Posted on 06/12/2010 9:51:14 AM PDT by Talisker
I've found the slander and contempt expressed on Free Republic towards Abby Sunderland and her parents quite interesting. Of course, we're all supposed to believe that every post on FR is independently made, but these hate posts have been too interlocked in similiarly bizarre content for me to believe that.
Basically the hateful screeds boil down to Abby being a child instead of a young woman, unable to understand the danger of her trip, put at risk by fame seeking parents, to do something with no socially approved redeeming value, which ended in abject failure due to Abby's incompetence, and for which CPS should be called in to have Abby pulled from the family for re-education, while the parents are jailed, fined, and billed for the rescue efforts.
In short, an absolutely damning, completely collectivist viewpoint with zero acknowledgement of independent rights, which is based solely on collectivist evaluation, collectivist judgment, and collectivist punishment - fronted as family values and child protection.
Oh yeah, and also a complete and utter lie.
For there were many expert sailors as advisors behind this trip, all of whom signed off on both Abby's abilities, her equipment and her trip plan. And there was never any hint of her family not being willing to pay for any part of the rescue efforts. Entire ships have been destroyed through rogue waves, but there's no acknowledgement of that universal danger. And Abby performed beautifully as a sailor and as an adult, through storms, equipment failures, and difficulties across thousands of miles of sailing, and a crisis situation which would have had all of these naysayers pissing their pants.
But pants pissing is the point here - the very big point. Because Abby threatens the millions of families who base their concept of child rearing on the idea that childhood, literally, never ends. That children must be driven everywhere and monitored constantly, even as teenagers. That they need psych meds for growing pains. That responsibility is an injustice towards them, because they can't be allowed to develop any personal power that is not first approved by the mommy educational collective.
So pants pissing has become noble. It has become the sign of respect towards the community, of good parenting, and of normal childhood - the childhood that never ends. In fact, pants-pissing has become the litmus test of social approval itself, because it enables the protection of neurotic helicopter parents who see bogeymen under every bush so that they can justify an obsession about their children's safety that allows THEM to never grow up.
And guess which political party they ALL belong to, and HOPE to never CHANGE from?
So to them, now - now - "we" have this tiny little thumb-sucking girl child, only 16 years old and so barely out of diapers, being thrown into the ocean by greedy parents, straight into a hurricane to drown for their greed, with absolutely no approval from any group of safety parent educators or state approved parental control boards!
Do you realize what this could do to the carefully created psychological voting blocks of the pants pissers? Especially when that so-called "mom" from Alaska with the big family that hunts and fishes and camps and snow machines is running around actually threatening to run for high office?
Do you see the connection here? If Abby is praised and acknowledged for her courage and maturity, and for living life instead of just conforming to it, and especially - especially - for her individuality, her acceptance of personal risk and responsibility without the approval of the collective, people might start to remember what it means to be an American again! They might start to remember freedom, and risk for the sake of living life to the fullest, and learning through doing, and the value of learning courage in the face of difficulty, and they might start to discover their self-respect again, and build character.
And how would that effect the pants-pissing moms who scuttle through life at the end of the snapping fingers of feminist, communist, education-collective politicians? How would that effect their views of the locked-down, cop-patrolled, drug-infected, psych-medicated, fenced prison hellholes of morale-crushing subservience called public schools? How would that effect the ability of these politicians to convince these collectively-approved, latte-sucking "moms" to continue to destroy their children - by never letting them grow up - in the name of "safety"?
And above all, how would that effect the votes?
No, no, no, no, no. Call out the shills, invade the Net, and even get on Free Republic and in the name of God, parenting, sin, ego, vanity, stupidity and every other communist-studied conservative trigger-word, invoke cowardice in the name of responsibility, rip away adulthood with the insult of enforced childhood, hammer on cost without mentioning no resistance to payment, and above all sneer at parenting that is based of building courage and trust and adventure as an absolutely unforgivable violation of the sacred order of socially approved pants-pissing.
And demand wet pants! Wet pants for social justice! Wet pants for lack of guilt! And especially, wet pants for votes!
After all, it's for the children.
P.S. Congratulations to Abby and her family - you all did great. Abby sailed with competence, courage and joy, and inspired millions of people. If America is to have a future in freedom, she and people like her are the ones who will make it happen. But above all, she and her family made selfish cowards and conniving hypocrites everywhere publicly wet themselves, and for that America is truly grateful.
Looking at your posting history, I see that essentially all of your posts are as brainless and vacuous as your last one to me.
Bet you’re fun at parties. Yawn.
I believe that the age given for Mary mother of Jesus was just 14. How about that torrid romance Romeo and Juliet. What was Juliet’s age? And so it goes.
ATV thrill riders who buy those things just to race up and down the wild hills in daredevil stunts;of course they didn't bother asking before making lots of erosion -enhancing ruts on my private property,cutting inconvenient fences,and so on.All for pointless adrenaline surges.We lost a good friend who insisted on racing uphill helmetless on an ATV.Fatal head injury.
Now I suppose you might make a case that all these people engaged in high-risk pointless endeavors weed out the incompetent risk-takers and those who survive and procreate pass along more highly developed reflexes or something.
Either one respects freedom for all or one holds it in contempt for all. There is no middle ground. Do you want the State to leave you alone? To stop telling you how to live your life? Then stop telling the State to mess with other people's lives. If you demand that the State regulate the other guy's life, then you are giving the State permission to regulate yours.
A true conservative demands the end of the Nanny State. He does not encourage it to seek out new victims.
Thank you!
What?
You are painting with a broad brush.
Abby could not do any of this without financial backing (and loads of it) which she did not personally earn.
Parents can and do groom their children to fulfill THEIR OWN desires, often at great risk (emotional and/or physical) to the child.
I do not know if that is the case here, but I do know that it does happen ... so it’s a relevant point to make and question to ask.
And its not ‘collectivist’ to ask.
It’s only collectivist to tell others not to ask.
How many times did steve fosset need to be rescued? Richard Branson? Just because you don’t succeed means that you should not have tried.I think you better stay on your couch because something might happen to you if you move.
I agree, this young woman was and is being exploited by her parents.. this could have cost her,her life..
Her father is supposed to protect her, yes even from herself and her dreams if necessary .
Shame on them
Whorealdo was all over this; mentioned that the kids were home schooled. Probably a code for practicing Christians.
Who appointed you posting Nazi? No post for you! Being a noob is a relative thing.
If the parents hurry up they can have another child so they can train him(or her) to sail around the world at age ten, what the heck, 6 would be better...or maybe even as a baby, would a 6 month old be able to....only the parents know for sure?
They are not asking for your permission.
They are not seeking your approval.
They are not trying to not pay for the rescue.
The fact that people hear in this forum want to throw them in Jail for child endangerment is nuts.
If you cannot accept bad outcomes then you cannot be free.
Your sexuality of thirteen year olds argument??? Whatever.
The State does not own the people who live within it's jurisdiction. If you want to be free to make choices then you have to be free to make bad choices.
Speaking of Sunday, what about parents that send their kids on mission trips to third world countries or into gang-infested inner cities in the US? Even driving is more dangerous than sailing - the death rate of teenage drivers is far higher than sailing.
It’s a big dangerous world out there. I would rather my children dream about big things, teach others about Jesus, than sit on their asses playing xbox all day.
>> I think you better stay on your couch because something might happen to you if you move.
I have a better idea. I can, and do, take plenty of risks, including activities that carry the possibility of physical harm.
If there isn’t the possibility of failure, then by definition it isn’t really a risk — right? So as a conservative, I plan for BOTH outcomes, success AND failure — and I make sure I have what it takes to be responsible in the case of failure. If I think it over and decide that I’m unwilling or unable to be responsible should I fail, then I won’t undertake the risk — it’s unacceptable to me.
This is particularly true if the REASON I’m taking the risk is for personal gain, pleasure or ego gratification. Different criteria would apply if it was a risk required to (for example) save the life of a family member or escape from a country where I might be imprisoned or killed.
That, my FRiend, is how a CONSERVATIVE behaves.
Are YOU a conservative?
Abby and her family were NOT conservative, IMO. They took an UNNECESSARY risk for personal reasons — remember, risk includes the possibility of failure — knowing full well that if something happened, they could not be responsible to provide the navy and aircraft required to rescue their daughter. A thoughtful, responsible CONSERVATIVE would not take such a risk for such a reason knowing that a huge cost would be required of others should they fail. And satisfying an ego, writing a book, breaking a record is not sufficient reason to put the burden and expense of failure on an innocent party.
Remember, the original poster in his rant made it personal — suggesting that anyone who opposed Abby’s stunt must be a nannystate socialist. That’s what gets under my skin, because just the opposite is true. Those who think the world should bail out their stupidity and failures are of a piece with the socialist mindset.
Excellent post. FR is riddled with disgusting Nanny Staters, unfortunately.
You are right on my friend!
Agreed.
On other threads I told the story of my 13 yr old grandmother travelling alone from Germany to come to the US, get a job, and 5 yrs later marry my grandfather who as the eldest of 12 in a fatherless home raised most of his siblings.
Prolonging adolescence gets us a ninnified, dependent electorate that elected Obama. 16 is old enough to dream big, work hard and achieve spectacularly.
We have been invaded by whimps.
Who gives you the God-like ability to attribute motivation?
People here on “Free” Republic are advocating jail time for her parents. In other words, bringing the whole judicial coercive power of the State to bear to correct behavior they don't approve of.
Were you involved in the family's planning for her circumnavigation? You sound as if you have intimate knowledge of their motivation and lack of planning and preparation. Since I lack that knowledge and intimate insider view of their planning I am really curious as to how many pairs of socks she packed? Care to share?
If you want to be free you have to be willing to accept bad outcomes and good. If you remove the right of others to have bad outcomes because it offends you, then you are not free by definition because you want the State, through your duly elected officials to limit the choices of us all.
Americans grow up in highly controlled environments. Environments where from the time they are five years old they show up to the same school building each day. A bell tells them when to sit, when to move, when to eat, when to play. The textbooks are arranged in neat little chapters with sequential questions at the end of each section. These same questions are used to make up the predictable test questions. Everything is neat, easy, safe, and above all predictable. When these same Americans grow up to be voters they demand a world, a society that is highly controlled, neat, clean predictable. God help you if you reject that model because the full coercive force of the government will be thrust upon you by freedom loving Americans.
Every so often, something comes along to make the Nanny Staters charge off a cliff like so many lemmings. The last wave to take the plunge were the Rudy-Rooters.
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