The Real Johnson writes:
In short, smoking in a car with a kid = bad.This is one of those issues of moral consistency. Can you really be pro choice (which I am), for example, and support smoking-in-the car bans? While in utero, the child is nothing. You can drink, smoke, or kill him if you feel like it. Totally up to you. Right to choose is paramount. But then he pops out and becomes a ward of the state. All of a sudden, you don't know what's best and your behavior is regulated for their protection. Strange.
And yet, there are people who would say it is not the government's business to tell me what I can and cannot do in my own car with my own kids.
I wonder then (but didn't bother asking), what these people's idea is for the role of government? If it's not there to enact laws that attempt to protect and improve the lives of its citizens, what is the government for?
Ok, to be fair. I don't know if this is entirely a contradiction. Progressives will likely scramble to make distinctions. Maybe they are right, but I doubt the ground will be solid. As a libertarian, 'children' occupy an ambiguous status. They are not fully formed adults yet, and so at what age to 'free to choose' principles apply. After all, a 5 year old is not exactly free to choose leave the car when his parents start smoking. He is, in other words, coerced to some degree by the structure of the family. Customarily, we assume that part of individual freedom is the 'right to raise ones children' on the assumption that parents sort of know what is best ,and that the family unit is something to be respected.
This is a flawed assumption: and kids suffer for the choices that others make. Is there a role for the state in the protection of children? Sure. Is this consistent with libertarianism? I think so. But there will always be a tension between the top-down and the bottom-up. After some meandering, I find myself in agreement with Johnson, on this one.
What about the schools and their role in rasing our children? I think children spend the majority of their time having their minds shaped by government agents (ok, teachers). I think in Ontario that Teachers are considered legal gaurdians of children when they are in school?
ReplyDeleteSo to answer the question directly - the state does have a role in the protection of our children, but through non-coersive means like education. In extreme cases the welfare of the individual, regardless of age, becomes the states respondsibility.
Chris
Somewhere along your meanderings, you seem to have found reason - I admit, your first paragraph is strong.
ReplyDeleteAs you are pro-choice, where is the line for you, and how did you define it?
Somewhere between a couple months and 5 years? :)
TG
TG - five years? haha.
ReplyDeleteChris: it's still a little coercive. After all, school isn't optional. Not that it should be.
TG - are you talking about the line between when the kid becomes protected by the state and when it is the woman's right to choose? Most people would say it is birth: kids are nothing before they draw their first breath. I don't know if I agree with that, but that's an easy thing.
ReplyDeleteAM - School is optional after 16. The modern school system was created in an effort to keep children out of factories and allow then to further their development. The government mandated that children stay in school until a certain age as many children left school after grade 8 in order to help run the family farm. Its why we have summers off actually, because of the farm dynamic way back when.
ReplyDeleteNow that the population has overwhelmingly moved to metro centres and subdivisions, the family farm is no longer at the hub of most peoples lives. People go to school more or less out of choice rather than because they have to.
On when a fetus becomes a person, I have to agree with the first breath idea. The state is mandated to protect its people. This does bring up an interesting point though. If you are pro-life (life begins at conception) then would it not follow that the state can regulate what a pregnant mother can consume?
To look at it another way, if you are pro-choice you would then believe that the mother has a right to choose what she does to her unborn baby and ultimately what she consumes while pregnant. Since our government does not mandate (only strongly suggests) that expectant mothers don't drink or smoke, would that make our government pro-choice because of their policy stance?
Chris
I'm not sure if you're right about the origins of the modern school system. In Europe, I know public education had something to do with creating citizens, so basically, changing a peasant from a villager with a local identity into a Frenchmen who will go fight for his country and people.
ReplyDeleteNow it maybe more about just putting kids somewhere so that they are not running around outside in gangs while their parents are at work. Definitely a disconnect between intention and outcome. Anyway, i'd like ot be corrected on this, as I don't know for sure.
As for the personhood issue. "birth" makes no sense. you're telling me that the kid is not "alive" 5 minutes before birth? If so, what about 10 minutes? What about 1 hour? What about 1 day etc...? Birth is just when the baby comes out. It's clearly a baby sometime before then.
Yes AM,
ReplyDeleteI was referring to the reference point you use when you decided that - although you are pro-choice - you do support parents not having the right to smoke in a car while their children are present.
As you say, this conflicts with your pro-choice stance, but you do support it.
So I ask, when does it change for you? I guess you answered, at birth.
Meaning you would have no problem aborting a baby before delivery, however once they are birthed, parents no longer have that right of choice, and must parent as the state sees fit?
I realize this is an almost impossible question - it is not a clear line for me (I share your stance on this one).
Apologies - I didn't catch your last reply to Chris.
ReplyDelete"As for the personhood issue. "birth" makes no sense. you're telling me that the kid is not "alive" 5 minutes before birth? If so, what about 10 minutes? What about 1 hour? What about 1 day etc...? Birth is just when the baby comes out. It's clearly a baby sometime before then. "
So then where's the line for you?
To be honest, probably sometime in the third trimester. Still, i'm pro choice. It's an intellectual position that I think is slightly stronger, but i'm not really that sure. I would like pro choicers to say it like it is: Just admit that you're killing a baby, at some point. Not in the first month or so, but if you abort an 8 month old, (which does happen occassionally), you're killing a baby. I'm not claiming 100 percent consistency here, lol. I've met few people who can meet that standard.
ReplyDeleteThe important thing to remember is that only a born baby can have any "legal right" and to say otherwise would mean limiting the freedom of a living, breathing individual. At 8 months, its a baby, it can be born and live. But it doesn't change the legal distinction.
ReplyDeleteI know that it's the law, I just think it is pretty arbitrary.
ReplyDeleteIt is an old debate, this abortion issue. It is interesting to note that times have changed in how it is debated. Not so long ago, in Canada, there would have been a lot of mention of 'soul', and when the baby (unborn or not) is infused with the spirit of God. In actual fact it was this infusion of spirit which made it wrong (in the eyes of right-to-lifers) for a mother to agree to the killing of her fetus - essentially it was considered wrong to kill one of God's creations. And if God didn't want you to be pregnant, then, of course, you would not be pregnant, so there is no time, from the moment of conception, that the growing embryo could be aborted. Interesting to realize that, despite the growing Christian evangelical wave in the States, most of the writers on this blog do not even bring up the subject of religion in passing. I consider that a good thing.
ReplyDeleteRe government telling a parent not to smoke in the car when her child is a passenger:
I think if they are serious about this, they should do the realistic thing - outlaw cigarettes, stop collecting huge taxes on tobacco products and stop giving lip service to the idea that somehow cigarette smoke is bad. They know it is bad and they really don't care. Government is in bed with the drug companies, and the last thing that drug companies want is for cancer or heart disease to go away.It is all a big pretense. Big business loves our kids being fat, our population eating garbage, and people smoking. Health care cost us money, but it brings HUGE profits to the people that run the government in the background - the corporations. And the CEO's of these companies will be the first to make charitable donations to fund advertising to get mothers to butt out when behind the wheel of a car. Give me a break. If it weren't so annoying that we are constantly being 'had' by the system, it would be amusing. DM
DM>.. are you "pro choice"? If so, you believe that the woman's right to her own body excuses the killing of unborn children. Now keep that in mind alongside the thought that the government should make it illegal for people to inhale the smoke of tobacco leaves and ask yourself: what happened to "free choice"?
ReplyDelete