Subnostr

One exception: children have a right to their parents' care.

This statement is backwards and is the symptom of the disease that causes the most government intrusion in our lives today.

Children do not have rights other than judicial intervention over abuse or neglect by their parents. Even this can be excessive intrusion into parents' property rights. The only reason a parent would keep a child around and abuse them is if the state forces and/or subsidises them to care for the children. In a natural rights system, the parent would sell or give away an unwanted child.

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Discussion

James A Lewis 2y ago

Now, don't confuse my assertion that children have a right to the care of their parents to mean I desire the state to get involved. Children would have this basic right even if the state didn't exist. It is a violation of natural law to create children and not also provide them the requisite care.

Brunswick 2y ago

Are children's rights to have their parents care for them a positive right or a negative right? My assertion is there are no legitimate positive rights. If our difference is on the definition of rights, and you are colloquially using the term, then yes I agree.

James A Lewis 2y ago

It is a right in the sense that to withhold requisite care the parents would violate their child. Whose responsibility it is to be sure the parents do provide said care is a separate matter worth debating, but the basic point is that the parents ought to provide it.

Brunswick 2y ago

To say the parents aught to care for their children is like saying a bear aught to care for its cubs. If we are to extend a positive right to the children to force their parents to do what they should naturally do, then we must use force to make their parents do what they apparently aren't doing. Its better, in my opinion, to think about it from the children's perspective. If the children do not want to be with their parents, and the parents do not want to be with their children, then the state (or society) should not force them together. If the parent is relinquishing thwir property rights over their children through neglect, then the children are free from the bondage of their parents by default. There is no need to provide rights to the children under the care of their parents in this case, because at that point the children have been emancipated defacto and they are free to find another means of survival such as from an orphanage. In the case of an infant or small child, like the second ammendment, its better to err on the side of freedom and property rights than on the side of the state "protecting" other people's property.