Hi adhktfeked

Readers! Another day, another report from the frontlines of our obsession with predators. Allow me to make a strange analogy.

As the storm Sandy approached us this weekend (I’m in New York), Mat McDermott at the blog TreeHugger wrote a post, “What if New York City Invested in Climate Change Adaptation Like it Has in Combating Terrorism?” Says Mat:

New York has pulled out all the stops in preventing another massive act of terrorism—going so far in some cases that it has trampled civil liberties….—but has done far less to mitigate the effects of a much longer term, slower moving, but the frankly far more existential threat of sea level rise, extreme weather and climate change.

That’s how I feel about our focus on child killers. Yes, predators are a danger and we should stop them if we can. But to focus laser-like on them means spending massive amounts of time, money and manpower, often fruitlessly, on a very rare problem, and even trampling some civil rights in the process. When if we REALLY wanted to help kids, there are a lot of better ways to spend — and spread — our resources.

With that in mind, here’s a letter I got this weekend:

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Dear Free-Range Kids: I am an Indian male living in Austin, TX. I am 36 and have been in the US since I was 20. My wife of six years is white and was born and raised in Austin. We have a daughter who is almost two and a half. I take my daughter hiking along a short greenbelt trail near where we live. Today when we left for the hike she decided to test some boundaries just as she left the car. She yelled at the top of her lungs and started bawling that she did not want to go hiking and just wanted to get back in the car. Having seen this tactic from her for the past few months, I helped her put on her backpack and calmly asked her to try to hike with me for a few mins first. Couple minutes later she was totally immersed into the hike and enjoying it.