Child safety seat as envisioned by Fuqua
Charlie Fuqua, Republican candidate for the Arkansas Legislature, has written a book in which he calls for the death penalty for rebellious children.
Whether he is sincere or merely woke up one morning and said to himself "I want to write something that makes the Westboro Baptist Church look like squishy middle-of-the-roaders" is up to the voters to decide. Personally, I think he is angling for the support of Arkansans who wish their kids were dead. This is not an inconsiderable part of the electorate. Most parents want to kill their children at one time or another. For example, almost all moms and dads who have taken a young child on a long car or airplane trip have experienced the urge to drop that child off at the nearest gas chamber before going home. An older child usually gives its parents many more opportunities to dream wistfully of their offspring's demise as it grows to adulthood, by wrecking the family sedan, impregnating its second cousin and demolishing their plans for financial independence by wanting to go to college, to give just a few for instances. More than one set-upon parent has noticed that the peace of the household would be so much less frequently shattered if Junior found the peace of the grave.
My own father on several occasions expressed a desire to terminate my juvenile existence in spite of the fact that I was a comparatively well-behaved child, maintaining good grades in school, starting to work at the age of four delivering newspapers and attending church on a regular basis because I was dragged there and forced to endure it. Those occasions usually revolved around my leaving Dad's carpenter's tools to rust in the back yard and those instruments were the ones he would wave at me while threatening to send me to another (hypothetically warm) plane of existence. So Charlie might have gotten his vote.
I don't want to be accused of exaggerating Mr. Fuqua's proposals here, nor do I want to imply that Fuqua hates children because he was tormented by his peers while growing up because his surname is so easy to comically mispronounce, although that might well have been the case. Fuqua does not envision a future where if a fresh grave suddenly appeared in a rural or suburban back yard, a not-so grieving parent could easily dismiss his neighbor's concerns about it by saying "Sassed me," or "Peed ahind the refrigerator." No, a parent would have to have some sort of judicial permission before throttling their child. Fuqua takes his guidance from the Bible, in whose Old Testament pages he claims the practice originated. The child in question would have to be taken to the "gates of the city," where his case would be considered by the city's "elders." This intriguing passage from Scripture not only reveals the biblical patriarchs' attitudes towards bad kids, but also that fact that Bible people, despite being tormented regularly by plagues and famines, could nonetheless afford to live in gated communities. Possibly this is because they were allowed to kill their kids. Indeed, the OT is full of stories about offspring being killed, whether under the orders of God or merely freelance.
We would have to do things differently here, as most of our cities don't have gates. Most of them just have freeway off ramps and you are not going to find any elders there, just homeless psychopaths looking for rides, money or murder victims. All of our elders that have managed to escape being imprisoned in nursing homes are busy flaming each other on Facebook, so I don't know if they have any interest in solving other people's domestic problems.
So Charlie Fuqua's proposal may just prove to be one of those shining, idealistic notions that capture our imaginations with their promise of a better future but eventually turn out to be unworkable, like free love or Internet Explorer.
Charlie also advocates the forcible expulsion of all Muslims from our shores. This is a man who seems incapable of timid ideas. One can only hope the voters of Arkansas agree.
Whether he is sincere or merely woke up one morning and said to himself "I want to write something that makes the Westboro Baptist Church look like squishy middle-of-the-roaders" is up to the voters to decide. Personally, I think he is angling for the support of Arkansans who wish their kids were dead. This is not an inconsiderable part of the electorate. Most parents want to kill their children at one time or another. For example, almost all moms and dads who have taken a young child on a long car or airplane trip have experienced the urge to drop that child off at the nearest gas chamber before going home. An older child usually gives its parents many more opportunities to dream wistfully of their offspring's demise as it grows to adulthood, by wrecking the family sedan, impregnating its second cousin and demolishing their plans for financial independence by wanting to go to college, to give just a few for instances. More than one set-upon parent has noticed that the peace of the household would be so much less frequently shattered if Junior found the peace of the grave.
My own father on several occasions expressed a desire to terminate my juvenile existence in spite of the fact that I was a comparatively well-behaved child, maintaining good grades in school, starting to work at the age of four delivering newspapers and attending church on a regular basis because I was dragged there and forced to endure it. Those occasions usually revolved around my leaving Dad's carpenter's tools to rust in the back yard and those instruments were the ones he would wave at me while threatening to send me to another (hypothetically warm) plane of existence. So Charlie might have gotten his vote.
I don't want to be accused of exaggerating Mr. Fuqua's proposals here, nor do I want to imply that Fuqua hates children because he was tormented by his peers while growing up because his surname is so easy to comically mispronounce, although that might well have been the case. Fuqua does not envision a future where if a fresh grave suddenly appeared in a rural or suburban back yard, a not-so grieving parent could easily dismiss his neighbor's concerns about it by saying "Sassed me," or "Peed ahind the refrigerator." No, a parent would have to have some sort of judicial permission before throttling their child. Fuqua takes his guidance from the Bible, in whose Old Testament pages he claims the practice originated. The child in question would have to be taken to the "gates of the city," where his case would be considered by the city's "elders." This intriguing passage from Scripture not only reveals the biblical patriarchs' attitudes towards bad kids, but also that fact that Bible people, despite being tormented regularly by plagues and famines, could nonetheless afford to live in gated communities. Possibly this is because they were allowed to kill their kids. Indeed, the OT is full of stories about offspring being killed, whether under the orders of God or merely freelance.
We would have to do things differently here, as most of our cities don't have gates. Most of them just have freeway off ramps and you are not going to find any elders there, just homeless psychopaths looking for rides, money or murder victims. All of our elders that have managed to escape being imprisoned in nursing homes are busy flaming each other on Facebook, so I don't know if they have any interest in solving other people's domestic problems.
So Charlie Fuqua's proposal may just prove to be one of those shining, idealistic notions that capture our imaginations with their promise of a better future but eventually turn out to be unworkable, like free love or Internet Explorer.
Charlie also advocates the forcible expulsion of all Muslims from our shores. This is a man who seems incapable of timid ideas. One can only hope the voters of Arkansas agree.
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