We are told that many of these young people would go hungry otherwise, but the fact is, by feeding students at school we are absolving their parents of that responsibility. And let me tell you something. If, in fact, these kids really are so poor that they come to school starving, we had better have a much closer look at what is going on in the home. No matter what the family income, there is absolutely no excuse for sending a child off to school with an empty stomach. With all the social programs, social workers, food banks, and church organizations, the only reason a child doesn’t get breakfast in this country is because his or her parents just can’t be bothered. And, of course, if the school is going to feed your child for you, as far as some parents are concerned, “hey, why should I bother?”
All we are doing with programs such as this is making it easier for parents and their children to abdicate their responsibility. Lovely message we are sending!
Some communities take a much more responsible position. In Laval, Quebec, for example, a committee of parents has been established to work in concert with the teachers. If a teacher in Laval spots a child they don’t believe is being fed properly, they alert the committee. Someone on the committee then phones the parents to ask if there is a problem. Nine times out of ten the parents didn’t even realize the kid was hiking off to school without breakfast and the problem is solved immediately. If it is discovered that there is a real problem, someone on the committee puts the parent in touch with an organization that can help. All very quietly so as not to embarrass, but all intended to illustrate to both parent and child that they have personal responsibilities which at the very least require them to put some food in empty stomachs!
Which approach do you think is the best? Surely the answer is obvious. Why then do we insist in most of the rest of the country on doing something that at best is applying a temporary bandage to what could very well be a life-threatening hemorrhage? Is it because we are just too afraid to tackle the real problem? That we ourselves have fallen victim to the concept that personal responsibility is an outmoded concept?
Maybe this is why we now have people suing McDonald’s if they spill hot coffee on themselves. Today even the law agrees that if you get drunk at your friendly neighbourhood bar, sneak away and crash your car, it’s the poor beggar who served you the beer who runs the risk of being held responsible.
Could this be why those commuters in Toronto stepped over a dying man rather than stopping or calling for help? Do you suppose they truly believed it just wasn’t their responsibility?
One of my father’s most delightful stories was about growing up in a village of chimney watchers. On cold mornings everyone checked his or her neighbour’s chimney to make sure smoke was rising. No smoke meant possible trouble.
It has truly been a long, long trail a winding from a time when we watched each other’s chimneys. And of this I am certain: All the state-run, unionized daycare programs, all the school breakfast programs, all the social programs, all the free needles and crack pipes in the world aren’t going to convince many amongst us to start looking out for each other’s chimneys, or anything else except, of course, ourselves.
FIVE
The Thug Huggers
“Holy, old mouldy, look at that!” My brother Paul, at the time a sergeant with the Brantford Police Service, doesn’t talk to himself all that often, but then again he doesn’t see a guy stealing a television set in broad daylight that often either. Paul has just pulled his cruiser around a corner in one of Brantford’s ritzier neighbourhoods when what should appear before his amazed eyes but a guy balancing a brand new TV on his shoulder trying to look casual as he strolls across a well-manicured front lawn.
There’s been a rash of break-ins in the district so there’s no chance this guy is just out for a bit of afternoon exercise. Besides which, Paul has arrested our TV-carting friend a couple of times previously and knows him very well. Not a person you would want to invite in to have a look at your new silverware, believe me!
The television is hurled to the ground and the foot race is on! My brother, having just completed another of his sporadic diet and exercise programs is gaining when the thief jumps into a brand new fire-red Mustang and peels away. Now it’s one of your Hollywood favourites—a car chase! Instead of up and down San Francisco’s famous hills, this time it’s confined to the very ordinary Brantford streets, siren blaring, tires screeching, the Mustang staying well ahead.
It ends suddenly when the Mustang wheels into one of Brantford’s seedier low-rent housing complexes. The chasee darts out, romps around the corner and disappears. Several neighbours come running out pointing to a house, which in cop jargon is “well-known to police.” “He’s in there, he ran in there,” they shout. My brother, who once took part in a drug raid on the house, has no doubts whatsoever that the friendly neighbours are correct, but he’s got a dilemma. He didn’t see our thief-friend go in. Which means Paul can’t enter that house, even though he knows full well the crook is inside. He’s got to have a warrant.
By this time a couple more cruisers are on the scene. They stand guard while my brother tracks down a friendly judge he knows. It’s Saturday afternoon. Finding the judge takes a couple of hours, but it’s all for naught. As much as the judge would love to give my brother a warrant so he can go in and arrest this guy, he can’t! Why? Because the law says in order to issue a warrant, police must actually see the suspect go into the house. It is simply not good enough to have neighbours indicate the hiding place.
I probably shouldn’t tell you this, since these days this kind of thing can get you charged with police brutality or something, but what the heck. You only live once. (Besides which, if they come after Paul with this, he can always claim it wasn’t his fault!) Fact is, my brother is not one to let anyone get the best of him, so for months after this little episode, every time one of his officers was having a quiet night, he’d instruct him or her to do a little nighttime check of the house in question. It became a great game. Whip up to the house with the cherry lights whirling, flash the spotlight on the windows, and listen to the toilets flush as thousands of dollars’ worth of assorted drugs were sent plunging into the sewers of Brantford! The guy finally took off for parts unknown. “So,” says Paul with some satisfaction, “I did my job!”
• • •
You may recall one of the most famous examples of how the thug huggers have tied the hands of police. The RCMP in British Columbia follow a trail of blood from a murdered man’s home to a nearby house trailer. The trailer door is covered with bloody handprints. There could be little doubt the murderer is inside. Police yell several times to come out with your hands up, but there is no response. Finally they break the door down and find a man, drunk and covered with blood. They arrest him on the spot and charge him with murder.
Incredibly, the man is let off and police are lectured by the judge for infringing on his rights.
It’s called the “hot pursuit” law. What it boils down to is that only in the course of a “hot pursuit,” when police actually see the suspect going into a house, can they enter without a warrant. Even hearing the suspect inside or, as in the case of my brother, other witnesses seeing the suspect go into the house is not good enough. The only time police can enter a dwelling without a warrant is if it is in the course of “hot pursuit” and police actually see the person enter.
It is only one of a multitude of laws passed in this country at the insistence of left-wing politicians, social activists, lawyers, and in some cases convicted criminals, which have very clearly swung the pendulum of justice far into the accused’s corner. More than one caller to my show on CFRA has expressed amazement that police are ever able to make an arrest, let alone get a conviction.
This swing of the justice pendulum in favour of the accused is not confined to Canada. If anything it was much worse in the United States up until recently, when soaring crime rates finally convinced authorities that the lefty thug huggers, once again were dead wrong and that the only things that really deter crime are strict policing