Georgia Quotes
This amendment would destroy parental authority and responsibility throughout America, would give irrevocable support to a rebellion of childhood would to which menace our civilization.
The Supreme Court had ruled that the Constitution prohibited the Federal Government from regulating conditions of child labor. A Constitutional amendment was passed by Congress and submitted to the States for ratification. That amendment is still the legal basis for all the Federal involvement in child labor.
Georgia Legislature, Resolution on child labor debated and passed by the Georgia legislature, July 3, 1924
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
The NRA issued regulations making many forms of child labor illegal. Many opposed to the idea, saw it as an attack on the freedom of a parent to decide whether a child would or could work and under what considerations. A father could send his son to work in a dangerous coal mine 12 hours a day and boys grew up never seeing the sun shine. This point of view and “right” of the parent, actually prevailed and the Supreme Court declared the NRA unconstitutional. It took a Constitutional Amendment that passed with overwhelming popularity to allow the government to regulate sweatshops, coal mines and other conditions of child labor. Like most things conservatives opposed, the association of a program or reform with communism traditionally stirred opposition, even to something as benign as child labor regulation.
This was an amazingly controversial quotation. At first glance it seemed like a typical position that a very conservative, anti-government politicization might take—the government should not interfere with a parents bringing up their children. However, there was a more ominous part of the quotations. While everyone in America would certainly agree with Paul that the Government does not “own” the children, there are few who would agree with the point that follows—that the Parents “own” the child. Paul reveals the normally hidden aspect of his politics—that he is highly influenced by the extreme, Biblical Literalist Fundamentalist Christians and Jews. In the Old Testament, the Father really did OWN the child. The latter was his chattel. A father had the legal and duty-bound power of life and death over his children. Most American Christians and Jews have long since abandoned the literal biblical notion of children being owned by a father and today see a child as a person who can sometimes need the protection of the state just like any other citizen. And there are occasions where the child must be PROTECTED from the parents who may be acting within their fundamentalist notions of Biblical rights and duties, but not with their civil rights and duties. Ownership, of a child is not one of the modern civil rights of parents.
This was not original with Mobuto. It came from an famous legal opinion in a California case. See {584276}
Citizen of U. S. & Israel
The orange jumpsuit was the typical uniform of jail and prison inmates of the time.
