For the Children
Sam Aurelius Milam III
I
recently encountered another of those situations in which a baby seems
to have been injured by one of his parents. In such a situation,
a dissenting opinion with regard to the appropriate response is discouraged.
The expected opinion is that the government should intervene and seize
the child. Few people seem inclined to wonder if there might be alternatives,
or to consider the long term consequences of whatever possible responses
there might be.
There
are probably a lot of possible responses to such a situation. One
of them, as unlikely as it seems, is that the parents (for better or for
worse) should have the sole and final authority regarding the treatment
of their child. Under such a doctrine, the government would be powerless
to intervene. The disadvantage of this alternative is that a small
number of children would be injured or maybe even killed by unfit parents.
It's a tragic situation. One redeeming feature is that the harm would
be limited to a small number of people.
The
present unquestionable doctrine is that the government should intervene,
and seize the child. We suppose that the standards for such intervention
will be strict. The government will intervene only in cases of extreme
threat to a child. That might be a good system if it would work.
However, it won't. The strict standards for intervention will gradually
relax. At first, only severely threatened children will be taken.
Then, the number of acceptable justifications for seizure will slowly increase.
One day, the government will take a child whose mother inadvertently left
a door open, so that the child was discovered wandering down the sidewalk,
alone. The government will take a child subjected to unapproved discipline
by her father. It will take the children of parents who refuse to
allow standard medical treatment or who refuse to send their kids to school.
It will take children who are allowed to view the wrong movies, read the
wrong books, or see the wrong kinds of pictures. It will take children
whose parents take inappropriate photographs of them, children whose parents
allow them to consume the wrong substances, or children whose parents don't
keep the house clean enough. Mothers who use recreational drugs during
pregnancy will be deemed guilty of child abuse. It's my understanding
(albeit unverified) that it is a felony in some states to merely advise
your adolescent teenager to be sexually active, whether or not the youngster
actually follows the advice.
The
enforcement of such considerations will require pervasive monitoring.
There will have to be surveillance cameras everywhere. Priests, teachers,
librarians, doctors, counselors, and anyone else who has any contact with
children, will be required to report anything suspicious, however trivial
or innocent. Every right to privacy will be set aside. Disclosure
will be mandatory. Guilt will be presumed. The accused will
bear the burden of proof.
Millions
of people have come to this continent seeking liberty. Hundreds of
thousands of parents have seen their children maimed or killed in foreign
wars (far more children than the number injured by their own parents),
presumably to defend liberty. Are we prepared to disregard all of
that history, to sacrifice all of that liberty, to endure that kind of
government, merely to protect a few children from their parents?
| Help me defend liberty.
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June 2002
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