Okay, I don’t know what kind of mental illness this woman suffered from, but there had to be signs that something was wrong. I guess it’s natural to want to place the blame somewhere, but people knew that she was unstable. The police had even checked up on her just before the incident took place, so people clearly thought that she might be dangerous/need outside help in the immediate future.
Wouldn’t it almost always be a bad idea to leave small children alone with unstable people?
I think that people, particularly leftists, enjoy blaming abstract entities like society. It assuages their self-imposed guilt and gives them an excuse to enact yet another economic black hole social program.
Well, this leftist would prefer not to “blame” anyone in cases like this: The authorities have to walk a a line between protecting children and protecting the rights of their parents, even when the parents are mentally ill. In a system that errs on the side of leaving children with parents, incidents like this are bound to happen. If the mother was so mentally ill that she isn’t culpable, and the cops didn’t see sufficient evidence to remove the child, then no one did anything wrong and it’s simply a tragedy.
I’m trying to figure out how this response has anything whatsoever to do with the OP. I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a “leftist” who will step up and say, “I think it’s wonderful that this eight-month-old baby had her head dashed open on the concrete, for it will surely bring more attention to the plight of the mentally ill, thus lining the pockets of the people who run the food bank! THAT’LL SHOW 'EM!”
I also think this whole “leftists enjoy blaming society” thing is getting pretty goddamned tired, too. Although, you know, this sentence seems to stand up, too:
I think that people, particularly Liber(al)(tarian), enjoy blaming abstract entities like leftists. It assuages their fear that they don’t have any actual points to make, and gives them an excuse to slam yet another non-conservative organization.
Can you please - PLEASE - check to make sure that the posts you’re making have anything whatsoever to do with the OP? Sometimes? Please? It’s getting to where I see your name in a thread and my temples start throbbing before I even get to the body of your post.
So anyhow…the linked article was primarily an interview with her pastor. It didn’t say anything about social programs, or what caused her to do it, or anything else. I think she’s a sick, sick woman who should never be allowed to have another child. I hope her kid didn’t feel much pain before she died. The linked article doesn’t have anything in it about the baby’s father except his name - I hope he’s making it through his own horror as well.
Actually, in this specific instance, I think Lib’s post was sort of relevant. If you’ll note, that OP did say:
Which clearly tries to put some of the blame on the “society” that wouldn’t remove the child from its mother. And I half-agree with Lib’s “leftists like to blame society” statement–only half though, because the right is just as bad, what with all the “family values” and “moral decay” bullshit.
The bit about it being an excuse to enact black-hole social programs was just silly though. You could just as easily say that the right sees stuff like this as an excuse to enact tax cuts for the upper class, so that they’ll be able to donate more of their money to charities that will help children like this.
Well, to further this discussion productively, specifically which “black hole” social programs were enacted by leftists on the basis of blaming abstract entities like society?
To your first point: I still don’t see what that has to do with “leftists,” or with black-hole social programs. Maybe I’m just stupid.
To your second: I rather doubt, with my posting frequency, that I’ve shown up on your radar enough to cause that reaction.
Okay, so you feel that what he said had some bearing - since the societal aspect was raised, which I’ll concede - but essentially only half of the first bit, since it’s really just standard party-line hyperbole, and the rest has no relevance.
I’ll retract the part about having NOTHING to do with the OP, but I think it’s broad, vague, and tangential, at best, to the content of the post.
What I don’t understand is why you felt compelled (and apparently still do) to hijack the poor woman’s thread just so your could hurl a screed at me and tell me how you hate reading what I write — in response to what I wrote. You have ignore. Use it.
Okay, Liberal I can see where you’d believe that I was placing the blame on all of society, but I was thinking more along the lines of the immediate family in this case. Now that it’s not 1 am, I see the flaws in that statement. Should we put the children of all mentally ill people in foster care? Of course not.
To be fair, you’re the one who brought liberals into it, which is part of the reason that the thread is taking its current path.
But rather than address that he addressed his personal feelings of ALL LEFTISTS and brought up the term ‘black hole social programs’.
Besides, I didn’t read the OP as NOT blaming the mother at all, rather suggesting that signals were there that the mother was unstable and no one did anything. Lib decided to make a big political speech instead.
Ah, the classic Libertarian cryptic-yet-infuriating short post. A SDMB tradition since 1999.
One kinda has to admire the structure of such a post, in the same sort of perverse way one has to admire al-Qaeda’s tactical imagination re 9/11. Such a post (like the 9/11 attacks) is an elegant solution to a ‘problem’ that shouldn’t, by any stretch of the imagination, be anyone’s problem. It slams in a way that gets under people’s skin, without really saying something concrete enough to actually be rebutted. Such a post is completely contrary to the spirit of GD, but unfortunately within its rules. And the result is usually to turn Lib’s original post, and his followup explanations, into the new subject of the thread, hijacking it from whatever it was originally about.
In your zeal to admire al-Qaeda, you failed to notice this is not GD. Frankly, if you and your people would just let me speak my peace and leave me alone, this sort of thing wouldn’t happen. But no, lacking self-control like all leftist extremists, you cannot help but jump on the bandwagon while simultaneously condemning it. I was one voice — you have turned it into five.
Excuse my ignorance but if you are mentally ill and you kill someone because of the effects of your illness I thought that, in the eyes of the law, you essentially weren’t to blame. You would get banged up in a mental home for the rest of your life but they couldn’t try you for commiting a crime. I may be wrong and more than likely this is a very compressed, inarticulate, simplistic take on it but I’m pretty sure that, in essence, that is what happens.
