We shouldn’t have to insist that our personal, romantic, and family relations be absolutely free of violence and coercion. We expect freedom in our relationships, but how we relate to the relationships of others is an entirely different matter. While many people want to help others have more fulfilling relationships, some simply want to exercise control over others and impose their values. This is where governments come in with their laws and their coercion. Because every law is backed up by the threat of force, every law aimed at controlling personal relationships is guaranteed to reduce their quality.
When people are insecure about their sexuality or ability to reproduce, that insecurity is projected in attempts to control the private relationships of others, but the real threat is their own insecurity. All societies have developed norms of sexual behavior over time to ensure procreation, but imposing them by force is guaranteed to reduce satisfaction. While such laws may encourage (or in some places discourage) procreation, they do so at the cost of quality parenting. People who receive financial incentives for having children will be less enthusiastic about parenting than those doing it for the intrinsic satisfaction.
Laws attempting to control sexual behavior are backed by the threat of violently invading someone’s bedroom. If people are involved in a relationship or exchange of physical pleasure in which both consent to what is happening, it is a crime to interfere with their relationship. Such laws are generally unenforceable anyway. They serve greater purposes than their absurd stated objectives by allowing governments to set the standard of sexual behavior and by giving them another weapon to use against deviants.
As many people understand it, marriage is a lifelong commitment between individuals based on a sacred vow. Before governments got into the marriage racket, the nature of these commitments was determined solely by the individuals involved and the religious or community institutions they made part of their commitment. In many places, the control of “marriage licensing” allows governments to control who can get married. The marriage racket also means governments control divorce, which would be bad enough without giving people the chance to seek decrees from judges backed by force. This is particularly disastrous when it comes to the effects on children, especially because they grow up thinking that when they have disputes, they should be settled by coercion.
When relationships turn violent, whether between spouses, parents and children, or any family members, intervention by force may be justified to protect those unable to protect themselves or remove themselves from a dangerous situation. However, trusting this noble purpose to government usually backfires. It forces people into unhealthy relationships and creates false incentives. In some governments, great bureaucracies are dedicated to managing family relationships. Even the decrees of bureaucrats are backed up by force, leading to predictable consequences that governments use as an excuse for more government. If a society accepts that a coercive monopoly is an acceptable way to manage personal relationships, it will fall into a spiral, that if unchecked, guarantees the destruction of healthy relationships. When we demand to peacefully coexist with those we love, and peacefully walk away from those we don’t, our most sacred relationships will be much more satisfying.
Believe it or not, children are people too. Even before birth, we are all capable of expressing our will and deserve to have it respected without forceful interference. Parents make up all kinds of excuses to make their job easier, but the most destructive are those that deny children these fundamental rights and claim children as the property of parents. A child is a person, not a piece of property. When a child is respected as a person, it is no longer acceptable to strike a child or violate their rights in any way. In no way does this diminish the extreme responsibility parents take on as guardians of those who are not yet capable of meeting their own needs for safety and security. Treating children like property might make a parent’s job easier temporarily, but it stunts their psychological development and conditions them to be treated like property by other authority figures, which is exactly why governments encourage this behavior.
Most governments create a legal framework around the idea that children are the property of their parents or at least are not fully people until they attain an arbitrary age or legal status. This reinforces the idea that rights are merely privileges to be given or taken away by an authority. While parents take on a certain responsibility as caregiver, they have no right to deny the will of a child to the extent it is properly expressed. Parents are not justified in using government to help them enforce their false ownership of a child. Children know when they are being treated like property and tend to resist it. The best parents are those who raise their children with an understanding of the great responsibility of parenthood and establish relationships based on understanding and respect, rather than the threat of force.
Most parents have a genuine desire to ensure their children are educated, but the government takeover of the education industry has led to a sense of helplessness among parents. In their eagerness to meet social standards of education, they are generally happy to turn their children over to government. Because children are people, they have the right to choose the course of their own education, not just from some arbitrary age, but from the moment they are capable of expressing a preference. This ensures the optimal engagement of a child’s mind, which is constantly seeking to observe, learn, and develop the skills essential to providing for its own happiness.
As we are all empowered by the wisdom accumulated through the ages, children are especially empowered. This is particularly true as technology makes information accessible at younger ages every day, and parents attempting to control their children are no longer capable of doing so by keeping knowledge from them. While people in general are smarter than they have ever been, children are even more so, and society will adjust and be happier for it. As they demand their rights of personhood, children will get them, and the sooner they do, the happier we all will be.
III. The Evolution of Parenting
When we create another life, we take on a special relationship with that individual as a parent. The same is true when we adopt a young person and take on the responsibility of a parent. As with any relationship, it is up to us to decide the terms. It is critical to respect that we do not get to decide the terms for others and we do not get to impose our standards. The most important thing you can do as a parent is ensure that your relationship with your child respects their personhood. As we better understand parenting, we can eliminate the use of force as a tempting, but counterproductive, technique to influence our children’s behavior. But truly respecting and nurturing a fellow human means much more than not spanking them.
As we become more efficient, we free up more time and energy for better parenting. If the moral argument was not compelling enough, science has clearly demonstrated that hitting children interferes with the healthy growth of their brains. Using violence against children teaches them that violence is an acceptable way to settle disputes and influence others. When a parent hits a child, they often forget the physical nature of the relationship from the child’s perspective and just how intimidating they can be. This also warps a child’s view of authority. The use of violent language, yelling, and anger can have the same effect and teach children the same destructive habits.
Parents should use reason and logic to influence the decisions of their children and use force only when immediately required for safety. This is the same standard by which we would like to be treated as adults. Communicating needs and requests is more effective than making demands and threatening consequences. Sometimes this requires patience, but a little patience to inform and educate early on will save parents from dealing with irrational behavior later. When parents say, “because I say so,” they are conditioning their children to submit to authority and missing the most powerful opportunity to teach by example. This principle should be applied more broadly to our attitude towards our children’s education. Parents should facilitate natural learning, not force their children into indoctrination centers. Only by teaching our children with reason and logic can we expect them to be able to think for themselves.
While you have no obligation to use your body to bring an unborn child into the world or to nurture a child, parents enjoy the privilege of defining a sacred relationship. If you define it as one of ownership and domination, you will raise a child who will contribute slavery and servitude. Effective parenting will break the cycle of violence, and each generation will be much more loving and capable than its predecessor because we naturally strive to be better parents.
To anyone who understands bullying, it is ironic to see government schools trying to tell children that bullying is unacceptable. What they are really saying is that bullying is only acceptable when done by government. Children are too smart to miss the hypocrisy. Governments depend on controlling language. Words are redefined or vaguely defined to serve their needs. Any time we introduce a specific definition of bullying, it reveals that government is the biggest bully of all.
To bully someone is to try to affect their attitude or behavior through intimidation or threat. This implies the use of some superior force. By definition, there is no organization of force superior to government. Every law it passes is backed by the threat of force. Predictably, government bullying is not restricted to its “official” and stated purposes. Because they create arbitrary authority, governments encourage bullying by individuals who can use authority against people, like police, bureaucrats, and politicians.
Children are great at learning by example. The bullies on the playground are most often the children of parents who bully them. Telling children that government is good conditions them to be bullies. When we vote for politicians (who at best, manage institutional bullying, and at worst, are horrific bullies themselves) but tell our children not to bully, we send a clear message: “Do as I say, not as I do.” Not only does this insult the intelligence of our children, it doesn’t work. They learn that if it’s fine for government to be a bully, it’s fine for them to be bullies.
This creates a general culture of bullying in which relationships are tainted by coercion and intimidation. It is easily identified when it takes a physical form, but the emotional forms are just as destructive. People who bully emotionally are sure to have far less satisfying relationships than those who relate to others with respect. A society dominated by institutional bullying and hypocrisy will surely produce more bullies.
Besides the problems of racism itself, there is a problem in the way the term is used to describe different things at different times and how it is used to stifle open conversation. We all judge each other and make decisions based on limited information. We develop groups and categories to more quickly evaluate people and decide how to interact with them. It would be an absurd denial of reality to say that racial differences don’t matter, even though there are universal features of the human experience we all share. There is nothing wrong with acknowledging racial differences, celebrating them, making objective comparisons, or even making fun of those differences. Some would say that none of these cross the line into “racism,” but vague definitions often lead to suppression of open discussion in the name of political correctness and deceptive political action.
When racism is used to single people out based on our judgement of their groups rather than judging them as individuals, it is detrimental. We have the right to choose our associations for whatever reasons we like, but judging an individual as a member of a collective as superficial as race keeps us from enjoying the full potential of our relationships. Unfortunately, simply expressing preference is not enough for some people, so they look for ways to impose their judgements on others, whether positive or negative. This is where governments step in to take advantage of “racism.”
Using any judgement about a person to justify an act of force against them is wrong. Racism happens to be a very common justification and one of the most vile because it denies people their individuality in the mind of the racist who sees them only as a member of a collective. Our tendency to evaluate people by race provides governments with another opportunity. All we need to do is look at a map of the world to see that the forced collectives formed by governments generally reflect racial groups. What is not so obvious is how governments stoke racism through nationalism.
Historically, racism has been used as motivation for the most catastrophic violent atrocities. All racial judgements are subjective evaluations, but when a judgement of superiority is combined with a government’s belief that it owns everyone in its territory and can engineer society by violence, mass murder is often the result. Whether done by governments or individuals acting on their own, to steal from, assault, or kill someone is to govern them. Widespread violence by individuals or small groups motivated by racism are just as wrong as racist wars or purges, but much easier to deal with than when all of that racism is violently institutionalized in government.
Governments use racism as justification for all kinds of policies that further entrench the practice of evaluating people by race. Some governments do this with policies intended to reverse racism, which tend to have the same disastrous effects as welfare, but targeted to a specific race. The super rich especially appreciate racism because the artificial divides it creates are a convenient distraction from the genuine divides between the super rich and the rest of us. Governments use racism to keep us divided and conquered.