In response to A further thought on the collective ‘ownership’ of children:
One of the creepier features of lefty language is the application of possessive pronouns. “My” is for rights (real or imagined), “your” is for responsibilities, “our” is for the stuff in my bank account they want to take. Unless it’s the case of “our responsibility” in which case they actually mean “your responsibility.” As the old saying goes, “what’s mine is mine, what’s yours is negotiable.”
Nowhere is this linguistic claim-jumping more bloodcurdling than when they apply it to actual human beings: “our workers,” “our seniors,” and especially “our children.”
Oh, Melissa Harris-Perry? I have a rule. Unless you’re my wife, there ain’t no such thing as “our children.”
Maybe something noble motivates the MHP/MSNBC national paternity suit campaign. Who knows? Maybe she merely is is inviting me to share my fatherly wisdom with America’s children as if they were my own progeny. If that’s the case I invite them to shut off the damn internet, finish their damn homework, and clean up those damn pigsties they call rooms.
But I doubt it. When you put “we have to collectively educate/raise our children” into the Google Lefty Translator, you get “I want to force your kids to listen to my lectures, and I want to force you to pay me for it.”