Back when daughter, Social Sphere, was young, she was in a
girls’ organization, and I helped out with it. She was invited to the group by
a girl who was her favorite friend from first grade through elementary school
years, whose mother was the leader. We met weekly, and did crafts, learning
experiences, and learning adventures and camps. Most moms stayed and helped,
rather than drop their daughters off. We moms took on assignments to help with
part of the program, and help the kids do crafts. We made some good memories
and good friends during those first few years.
Then there was a rift, with many (most) of the moms
objecting to the leader. There were some valid issues that had been building up.
One was that the leader enforced a no sugar policy for her own household and
insisted that should be the policy for all troop activities. No cupcakes or cookies
at snack time.
The time this became most frustrating was at a campout. The
girls were in a cabin, so not hard-core camping. They had made their own menu
and shopping list, with the guidance of the moms. This included trail mix for
the hike. The leader forbade the girls from putting M&Ms in with the
peanuts, sunflower seeds, and raisins. The moms who had overseen the menu
planning hadn’t seen a problem with a little sweetness among other healthful
foods. It was bad enough that no meals could have desserts, and breakfast
disallowed syrup on the pancakes.
The event took an entertaining turn when the regional leaders
dropped by the cabin to offer a presentation on some topic—and they used
M&Ms as part of their object lesson, a little packet for each of the girls.
The leader happened to be in another room napping at this hour; she’d been up
late and gotten up early as the main leader, but there was plenty of backup
during the afternoon. So, anyway, the girls and grownups all looked at one
another, and there was a silent conspiracy (including the leader’s daughter and
husband) to allow this and just not say anything to Ms. Leader. What she didn’t
know wouldn’t hurt her.
There were other issues. Ms. Leader spent a chunk of money
on a piece of equipment that would rarely be used and could have been borrowed—against
the approval of the other moms. Also, moms were asked to volunteer for various
assignments, and then they were overruled or ignored, amid complaints from Ms.
Leader that she was doing all the work and no one could be counted on.
The aggregate of complaints led to the decision to separate.
We held a meeting, with a regional leader as a mediator. My purpose there was
to try to find a resolution, because I wanted to avoid having the girls
separated. Ms. Leader didn’t come; she sent her husband (who was also a
registered leader), so there was no way to actually air grievances and come to
an agreement about change. The regional leader said any parent is free to start
a new troop and recruit girls, and there was no reason to step in and prevent
that from happening.
That seemed to be the simple answer for everyone—except us. It
was a dilemma. There was loyalty, particularly to the friend who had first
befriended my daughter, and the desire to continue to be with her. But there
were a dozen other friends we would lose contact with if we didn’t go with
them. Under this pressure, I stayed with the original troop for a trial, along
with Ms. Leader’s daughter and one other girl recently recruited. We tried to
go on as if all was as before. I took on more assignments, since there were
fewer moms to divide the work.
The last straw for me was after I’d spent a number of hours
on an assignment, a craft with purpose that met some badge requirement. I’d
bought the materials, prepared the kits, and showed up prepared at the meeting—which
was what could always be expected of me, good old reliable. Ms. Leader went
through the program, and then, without notice ahead of time to me, substituted another
activity for the one I’d prepared. We didn’t even do mine. She didn’t so much
as acknowledge that I had had an assignment and had put time and effort into
it. She had what she thought was a better idea and went with it, always her
preference because she knew best, and this way she had control of the outcome.
It wasn’t the first time this had happened to me, but I had
been ever forgiving. Now the mass of slights and what suddenly felt like
oppression—combined with the separation from so many friends—came hitting me in
the face. My daughter was sorry about the separation from her friend, but they
could still meet for play dates. And she was happy to join the other dozen
girls and their moms in a fuller troop that did more fun things. So we adjusted
and moved forward. (The new leader was indeed better leader material.)
The friendship between us adults was strained, not because
she had offended me (which she had), but because I had broken loyalty. We got
back to congeniality eventually, but never to easy conversations or dinners
together as couples. And there were fewer play dates as time passed.
I’m guessing this is something very similar to just about
everyone’s experience with some leader in some organization. I tell this story as
a micro example of some principles that apply at macro levels:
·
Parents want to be in control of decisions about
the care and upbringing of their children. No one else has the right to step in
and make policy because they know better and just have the child’s best
interest in mind.
·
People are willing to do their part, but they
expect respect in return. They are not willing to simply follow orders of their
“superiors” and have their efforts ignored and unappreciated, or their opinions
overruled.
·
People are not willing to put in time, money and
effort and then have their expenditures go to things they disapprove of as
unnecessary.
·
“When a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations…evinces
a Design to reduce [the people] under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it
is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for
their future Security,”[*]
or whatever purpose they have for the organization. Despots, whether of little “fiefdoms”
or larger “kingdoms,” deserve to be removed from any position of authority.
Here’s one more thing I learned: sometimes a petty despots
suffer from the prideful misapprehension that they know better and have the
good of their subordinates in mind; they thinking they are serving by
controlling.
We can see this in the fascist efforts of Michael Bloomberg controlling
the size of sugary drinks in New York. We see it in public education at the
national level, where it simply doesn’t belong, and often at state and district
levels. A few days ago MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry voiced what we’d
suspected was the despotic belief, but we were shocked to hear it anyway:
We have never invested as much in public education as we
should have because we have this private notion of children. “Your kid is
yours, and totally your responsibility.” We haven't had a very collective
notion of “these are our children.” So part of it is to break through our kind
of private idea that kids belong to their parents, or kids belong to their
families, and recognize that kids belong to whole communities.
Once it's everybody's responsibility, and not just the
household's, then we start making better investments.
Really? How dare I believe I am
entitled to make decisions on the care and upbringing of my own children, just
because I happened to give birth to them and provide for them? A better
question is, how does anyone come to believe a fit parent isn’t the responsible
party for decisions about the child? My belief is rational. Hers is outrageous.
It fits the pattern of way too many youth novels about post-apocalyptic
tyrannical societies: the Matched trilogy,
Agenda 21, and Among the Hidden, for example.
This morning I came across a piece by socialist Cass Sunstein,
defending paternalistic government—because people make mistakes and need the
right choices forced upon them. Seriously. He thinks the discussion should be
about which approach to take, not whether to be paternalistic, because:
What seems to unify paternalistic approaches, however
diverse, is that government does not believe that people’s choices will promote
their welfare, and it is taking steps to influence or alter people’s choices
for their own good.
He says it calmly, with an attitude of, “of course reasonable
people will agree with me”—and I disagree with every example he offers of
government making things better. In his case I do not give him the benefit of
the doubt about intent: it is not about caring for the stupid people; it is
about controlling all the people. The point of his article is to find a way to
control the people without letting them know their freedom of choice is being
controlled. But concern about that abstract notion of freedom is only important
until tyranny takes sufficient hold.
The “long Train of Abuses and Usurpations” is growing. These
are in opposition to the Constitutional law that protects us from them. The
question, then, is not how to separate and form a new government less
oppressive; it is how to throw off the extra-Constitutional usurpations while
we still have a Constitution to return to.
[*] The Declaration of
Independence
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