It was how the Soviet Union kept its foreign diplomats in line — their children had to remain back home in Russia as hostages, lest the parents’ temptation to defect prove too great. Seizing children is so punitive we don’t even do it to convicted criminals — not even murderers. Unless there is specific proof of harm or imminent harm to a child, even bad parents have the right to be parents.
But what is the definition of harm? In an era when hurt feelings can receive five-figure damage awards, and when political apologies for ancient slights have become routine, harm isn’t just limited to physical abuse — it’s now political.
Just ask the Winnipeg mother who had her two children seized this summer by Child and Family Services because her seven-year-old daughter went to school with a swastika drawn on her arm. That daughter, and her two-year-old brother, were snatched away.
The definition of “abuse” under Manitoba’s Child and Family Services Act lists three species: sexual exploitation, physical injury, and anything that results in “emotional disability of a permanent nature in the child.” Needless to say, it was that last section that the do-gooders used to seize the mother’s kids.
There is no medical textbook extant that lists political views, even radical or racist views, as an “emotional disability.” It is an anti-intellectual gimmick to characterize things we don’t like as illnesses in need of a cure. But that’s easier than convincing our political opponents of the error of their ways. Again, look at the Soviets.
Anyone who didn’t support the Communist utopia was obviously mad — it was a logical truism.
Nazism — or, as the mother calls it, white supremacism — is foul. Of course it is — just like radical ideologies of the Black Power movement and of Islamic supremacism. And, yes, the swastika is a symbol of hatred and death — at least since the Nazis purloined it 80 years ago. The hammer and sickle and the crescent moon have been responsible for far more death than the swastika, but it’s doubtful a display of those emblems would have resulted in a state-sanctioned kidnapping. T-shirts of a murderer named Che Guevara are practically standard-issue on campuses across North America. And Charles Manson’s name, if nothing more, was rehabilitated by a second-rate singer named Marilyn Manson. If offensive political symbols are the new litmus test for child abuse, we’d better start building more orphanages.
It seems the real target of Manitoba’s Child and Family Services was not the mother but her husband — a man she describes as a “bigot,” an unusual insult from a white supremacist. Winnipeg police spokesman Pat Chabidon did the rounds, ensuring the media knew the husband “was a subject of interest in a hate-crime-type investigation in 2005,” though no charges were laid.
Since when do police make public comments about child welfare matters, giving briefings about the accused? Actually, “accused” doesn’t quite fit — he wasn’t accused of anything? The police couldn’t charge the father, let alone convict him. But who needs such technicalities as a trial and conviction — why not jump straight to the punishment? That’s not justice, that’s government vengeance.
For those who are content to see a white supremacist punished this way — or, rather, to see two innocent children punished this way — they should realize that when the definition of “abuse” can leap from real harm to political harm, anyone can be targeted. In 2002, seven children were seized from a home in Aylmer, Ont., when a 27-year-old Children’s Aid Society operative, armed with a BA in psychology and plenty of self-righteousness, determined that spanking was child abuse and seized the lot of them. In Germany, even home-schooling has been deemed to be child abuse. The mayor of Altensteig filed a lawsuit against the Landahl family, demanding custody of their five home-schooled children. They fled to the U.K. rather than risk conviction.
Harvy Frankel, the dean of social work at the University of Manitoba, praised the seizure of the Winnipeg children. “We should be reassured that this is child welfare practice as it should be,” he said. Then again, Frankel’s area of expertise is “integrating clinical practice and social justice.” He believes child welfare is all about politics.
So neo-Nazis can’t have kids, and spankers and home-schoolers are on notice, too. How much longer before mere critics of this system are targeted, too?
Ezra Levant is a Calgary lawyer. He can be reached at [email protected]