IMPORTANT NOTE:
You do NOT have to register to read, post, listen or contribute. If you simply wish to remain fully anonymous, you can still contribute.
|
Home  Forums |
|
|
|
|
Topic History of: Sex offenders should be allowed to adopt
Max. showing the last 5 posts - (Last post first)
|
pete |
Very kind words, Nonesuch, thank you.
It’s just that I lament and loathe the subversion of the justice system in relation to one category of offending by postmodern PC victimologists, who always want limitlessly savage penalties for the most piddlingly insignificant infractions of their rigid ideological code. |
|
Nonesuch |
Pete, you have written with grace and understanding. Such thoughtful contributions. Would that more people thought like you. Or that your words should be presented to a much wider audience. Inspiring. We're not all life-long monsters. And some of us appreciate words such as yours. Thank you. |
|
pete |
When I referred to "biological monsters" in my earlier post, I actually meant "biopolitical monsters" - bogeymen created to regulate and manage public passions. My spellcheck automatically 'miscorrected' it to 'biological.' |
|
pete |
Jo wrote:
It seems common sense to me that sex offenders, child abusers and killers, whether of adults or children, should not be allowed to adopt.
I have become extremely sceptical about common sense, Jo. It’s not quite the same thing it was when Tom Paine was writing about it in the eighteenth century. There were no powerful multinational media corporations peddling myths about invented biopolitical monsters across the Anglosphere back then, and no dodgy State-backed agencies like CEOP and the NSPCC with a massive interest in sustaining a state of panic.
Vast numbers of people were not subject, as they are now, to the perennial spewing of oceans spurious, if not frankly disinforming, advocacy research, which these organisations depend upon to sustain a sense of permanently smouldering panic. The latter in turn enables them to justify ever-more draconian punishments in addition to ever-increasing funding and growth, much of it from the public purse (which means that it is unavailable for other areas of public policy such as health, education, transport, infrastructure, investment in productivity upskilling, etc.).
Common sense in Paine’s day was based on the widely-shared sense of injustice and repression that essentially law-abiding people experienced, very deeply, toward a pitiless and arrogant junta. This was what they had in common and it contributed to a shared common sense of necessary justice. They were not being fed paedo-panic propaganda en masse on a daily basis courtesy of CEOP, the NSPCC and their friends in the corporate digital media. They were instead using their own rational faculties to make up their own minds about their lived experiences under the junta.
It seems to me that CEOP and the NSPCC with their media allies have invested a vast amount of time and effort in disseminating fear-and-loathing propaganda deliberately aimed at creating a new common sense, a common sense concocted by privileged, well-remunerated agents of the state aiming to continually expand their income streams, their influence and their prestige. This is a top-down common sense wholly at odds with Paine’s ground-up common sense.
I dislike the ideological creation of biological monsters. Nothing good ever comes from this. Lynch mobs, vigilante thugs and cash-and-publicity-hungry propagandists serving their own interests are the only beneficiaries.
I consider it profoundly unethical and unjust to assess people on the basis of spurious categories such as “sex offender”. The life-long restrictions and punishments imposed on such individuals for the most trifling of “offences” do not apply to serial granny-bashers, drug gangsters or incorrigible burglars. And I would be utterly opposed to such blanket measures if they did.
The individual and the specific circumstances and nature of their crime should be assessed, not the category of criminal they are presumed to be. Jean Genet was an unpleasant thug and a ruthless thief as a youngster, yet became one of France’s greatest 20th century writers. Given the chance, while some people will fail, others can and do change and grow from their errors. No one should be pre-emptively denied such chances in a rational and humane justice system. |
|
Jo |
It seems common sense to me that sex offenders, child abusers and killers, whether of adults or children, should not be allowed to adopt. |
|
|
|
|
