http://www.lewrockwell.com/miller-joel/miller-j3.htmlDARE To Kill Families
by Joel Miller
by Joel Miller
For their role in cuffing dope pushers and supporting the DARE program, cops
in one Massachusetts town were recently awarded a $1,000 by a local
drug-abuse prevention organization. A job well done: Only part of which involved
undermining the family and the relationship between parent and child ? but an
important part.
While the DARE program has come under intense criticism in the state,
resulting in drastic funding cuts, Marshfield, Massachusetts, Police Lieutenant Phil
Tavares has been fulsome in praise for the anti-drug school program. Reports
the July 8 Boston Globe, "Tavares said he has received only positive feedback
about the program and he firmly believes it's a needed resource. As an
example, he talked about the recent case of a DARE graduate who called the police on
his mother after finding marijuana in the house."
Oh yeah. That's good: Fink on your mom.
It's nothing new. DARE has always warred on the family, pitting kids against
parents. Writes Diane Barnes in the Detroit News, "Children are asked to
submit to DARE police officers sensitive written questionnaires that can easily
refer to the kids' homes. And you might be surprised by a DARE lesson called
'The Three R's: Recognize, Resists, Report,' which encourages children to tell
friends, teachers or police if they find drugs at home."
As I point out in my book, Bad Trip: How the War Against Drugs is Destroying
America, drug arrests in a number of states have been tied directly to
children ratting on parents. The reason is simple enough: DARE classes are taught by
cops, who are duty-bound to follow up on tips from kids. The Wall Street
Journal reported two Boston cases in which "children who had tipped police stepped
out of their homes carrying DARE diplomas as police arrived to arrest their
parents."
If we are keen enough to see them for what they are, we should be thankful
for such horrifying news items. For all its destruction to families, the DARE
program tips the hand of the drug-war establishment in one important regard: It
brilliantly highlights the fact that the State will tolerate no competing
authority. Its goals are absolute.
Writes Oxford Don C.S. Lewis in one of my favorite essays of his, "The
modern State exists not to protect our rights but to do us good or make us good ?
anyway, to do something to us or make us something." We, in this scheme, have
no right to make ourselves something or do things for ourselves unless our aims
fit within those of State's, for as Lewis continues, "We are less their
subjects than their wards, pupils, or domestic animals. There is nothing left of
which we can say to them, 'Mind your own business.' Our whole lives are their
business."
No uppity slaves will be tolerated. For the State, the province of our very
will and desires are seen as under its jurisdiction. They only wait to be
conquered ? along with the other intermediary authorities that stymie the State's
advance, which is why down through the years ambitious governments have warred
on churches, businesses, communities, and families ? precisely because it
they will allow no other competing loyalties. It doesn't matter what the agenda
is; the State wants total support and involvement from its subjects. Divided
loyalties must be squashed, even if it means, in the case of the drug war,
ratting on a parent or finking on a friend. The State's word is both law and final.
And that means, however much you may love your mother, if you find a doobie
in her drawer, you call the cops.
''Having teenagers feel comfortable talking about problems with police ? you
can't beat that," said Travers to the Globe. Translation: Replacing parents
as the confidants of their children is key to the State's absolutist goals. The
child must be taught to see his true loyalties in the camp of the police, not
his parents. He must be taught to come to the police with any infraction of
his parents', so the true object of his loyalties can mete out the proper
punishments for nonsubmission to the goals of the State.
Of course, the drug-war's undermining of parental authority started long
before DARE, and the program is not the ultimate focus of this discussion. We are
looking at how the drug war as a State project undermines rival authorities.
Go back to something foundational to the both the war on drugs and the
undermining of parents: The moment the government took parents out of the position of
training children in the proper use of intoxicants ? i.e., by banning
particular substances across the board, regardless of the user's age or the drug's
purpose ? it began chipping away at its rivals and their authority over
children.
For the State this is paramount. We must never forget what children are for
the State: both potential tools and threats. Because just as children are
subject to their parents, they are also subject to the State and someday, once
mature, will be primarily subject to it. If children are raised by parents to
value individual freedom and choice, the rival authority of parental control is
simply exchanged for self-control and the State's domain is not much increased.
If their parents encourage them to extreme levels of individuality, their
resultant autonomy can lead directly to decreases in state power; ergo, they
become a threat.
To gain substantial control over the individual (turn him into an ally and
stifle the threat his autonomy represents), the State must assert control early
and broadly ? removing from parents the ability to properly empower children
with much sense at all of self-determination and autonomy. The child must
learn to see the State as the final authority, period.
"Today the state controls not merely the individual's body but as much of
his spirit as it can preempt," writes social critic Christopher Lasch in his
1977 book, Haven in a Heartless World. "The citizen's entire existence has now
been subjected to social direction, increasingly unmediated by the family or
other institutions to which the work of socialization was once confined. Society
itself has taken over socialization or subjected family socialization to
increasingly effective control. Having thereby weakened the capacity for
self-direction and self-control, it has undermined one of the principal sources of
social cohesion, only to create new ones more constricting than the old, and
ultimately more devastating in their impact on personal and political freedom."
The drug war and its ancillary programs like DARE are only part of this
undermining of the family, but everyone concerned about the State's intrusion into
the private lives of individuals and families must see the attack on all
fronts.
So when you next spy a DARE bumper sticker or T-shirt, remember that the
Statist usurpers of parental authority are afoot and, whether you use illicit
substances or not, they distrust and oppose your role as parent. As we all know,
these days it takes a village to raise a child, and sometimes you've got to
throw a few moms and dads in prison for the kid to grow up properly servile.
July 13, 2004
Joel Miller [send him mail] is the author of Bad Trip: How the War Against
Drugs is Destroying America.
Copyright © 2004 LewRockwell.com
Every act of a delegated authority, contrary to the tenor of the commission under which it is exercised, is void. No legislative act, therefore, contrary to the Constitution, can be valid. To deny this, would be to affirm, that the deputy is greater than his principal; that the servant is above his master; that the representatives of the people are superior to the people themselves; that men acting by virtue of powers, may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid."
--Alexander Hamilton