Here’s a hot take: It’s not the government’s job to teach your children not to want to run away to cult to murder people in the name of a 1400-year dead Arabic misogynist. It’s yours.
This week, I read a heart-rending report about how the Swedish government “failed” the parents of our some 300 exported ISIS-jihadists. These parents, along with a doctor from the border, supposedly pleaded with the Swedish government, the police, to do something about the young men and women that were on the brink of travelling to a Middle Eastern civil war back in the mid 2010’s to fight for a hostile foreign nation. And yet, the government did nothing. The police arrested no one. The young extremists left. Some returned for free health care and a vacation from war and death, only to go back and do it all over again. Some never returned at all. Some may still be down there.
The report was explicit in placing the blame. Through an interview with a doctor on the Iraq side of the Caliphate, the blame was squarely placed at the feet of the Swedish government. Why they didn’t do anything. Why they didn’t stop anyone from going. Why they didn’t heed the call from parents across the country to stop their sons and daughters from falling under the spell of this death cult nation.
Only… that’s not the government’s job. At least not ours. The government is sorely inept at raising children. Most often when it tries, it fucks it up. So much so that the government goes to extremes not to do that any more. Which is completely fair. Despite Sweden’s many socialist turns, it is not yet an absolute provider and authority on every single matter pertaining to the human existence. We have not yet devolved into a communist hive mind, where the individual human, the parent, only needs to breathe, eat, shit, generate taxes, and squeeze out a fresh new work force.
Long rant run short; it is still the responsibility of parents to raise their children. Not the government’s.
That’s not to say that all parents are capable of doing so. I frequently work as an upper elementary school teacher. I encounter parents that probably shouldn’t have been put in charge of childrearing on a daily basis. But just because you’re incompetent at your biological imperative, just because you fail to generate productive members of society and instead spawn violent hooligans, doesn’t mean that the responsibility isn’t still yours. It’s your fault. It’s your mess. If you didn’t raise your sons and daughters better than to run away to enslave, murder, and die in a foreign civil war, then that’s quite simply the bed you’ve made for yourself. No sympathy for the self-inflicted.
Naturally, it’s not just the parents and families that suffer from the radicalization of their young. All of society suffers for it. Not to mention all the people that suffered at the hand of our (should state “former”) citizens. And even though there’s much to be said about the alternatives of ramifications to coming back from a sojourn of fighting for a hostile foreign government, no democratic government should be in the business of pre-emptive judgement. It shouldn’t be illegal to travel. It shouldn’t be illegal to hold to a creed, even though a murderous one. And it shouldn’t be illegal to degenerate to a fundamentalist. Judgement in a democratic society has to wait until actionable crimes have been committed.
To turn my condemnation into something a little bit more productive; considering how many parents fail to raise their children, just about the only bit of government involvement that I wouldn’t mind seeing in the process would be to introduce a child-having licence. If you prove too irresponsible to care for a new human being, maybe you shouldn’t have children. Because no: Having a child isn’t some universal right as much as it is (perhaps) the greatest responsibility that a human being can shoulder. Most mess up a little bit, but it’s not a particularly high bar to pass to not raise mass murderers (or as they’re called in IS-returnee interviews; “ambulance drivers”).
The onus isn’t on the government in this case. It’s on you, the parents. It wasn’t from the government’s care that these misguided 300 escaped; it was from yours. It’s easy to shift the blame and expect the government to pick up all your shit, but that’s not what this government is meant to do. It’s not what this government is equipped to do. Because even though I often disagree with this government, and it’s laws, it’s still a government of law. I would be absolutely horrified if this government introduced legislation that allowed them to judge and sentence people prior to the act. I would be absolutely horrified if this government introduced legislation that shifted jurisdiction over children away from the child’s parents. Because that’s not the sort of government I would want. And I don’t really think that’s the sort of government you’d want either.
Suck it up. Don’t shift the blame. It’s entirely on you that your children turned into fundamentalist murderers. Don’t compound your sins with cowardice and intellectual dishonesty. Get your own fucking shit together and stop expecting your government to do your parenting for you.
/Sebastian Lindberg 18/5-2021
WastedWords 