The eminently reasonable Jason Kuznicki weighs in:
[B]eing troubled by both the state and the FLDS does not make one any less a radical for individualism. It’s perfectly conceivable that giving more control to either one means that individualism loses. Highly controlling environments like the FLDS may indeed approach the status of a government, Howley argues, and I’m certainly prepared to think of them this way. But then, there’s an actual government on the scene, too, and it’s worth worrying about that as well.
I’ve also long thought that libertarianism is the most humane way to view adults in society, but that it breaks down when applied to children. This need not be a problem with libertarianism in itself, but only an admission that all great explanatory models have their limits. One simply can’t presume that a child has the autonomy or independent decisionmaking skills necessary to act as an agent of her own self-interest. This is what libertarianism demands of adults, and I believe that virtually all adults can do it, even if many adults aren’t willing to, and even if many others are convinced that they can run other people’s lives just a little bit better. The adults who want to run things they shouldn’t are the more profound or radical challenges to libertarianism; for libertarians, deciding the status of children will always be at best a question of where to draw the borders, not a challenge to the fundamentals.
I don’t have much of a problem, then, in saying that children have a limited set of positive rights — that is, of social obligations that adults need to provide to them, for a limited time, until they reach adulthood. A newborn baby can’t feed itself, after all, and from that point forward children in some sense must have positive rights, otherwise we would simply be bringing them into the world to let them die — an absurdity.
Here’s an AP article on some discarded boys in Utah:
Former members describe a religion that thrives on domination. Every detail of their life was scripted—from plural marriages to what they could wear, who they could associate with and what job they could have. In the last 4 1/2 years, more than 400 teenage boys have been excommunicated, many for seemingly minor infractions such as watching a movie or talking to a girl.
“You’re taught that everyone out here is corrupt and evil,” Steed said. “You have no idea how life works, no idea how to survive in modern society.” They are, after all, only teens, but now they are on their own.
Many are highly skilled in construction, a main job in the creek. But all this support from outsiders is confusing. The boys say FLDS members and even their own families often turned on them, so it was easier to distrust everyone.
“In a way, it scares us,” said Raymond Hardy, 19. “I’m not used to it.” Ream wants to know what the catch is. “There’s always a catch. Why are they doing this?”
Robert R. Butterworth, a Los Angeles psychologist who specializes in child trauma, said the boys likely would feel safe bonding with each other for a while, but would struggle with creating their own boundaries.
“Now they’re in a society where there are no controls at all,” he said. “They have to develop their own inner ability to say noÉ. In a sense, they’re handicapped.”
If a couple of parents raise a nutritionally deprived, stunted kid, we’re shocked, outraged, disgusted. Why does that sentiment not carry over to psychological development?
[...] Howley responds, reminding readers of the other side of intensively polygynous marriage — the discarded boys. [...]
Isn’t that just a synecdoche for modernity in general? The transition from rigid, community-centric social structures with arbitrary rules and gross punishments to an as-yet-amorphous individualist social semi-anarchy is what we’ve all been going through. For me, while I’m not facing anywhere near the social cliff face that these boys are facing, I am still experiencing the need to develop new moral structures with the well-deserved collapse of the ones with which I was brought up.
It is also a stark, if anachronistic, example of the social forces explored in Roy Baumeister’s “Is There Anything Good About Men?”.
“If a couple of parents raise a nutritionally deprived, stunted kid, we’re shocked, outraged, disgusted. Why does that sentiment not carry over to psychological development?””
When you say “shocked, outraged, disgusted” you mean that even anti-government folks that are willing to support government intervention, whereas in the area of psychological development not as much, right?
I think there is a considerable non-libertarian consensus on thinking that the psychological trauma of being raised by fanatics, etc is grounds for government intervention.
In practice government intervention in the area of psychological development of children is extremely common, and I would suggest that guidance counselors and government social workers are highly beneficial to society.
I need some government intervention—or—to meet a girl who will “help me find the answers” as Ma Bailey said.
…to help you find out what your “special purpose” is for?