Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Chattel versus Children, Rights versus Definitions

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One hardly needs a piece of paper to engage in all the free expression of genitalia one likes, so long as within bounds of modest decency so as not to scare the wildlife. One can call such activities by whatever name one wishes. Marriage, significant other, fornication buddy, whatever. One can invent cults and religions and label favorite practices whatsoever names one desires. And one can contract with other adults, within bounds of enforcible contracts, and call those contracts by whatever label one favors. But one does NOT have a legal or moral right to contract so as to treat children as chattel. A child is a special ward of the State ---not a chattel of the State, not a chattel of parents.
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Those who choose to remain citizens of a civilization, governed under the form of a State, have an interest in preserving their civilization for themselves and their posterity. They have, and will take, power to moderate incentives for preserving and replacing demographics for sustaining their civilization. They can favor presumptions regarding how best to foster succeeding generations. Should parents be accorded tax breaks? Should parents be accorded presumptions of fitness to have and raise children? Should judges and orphanages be accorded discretion to weigh factors in assessing how orphans should be cared for and adopted? OR: Should political correctness require all children to be thrown to the first bidder, as of right? Should traditional families not be presumed superior, absent showing of disqualifiers? Should parents not be availed special certification as "married" in the eyes of the law?
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In itself, marriage is not a person. Marriage itself does not have rights. A State certificate merely indicates clearance for presuming participants to be generally qualified and favored for having and raising children. After all, there are persons unfit to have custody of children, and it must fall to government to assess such situations. An assault on government certified status of marriage easily morphs into an assault against protecting children from being treated as chattel. There is no "equal right," per se, to obtain the supervision of a child! Wider civilization will retain power to stop what the majority consider abuse. That interest is not to be destroyed by giving every person who may be adult in body but not in mind some presumed "right" to lordship over any child. Against such governance, the only check is availed by respecting a broadly assimilated society of decently qualified and relatively modest parents. To undermine interests of ordinary parents, to create a "right" in everyone to treat children as chattel, is to hurry the time when State elitists, as a matter of course, will assert superior and arbitrary power to control all significant details regarding the raising of the next generation. When it comes to asserting "equal rights," too many brains are blinded by their genitalia. Their ill considered implication is that hormone addled adults have rights, but children are chattel.
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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Re: "Studies have shown"

One hardly needs agenda driven studies to notice the general decline in America. Do "studies show" that politically correct, state forced, equal sponsorship of every relational "right" would reverse the general decline? In the face of obvious general decline, the "studies show" argument is more hobby horse for leftists for taking over the message and rationalizing wannas than for pointing any way for reviving America. Have "studies shown" that European style social progress will manage even to replace the next two generations?

Anonymous said...

ecpnc, Re: "most of the NGO's are environmentalists, which by their very nature favor the heavy hand of central planning and control"

Yes, I also have a hard time believing in the purity of those who fund and string these organizations. They may very well be cynical, deluded, angry, and naive, but they certainly are not knowledgeable about democracy. Democracy simply does not work for a complex society! A constitutional, representative republic may work relatively well, but that's not something one can very well export. Indeed, we ourselves may soon lose it, at home, except for its dressed up pretense. No middle class, no representative republic! No mind, no matter! Instead, we will get elitists pandering in front doors to give away goodies to mobs, while stealing blind out back doors. The Number One Political Priority for everyone who wants to conserve a decent republic ... should be to Awaken America's Middle Class to its need to unite ... in order to restore what is needed to preserve a decent republic. So long as decent, common sense, middle class Americans remain diverted and divided, angling for how to earmark re-distributions of bennies and re-twistings of entitlements, with no concern or prayer for assimilating guidance, we will just fall all the faster, without a prayer. I'm not seeing much awakening Will to assimilate in respect of common sense. Instead, I'm seeing angry people twisting off in all directions, wanting to turn even the most basic of assimilating institutions upside down, the good of civilized freedom be damned. Angry toddlers with fingers on dangerous buttons, unraveling the nation.

Anonymous said...

Cui bono? What do super funders want? Do they want a decent, representative republic? Or do they want a casino that nearly exclusively serves those they consider the real players? Every decent middle class American who is wishing, hoping, and waiting for super knight elites to save the day is part of the problem. What we ought to KNOW by now is this: If decent, middle class Americans do not by election day assimilate to common sense, then we will have been completely sheared. Is any Republican at any level working to lay out a program that would assimilate middle-class common sense?

Anonymous said...

America will get no heroes until it awakens to common sense. One may take a constricted versus an expansive view of self interest and common sense. In politics, people tend first to seek to fulfill immediate needs, based on what people are, rather than based on any notion of what people should seek to become. They seek to remake god and society in the image of constricted self interests. Many make this style a fetish, or even pretend it's consistent with justifiable philosophy. They don't seek civilization that sustains respect for decent freedom of expression and enterprise of all. Rather, they seek to bend civilization to force it to approve of themselves, as they are, rationalizing that there is no validity to any notion of what they should be. Constricted souls, having no other vision to guide them, plant themselves at bottlenecks of power. One need not be the brains to achieve power. One may achieve power to bend most others to one's will simply by seizing bottlenecks through which choices are framed. These people are not interested in debates, because they admit of no value higher than to force approval of what they are, rather than concern for what should be availed for society to become. They are not interested in sustaining societies of liberal debaters. Rather, they're interested in forcing society to approve of libertine self interests. There are few subterfuges they will decline, so long as effective to constricted purposes. This is the path straight from anarchy to totalitarianism. It's hardly different from the path of any self righteous jihadi. The path to enlightened empathy is different. It seeks to avail expansive, sustainable views of self interest. It asks people with capacity and insight to think about what is needed, in common sense, to sustain a decent, representative republic. So long as the middle class remains in a funk, misled to rage among divisive promotions of constricted self interest, America will continue to unravel. Wannas will continue to trump notions of assimilating values, and Americans will continue to be milked and bilked.

Anonymous said...

The world is changing faster than our Rube Goldberg contraption of central regulations can keep pace with. We're no longer nimble. Our medical care is tied to our jobs, our employment is tied to our underwater mortgages, and most of our institutions are run by networks of cronies who care little for America, much less any higher vision. Regulations are not mere jokes; they're despicable jokes. Centralists continue to pretend to know best, to write grandiose regulations, and then to offer exceptions to thousands of their fellow travelers. These are preludes to breakdown, not greatness! Of course, complete breakdown will really make us a serf nation. That seems precisely to be what many or our faux deep thinkers and inhalers want. I see apologies for staying the course: Ever more free trade with China. Ever more enriching of parasites who know how to infiltrate and bleed our politicians. But WHO is talking common sense for restoring America? I like Paul's general direction, but the over sudden aspects of it are too grandiose. We need both to restore and defend America, but not to rebuild seventh century despotisms. We don't need fixers who know how to harness everyone to corporate control. We need thinkers who love freedom, who can articulate feasible ways to dismantle Rube Goldberg and restore us to a path of common sense. If the middle class will find and articulate common sense, leaders will find and get in front of it.