Talk:Think of the children/Archive 1

comment from 2005
An actual citable example of the use of the phrase would be better. It strikes me it is used less by politicians than by advocacy groups as a mocking of policies with which they disagree.Shsilver 15:18, 28 December 2005 (UTC)


 * "for the children" was the actual phrase used by Janet Reno to justify the raid on the Branch Davidian church.

Isn't it Ironic?
Look what came out just a few months after I wrote the original entry. It even comes complete with an Orwellian title about 'children'...

From the Washington Post:

"In March, the House passed the Children's Safety and Violent Crime Reduction Act.

Under the broad-ranging bill, DNA profiles provided voluntarily, for example, in a dragnet, would for the first time become a permanent part of the national database. People arrested would lose the right to expunge their samples if they were exonerated or charges were dropped. And the government could take DNA from citizens not arrested but simply detained."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/02/AR2006060201648_pf.html Rearden Metal 09:01, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

CSD/Possible redirect?
This sort of thing does exist in the general interest. See "Think of the children!", a popular phrase that means about the same thing. 68.39.174.238 23:57, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Logic section
The Logic section seems to be very confusing, not following a clear order. And what's with the "think of the diapers" bit at the end? ...that looks like vandalism to me. It has stayed that way across a good number of edits, so I left it as it is for now. Still, the rest is sort of hard to follow. Error792 07:29, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Do we really need a citation to prove that people want to protect children? That seems silly.

Too many boxes at the top of the article
This article is a an article about a very important political thing, but too many boxes on the top may discourage people from reading it. See my essay WP:RDAL, can someone reduce the number of boxes? Thanks! Wooyi 22:07, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Flagrant NPOV violation?
Isn't this whole article in its current form a flagrant NPOV violation? I'm sure the quoted politicians would at least assert that they honestly feel children are relevant to the contexts in which the quotes were made, and even in the hypothetical example seemingly specifically constructed to show that this argument is always a logical fallacy, an unexplained leap of logic is made from "the issue affects children only indirectly" to "children are irrelevantto the issue".

I don't see how this article can possibly assert that this argument is invalid in general, as it currently does, without breaking with Wikipedia's NPOV policies. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.202.98.188 (talk) 23:57, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

add quote from mein kampf?
I'm curious as to whether we should add the following quote from mein kampf to illustrate the potential for abuse of the "think of the children" mindset. I have not added it because I feel strongly about this argument being used to implement internet filtering in Australia (I'm australian) and so I may be breaching NPOV by adding it... can someone more detached from the situation make a comment. quote: "The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation." - Adolph Hitler (Mein Kampf) Whitehatnetizen (talk) 12:27, 4 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure about quotes from Hitler, but this article could really do with some mention of the proposed Australian Internet filter. And how 'protecting the children' is the justification for the filter. --TenguTech (talk) 00:46, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Reductio ad Hitlerum
I would agree on the previous statement; the reference to Mein Kampf is as much of an appeal to emotion over logic than For the children itself. Mickeymephistopheles (talk) 15:17, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Original research in "Examples"
An editor has contended that the entirety of the "Examples" section constitutes original research. I do not feel that citing sources which clearly include "for the children" rhetoric is out of place here. Commenting on their intentions, decisions, thoughts, etc. is clearly off limits, but we are merely listing sources which have, in their own words, utilized the rhetoric pattern. Removing the majority of the article without even attempting to edit it is not constructive. –  7 4   21:36, 28 February 2009 (UTC)


 * As a direct refutation to the statement "please read: Wikipedia:OR, there are no third parties in this section that describe the examples as using 'For the children'", these sources directly comment on the use of the rhetoric. If you would like to point out individual areas for improvement, please do so (perhaps using a "citation needed" template). –  7 4   21:48, 28 February 2009 (UTC)


 * The example section is original research in the sense that it's the editors POV that these examples use what the article earlier describes as a "Thought-terminating cliché." We should use third party sources that describe how others use this rhetorical phrase. Not link to what in this case amounts to primary sources. The first source you mention here talks about online child porn (not the logical fallacy) and the second isn't from a reliable source. --Sloane (talk) 23:37, 28 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Ummm... No. If the section were titled "Examples of thought-terminating cliché usage" then you would be correct. It's not. It's merely a list of examples of the use of the "for the children" rhetoric (the subject of the article), without interpretation. Primary sources are completely valid for representing what the primary source actually says. Any reasonable person can note the use of the word "children" in rhetoric&mdash;no interpretive sources are necessary. –  7 4   00:05, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
 * A google search for the phrase "For the children" gives me 8,690,000 links. Are we gonna add them all? What's the point, anyway? Wikipedia isn't meant as a catalog for which people say certain phrases.-Sloane (talk) 00:31, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
 * The "point" isn't tied to the people, it's tied to the use of "for the children" political rhetoric. This is not an exhaustive list; we only need a limited number of examples to demonstrate the different ways "for the children" can be applied to everything from gun control to white supremacy. From my brief review, all the current examples are both public and reasonably notable (except the USAToday reference, which I intend to move to the article proper), thus making them good "examples" of how the rhetoric is used. If you go to the article on Tautology (rhetoric), do you not get a few examples of what a tautology is? Granted, that example section is formated as a paragraph (which is a real tragedy as far as informational conveyance is concerned) but it most certainly exists. If you have a problem with a particular example I'm sure we can revise/replace it, but please don't remove them all. –  7 4   01:09, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Additional source
Childhood, Vol. 14, No. 1, 85-104 (2007) DOI: 10.1177/0907568207072532

The Moral Rhetoric of Childhood by Anneke Meyer

I cannot access the text of this article to determine its value, but the abstract seems to cover "for the children" rhetoric. –  7 4   17:14, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Wrong Hitler quote
Ralph Manheim's translation Adolf Hitler's book Mein Kampf contains the quote "the state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation.

That is factually incorrect. Hitler's writing only includes the sentence " the state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people." The second sentence comes from "The Hitler Letter" byDaniel Lapin, a Jewish Rabbi and his writings have been published here:

http://www.aapsonline.org/brochures/lapin.htm

While the incorrect quote would have been very convenient, the entry is wrong, misleading and the fact that it has not been noticed so far does not cast a good light on the editors and the submitter. I just wonder, who combined those two sentences into one paragraph and misleadingly left out the correct attribution. —Preceding unsigned comment added by DF5JT (talk • contribs) 09:22, 19 March 2009 (UTC)


 * sorry - did a knee-jerk revert on that quote without reading here - this needs some more investigation. I don't know where the quote came from.  Whitehatnetizen (talk) 09:29, 19 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I can't make it any clearer than I have already done. Please follow the link I provided and see for yourself that the first part of the sentence is a direct quote from Hitler's "Mein Kampf". The context this sentence appears is a fictional letter from Hitler to Julius Streicher and the sentence itself is marked as a quotation from Hitler's original writing. the second part is clearly and undisputably a piece of fiction by Rabbi Lapin.

I stand by my criticism with regard the basic research of a) finding the original of Manheim's translation and b) relying on simple Google searches with the obvious bias of not checking whether the complete quote comes indeed from Manheim's translation.

We are currently having a severe "save the children" discussion with regard to some premature silly internet filtering ideas by "minister of family" Ursula von der Leyen and this quote has popped up in the discussion. We simply can't have incorrect quotations in a touchy discussion like that, otherwise we are playing into the hands of those who are about to censor the internet. Seriously. —Preceding unsigned comment added by DF5JT (talk • contribs) 16:33, 19 March 2009 (UTC)


 * similiar discussion happening over the proposed Internet censorship in Australia. this is where I encountered it also (not in the article, just on the web in relation to the debate). Whitehatnetizen (talk) 16:46, 19 March 2009 (UTC)


 * That's a little heavy-handed on the criticism, isn't it? Google shows this quote a number of places online, almost all attributed to Ralph Manheim's 1943 translation published by Houghton-Mifflin, Page 403. This site would appear to agree with your assessment that the quote is not genuine. I agree that we shouldn't use it until/unless someone can confirm it, but I think there is sufficient evidence to assume good faith on all the parties involved here. The quote was apparently added by 86.135.48.130 in this revision on January 22, 2009, following Whitehatnetizen's suggestion on this page above. If anyone has a copy of Manheim's 1943 translation of Mien Kampf lying around, it would be enlightening to see what page 403 holds. –  7 4   14:52, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
 * yep I made the suggestion - someone else added the particular translation of mein kampf that it apparently occured in. I've deliberately stayed away from editing this article significantly because I'm passionate and slightly not impartial about the subject.  possibly the quotes found in google could be a result of the meme-like aspect that this quote has taken on.  I found it somewhere on the net and couldn't be bothered searching for an original source - my bad.  I assumed that the ip that added it had found it verifiably.  I've searched some other translations available and havn't been able to find the second part of the qoute Whitehatnetizen (talk) 15:01, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

possible citation for the quote - can't find the referenced version online but archive.org has a full text copy (found via the mein kampf wiki page) but would require changing the quote and perhaps is taken out of context http://www.archive.org/stream/meinkampf035176mbp/meinkampf035176mbp_djvu.txt "[the folkish State] has to make the child the most precious possession of a people." Whitehatnetizen (talk) 13:19, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Kay Bailey Hutchison and Prop 8
This needs a reliable source and context. It's unclear to me what she's talking about, though the linked blog implies it is the Iraq War. However, it could also be the Global War on Terror or something else; I'm not sure. The video is, unfortunately, gone, and I can't find any mention of this phrase on Google aside from blogs and Wikipedia-sourced sites. I'd take it down, but perhaps someone else can find the clip or an RS and back this up. (After adding a Democrat example, I'm a bit reluctant to take down a Republican example the same day, but this really does need at least one RS.) Oh, and I took down the Prop 8 example, since it's been unsourced for a while. I think what's being recalled here is the argument (which I can't find on the California Proposition 8 (2008) page) about an elementary school trip to a gay marriage ceremony. However, that's a specific anecdote under discussion, not a "for the children" generality as with the other examples (including Hutchison). Calbaer (talk) 19:36, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Okay - I found the clip at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfWZKCG2axw ; still not technically an RS, but good enough for me. I'll fix the example. Calbaer (talk) 19:40, 8 July 2009 (UTC)