Well yes, it is bad to the extent that it reflects a general close-mindedness that clings to a traditionalist ideal.
The child who runs into the road is irrelevant to what’s in contention.
Haha.
“If I need your opinion, I’ll bitch slap it out of you.”
No there couldn’t possibly be abused children re-enacting mommy and daddy’s behavior towards them in the anarchist movement. No way!
Prove it.
Ad hom. (Although I’m very glad you think so)
Straw man.
This is what you’re trying to prove as opposed to just asserting
The Nazis and Soviets sure seemed to be.
Because it’s convenient?
That wasn’t intended a compliment either.
Prove that one’s childhood and one’s personal relations has an effect on their psychology? That’s simply obvious. This is psych 101 man!
That’s not anything I had set out to prove initially, it’s a given in this debate to begin with that there must be families for there to be a society and state to begin with. It’s simply a building block in the chain, you obviously need to have families in order for there to be a society for a state to control to begin with. This is really an inconsequential given in the discussion.
No, they weren’t categorically opposed to “the family” as such. Noone is.
touché
You, Molyneux and the rest of the cultural marxists sure seem to be. Anyway, it doesn’t really matter whether they inteded to get rid of the family for the sake of getting rid of the family or for power. The point is that they proceeded as far as they could to undermine the family because it is constantly in competition with the state.
Not that what you wrote is true anyway, the state desires power, which by definition means it must abolish other institutions that stand in the way of this power, the family is one of these, buisness is another and finally there’s the church.
Now prove what I asked you prove, if it’s not too difficult (which it is).
So you might as well have been saying that people must exist in order for there to be control? Yes the family is necessary for society, beyond that it isn’t necessary for the state. The opposite in fact.
We’re not cultural marxists and we’re not opposed to “the family” as such. I’ve already pointed out to you that this is a strawman, that you’re setting up a false dichotomy.
I think you’re using “the family” as a platonic ideal.
The state never actively attempts to abolish these things, it co-opts them or forms synergetic relationships with them. No state sets out to “abolish the family”, they want to produce families that are obedient, that’s all. Likewise, no state sets out to “abolish buisiness”, it cartelizes buisiness and uses buisiness as an ally. Likewise, no state sets out to “abolish the church”, it uses the church as a mechanism for legitimacy and patronage. This is the obvious truth about how the state has historically functioned, not in absolute opposition to these things, but in patronage with them and always attempt to plan a particular model for them.
You obviously don’t even understand my position.
Yes, because both have totalitarian tendencies. A fact you conveniently overlook while claiming that other people ‘deny’ reality.
Yes, churches compete with the state…for power. There’s nothing libertarian about that. But then you of course don’t care because what you’re selling is conservatism, not libertarianism.
I’m curious why people think that the prohibition on the use of force against children would be associated with the libertarian left? It’s my understanding that the arguments in favor of this notion come directly from the authors on the libertarian right. I personally am a left-libertarian (in the Roderick Long sense, as opposed to the Steiner/Vallentyne/Otsuka sense), and I don’t believe that the use of force against children can never be justified (or that it can only be justified in the same kinds of situations which would justify force towards mature adults).
If rights are construed as reflecting the respect to which others are due, then it would be surprising to me if we arrived at the idea that we ought to treat adults and children the same way. Children – particularly young children – are different sorts of beings than adults, and in ways that seem ethically significant. To use a tired example, I would not think it to be disrespectful of my twelve year old daughter if I discovered that she had been seduced by a middle-aged pervert, and I coerced her into staying home instead of going to be molested by him. Perhaps there would be limits on what I could legitimately do to enforce this decision, but it seems unreasonable to suggest that the limit on my legitimate alternatives would come before, for example, standing in the way of the door (which I think would certainly be illegitimately coercive if done to an adult). Or maybe it doesn’t seem that way to some of you, but I’ll say this: I would not want to have been raised with the kind of free reign which some of you guys apparently want to accord to children.
But that doesn’t have anything to do with being on the left or the right, as far as I can tell…
No you just obviously has some difficulty “proving” or elaborating upon anything you say, instead you resort to telling me I just don’t understand this. I’ve heard that before, somewhere along the lines of “libertarianism is great in theory, but libertarians just don’t understand the real world”.
One minute you say the state next wishes to abolish these things, the next you say it just wants power.
Congratulations! You just contradicted yourself. The state has always tried abolishing the family. Inheritance tax, forced “charity”, various laws concerning how parents are free to raise their children, forced schooling. Need I continue?
As for the church, In what way is banning Catholicism in China coopting it? Just curious.Although, otherwise you’re correct, those Soviets were terribly fond of Christians and tolerant to religion in general.
Or simply a reality. One that you would like to ignore and deny but unfortunately can’t.
As I said earlier in regards to religion, I know I’ve confused the libertarian left with atheism and in this case the “cultural left” (for lack of a better term). So I’m sorry. However, I think it comes from a poor distinction between left and right libertarianism, with some people claiming the ground of left libertarianism on account of the social beliefs (Roderick Long, who supports the political process for example), whereas others justify adopting the title as a result of their rejection of the political process.
Oh but don’t you know, children are fully rational agents. [8-)]
Giles, what do you mean when you say Long accepts the political process? As far as I can tell he supports various voluntary causes, but not political means per se.
-Jon
Sorry Giles, I guess I missed that one.
Jon, YOU’RE not a fully rational agent! (SERVED!)
You’re not defending libertarianism though, you’re defending cultural conservatism.
There’s no contradiction. Part of the method of the state maintaining power is by having a synergetic relationship with things like buisiness and church.
None of that aims at abolishing the family so much as co-opting and controling it. The abolition of the family as such, however, doesn’t follow.
Why does everything go back to the reds with you, as if that’s an example of statism as a whole?
Not really, you’re treating “the family” as some kind of ideal detached from reality, and as some kind of bastion of virtue that is always opposed to the state.
(I can’t BELIEVE no one has quoted Hitler yet!)
Contorting them beyond all recognition and amalgamating them, in the process. It may not quite be “destruction”, but preservation it definitely is not.
-Jon
In the case of buisiness-state and church-state relations, it’s usually a tit for tat in which one is granted special privileges so long as loyalty is maintained to the other. As a consequence of this, religious and economic institutions can effectively be artificially strengthened through patronage with the state. They’re never really eliminated, they just become more like states in themselves and become part of a parasitic class. They’ve hardly been historical enemies of the state at all.
What do all of you think of “military families”?
and