By Timothy Birdnow —— Bio and Archives April 19, 2015
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Free-Range Parenting It's a new, hands-off approach to raising kids. Should you give it a try? Would you let your 9-year-old son ride the New York City Subway system alone? Columnist Lenore Skenazy did, and then she wrote about the experience in the New York Sun. What followed was a storm of media attention and a mix of accolades and accusations from parents everywhere. A new movement also grew from Skenazy's bold move: It's called free-range parenting. Almost as a backlash to the overbearing, over-scheduling "helicopter" parent, free-range parenting is based on the notion "that we can give our children the same kind of freedom we had [as kids] without going nuts with worry," Skenazy says. "When you let children out, all the good things happen - the self-confidence, happiness, and self-sufficiency that come from letting our kids do some things on their own," she says. Sounds great, but even non "hovering" moms wouldn't dream of doing what Skenazy did."
"Free-range livestock farming "There is a growing trend among farmers to support welfare-friendly and sustainable production in livestock farming, with milk produced by cows that graze in fields, free-range meat and eggs, and organic produce. Animals are provided with more space, outdoor runs with shelter and daylight in their housing. These measures go beyond legal standards for animal welfare." [...] "Sustainable livestock farming "The government and farmers aim to optimise the sustainability of livestock farming by 2023, and can count on great support from society. Livestock farming should produce with respect for man, animal and the environment, all over the world. "This ambition from the future vision on livestock farming is supported by a collaboration of farmers, the processing industry, supermarkets and the environmental movement. "Sustainability in livestock farming is promoted through the development of innovative housing for cows, pigs and chickens for instance. New housing facilities for chickens have day and night accommodation, outdoor runs and space and facilities to demonstrate natural behaviour. Other developments are the comfort class housing and the family housing designed for pigs. From 2015 all new housing should be sustainable, with funds and research provided by the government. "Sustainability is the buzzword of the environmentalists and those who seek a preplanned society. The goal is to corral people in confined city spaces, packed in as tightly as any sardines while the countryside is allowed to go to seed. Free range livestock are no small part of that scheme; the idea is to promote letting the large swaths of grasslands grow back, ostensibly for "free range" food production. That production will be curtailed at a future date, and the land left fallow. Environmentalists want a de-industrialized world, and Progressives want a world tightly under their control. The two agendas meet at this juncture. People remember the Morlocks and the Eloi from H.G. Wells, but they have mostly forgotten Wells' "prequel" stories. Wells promoted a vision where the countryside would be largely uninhabited and people would be clustered in the cities, which would extend down into the Earth. Eventually the surface-dwelling wealthy class lost their intelligence and became Eloi while the working class evolved into subterranean Morlocks. But all of this came about because humanity turned it's back on the countryside. Wells never explains exactly why, but it is not hard to figure out that the environmental movement would see to that. Environmentalists hold Nature in a reverence that is akin to religious worship. They are, in many cases, Animists and a number of them dream of a world bereft of the "cancer" of humanity. In fact, there is something called the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement that promotes the agenda of self-speciecide. Why? To "liberate" the Earth from Man. And let us not forget in all this the Animal Rights crowd. Free Range is a goal of this group because it means a more humane existence for the animals. Can't argue with that, can we? But to animal rights advocates "a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy" and calling a child free range is no different than calling a pig free range, or a cow, or a sheep. This is entirely the same principle. According to PETA:
"But, in the just-released Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness, a prominent group of scientists has declared that humans are not unique in ways that matter. Stand on their toes or tentacles, snatch their offspring from their arms or their arboreal nest, and any animal will feel the same way about it as would you or I. The question is, knowing this what do we do about it? "Hundreds of studies have already shown animals' logical, mathematical, linguistic, and emotional intelligence. For years we blithely believed that humans were the only species to use tools, until researchers documented that octopuses carry coconut shells as portable hiding places, crows use sticks to dig in the ground for grubs, and many other examples. Fish's mathematical abilities are on par with those of monkeys, dolphins, and bright young human children."So, Mankind is not special at all, merely slightly more intelligent than a porcupine or Portuguese Man-of-War. And apparently intelligence is all that matters; there is no soul, no Divine aspects of Humanity to set us apart. Free Will is an illusion. Which is why calling them "free range kids" is so dangerous; it buys into the notion that children are mere animals, creatures of convenience. And if we feel free to raise livestock for human consumption, or for wool or other animal byproducts, or to ride atop, then people are equally fair-game. Free range is free range. This is where we have got to take a stand. We have allowed the Progressive Left to dominate the conversation for decades, and they have systematically deconstructed our language. "Social Justice" means welfare payments and special privileges for protected classes rather than a society where laws are applied fairly. "Civil Rights" means special privileges for groups. "Wage Equity" is code for paying the same for less seniority or less work. "Fair share" means a sliding scale where the more productive are forced to shell out more in taxes. And of course we've been treated to "marriage equality" which means we redefine marriage to be whatever anyone wants it to be; marriage between two people of the same sex, between multiple partners, between close blood relatives, between man and beast. Why not that last? A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy after all. All that should matter is that they love each-other. Who could be against that! As a man thinketh so shall he be, the Bible tells us. If the Left owns the language we will think like the left. Unlike the animals (and contrary to the PETA author I cited who believes animals have their own actual language) our thinking is inextricably linked to our verbal expression. Change that and you change the way people think. Change the way we think... The idea of Free Range Kids is backwards; these are kids raised the old fashioned way. Who are the aberrations? The Helicopter parenting types, that is who. We should never let them define Orthodoxy for us. We ARE the Orthodoxy; the are the Heterodoxy, the destroyers of tradition and normalcy. We were once all free range. Sadly too many Americans have allowed themselves to be put in the corral. Here is an overview of the many ways the Obama Administration has labored to implement Agenda 21 in rural America and impose their worldview on agriculture. Here is a rundown of many of the rural abuses of the Obama Administration.
Timothy Birdnow is a conservative writer and blogger and lives in St. Louis Missouri. His work has appeared in many popular conservative publications including but not limited to The American Thinker, Pajamas Media, Intellectual Conservative and Orthodoxy Today. Tim is a featured contributor to American Daily Reviewand has appeared as a Guest Host on the Heading Right Radio Network. Tim’s website is tbirdnow.mee.nu.