For decades, Tipper Gore has told parents how to raise their children. In her book Raising PG Kids in an X-Rated Society, she shamed parents who dare allow their children access to youth culture. She insisted that following her example of selecting your children’s music and TV programs for them, of chaperoning your teenaged children at concerts, etc. was the only way to ensure children would grow up right and become adults who make the right choices.

We recently saw the results of Tipper Gore-style parenting. The son Tipper Gore raised, Al Gore III, was caught endangering people’s lives by driving 100 mph on a public highway. When police pulled him over, they found in his car several illegal drugs. This was not Al Gore III’s first such experience, of course. In 2003, he was stopped for driving at night with his headlights off and police found drugs then, too. Not only has Tipper Gore raised a junkie who endangers other people’s lives, but she has raised a son who can’t even figure out that when you have a stash in your car, you don’t drive 100 mph.

Now that we’ve seen the results of Tipper Gore parenting, hopefully parents will stop emulating her example. Because Al Gore III is not the only victim.

Presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s Utah finance co-chair, Robert Lichfield, is being sued by over 100 victims. Lichfield, it turns out, made his money by running camps where they lock up and torture people. Not convicted criminals. Not even accused terrorists. The people he tortures are children and teenagers.

Some fretful parents are mislead into hiring Lichfield, thinking his “treatment centers” will help their children avoid making mistakes. Other customers are repugnant parents who want to abuse their children and aren’t even man enough to do it themselves. Lichfield’s thugs lock up these youth and, as described in the law suit, subject them to battery, sleep deprivation, starvation, sexual abuse, and forms of cruelty that don’t even have names, all with the promise to parents that this will make their children more obedient.

Similar “behavior modification camps” have been run by Mel Sembler, Romney’s <I>national</I> finance co-chair. Sembler’s Straight Inc. paid out millions in lawsuits before it finally closed. (Actually, it still exists, but under a new name to escape responsibility for what it did under its old name.) Sembler survived with enough cash that, in addition to helping Romney, his other philanthropic work includes heading the Scooter Libby Defense Fund.