Comment by bccdee
2 years ago
> It violates core liberal fundamentals. People have the right to be as involved of parents as they see fit, and to raise their children with values of their choosing.
If that's "core liberal fundamentals," then maybe liberalism is, at heart, rotten. Your take on it certainly is. I don't respect a parent's "right" to neglect or mistreat their children. Society collectively is entitled (in fact, obliged) to intervene in harmful family situations.
That's not what liberalism is, though. Who are you citing here? What aspect of liberal philosophy entitles parents to treat children like their property? Parents don't own their children; liberal individualist property rights cannot apply to the treatment of human beings, who have their own rights.
Rather than any sort of liberalism, what you're espousing here is a form of deep pre-liberal conservatism, where children have no rights and are instead property of their patriarch, whose authority is absolute and arbitrary. How can you possibly believe that the government, with its myriad checks and balances, is too susceptible to corruption to intervene in family life, but that parents, whose power over their children should be absolutely unchecked in your view, cannot be corrupt? That they have an inalienable right to withhold education and socialization from their children; that this self-evidently corrupt and selfish desire is beyond reproach?
This is a ridiculous and half-baked ideology.
Liberalism as an ideology can be derived from two axioms:
1) All people are moral equals
2) There is no moral oracle
It follows from these that no person has a source of moral authority to impose their views on another. What gives you or anyone else the moral right to intervene in someone else's family, presumably by force, over their objections? This isn't a rhetorical question. I'm earnestly hoping for a clear answer.
Liberalism is the ideology responsible for our prosperity. Liberal literature is also pretty clear about what it is:
> Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights. - Declaration of the Rights of Man - 1789
Centralized authority, no matter how well-meaning, has failed at every turn. Raising hateful, illiterate children injures no one else. More fundamentally, I think it's critical to separate your personal moral compass from a moral framework you are comfortable using force to impose on other people. The first step on the path to evil is thinking you know better.
> Liberalism as an ideology can be derived from two axioms
Those axioms don't really create a consistent or substantial ethical universe. If I'm a serial killer and I say, "don't worry, we're all moral equals. You're just as entitled to kill me as I am to kill you," then I'm not violating your first principle. And if you were to respond, "killing like that is simply wrong," you'd be violating your second principle and setting yourself up as a moral oracle.
The core of liberalism is not an underlying system of ethical axioms: Mill was both a liberal and a utilitarian, but you can just as easily argue against liberalism from a utilitarian standpoint—moreover, the position you're evincing here is liberal but anti-utilitarian. No, the unifying source of liberalism is the political status quo which produced it. The real champions of liberalism were the capital owners who stood to profit by it, and who had the influence to bring it about, ousting the aristocracy in the process. The idea that liberal hegemony is a moral triumph and not a political one is simply history being written by the victors.
> Liberalism is the ideology responsible for our prosperity.
It's more correct to say that liberalism and industrial prosperity were both products of the industrial revolution, rather than one being responsible for the other. Illiberal authoritarian powers like China and India are demonstrating that industrial prosperity is eminently attainable without liberalism, although I wouldn't consider that an endorsement of their respective ideologies.
> The first step on the path to evil is thinking you know better.
The first step to literally anything is thinking you know better. You can't escape the duty of having to make judgements. Inaction is itself an action that can cause harm, and there's no a priori reason to privilege the choice not to act.
> Raising hateful, illiterate children injures no one else.
It injures the children. Besides which, raising a sufficiently hateful child does injure others if you ultimately induce that child to commit a hate crime.
> Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights. - Declaration of the Rights of Man - 1789
The operant question here is what it means to "injure someone else" and how we intend to "limit the rights of other men to assure others' enjoyment of the same rights." Natural rights are a very flexible concept. Do I have a right to healthcare, or do hospitals have a right to deny me care for profit? Do I have a right to dump my garbage in the river, or do you have a right to clean drinking water? "Natural" rights are an oxymoron; every right is contrived, and deciding which rights we choose to legitimize and prioritize allows us to sculpt a flavour of natural rights theory to suit any belief system whatsoever. For example, just about anyone would agree that a person has a right to evict a violent burglar from their home. A conservative might further argue that Americans have a right to violently detain illegal immigrants in defence of their borders. Finally, a Nazi might plead that Aryans have an absolute right to defend their homeland from ethnic invaders. By tweaking exactly which rights you get and to what extent you get them, you can justify practically anything. That's why I find utilitarianism so much more rigorous.
Just want to say thank you for your comments here. Impressive writing and argumentation.
1 reply →
> You're just as entitled to kill me as I am to kill you
This is exactly it. Your freedom is a function of your relationship to those who can use legitimate force against you - of how much power is held over you. If you can be killed without consequence then you're only as free as you are strong. This is a description of liberal anarchy, which is the natural state.
I guess I should have elaborated that the it is a liberal order which guarantees everyone an equal right do everything which injures no one else. It is the pursuit of order while maximising the freedom of the natural state that motivates the liberal. So the response isn't "killing like that is simply wrong", it's that violence without due process is disorderly.
> the position you're evincing here is liberal but anti-utilitarian
It's not actually, it's anti-authoritarian, which is a synonym for liberal. I'm arguing that the only legitimate use of (physical) authority is in the maintenance of a liberal ecosystem. It is not legitimate to use authority to intervene in the outcomes that ecosystem produces. You've not directly answered my question:
> What gives you or anyone else the moral right to intervene in someone else's family, presumably by force, over their objections?
The answer, should you produce it, would presumably justify any authoritarian intervention in pursuit of a utilitarian objective.
> prosperity is eminently attainable without liberalism
This was tried and failed in the Soviet Union for a reason. It will fail the same way every time power is concentrated in human hands. Liberalism-authoritarianism is a one-dimensional axis. Power is either diluted or concentrated. Neither outcome is utopian, but the failure modes differ. Giving relatively large amounts of power to the average individual produces all sorts of negative outcomes (eg. school shootings), but the consequences of concentrated authority are always catastrophic. The old adage about eggs and baskets applies. Distributed power is antifragile.
> Deciding to privilege non-intervention over any other course of action is itself a choice that can cause harm.
This is an opinion. I disagree. The harm is caused by the agent (person) or natural circumstance that triggered the outcome. If you get sick it's the disease that causes harm, not the person who didn't care to help you. If you're pushed out a window, it's the person who pushed you that caused the harm, not the one who didn't catch you.
> It injures the children.
This is also an opinion. People disagree axiomatically about what sort of upbringing constitutes injuring a child. Some would say failing to enforce attendance of religious school is injurious. You're sure you know best?
> Natural rights are a very flexible concept.
They're not really. It's pretty simple, you have the same rights you would in a state of nature with no other person intervening. So yes clean air and water, but no not the professional services of other people. Yes rights are only meaningful when they intersect with the rights of others. The entire liberal thesis is that the right of people to choose how to live supersedes the authoritarian pursuit of collective outcomes. We can still pursue them, just on a voluntary, consensual basis.
10 replies →
> How can you possibly believe that the government, with its myriad checks and balances, is too susceptible to corruption to intervene in family life, but that parents, whose power over their children should be absolutely unchecked in your view, cannot be corrupt?
Because generally parents care a lot about their children. That has been a universal experience. There are of course some rotten outliers, but those are the exceptions which prove the rule.
Whereas governments are mostly comprised of faceless bureaucrats who will generally care far less about a child. Again, there will be some great exceptions of government employees who are truly fantastic, but the general perception I have described still holds.
That you cannot see this obvious fact means
> This is a ridiculous and half-baked ideology.
these words seem to describe your ideology. And you may not believe me, but just look at referendums or bills about parental rights and public's reaction to those. Even in a one-party state like California with progressive zealots in power, governor Newsom figured it is wiser to veto bills which encroach on a parent's rights.
>generally parents care a lot about their children. That has been a universal experience. There are of course some rotten outliers, but those are the exceptions which prove the rule.
I have personally seen parents care *so much* for their children that they don't see their abusive behavior. The "most caring" parents can turn out to be absolute monsters to their children, and think they're doing the right thing.
You mean overcaring and overprotecting someone? Or those who think that their behavior and the way they raise their children is always the right way?
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> There are of course some rotten outliers, but those are the exceptions which prove the rule.
Oh please. This could be used to justify anything. I could say that murder is uncommon, and when it does happen, that's "the exception that proves the rule." Moreover, the prison system is corrupt and violent. Therefore we should stop prosecuting murderers.
> Because generally parents care a lot about their children. That has been a universal experience.
"In the 2012, Canadian Community Health Survey- Mental Health, 32% of Canadian adults reported that they had experienced some form of abuse before the age of 16. 26% had experienced physical abuse; 10% had experienced sexual abuse; 8% had experienced exposure to intimate partner violence." [1] Clearly this is a massive problem, and I don't accept "well what if we pretended it didn't happen" as a solution. If you believe parents are "universally" caring, I suggest you open your eyes and stop relying on your preconceptions.
Besides, being caring is not the issue. If a caring but misguided parent raised their children in the woods, cutting them off from society and education, that would still be an evil act. I have no interest in allowing extreme moral relativism to get in the way of preventing things which we all agree are evil.
> Whereas governments are mostly comprised of faceless bureaucrats who will generally care far less about a child.
I'm sure faceless bureaucrats don't care much about murder victims either. Again, that's not an excuse to stop prosecuting murderers. A bureaucracy does not depend on the enthusiasm of its participants to serve a purpose.
> And you may not believe me, but just look at referendums or bills about parental rights and public's reaction to those.
Which ones? If you've got a referendum to the effect that the public largely does not believe that CPS should ever intervene in families, I'd love to see it. Alas, I suspect you're referring to something much narrower and less relevant.
[1]: https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/health-promo...