Howard Richman writes:
Vox Day concludes that there are only two options, either the parent owns the child or the state owns the child. I have noticed that people with simplistic political ideologies (libertarians, anarchists, fascists, and socialists) tend to propose false dichotomies, pretending that the only choices are the extremes. Here Vox Day is holding that there are only two choices:1. absolute parental power (Christian libertarianism) or
2. absolute governmental power (socialism).I oppose absolute power whether held by the parent or the government and prefer the American system of checks and balances over both libertarianism and socialism.
And I have noticed that people who are unable precisely articulate their own position have a tendency to claim that the problem is too complex and their position too nuanced for them to actually express it. Is Mr. Richman proposing a new, hitherto unknown philosophy of matrix ownership? The fact that libertarianism, socialism and fascism are coherent political ideologies hardly makes them simplistic.
Mr. Richman clearly does not understand that while the operational reality allows great latitude for multiple influences, there can ultimately be only one controlling authority. With regards to a child’s education, either the government is operating under the aegis of parental authority or vice-versa. The power that can dictate the education and claim the child at will is the owning party; if a state government can take the child away from the parent simply because the parent does not send the child to a school on the government-approved list, then it is the state government that owns that child, not the parent.
Furthermore, that American system of checks and balances is federal and does not apply at the state level, still less the local level where most school-related decisions are made. Still, I must give Mr. Richman some credit for understanding that socialism and libertarianism are near-polar opposites.