As part of my “You Be the Judge” series, I periodically share stories that presumably create moral quandaries for libertarians and other advocates of limited government and individual liberty.
Though I’ve been lax in this regard since my last iteration in the series was about drug legalization back in April.
Time to atone for this oversight. Today’s thorny topic deals with the reasons that government must provide before taking children from their parents.
We had an example of this type of quandary earlier in the year, which actually resulted in parents fleeing to Cuba.
Our new example comes from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. Here are some details from a story in the UK-based Daily Express.
Britain’s obesity epidemic…sees NHS hospitals dealing with 1,000 cases every day… Increasingly social workers find youngsters being fed a high-fat, sugary diet, which can be just as bad for their health. The phenomenon is known as “killing with kindness” because the child craves the unhealthy food and a loving parent feels unable to say no. Professionals say they have to make complex decisions in care proceedings and a family’s gross over-eating can be one of the factors that leads to them losing their children. A Sunday Express survey of councils found that in the past year five children were taken from their families for that reason: two in Wake-field, West Yorkshire, one in Oxfordshire, one in Salford and one in Hounslow, London. The previous 12 months saw five similar cases in Sheffield, Portsmouth, Lincolnshire, Slough and Harrow, London. …Ex-Chief Medical Officer Sir Liam Donaldson warned in 2006 that health chiefs would look at removing children from their families if they became super-sized, risking their health. The first reported case took place in 2007 when an eight-year-old girl from Cumbria, who had to wear size 16 clothes, was taken into care.
I confess that this story leaves me conflicted.
Since I surely would favor the government taking kids if they were being starved to death, shouldn’t I support taking kids if they’re being fed to death?
Even if they’re not being fed to death, they are probably being condemned to lives of obesity, which is associated with all sorts of bad outcomes. Don’t I want to save them from that fate?
On the other hand, do any of us think that kids generally are better off in a foster care system?
Moreover, do you trust the government to make wise decisions? That’s an especially relevant question in the case of the United Kingdom, where kids actually have been removed from a home because the parents didn’t believe in unlimited immigration.
And what’s the cut-off point? Maybe if the government starts with seizing grossly obese children, that eventually will lead to raiding homes with mildly chubby kids.
These slippery slope arguments are important because most examples of government abuse have relatively benign beginnings (today’s monstrous income tax, for example, began in 1913 as a very simple, two-page tax with a top rate of just 7 percent).
I don’t know the right answer, but I look forward to reading the comments.
P.S. If you want additional challenging examples of “you be the judge,” peruse this list.
- Is it appropriate to put politicians on trial for economic malfeasance?
- Is it excessive vigilante justice to set your daughter’s rapist on fire?
- Should prisoners with AIDS be segregated from other convicts?
- Which tax collection tactic is more brutal and unjust?
- When a wheelchair-bound guy uses a baseball bat to punish his granddaughter’s molester, what’s the right response?
- Should politicians set pay levels at government-owned firms?
- Is sharia law sometimes appropriate?
- Is the Netherlands right to segregate troublemakers from the general population?
- What do you do about self-destructive behavior in a government-run healthcare system?
- Should there be laws against incest among consenting adults?
- Should motorists be allowed to warn other drivers about speed traps?
- Is jury nullification the right approach for victimless crimes?
- Was this angry father wrong to take matters into his own hands?
- Should drunk-rafting be a crime?
- Should rich people pay higher speeding fines?
P.P.S. On a separate matter, I gave a speech earlier this year while visiting the Citadel in South Carolina. I gave it the grandiose title of “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Economic Policy.”
I don’t know if this is a positive sign, but that video has been translated and posted in China. Considering that my blog is blocked in China, I assume this is progress of some sort.
You won’t be surprised to learn, though, that I have no idea how to embed this type of video, but if you have a bizarre desire to watch me pontificate with Chinese subtitles, feel free to click on the image.
I have no idea whether I’ll change any minds in China, but I hope the country moves more in a free-market direction. As shown by Hong Kong and Singapore, Chinese people are very productive when freed from the shackles of big government.
Moreover, some Chinese bigwigs seem to understand. I was very impressed, for instance, when the head of China’s sovereign wealth fund made some very accurate observations about the failure of the European welfare state.
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I concede that I cannot give a bright-line answer. Like we can say, “If you knowingly take something that doesn’t belong to you, that’s stealing, period.” But what is “child abuse” or “child endangerment”?
But I am quite sure that the fact that a social worker or judge disagrees with the parents over what constitutes good parenting is not sufficient reason. Like: A parent beats his child with a spiked metal rod causing massive internal injuries? Yes, that’s child abuse. A parent insists that his child go to bed at 9:00 when the social worker thinks that the appropriate bed time for this child is 9:30? No.
The fact that the social worker thinks a parenting technique is “harmful” is not sufficient reason. Because of course anything you think is bad parenting you will, by definition, consider “harmful”. Every disagreement is about whether something is good or bad for the child. Once we start down that road, it is a very short slippery slope to the government dictating how children are raised. I do not have any difficulty imagining government officials telling parents that they must teach government-approved positions on controversial issues, like politics and religion and social issues. After all, what could be more harmful to a child than teaching him to be a racist or raising him to be a member of some crazy cult?
….“ I have to run off to the people’s ministry of health standards to get an obesity exemption for my twelve year old to attend sumo wrestling school. See, his BMI came in at 28 at the mandatory government school health check (too high for a twelve year old). So I received a notarized letter that my child will be taken away unless I document a Sumo exemption, or present a concrete plan and timeline to get his BMI below 24. See, even with the Sumo school exemption his BMI cannot be above 27 anyway. But we also immigrated to the UK from the island of Valuvalu, where scientific research by UN anthropologists indicated a higher BMI was endemic to the island natives, even before civilization, and seems like the genetic makeup of Valuvalians is such that the BMI threshold for detrimental health effects is quite a bit higher than for the typical Anglo-Saxon. But the problem is also that my son is not 100% Valuvalian, so I’m struggling to get his additional racial exemption approved. My son’s paternal grandfather seems to have been Dutch, and while 75% Valuvalian genetic content still qualifies for a higher BMI-TAT (BMI Take-Away Threshold), the genealogy records are difficult to obtain. We have been trying to get a certified genealogical lineage tree for our family from the authorities in Valuvalu, then have the certificate officially translated into English by an authorized agency, so we can submit to the health authorities and hopefully get to keep Johnny home. BTW, thankfully, he is at home today – his school is having a field trip to the chocolate factory and he was expelled for the day. It’s hard. But ‘It takes a Village’ — and this is the village, and participation is mandatory”.
“But my son’s greatest threat is not obesity. Ever since he started going to church, and was indoctrinated with the virtual insignificance of life on earth compared to the afterlife, he has been behaving recklessly. In an effort to counter this cultural externality I’m spearheading a proposition to ban his church. I don’t think that I’ll garner 51% support quite yet, but one day I may, and then this terribly polluting metaphysical ideology will be forced to stop harming our family“.
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In summary, obesity does not cross my threshold for taking children away. Like many ideological differences, great irreconcilable discords can originate from seemingly minor quantitative differences in effects and compromises between competing forces (like different interpretations of what a below world average growth trendline can do to your national prosperity level and standard of living).
There are many ways in which parents can harm their children and the threshold of harm, as well as what is ultimately harmful and how much, can be very individual and eventually subject to revision. There is also the standard harmonization and homogenization problem of coercive collectivism. It is impossible, unwise and short-sighted, to establish standards that will apply uniformly to everyone. But if you value coercive collectivism more than I do, and place less value on individual responsibility and choice, you will support a different compromise – sometimes a radically different one.
are American Amish children… living on a farm… assigned chores by their parents in danger? at risk of injury? yes… farm work is dangerous… and young people engaging in farm labor are always at risk… but is that reason to remove the children from a loving family… traumatize them and force them to conform to the statist ideal of childhood socialization and destroy their lives and culture? HELL NO! for all of their talk about diversity… statists are remarkably inflexible and intolerant… obsessed with the idea of conformity to the statist ideal… these people are a danger not only to individual liberty… but to our nation… and it rich heritage of cultural diversity… what we get from statists is lip service… political opportunism… and sanctimonious BS… we live in a world… at risk… these fools can not legislate a risk free society… no matter how they posture and blow… but they can break up families… destroy lives and impose an abstract shallow ideology on the rest of our society…. thru the coercive force of government policy… that is if we let them… if we allow politicians and bureaucrats to take our children… either thru a narrow spectrum of government approved educational procedures or by outright kidnapping… we are lost…………………………….
so what if they are a little chubby…………………………. or have other imperfections not approved by the government… they are our children… and we love them…
drketedc beat me to it, but I will reiterate. The state should be allowed to take children, but only if there is clear and demonstrable harm occurring to the child in question. Obese children might have future problems, but unless they have current uncontrolled diabetes clearly caused by their diet or some other current health issue. Future, possible problems is a standard that allows us all to be criminals.
The transition from ‘family’ to ‘state-owned’ kids began a long time ago. I wrote about it impacted my family back during the Carter administration in the Borg Generation. Britain is the beam along which we will be traveling so mind the pattern. I do wish I knew how to re-blog this piece on my site! I use wordpress but have a separate URL. http://coldwarwarrior.com/2013/08/12/the-borg-generation-a-cold-war-legacy/
Rarely, if ever, should government entities steal children from their homes. There must be a clear risk present to even consider it. Obesity is not a clear risk. Starvation is. We all know that no food=death. Being fat may have future risks associated with it, but the key is ‘may’. It would be much better to limit government activities in all areas. When in history have poor people been so fat? Get the government out of our lives and you will see this false ‘epidemic’ abate.
I am against vaccination mandates, for example. We lived with the fear of having our kids stolen and abused by government hacks. All done in the name of the Common Good. All created by cronyism. Reduce government power and you would see a lot of these slippery slope cases go away.
It is too easy for government to steal away children for political reasons. I already struggled with the fact that my kids are hostages to my proper behavior. I am so glad they are all grown up so I can act without worrying about how my concern for my own kids could be used against me.
Reblogged this on U.S. Constitutional Free Press.