A few days ago, Melissa Harris-Perry was featured on one of MSNBC's
“Lean Forward” ads, in which she boldly proclaimed that children belong to their
communities rather than their parents.
So far, there has yet to be anyone from the right who actually
articulates why children do not belong
to their communities, why they do in fact belong to their parents, or if they
belong to anyone at all. Sure, there
have been denunciations of her words as being outright communistic – all of
which may be valid – but so what? Glowing
Harris-Perry, framed by pink flowers dancing in the sun, conveys the goodness
of collective thought in our education system clearly and concisely, and the
right’s response is to flail and bleat that such a pleasant woman is evil? Really?
After all, not only will children outlive their parents, but they
can choose to become independent, active members of their community as
early as fourteen if they get a part-time job. The first eighteen years of a child’s life,
training and education might completely determine how productive a citizen they
will be in the future, so why wouldn't the state take a more active interest in
how one raises their child? Why wouldn’t
you and I take a greater interest in how our neighbour raises their child?
The idea that a child in some sense belongs to his/her parent seems
like common sense belief; a child is the product of their mother and father, and
we own what we produce, thus... This
isn’t necessarily true, but even if it was, conservatives cannot simply rely on
common sense beliefs to defend goodness anymore. For much of America, “Over-taxing the rich to
feed the poor is good,” is a common sense belief. “Education is a right,” is a common sense
belief. Yet if you’re a conservative, you
know NONE of these are true ... and you can probably articulate why.
So why is it untrue that a child belongs to the community or
collective? Well, if one is a Christian (as conservatives most often are), the
answer is pretty simple; your children belong to God, just as you belong to God. Douglas Wilson, a well-know author and
theologian, put it quite nicely when to defend anti-collectivist notions about
people, he pointed to the instance in the Gospels when Jesus was asked whether
or not it was good to pay taxes to Caesar***.
Jesus famously states: “Give back
to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” But before he says this, he takes a coin and
asks whose image is on it. Of course, it was Caesar’s, so it belonged to
Caesar.
Whose image is on your children?
God’s (Genesis 1:27). And so why
don’t our children belong to the community or state? Because we are not permitted to give what is
God’s to anyone but God – especially to Caesar.
Children do not even belong to their mothers and fathers themselves! God merely gives the father and mother authority
over their children to raise them for His work and Glory.
For conservatives and libertarians who are not Christian or for
conservatives and libertarians who would rather not refer to religion to defend
against the left, the answer is just as simple. Children cannot belong to the state because under collectivism, the state exists to serve itself, not to serve others. It will not take our children and produce self-reliant, thinking individuals because what it needs more than anything else are servants - dependent and unthinking. So if not the state (and if one rejects God's ownership), to whom would our children belong?
Well, the notion that anyone could belong to anyone else contradicts individualism
and self-determination. I assume that
for most libertarians especially, not even a parent can rightly own a child. But we could view the relationship between
parent and child not as one where
ownership is involved, but one where merely authority and responsibility is
involved. Though individualism mandates
that we all be self-reliant, there is still a moral responsibility we have
towards each other to insure that our actions do not infringe upon someone else’s pursuit of happiness.
Children are a direct consequence of their parent's actions, and thus
the parent has a moral responsibility to insure the pursuit of a child’s happiness is
not diminished either by making poor choices in child rearing or through total
neglect. Parents would not own their children,
rather they would have authority over them and the duty of insuring their
children receive the necessary training and education that will allow them to
become productive citizens – not for
the sake of the state, but for the child’s own sake.
It will be difficult to counter the idea that children belong to the
state with the idea that children belong to God or their own selves because of
the great gap stemming from ideological differences between the left and right. What necessarily follows from socialism and
communism, collective ownership and working for the good of the state, is that
people too belong to the state and each other.
Unfortunately, conservatives will first have to tear down the
collectivist wall shielding the liberal from basic truths before we can
really address Harris-Perry’s words.
***I cannot find the interview yet, but I will :*(
***I cannot find the interview yet, but I will :*(
