There are several underlying fallacies at work here. Here's a few:
1. Citizens should not just talk to each other if they have a concern. They should not get to know one another, or in any way communicate concerns to each other. They should always go directly to the government- secretly informing on their friends and neighbors.
2. False allegations of child abuse, and unnecessary government interference in a family have no negative consequences in a child's life.
3. Slander, defamation of character, false accusations- these are actually noble, so long as it's 'all about the children.'
Never mind that the children are directly harmed when their parents are slandered and forcibly separated from their children because somebody had a 'bad feeling.' Never mind that there is no such thing as 'erring on the side of the child' when we're talking about forcibly removing a child from his family.
Over at Free Range Kids, where I found the link, Lenore Skenazy writes:
Too bad the Ad Council sat out the McCarthy hearings — it could have had a field day! “If you even SUSPECT your neighbor is a Communist…” And it’s really sad we didn’t have 30- second TV spots in Salem in the 1600s: “If thou even SUSPECTETH sorcery…”
The problem is: In our commendable desire to keep kids safe, we have gone overboard and turned into a country where all parents are suspected of not being good enough, or — now — even actively bad.
Unfortunately, when the parents are falsely accused of child abuse, it is the children who suffer, the very people who claim to care about the children are actually thoughtlessly subjecting those children to unspeakable pain. They will be removed from the home and family they know, subjected to intrusive, often painful and humiliating physical and psychiatric exams, touched where they do not wish to be touched by people they do not know and cannot help but fear- before a child is subjected to this trauma, there should be a better reason for it than a funny feeling in a chance coffee shop encounter. Pin It
