Do Talk To Strangers

In November 2014, two children belonging to Alexander and Danielle Meltiv were picked up by police officers while walking home from a park a third of a mile from their home at 5 p.m. The authorities did not contact the parents about the whereabouts of their kids until three hours later and would only release the children into their custody after they had signed a "temporary safety plan" promising not to leave their children unattended.[1]

There is a big problem with perception vs reality in the United States today. I'm talking now, specifically, about the misinformed and idiotic trend toward reporting, arresting, and charging parents with child endangerment for allowing their kids to play outside unsupervised. Given the reality of the risks involved, this embarrassing state of affairs constitutes a true tyranny of ignoramuses in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.

In the US, a child aged 14 or younger is more likely to die of a sudden, unexpected heart attack than to be abducted by a stranger. We have 60 million kids in this age group[2] and, in the latest year of compiled statistics, 115 of them were abducted by strangers.[3] That works out to a 0.00019% chance that, in a given year, a child aged 14 or younger will be abducted by a stranger. In fact, you are more likely to find a child dead of accidental drowning in a bathtub than you are to have him or her abducted by a stranger in any given year.

The most laughable (and tragic) misunderstanding of these odds is that many people feel that exposure to society is more dangerous for kids today than it was 20, 30, or 40 years ago. But this is not the case. From 1990 to 2007, for instance, "substantiated cases of child sexual abuse have declined 53% and physical abuse substantiations have declined 52%."[4] Rape, attempted or completed, against children fell a further 43% from 2003 to 2011.[5]

I could launch here into an exposition about why more people today are more likely to imagine that American society is more dangerous than it was in previous decades. But I'm not going to do that. It would only give a false air of legitimacy to the perpetrators of this trend. In the end, it is an uninteresting mystery to solve -- in the face of the active curtailment of liberty that is going on due to the breathless intervention of uninformed busy-bodies.

It really just comes down to this for parents: are you going to be influenced more by the true facts of the world or by fear of looking bad to people who are going to judge you regardless of how well you take care of your children? And to law enforcement, the courts, and the various child protective services agencies out there we need to say, "Enough is enough." What happened to the Meltiv family in Maryland should never happen to any family.

[1] Slate.com story about the Maltivs
[2] 2013 US population numbers by age range, US Census Bureau
[3] May 2013 Washington Post opinion piece by the director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hamshire
[4] Trends in Childhood Victimization, Crimes Against Children Research Center, University of New Hamshire
[5] Free Range Kids.com crime statistics page

Back to My Center, Politically

I'm not really sure which post or image I first responded to on Facebook that made me start sounding like a perpetual Barack Obama supporter the last couple of months. The truth is that I am not. I just felt it was important to take a stand against obviously slanderous information. I guess there's just something in my DNA that rages against intentional misrepresentation. No one may say I have not done the same for Romney when I saw similar distortions.

But I identify most closely with the Libertarian point of view: "Lord, save me from those who try to help me, I can handle my enemies by myself." If the Republican party had had the balls to nominate Ron Paul, I'd be all over that. In the end we need less centralized power, not more. Just think of it - instead of one convenient place for corrupting, pandering lobbyists to go (Washington, DC), just think if they'd have to spread out across all 50 states Capitols. Or, even better, thousands and thousands of county seats. Alas, I may not see that come to pass in my lifetime.

But I know that a Republican party yes man is also not what this country needs in the White House. The Neo-cons still control the Republican party and it is thanks to them we had the runaway spending of the Iraq war and the erosion of our civil liberties in the form of the so-called Patriot Act, warantless wire-tapping, the TSA, etc. If I must choose between a tax-and-spend Democrat or a borrow-and-spend Republican, I will go for the guy who's gonna at least bankrupt us peacefully.

Which brings me to our role in global affairs. I've said it before, I'll say it again: We cannot preserve our Republic while we try to maintain an Empire. The problem with maintaining a Superpower-class military long after the Cold War has ended is that you end up looking for excuses to get a return on your investment. I'm all for strength, but "larger than the next 10 militaries combined" is at least seven or eight times too large. Continually bleeding debt money for this - as well as the Federal entitlement programs in their current forms - will certainly force the hard choices, in a more painful way (like in Greece today), than if we made them today, intentionally.

Seeds of an Economic Turnaround?

At this time, the American economy is in a downturn with a good bit of the popular press devoted to subjects such as the sub prime mortgage crisis, the low value of the dollar, unemployment, and the credit crunch. Yet, among the stories on reuters.com today:

* Hedge funds sell oil as ratio to gold narrows
* Gasoline prices retreat, could fall more: survey

And so the seeds of the next epoch of the American economy start cracking open beneath the soil.

It would be easy to miss this information. Most of the economic reports and opinions floating about (at any given time) are lagging indicators. They are based on the good or bad news of the last few months or even years. So it turns out that there's a reason why it always seems "darkest before the dawn". When a situation begins to change, we tend not to notice it because we are busy mentally processing the old bad news. The same holds true for good news too, which is why we also say, "Pride goes before a fall."

By the way, I'm not predicting a turnaround. The stories I mentioned above are merely seeds beneath the soil. They could be wiped out by unforeseen events even before they have a chance to sprout. I'm simply pointing out that since nothing ever stands still, it's useful to pay particular attention to what is presently happening if you wish to develop independent opinions about current events. And possibly even profit from them.