The post from David Post on Justice Thomas got me thinking more deeply about liberty rights and the American Founding. As a libertarian I tend to resolve conflicts in favor of political liberty as a default position.
The case Brown vs Entertainment Merchants Assn involved on the one hand the liberty of video game producers to market violent products even to those underaged v. the right (liberty?) of parents to raise their children with “absolute authority” and “total parental control over children’s lives”.
It's not easy to draw the line on where liberty ends and license begins. One standard I absolutely reject -- and I think the Founders rejected to -- is that we have no right to what is "wrong" in an objective sense (understanding that reasonable folks will disagree over what in fact IS wrong in an objective sense). Such a standard truly makes liberty meaningless or "hollow shells" (to use TVD's term in the comments).
The Founding Fathers believed men had an unalienable right to worship as they pleased which necessarily gives men an unalienable right to break the first half of the Ten Commandments and many other parts of the Bible (a very demanding book on moral issues).
But even extending beyond the narrow "rights of conscience" issue. Take Justice Thomas' standard on rights of parents. Absent thorny issues like when parents' near absolute authority conflicts with others' freedom of speech, I tend to agree with Thomas. Parents almost own their minor children, yet have the responsibilities to provide for them. Short of beatings which go beyond reasonable corporal punishment (I don't defend corporal punishment as good policy; but I don't think it's illegal to spank your kids) or neglect of necessaries, parents can do whatever the Hell they want with and to their kids. But that doesn't make what they do necessarily moral. It just means parents have a right to do what may be wrong. The Westboro Baptist Church or kids who are brainwashed into the KKK are two reductio ad absurdum examples. Or the humiliating emotional abuse to which many parents subject their children. I think for instance the emotional abuse that DJ AM's father subjected him to was gravely immoral and strongly contributed to his suicide. (I don't attribute causation as I believe all adults are ultimately responsible over the choices they make as adults.)
But I would see this as part of a parents' right to do wrong that comes with the almost absolute authority over their minor children of which Justice Thomas speaks. And this right to do wrong is part of a natural liberty right as America's Founders understood it. Again, the line draws at no beatings beyond reasonable corporal punishment and providing for necessaries.
We can't have government bureaucracies enforcing standards like "you can't emotionally abuse your children or we will fine you or take your kids away." But emotional abuse of your children is gravely immoral. I think any meaningful conception political liberty, ultimately, conflicts with the Nanny State of the Left and the Granny State of the Right. Maybe I'm wrong. But make no mistake giving people the right to self control and liberty over their own lives necessarily means giving them a right to do wrong and make mistakes.
8 comments:
“Nanny state” and “Granny state” are cute names for paternalism. My view is that paternalism should be in the home. Although I agree with Locke when he criticize Filmer’s Patriarcha for insulting the importance of mothers in the home.
How much of the founders generation saw the family as a private domain of the father? In Roman times the family estate was virtually the private nation of the patriarch where the father could dispose of his children as seen fit with impunity. Clearly the founders weren't that extreme.
Libertarianism would work just about perfectly if there were no such thing as children. Kids complicate everything.
Cogent analysis, Jon.
Thanks!
.
I think this just might be an area that exposes the weakness of the current Libertarian movement. But, it might take a little reasoning for some of us to come to.
.
The idea that an adult is responsible for his or her actions and cannot use the excuse of a poor upbringing as an excuse for wrongful acts deserves center stage. If that is true (I sense it is at least 99% so), then society must accept responsibility for setting any standards of what it means to be an adult. I cannot make that claim and expect anyone to accept it. So it requires some explanation.
.
Society sets standards of behavior all the way from what might be laudatory to what might be punishable in the most severe sense. Libertarians want to leave one's choice about such things up to the individual where the rules are not explicated by law saying that all adults are fully culpable for their actions period. I say that social standards not specified by law need some sort of identification on which all members of society have been well informed to the point of agreement thus, precluding the idea that what a parent uses as guides for raising children should be up to the individual parent and no business of the state. Parents ought to be held accountabloe beyong their child's adulthood--at least to some degree that, it seems reasonable, should be shared by their adult child. I don't mean to say that the state has a right to invade the home in any overseer sense; but, I do mean it is the responsibility of government to make sure that the general standards are well explicated--made very clear. Perhaps a standard regulated in the institutions of public education. My idea is not conclusive and it is open to argument; but, it should not be pushed aside.
.
Metaphysical standards are based on firm foundations; whereas, liberty can be seen as having the shifting foundation of personal choice.
.
.
.
.
.
ERAT.
.
In my just prior post, "beyong" should have read beyond
.
.
.
More to the point, I am coming to be very interested in the time of America's Founding as an aspect of the greater things that were unfolding in Western Civilization. Something unimaginable in prior ages was taking place in a transformation that is leaving humanity in a stage moving close to our adulthood.
.
We need to get over our differences in a way that can bring us to a unification for the sake of the future.
.
To me, I see the establishment of America as a most courageous attempt to unify metaphysical traditions with modernity in a new form of government of secularism.
.
It is, I think, an academically appropriate perspective on America's Founding.
.
I would like to find persons with a focus for discovering more about these thoughts.
.
.
That's in the zone, Phil. Perhaps you'll poke through the AC archives with new eyes. What you speak of has been there all the time.
The problem with modernity, esp as it reaches the 20th century and Martin Heidegger, is the abolition of metaphysics.
But the Founding ties liberty to metaphysics ["endowed by their creator"]. modernity hasn't succeeded in replacing this metaphysical assertion, hence, when you say
Metaphysical standards are based on firm foundations; whereas, liberty can be seen as having the shifting foundation of personal choice.
you have hit the nub of the problem of modernity, and of our current philosophical crisis. We got no heart, no soul.
.
Tom: The problem with modernity, ... is the abolition of metaphysics.
...
But the Founding ties liberty to metaphysics ["endowed by their creator"]. modernity hasn't succeeded in replacing this metaphysical assertion, hence, when you say
...
Phil: Metaphysical standards are based on firm foundations; whereas, liberty can be seen as having the shifting foundation of personal choice.
...
Tom: you have hit the nub of the problem of modernity, and of our current philosophical crisis. We got no heart, no soul.
.
Well, at first glance it appears as though you are correct; but, I'm not so sure of that.
.
Think about the idea of diremption--the breaking apart of the ages. What was prior to Modernity (in Western Civilization) was based on the solid foundation of Christian Faith. What we have with Modernity is based on the solid foundation of experience (subjectivity?) regarding science, art, and morality. These are two separate entities each of which is based on its own solid foundation.
.
America's Foundation can be seen as an effort to bring a "redemption" to Western Civilization. It has the sense of unifying each separate foundation together into one using this thing we call secularism. I have a quote from Hegel I'll have to dig up and I'll post it tomorrow. It deals with the Barbarians and the Roman Conquest. Supposedly the Barbarians were the victors.
.
Maybe you're familiar with the ideas?
.
I don't think Modernity is for the abolition of Metaphysics. Maybe it's the other way around and that might be the problem you're asking us to see?
.
.
Post a Comment