I'd rather see you dead

In a discussion on the 'Oz Conservative' blog, A.Reeves said:

If I had a son, and if he wanted to study the average Mickey Mouse course at a government-run Australian university, I would quote the words of King Louis IX's mother: "I would rather see you lying dead in your open coffin than commit a single mortal sin." ...

This sparked a memory from my childhood, from when I was perhaps five or six. I was talking to my mother, as all children do at some time or other, about doing "bad things" and about what if *I* were to do "bad things" -- and "bad things" means wicked things, sin and injustice: a six year old may not understand rape, but he understands murder and theft, he understands injustice; he understands wickedness even if he does not yet grasp the depth of the wickedness of which human beings are capable.

My mother said to me essentially what Blanche of Castile said to her son: "I'd rather see you dead than see you do such-and-such." She might even have mentioned the coffin, I don't remember for sure.


So, wasn't my mother so cruel in her pre-modernism? (Would not the modern-day statist busy-bodies have used that as a pretext for stealing me from my parents?)

I submit that the mindset which would even consider the former question above worthy of being asked, much less worth of being entertained, lies at the root of what is destroying our Western societies. I believe that if more parents said that to their offspring -- and meant it! -- the world would be in a much better condition.