(05-20-2022, 11:33 AM)Lucky2Last Wrote: Bro, you had to go back to Greek and Roman times to justify your Overton Window theory in a discussion we were having about modern political dialogue. Let that sink in. You do not argue in good faith.

But I didn't go that far back.  "Changelings" and "giving children back to the Faeries" were accepted all over the British Isles and most of Northern Europe while the Founders of the US were alive.  It was winked at that these were actually excuses for poor families to rid themselves of kids that today we would call special needs, or kids that were viewed as an unacceptable burden for some other reason. The magistrates tolerated it because they knew they wouldn't be able to find a jury that didn't either share the superstition or at least sympathize with the family. In colonial US and Canada, the people were more educated and religious and didn't believe in fairies. When infanticide did occur, it was sometimes prosecuted, but often not. If there was simply a dead baby in the crib in the morning, with no external injuries, medical science wasn't sufficiently advanced to prove what had happened. And medical science was such that it happened all the time anyhow, babies dying for no apparent reason. In effect that was winked at as well.

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