Further comments upon yesterday's post.

Yesterday, I commented on a treaty that Barbra Boxer is pushing for us to sign. One that would not only erode national sovereignty, but parents' ability to raise their children into functional adults.

I was attacked in the comments section for my opinions. I responded there, and will not repeat myself here. I did, however, decide to clarify my position.

It is my right, and my duty, as a mother to protect my children from harm. I will do that by any means necessary. If that means I have to pull the trigger on an attacker, so be it. If that means I have to intervene in his education to make sure he's learning how to read, how to write, and how to think, rather than being spoon-fed what to think, so be it. I am a teacher, and am capable of making sure he learns what he needs to be a functioning adult.

If that means I must run for, and attain, political office to maintain his freedom to choose how to think, and how to defend himself as an adult, I will do it. I won't like it, and won't want to do it, but I will.

Despite the rampant sexism in the poem (or maybe because he came from an era that understood that there were inherent differences between the sexes) Kipling explains it well:

She who faces Death by torture for each life beneath her breast
May not deal in doubt or pity -- must not swerve for fact or jest.
These be purely male diversions -- not in these her honour dwells.
She the Other Law we live by, is that Law and nothing else.

She can bring no more to living than the powers that make her great
As the Mother of the Infant and the Mistress of the Mate.
And when Babe and Man are lacking and she strides unclaimed to claim
Her right as femme (and baron), her equipment is the same.

She is wedded to convictions -- in default of grosser ties;
Her contentions are her children, Heaven help him who denies! --
He will meet no suave discussion, but the instant, white-hot, wild,
Wakened female of the species warring as for spouse and child.

In other words, you can interfere with my family--my husband and my children--over your dead body.