The 2010 Paul LePage Republican Party platform, page 4, under the heading of “Promote Family Values,” reads “Parents, not government, are responsible for making decisions in the best interest of their children, whether disciplinary, educational, or medical.” Conservative bloggers have written glowingly of this platform’s plain English that anyone can understand.

Well, what does that plank mean?

First, that parents are the sole deciders of what is best for their children; government has no role. Second, that it means all parents — no distinction is made between loving and caring parents and bad parents; between mentally unstable and mentally stable parents.

If implemented, that plank places any child in Maine at risk. If government has no role, a large body of law disappears and along with it Child Protective Services and the role of family courts. If parents believe that beating their children is in the children’s best interests, well that’s OK. OK?

Such an extreme result must be a misinterpretation, but is confirmed by the plank calling to “Reject the U.N. Treaty on Rights of the Child” (the U.S. is the only country not to ratify this treaty), which is a human rights treaty setting out the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of children.

Apparently LePage thinks children have no rights.

We must protect Maine’s children. Defeat Paul LePage and extremism.

Jonathan Albrecht, Dixfield