So you’re making the Nockian distinction between voluntary government and the state? Okay.
The argument hinges upon the right to liberty being inalienable, so such things as slavery contracts and state “contracts” that involve granting or delegating to another a right of arbitrary dominion over yourself are illegitimate because such a right is not in your power to give. See pages 30-33 in particular for the full argument. Also, see Roderick Long’s “Slavery Contracts and Inalienable Rights,” which is where I got the idea; my argument generalizes his about slavery to the state.
I would call that irresponsible parenting, because it is very likely that your two-year-old will wind up dead, kidnapped, permanently maimed, or worse before winding up dead. But you’ll note that I have not advocated spanking as a primary means of “educating” one’s children.
This doesn’t mean that children will always last only about a block before coming home. I wouldn’t rely upon this to mitigate the dangers of treating children as adults.
And when did I suggest beating children each night to “toughen them up”?
Did you read Roderick Long’s blogpost? There is no hard and fast, universal, a priori line that one can draw, but he offers some quite reasonable thoughts on the matter.
Out of curiosity, can we get a show of hands from anyone who actually has kids? It profoundly affects one’s perspective.
As parents go, I’d say my wife and I are much more willing to negotiate, explain, etc., than the average American parent. But the simple fact is that we also impose our will on our son when we deem it necessary. As gplauche puts it, we see ourselves as “custodians” of his welfare–but there’s no human authority above us rightly entitled to dictate the boundaries of that custodianship. At the same time we provide room and board, and the relationship has contractual aspects: you’ll do such and such while you live under our roof and eat our food. But it isn’t truly contractual, because he didn’t consent to be born into this family.
In some sense kids can tell the difference between reasonable and unreasonable parents, but they have no power to do anything about the latter, so instead they typically respond by developing mental problems that afflict them the rest of their lives. Acting within “reasonable” limits in a sense that’s understood by both parent and child is almost nonaggression–but not really, because of course the sense of reasonableness itself is under considerable parental influence.
It’s all “almost.” The relationship is almost voluntary, almost contractual, almost non-coercive. And if some adult tried to tell me that my son is a free agent, and that’s why he’s prodding the boy’s privates, I can assure you I will blow his head off–and it’ll almost be defensive force, to the same extent that the molestation was perceived by the child as non-consensual. If I catch him playing doctor with the neighbor kids, I’ll blister his ass. But afterward, I’ll be happy to discourse theoretically about it at length on a forum such as this one.
As I said, people can’t really face what libertarianism means. I imagine that if you were living in a free society and would murder somebody in the way you described, you wouldn’t do very well afterwards.
Well said. My wife and I don’t have kids yet, but we plan to fairly soon (just as soon as I graduate and get a job) so I’ve been thinking about these issues more of late.
I am the oldest of my parent’s six kids though, and the oldest of my maternal grandmother’s 15 grandchildren, and my brother-in-law has two kids age two and under.
That depends on what libertarianism means, and clearly there is disagreement here over what libertarianism means with regards to this issue.
You’ve made several responses like this that completely lack any substantive argument. I think your view is at best a minority one, probably not held by any actual parents, just like the children-as-property view is at best a minority one. Both are extremes on either side of the proper mean.
So, there’s a double standard and circular reasoning here.
First, it’s OK to dictate what children should do because they are supposedly not as clever as adults. However, the fact that such an idea is the basis for government is conveniently overlooked (although some people like to talk about ‘natural elites’…)
If children can be controlled because they are not clever enough, that must be necesarily true about adults ? Or else can we use logic when we feel like ?
The circular part is : Why do adults have ‘full rights’ ? Because they are reasonable. How do you know they are reasonable ? Well, because they are adults.
And so another conveniently overlooked fact is that adults do stupid things all the time, things wich have way worse consequences than the consequences that could follow if children’s rights were respected.
Like murdering people just like Len has just suggested and Geoffrey apparently approved.
Are you suggesting that in a free society, pedophiles will be welcomed? If so, I’m willing to state my case that I killed a rapist caught in the act, against your heirs’ case that you were an innocent man canoodling with your eight-year-old boyfriend, and let the chips fall as they may.
This is all confused and overlooks important distinctions I’ve laid out a couple times already. Moreover, no one is suggesting that children’s rights not be respected.
Why is it that people feel the need to engage in such dirty argumentative tactics? First, murder is unjustified killing. I’ll grant that killing a child molester may be going overboard. (It might not be depending on the context.) It is probably better to stop the rights-violation he is engaged in, restrain him, arrest him, and take him to court over it, where he will probably be forced to pay restitution and may be ostracized from society (or even castrated or executed if he poses a serious enough ongoing threat).
Are you talking about yourself ? As a side note, it’s interesting to note that puritans are willing to kill people who don’t conform with their cultural preferences.
It’s not just an opinion. It’s fact. Simply stating repeatedly that people don’t like where libertarianism leads is not a substantive argument. The question remains what libertarianism is. You just assume your idea of libertarianism is correct.
Sigh. No. But given that the bulk of libertarians, including the brilliant theorists, disagree with you, I’d say that puts the onus on you to provide a substantive argument for why your position is the correct one.
This is just silly and I think a deliberate mischaracterization. Quite obivously we have decided that both extremes are wrong. We are not undecided. And the mean is not an amalgam of both but the proper position from which the extremes are deviations.
So, again, it must be true because the bulk of libertarians say so, and now a new fallacy - recourse to authority - it must be true because ‘brilliant theorists’ say so.
He’s not making an appeal to authority; he’s pointing out why your unsupported assertion carries little weight. All we know is that such-and-such is your opinion. But why does something merit consideration because you think it? Others, with a track record of offering views with merit, have their opinions, which differ from yours. Why should we pick yours over theirs? Since it would be folly to accept theirs on any basis but merit, one concludes that it’s doubly so to accept your unsupported opinions.
So children engaging in voluntary sexual activities is re-defined as ‘molestation’ - the rights of children who want to do so are not taken into account because allegedly children don’t know what they are doing, and finally if the activities include ‘adults’, these adults are to be shot at first sight as Len proposed. Whoa.
Going further, it’s also necessary to impose your will on your wife, at times. Not in a tyrannical sense, but in a pragmatic sense because there can be only one captain of a ship, and when the CO and XO disagree, the CO’s will prevails. The family is a socialist structure where the father is the sovereign (though usually, for the sake of harmony, the father provides the veneer of democracy, and takes good account of the desires of the family when rendering decisions). Ideally he’s a loving, sacrificing sovereign, but you can’t legislate good parenting. To me, the father retains this position until the child shows a willingness and ability to live independently, as demonstrated by the act of leaving the father’s home and establishing an independent life, even though this “independent life” might be the simple choice of a new sovereign (“sugar daddy”?). This would be something that happens rarely in the homes of loving parents, and more frequently in the homes of abusive parents, probably.
You’re begging the question when you suggest that I’m “redefining” anything: sexual relationships between adults and children has been regarded as molestation for milennia. The general abhorrance of customs in ancient Greece or modern Kandahar underscore this point. Why would you falsely suggest that my view is something new and scary? Are you aiming for a defence of adult-child sexual relationships?
Meanwhile, there’s no “at first sight” about it. My hypothetical example involved catching the perpetrator in flagrante delicto. If you’d come upon such a situation and beam, offer the man coffee, and ask how “you two love-birds first met,” then I can only say I hope you aren’t a parent.