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The Home School Legal Defense Association helped kill American ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Killing US ratifica

The Home School Legal Defense Association helped kill American ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Killing US ratification of this treaty, which would have helped extend rights that the US pioneered to people overseas, was absolutely abhorrent. The UN treaty was essentially based on existing American law, was ratified by 130+ nations and had no potential impact on American education. You may remember that Bob Dole was wheeled onto the Senate floor to urge ratification. Homeschool advocates opposition was based on disinformation ("the UN is going to take your kids") I would take anything they have to say with a grain of salt.

rickjames28 13y ago
Nobody is disputing the facts here, so there is no grain of salt to take.
- a_bonobo 13y ago
  How much of that page is in fact "fact"? They call Germany's team that picked up the kids a "SWAT" team, even though Germany doesn't have a SWAT team, Germany has GSG9 which is solely used for anti-terror operations. I also wouldn't call a team that includes social workers a SWAT-team. This sentence alone shows that this article was only written to rile up emotions: >At 8:00 a.m. on Thursday, August 29, 2013, in what has been called a “brutal and vicious act,” Who has called it an act like that? The HSLDA itself, no-one else. I also can't find anything on this in German news, so there are no secondary sources, so no way to verify their claims yet. tl;dr: There are no facts yet. Edit: Just remembered, there's also the SEK, the Spezialeinsatzkommando, which are the German state police's special police to handle barricaded suspects - may have been in use here, but again, I'd highly doubt they'd be accompanied by social workers.
  - superuser2 13y ago
    I would conjecture that the reason for overwhelming force here is a reasonable guess that people who don't recognize the government's authority to enforce laws might attempt armed resistance, especially where their children are concerned. Swift and overwhelming force lowers the risk of anyone (government or citizen) actually getting violent. That doesn't necessarily justify the trauma of getting raided, but it would make sense if that's why they did it.
  - glurgh 13y ago
    Germany has GSG9 which is solely used for anti-terror operations. This isn't strictly true since the GSG9 can and occasionally has been deployed in what are pretty much domestic criminal cases. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSG9#Publicly_known_missions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSG9#Publicly_known_missions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladbeck_hostage_crisis#18_August http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladbeck_hostage_crisis#18_Augu... Not that it changes the absence of other sources. I couldn't find anything about it in German either - at least, not anything that wasn't a year old and from advocacy sites as well. Nor do I think it's terribly likely BPOL unit showed up somewhere to handle a Jugendamt case.
rdtsc 13y ago
Yes I don't completely buy their argument. This appeals to Americans quite a bit because there is significant homeschooling compared to other "Western Countries" (Just a hunch, I couldn't find much unbiased data on this). It seems _sometimes_ the reason, with one case in my own circle of friends, is the bad quality of local public schools. However I think large number of cases are related to religious education. I believe that is the intended goal of the German law. To not let parent teach children about God's miracles and water can be turned into wine if you pray hard enough, or how dinosaurs went clubbing with Adam and Eve and stuff like that. We are battling crazies in Southern states who are pushing this crap even into the public schools. So I believe in this country these German families will find many sympathetic years. Now, the question I don't know is, how bad is the quality of schools in Germany. Are gangs, bullying, racism pervasive? I can see an argument made in that case, otherwise, sorry, I'll side with the majority of Germans (presumably as a democracy they could have overturned this law many years ago).
- a_bonobo 13y ago
  >Are gangs, bullying, racism pervasive? Being German, there are no gangs like American gangs, there is some bullying (nothing rampant) and racism depends on the area you're in - my school had some problems with Turkish and Armenian kids hating each other, but no fights ever. Edit: There are a few "problem"-schools which have huge problems with kids from all kinds of backgrounds - the Rütli-school, for example. But I highly doubt the kids of OP's link went ot that school, they're white.
- einhverfr 13y ago
  I think there is something much larger at stake though. The question as you put it, I think, is whether culture should be allowed to arise from the grass roots or whether it should be formed by the state in public schools. You put it in one way but what about when it comes down to cultural values? We have extended the definition of bullying so far as to cover stated ideological opinions in the US, and therefore we use public school (as I think you are advocating btw) to destroy the diversity and pluralism that has traditionally underscored our society. But what if Indian immigrants want to teach that there is value in the caste system? Must the state use public schools to try to stamp out such a view? I am btw a large proponent of homeschooling because I think it represents a way for parents to take control of passing culture on to the next generation and that this helps encourage a tolerant and pluralistic society. If Indians want to teach that the caste system is a noble part of India's heritage, bully for them. If Catholics want to teach that radical individualism is harmful, and that marriage is extremely important because it supports the key relationships that hold society together, particularly between parents, grandparents, and children, bully for them. Accepting and encouraging such diversity is important for our nation. Encouraging culture at the grass roots, I think, is universally important, and it is worth noting that public schools have been, since the time of Lycurgus, an institution intended to destroy that role, and foster the primary loyalty not to one's parents or family but to the state. While this may have worked in ancient Sparta on that scale without destroying the local nature of culture, it cannot scale to the level of a modern country. I can't help but think about this in relation to the responses I get every time I suggest that the US should try to implement a Canada-style state-by-state single payer system for health care. A few on the right get upset at any notion of single payer, apparently believing that "private sector" is a magical incantation of great power, but the big objections I get are from the left. "But we can't let Alabama run their own health care system! That would be a disaster!" is one typical response. It is as if the role of the government in a democratic country is there to save people from democracy and that, paraphrasing Orwell (in "Animal Farm"), that people are free to make decisions as long as it is decisions that those in power like. But what if families should take responsibility for raising children? What if the general problems of state government belong properly to the residents of that state (aside from things which clearly violate the Constitution, including the Equal Protection Clause, of course)? I don't understand this hostility towards localism.
tzs 13y ago
That was a sad day for American politics. Not only would ratification have had no impact on US education, including homeschooling, it would have had basically no impact on anything domestically. Everything the treaty required we already do. Where it would have affected Americans is when they travel to other countries that also ratified the treaty. Since the US did not ratify, those countries do not have to extend to visiting Americans with disabilities the same rights they have to extent to visitors from countries that did ratify the treaty.
- einhverfr 13y ago
  But one argument against marijuana decriminalization of drugs is that it violates international treaties we are a party to. One real problem with treaties of this sort is that they remove public policy decisions from political discourse.
thejteam 13y ago
If it was based on existing US law then nobody in the US lost out on anything by failure to ratify. The treaty presumably would apply in other other countries that ratify it. Also, the danger is less what it would do now versus how the treaty could be interpreted in the future. Also, while HSLDA mobilized their members against the treaty they hardly have the political clout to kill a treaty in the Senate. At most they gave a few Senators who were on the fence reason to delay consideration.

rickjames28 13y ago

Nobody is disputing the facts here, so there is no grain of salt to take.

a_bonobo 13y ago
How much of that page is in fact "fact"? They call Germany's team that picked up the kids a "SWAT" team, even though Germany doesn't have a SWAT team, Germany has GSG9 which is solely used for anti-terror operations. I also wouldn't call a team that includes social workers a SWAT-team. This sentence alone shows that this article was only written to rile up emotions: >At 8:00 a.m. on Thursday, August 29, 2013, in what has been called a “brutal and vicious act,” Who has called it an act like that? The HSLDA itself, no-one else. I also can't find anything on this in German news, so there are no secondary sources, so no way to verify their claims yet. tl;dr: There are no facts yet. Edit: Just remembered, there's also the SEK, the Spezialeinsatzkommando, which are the German state police's special police to handle barricaded suspects - may have been in use here, but again, I'd highly doubt they'd be accompanied by social workers.
- superuser2 13y ago
  I would conjecture that the reason for overwhelming force here is a reasonable guess that people who don't recognize the government's authority to enforce laws might attempt armed resistance, especially where their children are concerned. Swift and overwhelming force lowers the risk of anyone (government or citizen) actually getting violent. That doesn't necessarily justify the trauma of getting raided, but it would make sense if that's why they did it.
- glurgh 13y ago
  Germany has GSG9 which is solely used for anti-terror operations. This isn't strictly true since the GSG9 can and occasionally has been deployed in what are pretty much domestic criminal cases. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSG9#Publicly_known_missions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSG9#Publicly_known_missions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladbeck_hostage_crisis#18_August http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladbeck_hostage_crisis#18_Augu... Not that it changes the absence of other sources. I couldn't find anything about it in German either - at least, not anything that wasn't a year old and from advocacy sites as well. Nor do I think it's terribly likely BPOL unit showed up somewhere to handle a Jugendamt case.

rdtsc 13y ago

Yes I don't completely buy their argument. This appeals to Americans quite a bit because there is significant homeschooling compared to other "Western Countries" (Just a hunch, I couldn't find much unbiased data on this). It seems _sometimes_ the reason, with one case in my own circle of friends, is the bad quality of local public schools. However I think large number of cases are related to religious education. I believe that is the intended goal of the German law. To not let parent teach children about God's miracles and water can be turned into wine if you pray hard enough, or how dinosaurs went clubbing with Adam and Eve and stuff like that. We are battling crazies in Southern states who are pushing this crap even into the public schools. So I believe in this country these German families will find many sympathetic years. Now, the question I don't know is, how bad is the quality of schools in Germany. Are gangs, bullying, racism pervasive? I can see an argument made in that case, otherwise, sorry, I'll side with the majority of Germans (presumably as a democracy they could have overturned this law many years ago).

a_bonobo 13y ago
>Are gangs, bullying, racism pervasive? Being German, there are no gangs like American gangs, there is some bullying (nothing rampant) and racism depends on the area you're in - my school had some problems with Turkish and Armenian kids hating each other, but no fights ever. Edit: There are a few "problem"-schools which have huge problems with kids from all kinds of backgrounds - the Rütli-school, for example. But I highly doubt the kids of OP's link went ot that school, they're white.
einhverfr 13y ago
I think there is something much larger at stake though. The question as you put it, I think, is whether culture should be allowed to arise from the grass roots or whether it should be formed by the state in public schools. You put it in one way but what about when it comes down to cultural values? We have extended the definition of bullying so far as to cover stated ideological opinions in the US, and therefore we use public school (as I think you are advocating btw) to destroy the diversity and pluralism that has traditionally underscored our society. But what if Indian immigrants want to teach that there is value in the caste system? Must the state use public schools to try to stamp out such a view? I am btw a large proponent of homeschooling because I think it represents a way for parents to take control of passing culture on to the next generation and that this helps encourage a tolerant and pluralistic society. If Indians want to teach that the caste system is a noble part of India's heritage, bully for them. If Catholics want to teach that radical individualism is harmful, and that marriage is extremely important because it supports the key relationships that hold society together, particularly between parents, grandparents, and children, bully for them. Accepting and encouraging such diversity is important for our nation. Encouraging culture at the grass roots, I think, is universally important, and it is worth noting that public schools have been, since the time of Lycurgus, an institution intended to destroy that role, and foster the primary loyalty not to one's parents or family but to the state. While this may have worked in ancient Sparta on that scale without destroying the local nature of culture, it cannot scale to the level of a modern country. I can't help but think about this in relation to the responses I get every time I suggest that the US should try to implement a Canada-style state-by-state single payer system for health care. A few on the right get upset at any notion of single payer, apparently believing that "private sector" is a magical incantation of great power, but the big objections I get are from the left. "But we can't let Alabama run their own health care system! That would be a disaster!" is one typical response. It is as if the role of the government in a democratic country is there to save people from democracy and that, paraphrasing Orwell (in "Animal Farm"), that people are free to make decisions as long as it is decisions that those in power like. But what if families should take responsibility for raising children? What if the general problems of state government belong properly to the residents of that state (aside from things which clearly violate the Constitution, including the Equal Protection Clause, of course)? I don't understand this hostility towards localism.

tzs 13y ago

That was a sad day for American politics. Not only would ratification have had no impact on US education, including homeschooling, it would have had basically no impact on anything domestically. Everything the treaty required we already do. Where it would have affected Americans is when they travel to other countries that also ratified the treaty. Since the US did not ratify, those countries do not have to extend to visiting Americans with disabilities the same rights they have to extent to visitors from countries that did ratify the treaty.

einhverfr 13y ago
But one argument against marijuana decriminalization of drugs is that it violates international treaties we are a party to. One real problem with treaties of this sort is that they remove public policy decisions from political discourse.

thejteam 13y ago

If it was based on existing US law then nobody in the US lost out on anything by failure to ratify. The treaty presumably would apply in other other countries that ratify it. Also, the danger is less what it would do now versus how the treaty could be interpreted in the future. Also, while HSLDA mobilized their members against the treaty they hardly have the political clout to kill a treaty in the Senate. At most they gave a few Senators who were on the fence reason to delay consideration.