not MY business to fix everyone else’s problems. Too many of them, not enough of me.
Not all “rights” are God given. Self preservation is. Health care paid for by other people, is not. Nor can I find anything written by Paul that seems to support universal suffrage though universal sufferage looks like it is on the menu for everyone. Our own society already demands universal mandatory K-12 education of children and only permits homeschooling on a state-by-state basis as an exception to the rule. So, it’s not just Germany. What happens to the Romeikes when they get here and are told to enroll in the schools here that are much more decadent than those they were escaping in Germany? Think it can’t happen? Think children are not already seized from their parents every day in this country on flimsy pretexts? If you don’t want us to be like them then we need to elect politicians who will state that educating children is not the government’s job. It’s just an option that the government provides if parents want it. I don’t see anyone running on that platform.
I have plenty to worry about what happens here, to us. Let the Germans worry about Germany. They do have a democracy.
Professor Hale said: “I have plenty to worry about what happens here, to us.”
Dude. This -is- happening to you. Your government is kicking a family out of your frickin’ country that was properly granted legal immigrant status by your frickin’ INS because they are White Christians.
“It’s a matter of obeying the laws in their own country.”
Its not their country they are having trouble with. They left their country. Its not about Germany. This is about your government not following the laws in your country.
Are you getting it yet?
But you say, why not let this slide? Because what the hell, they’re just a bunch of foreigners anyway. Right?
How long before the goon squad shows up at YOUR house and kicks in YOUR door because you didn’t kiss some petty school official’s @ss quite the right way? Probably not very long would be my guess, the ride down the slippery slope picks up speed quick after you pass the point of no return.
That little Glock is not going to help you when twenty armored DHS Schutzstaffel show up at 3AM.