Monday, July 05, 2004

Where the terminal go

Endings seem so final, don't you think?
Still...
Smacking children seems much in the news at the moment. With much talk of "children's rights". An odd concept, with many similarities to "animal rights". Neither children nor animals are moral agents - animals because they can't reason and children because they haven't learnt to be. Yet some people want to endow them with rights? Where on earth has this come from?
This of course isn't to say that children should have the crap beaten out of them (although that mewling brat on the train yesterday could be an exception...) - indeed, quite the reverse, adults have a duty to behave towards children with kindness and respect - partly because they need it to survive, and partly because they won't learn to grow into decent human beings themselves if they're maltreated. But this comes from the responsibilities and duties of adults, not some spurious "rights" of children.
An important distinction, I feel.

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