Doug and Valerie Herrman: Parents of the Decade

Posted January 5, 2009, 10:16 p.m.

It’s only January 5th, and I’ve already stumbled upon my nominee for the parents of the year. In fact, they’re my nominees for parents of the decade.

Doug and Valerie Herrman took in two-year-old Irvin Groeninger III as a foster child and, before too long, adopted the boy and gave him the name Adam Herrman. In 1999, when Adam was approx. 12 years old, he disappeared. The Herrman parents apparently weren’t too worried, because they didn’t report him missing in the next several days . . . or months . . . or years. In fact, Kansas police have just started trying to piece together what happened to Adam ten years ago, since they just found out about it.

I don’t even know what to say. How could two people who loved this child enough to take him into their home and raise him for ten years go for two days, let alone ten years, without reporting him missing? I just don’t understand. According to the Herrmans’ attorney, “they were very worried about him.” Well, we have ten years of negligent inaction that would imply they weren’t very worried at all.

Amazing.

Scott Bradford has been putting his opinions on his website since 1995—before most people knew what a website was. He has been a professional web developer in the public- and private-sector for over twenty years. He is an independent constitutional conservative who believes in human rights and limited government, and a Catholic Christian whose beliefs are summarized in the Nicene Creed. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Public Administration from George Mason University. He loves Pink Floyd and can play the bass guitar . . . sort-of. He’s a husband, pet lover, amateur radio operator, and classic AMC/Jeep enthusiast.

Quotes

Anyone who still needs to think about techniques on the battlefield will die.

Encased in their provincialism and supported by Western intellectuals, Third World leaders blamed the West for the failures of their own cultures. Instead of asking themselves ‘What did we do wrong? How can we put it right?’ they asked ‘Who did that to us?’

A man without God is not like a cake without raisins; he is like the cake without the flour and milk; he lacks the essential ingredients of happiness.

If we had a reliable way to label our toys good and bad, it would be easy to regulate technology wisely. But we can rarely see far enough ahead to know which road leads to damnation.

The stories we can neither ignore nor forget are unforgettable [because] they speak to something we know, but do not know that we know.

Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.

To be punished is not an evil; but it is an evil to be made worthy of punishment.

Markets change, tastes change, so the companies and the individuals who choose to compete in those markets must change.

There’s no point in having sharp images if you’ve got fuzzy ideas.

Regardless of its hypothetical virtues . . . the implementation of Marxism was a disaster everywhere it was attempted. . . .

The Fifth Amendment is an old friend and a good friend, one of the great landmarks in men’s struggle to be free of tyranny, to be decent and civilized.

I can see how it might be possible for a man to look down upon the earth and be an atheist, but I cannot conceive how he could look up into the heavens and say there is no God.

For he will render to every man according to his works: to those . . . who are factious and do not obey the truth, but obey wickedness, there will be wrath and fury.

The time is always right to do what’s right.

Every man should have a college education in order to show him how little the thing is really worth.

We are all born brave, trusting, and greedy, and most of us manage to remain greedy.

Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.

Forced compassion always short-circuits the human heart and destroys the integrity of true and loving charity.

Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.

If men could only know each other, they would never either idolize or hate.