Topic: Corporal Punishment (Re: Our response to Dmytri Kleiner's misunderstanding of money - page 24. (Read 24725 times)

We are getting to deep into moral relativity waters and the interwebs are simply not made for this type of discourse. I'm not going to try and prove you wrong. I respect your opinion, though in a potentially pompous way, I find it sad.

I bet you consider this to be a rational perspective, perhaps even an argument.

I consider it to be the seed of the tyrannical state.  What you are saying here is, "if I were king, you would be locked up or have your children removed from your home because I disagree with your parenting methods and consider you a bad parent."

Care to grow a bit, and approach this topic from an adult viewpoint?

Slavoj Žižek explains it well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjEtmZZvGZA#t=1m45s

That would be a fine admission in other circumstances. If you can't be consistent then what you are asserting can't be true, which moves it into the category of opinions. This would be fine, except that you presume to impose your opinion on other people.
I'm not a Libertarian and I do not accept those premises as axioms.

...it falls onto you, the adult, to be the responsible one and make sure that the child develops in an environment where these calamities are not possible, to the extent that is humanly possible and any reasonable person would or could have guessed that a calamity could take place.  Letting your child run through a busy street, letting your child crawl onto a breakable deadly thing, those are miserable failures on your part as a parent.  This should not happen to you, and I feel sorry for your child if he lives in an environment where these deadly calamities might happen.

Frankly, it baffles me that adults would ask me these questions about child-rearing.  I don't know if they're playing dumb or just are dumb.  "But how will I prevent my child from putting metal things in power sockets, if I cannot terrorize him with physical violence?"  Ummmm, if you're asking this question, either you're not qualified to be a parent because you can't Google elementary things about child safety, or you're not qualified to be a parent because you're looking for shitty reasons to beat your child up.


Translation from "everything the child needed to know": I better act differently because otherwise this big giant who could murder me will inflict pain and terror on me.

Is it any wonder that statism is rampant these days?


At the risk of playing Captain Obvious here:

That which you are doing to your kid, when you brutalize him and terrorize him when he disobeys you, is exactly what the State does to you when you disobey the State.

If you can't see it, it's because you were abused enough times and with enough intensity to come to the conclusion that said abuse is "normal".

I can't, that's the point.  Neither can you.  Believe it or not, we share a (general) philosophy; but it's an incomplete one.  Libertarianism (and all of it's variants) are based upon two central principles.

1) Property rights are paramount, are necessary for the functioning of a free society, are the roots of economic success, as well as the roots of all human rights because....

2) I own myself.

But why do I own myself?  Because I'm a rational, thinking adult; and therefore capable of understanding my rights & property, I'm capable of expressing those rights and demanding them from others, and responsible enough to respect those same rights in other people.

But children before a certain age cannot do these things.  So who owns them?  The question is not academic, and it's not one easily solved or ignored.  Literally speaking, it's easy enough to say that they own themselves even before they can assert that, but then who represents them until then?  This rabbit hole is deep.  If they own themselves as infants, and their parents hold their rights in escrow, who owns them before birth?  It's getting dark down here, isn't it?

I wouldn't consider it subjective, but you are free to ignore me all you like.  Still, I've made a claim that I can actually argue, although I haven't really tried yet.  You're the kind of person who makes a statement like it's obvious and anyone who disagrees must be Holocaust Denier material, and then you scutter off with your moral certitude.

If I am really wrong, wouldn't you have a moral obligation to, at a minimum, attempt to correct me?

There's no need to rebut a contradiction.


So do you really own them, in every philosophical sense, or do you not really own them?

Pick one and be consistent.

How 'bout this one, the religious argument....

All children belong to God, and as the parent, I've been appointed by God to care for His property until they are of age.  So, while I cannot deliberately bring them (unjustifiable) harm, I must answer only to their true owner, God.  In His absence, I am the final arbitor of what is in the best interests of my own children.  Neither you guys, as individuals outside of my own family, nor society at large, has any authority over myself or my management of God's children in my care.  You literally have no 'standing' to interfere; not under your own philosophies or any other (except collectivism, but I hope that one is beyond consideration here, because I'd have a field day with anyone who is going to claim that my children belong to "the state" or "society").  This is because, while I don't own my children, I have a (supportable) claim to represent Him in this matter, while you do not.

The end result is exactly the same as if I used the (partial/economic) ownership-of-children theory, as is expressed well enough in The Diamond Age; or if I used the individual-rights-in-escrow theory expressed by a great many Libertarian philosophers in many different ways.  I, not you, gets to decide what is in the best interests of my own children.  Nor would I get to decide what is in the best interests of your children, once you have some.  I've personally seen (quite literally) dozens of young people express these same kind of ideological sentiments, only to toss it all out the window once their first child enters the "terrible twos" (which is really the terrible threes)

What you might consider emotionally terrifying or to be (unjustifiable) physical harm is entirely irrelevant.

There is nothing to rebut, you gave your opinion of what your kids are to you. I find that sad as hell as that's not what mine are to me, but it's an entirely subjective matter. I could offer my opinion of what mine are to me, but somehow I don't think you are terribly interested in that.

I wish they were as articulate as you seem to think that they are.  I've seen the documents that they are regurgitating, and they aren't even doing a partcularly good job of that.

Maybe I am trolling a bit, maybe not.  Find the flaws in my reasoning, and debate or admit that you don't have a rebuttal.

That's a good question, care to expound upon it, or are you going to accept my statements as gospel?

Thank you Rudd-o and Abels, you guys are incredible. Love you to the core , wish I were so articulate!

This is either the saddest thing I've read in a long time or the global moderator of this forum is trolling.