Now, I can understand your basic motivation: that you really don’t accept the 67% rule for amending the Constitution — you’d like to see a 99% rule for that as well. Am I correct?

So my question is, do you in fact insist upon applying your own standards or would you be willing to accept the decision of a sufficiently large majority?

I accept the vox populi.

If the latter, how large a majority would you require for society imposing minimum standards of behavior upon parents?

Very high. In the neighborhood of 99%.

That was the intention of my second paragraph, to point out that you and aren’t even close on what the appropriate threshold would be. I would place the threshold so high that it damn near requires unanimity.

he vague agreement is that a sufficiently large majority of society can rightfully impose what it considers to be a minimum standard for child care upon all parents.

Sure, I acknowledged as much several times over the past week. There exists a point at which the state may justify intervention.

The problem is that you and I disagree about what could possibly qualify as a “minimum standard for child care” by several orders of magnitude and we’re probably off significantly about the “sufficiently large majority” part too.

OK, so we have reached a vague agreement in principle. Now the problem is a matter of drawing a line based on the degree of agreement within the community

The devil is in the details and I’m not sure which language you believe we agree on. Please restate it.

However, I don’t see any need or justification for the community to get involved if a parent simply chooses an unconventional approach that may or may not turn out to be beneficial in the long run. Mind your own business, even if you’re sure you could raise him “better.”

1. The general community determination of what constitutes unacceptable behavior;

2. The specific determination in a single case of whether that law has been violated.

This is nothing more than the basics of law. The community sets its standards of values and codifies those values in laws; and then applies those laws in specific cases. What we’re concerned with here is not any particular case but the general question of where the community should draw the line. The point of contention is that I am arguing a general case that the community can rightly set ANY standard it chooses, so long as a large majority of the community agrees with that standard. If 99% of the people think that it’s a crime to wear a wig, then who are you to gainsay them? What evidence can you provide that they are wrong — other than your own opinion? Ultimately all values boil down to community-wide standards.

Now, the good news is that communities tend to be diverse and broad agreement is obtained on only the most fundamental points. The fact is, we’re NEVER going to see 99% of the community agreeing on outlawing wigs. But the principle remains sound. Philosophically, you simply have no basis for claiming that any one ethical principle is objectively correct. In the end, when it comes down to the task of making society work, these decisions are made by large majorities. Remember, every single right that we consider fundamental can be taken away with a 2/3 vote — and we really don’t have to worry about the Bill of Rights being thrown out (at least, not explicitly thrown out).

So what I’m arguing is really more of an observation of the way things really work. I assure you, if we ever got 90% of the public to agree on something, it would be trivial to get it written into the Constitution.

Now, I agree that basic sex education does not enjoy the support of 90% of the population. Indeed, I suspect that the support it enjoys falls well short of my minimum of 70%. However, the level of support has been slowly rising over the decades and there’s no question in my mind that it will someday cross that line. I expect that sex education will become near-universal well before that happens.

In following Akston’s sensible lead, let’s concentrate on what we can agree upon, and leave off pursuit of the more difficult task for the moment.

We just did.

If you have conclusive, undisputed evidence that the actions of the parent are causing serious harm to the child, the state can intervene. If, however, there’s even the slightest doubt amongst the community about whether the parents actions are harmful (for example, the mental equivalent of a spanking), forget it.

The parent cannot do her job without having the clear benefit of the doubt.

If you can meet that standard with regards to “basic sex education” (however you define it), more power to you. I don’t like your chances though, because there are still some very prudish segments of society.

Thus, we’d end up with a trial in which the crucial evidence would be testimony from a psychologist to the effect that he had applied the standard test for the condition to the subject and obtained conclusive positive results.

OK, I’m going to assume that everybody will agree that in such a clear-cut case, it is appropriate for the state to intervene. This is still far from the case I’m arguing. The gap between this case and my position lies in the application of community values. We can all agree that autism is an unacceptable malady to visit upon a child. However, there are degrees of autism and in fact the mildest forms of autism do not prevent the child from growing into a happy, healthy adult. So even here, dat ol’ debbil “community values” still arises to curse our deliberations. How much autism is acceptable?

And we’re still not even close to the case I’m championing, the requirement of basic sex education. In following Akston’s sensible lead, let’s concentrate on what we can agree upon, and leave off pursuit of the more difficult task for the moment.

If you can conclusively (and I mean conclusively) demonstrate mental abuse, the state should be able to step in in an appropriate fashion, just like it does with physical abuse.

But that’s a high burden to meet and the whole teen birth control/pregnancy thing that started this conversation would not meet it.

Now, there are plenty of psychological tests that are used reliably to assess the mental health of a child. They can’t tell the difference between a healthy child and a super-healthy child, but they can identify a psychologically abused child. Such children can become autistic, and autism is a measureable malady. No physical abuse is necessary to mentally injure a child in this manner — it can be done simply by ignoring the child.

Thus, your position requires you to assert that a parent has every right to produce an autistic child, a person who is mentally handicapped and will never be able to function independently in society — even when such an outcome could be averted by taking the child from the parent and allowing it to be brought up by loving alloparents.

I suggest that you are allowing ideology to outweigh simple human decency. I support a lot of libertarian ideals, but I do not sacrifice my basic sense of decency on the altar of libertarianism.

It looks like we just disagree here. The line I draw for where an external group can override parents’ guardianship of their own children is set on demonstrable abuse. I use Maslow’s first two levels as my own general guide (for anyone still reading this thread and not familiar with them, see this link). These are areas which can be seen and measured physically. When I step beyond these issues, I can only attempt to evaluate the mental state of the child, using my standards, not his or his parents’. Perhaps the line grays a bit in cases of massive psychological dysfunction which causes physical damage or imminent danger to the child, but the general line remains in the physical realm. Maslow’s third, fourth, and fifth levels are far too subjective for me to support that kind of intrusion.

As I already wrote, I would support investigation and prosecution of the parties responsible for the sexual contact and impregnation of the minors involved – whether the father is a legal adult himself, or the father’s guardian (if he’s a minor).

As you predict, while I completely disagree with parents who ignore their children, I would never support legislation against it. There are of host of parental behaviors I don’t support. But that is a very different list than the behaviors I would seek to have criminalized.

You have not specified where you would place your line, but you’ve implied it’s somewhat more than physical well-being and safety and somewhat less than banning homosexuality. Being a libertarian, I accept whatever line you choose to draw for what you personally find acceptable, if you draw one.

Some people will always choose to draw their line far higher in the hierarchy. Some of those will want the government to enforce their conclusions. They’ll want the right to teach other people’s children “majority values” of sexual intimacy, peer choices, self-image, morality, patriotism, or religion (all the issues at those top levels). The further we move along a path like this, the more Orwellian our society becomes, and the more passionately I would oppose those efforts.

You draw a line at physical health and safety, citing that as an objective line. Whatever makes that an objective line? What law of physics dictates that the line be drawn there? The truth is, we agree on that line because it enjoys the agreement of the great majority of the American public. It has no cultural history to justify it — Roman fathers had the right to kill newborns. It’s solely a matter of majority rule. There is certainly a minority that disagrees with drawing the line there, believing that disciplinary actions that stray into what the rest of us call abuse are justified. But we overrule that minority — not very libertarian of us, is it?

So let’s dispense with the artifice that the line you draw has some sort of objective justification. It’s solely a matter of majority rule. The real question is, how much agreement do we need to declare something illegal? 99%? 90%? 80%? I have already stated that I put the line somewhere between 70% and 90%. Does anybody else care to offer a number?

Let’s remember that this is distinct from normal libertarian considerations (I just know that some idiot will argue that, if 90% of the public disapprove of homosexuality, does that make it right for them to criminalize it). We’re not talking about the right of the parent to do what he pleases with himmself. We’re talking about the parent doing something to somebody else: the child. The child is not the property of the parent. The parent’s right to do whatever he wishes does not permit him to do whatever he wishes to another person — including the child.

We must also be mindful of another complication: the affirmative responsibility of the parent to actively raise the child. Suppose that we have a case of a parent who feeds, clothes, houses, and provides all necessary care to the child but otherwise ignores it. The parent doesn’t abuse the child, the parent simply ignores it. You guys seem to feel that this is acceptable. I don’t. I think that a child has a right to a level of care established by the community.