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Tuesday, June 16, 2009
The Protection Of The Innocent
If there's a word with more ambiguity built into it than innocent, your Curmudgeon is unable to think of it at the moment. Strangely enough, though, we usually know what's meant by it when it occurs in conversation or prose.
In response to the post below, longtime colleague Linda of Right As Usual has posed an excellent question:
My only concern in the issue of libertarian thinking is the problem of the children (no, I’m not for advocating any atrocity “for the children"). I work in schools, and see the results of parental drug abuse, alcoholism, and sleeping around. The kids are the ones who suffer here. If someone can tell me how the legitimate interests of the child can be protected, then, sure, I think it would be better to keep our hands off morality issues.
This is and will remain one of the toughest questions for conservatives of any variety.
Your Curmudgeon beseeches you all, regardless of your opinions on social questions and the application of law to them, to ponder the following conflict:
- Conservatives want the law to respect family privacy and parental authority.
- Conservatives want children's innocence to be protected, especially in matters of sex and drug abuse.
How can a society advance on both these fronts if it's becoming more secular, more hedonistic, and generally coarser by the hour? Family privacy isn't an unmixed blessing; it can be used to shield bad behavior, including the mistreatment and miseducation of children. Yet we know from experience that the usurpation of parental authority by the State has had terrible effects, including the destruction of many families. Is there a middle way that would at least improve on our current state of affairs -- a middle way that doesn't require a massive revival of traditional Christian morality throughout our society?
There are no panaceas; an honest man, whatever his overall political orientation, should be willing to admit that. But a political scholium that bids for the respect of the general public should be willing to address the tough problems, even if only to say, "No, we can't solve it, but neither can anyone else."
Libertarian / classical liberal thought has never dealt adequately with certain subjects. We tend to dismiss environmental issues and other "commons problems" by saying "Let's privatize it, or as much of it as we can." At times we've been cavalier about infrastructural matters such as roads and sewers. On national defense and foreign policy, libertarians' traditional isolationism has proved inadequate for our shrunken, weapons-of-mass-destruction-ridden globe. And when it comes to immigration and border control, many libertarians are gothically insane.
This is not to say that paternalist conservatism (or, God help us all, social-fascist "liberalism") deals better, overall, with these subjects. The critical cleavage, as is discussed in this essay, is that sphere of issues and endeavors in which collectivities interact, rather than individuals. But a collectivity is a nasty sort of thing to need to reason about: its nature is uncertain; its composition is constantly changing; and conclusions about its "needs" are as dubious as a theorem about the dimensions of the angels' dance hall.
When it comes to the protection of children, unfinished creatures whose rights must be held in trust by a parent or parent-surrogate, we might be facing a domain in which all one can say is "We'll do the best we can."
Any thoughts, Gentle Readers? In pondering this subject, please remember:
- Laws can be changed more easily than societies can.
- Any alteration to our legal environment, however meticulously crafted, would have a cost. Some costs would be unacceptably high for the improvements they'd bring.
- Mistakes are inevitable; whatever your train of thought, consider what variables you'd monitor to determine whether your proposal has caused an objective improvement.
- No conceivable approach would "solve the problem;" that is, nothing anyone could do, short of the Second Coming, would ensure the perfect protection of all American children for all time. Look not for Utopia.
Let's get to work.
Comments
Some time ago I wrote that libertarianism was a sort of Broadway revival of The Liberal’s Story, the final scene being liberalism’s capture by Marxists, based mostly on my observation of a growing fixation by libertarians on how best to accommodate the “common good”.
Then, in this article, you address the “tough problem” of protecting the innocence of children, collectively, and write of “bidding for the respect of the general public”, of “endeavors in which collectivities interact” and of the search for a “middle way”.
I don’t mean this as a gotcha, or to redirect the commentary, or that I’m some great expert, I’m just saying it’s a melancholy thing to see the sovereignty of the individual set aside in direct proportion to the perceived importance of the issue. That pretty much describes the liberal, and that pretty much describes the libertarian.
Posted by Ol' Remus on 06/16/2009 at 02:47 PMThe problem arises from the trustee relationship of parent to child, Remus. We don’t expect children to exercise all the rights and responsibilities of adults; that extreme an application of the doctrine of individual liberty would result in far more death and horror than I could countenance. I sincerely doubt that my standards are distant from the norm in this regard. So we entrust the rights and responsibilities of the child to his parents or parent-surrogates, until he’s adjudged to have come of age, a tangled matter in its own right.
But with that relocation of the responsibility for the child’s welfare come all the questions persons of other persuasions raise about child abuse, child neglect, and so forth. The century behind us has seen all sorts of attempts, through the law and the courts, to erect protections for the child, so that his guardians won’t be able to slough their duties lightly. Those attempts and institutions have produced almost nothing good, and quite a great deal that’s bad, as I’m sure you already know.
So the whole nation is caught in a bind. We want children to be safe in their guardians’ care. We want them to be raised in a wholesome atmosphere. Most adults are aware that the existing governmental child-protection schemes are fatally wrong and must give way to something better. But we haven’t got the faintest idea how to see to it.
My own opinion is that no conceivable configuration of laws, courts, or bureaucracies would produce a net plus. No matter what arrangements we try, we’d wind up with some third party official, agency, or institution having unreviewable power over the kids and their families, an unacceptable result, for which there’s ample historical evidence.
The problem is that, if I’m right about that, then unreviewable power over the kids must rest in their parents’ hands, as it did before World War I. Which then means that some really heavy duty arguments about how that’s simply the best we can do have to be composed and made conclusive.
The hidden problem here is that there’s no such thing as genuine anarchy. In any imaginable society, there will be an effective preponderance of force available to any faction more mobile and more mobilized than those who disagree with it. That faction, if it swings into motion, will exercise the power of a State in whatever demesne it occupies, and over whatever subjects get its adrenaline flowing. When the subject is child abuse or neglect, I’d expect that the triggering energy of a decent majority would be quite low.
It truly is a tough problem. Whatever outcome anyone might reach in theory, it will be necessary somehow to demonstrate that the optimum, however low it might be, really can’t be bettered, against all the tender sentiments of the tenderest-hearted society in the history of the world. For those tender sentiments aren’t too distant from the animating passions of a lynch mob.
I think I need a big drink.
Posted by Francis W. Porretto on 06/16/2009 at 04:55 PMLinda is correct in being concerned (as we all should be) over the impact of our decisions on the “children” and to my knowledge there already exists a plethora of statutes prohibiting the physical abuse and neglect of our youngsters. On the other hand, the nature of the human beast whom many conservatives assert are given free will by our Creator will inevitably result in occasional less than optimal decisions.
We libertarians would pose the following question: Is it the function of the state to preclude by legislative fiat behavior which might result in psychological damage to our minor citizens?
Speaking as one who has been exposed both first and second hand to marginally dysfunctional parenting practices, I would point out that the “one size fits all” equality of outcome governmental solution should be avoided as the costs exceed the benefits.
Fran, I’ll join you in that drink. Cheers and
ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ
Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ on 06/16/2009 at 05:27 PMThis was a tremendously thoughtful thread. I’m going to think about it, and post again later this month.
I do agree, that if we are to head off the “nanny state”, we need to think about ways to gain a general agreement in the culture about the boundaries of privacy in the family. What level of injury to a dependent can be ignored, and where does a society draw the line?
For example: drug/alcohol abuse - at what point does it cross the line from distasteful, but none of my business, to “get that kid out of here”?
Sexual antics - unorthodox, but relatively harmless arrangements vs. unacceptable hypersexualized atmosphere with subsequent danger to minors in residence.
I’m remembering the days of my youth, when local society (primarily the women) would enforce norms, via their ability to accept/reject inclusion into the social circle. It was remarkably effective, yet entirely ad hoc.
Alas, that’s one of the more useful features of traditional culture that was trashed in the 60s, the ability to keep people from indulging every low instinct (or, at least, keeping it from the kids). If you didn’t rub everyone’s face in it, your skanky behavior was generally ignored.
Posted by Linda F on 06/18/2009 at 04:13 AMOne thing we must clarify in our minds is when we want our solutions to work. For example, we can try to ensure that the child’s eventual integration into society is the responsibility of the parent by holding the parents accountable if, for example, that child commits crimes. Another approach is to protect children while they are still children against bad judgement and abuse on the part of their parents—the state would have to monitor all parents’ activities and step in when certain boundaries are crossed.
The difference is between punishing harm and preventing harm. Most people would agree that preventing the harm in the first place would be best—an ounce of prevention if you will. However, if this good cannot be achieved without unacceptable levels of bad then it is clearly futile to follow that path. I think that our Esteemed Host is making this point.
Posted by on 06/20/2009 at 01:53 PM
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