"Imagine you cannot raise your own child without special permission from the state. In this matrix, getting permission means getting a license. And getting a license means the state performs psychological evaluations and background checks and passes judgment on your fitness to be a parent." The above is an excerpt from my Federalist essay today: "Licensing Parents: A Statist Idea in Libertarian Drag." In it I focus on an article I read recently, entitled "Licensing Parents," which was written by an academic named Andrew Cohen and appeared on a website that claims to be libertarian and run by several pretty well established academics whose slogan is "free markets and social justice." Though it ran a couple of years ago, I thought it noteworthy to see the whole concept of children as state property dressed up as a libertarian idea. My article today did not discuss a piece on the same topic which ran last month in Wired: "It's Time to Reconsider Restricting Human Breeding," by Zoltan Istvan. I hope to get to that later. I expect to see more of a drumbeat on the idea of licensing parents as the government takes over more and more functions of the family. (The best friends these programs have may be folks who claim to be for limited government.) Along with those policies comes a watering down -- and basically a takeover -- of all of our personal relationships by the State. Naturally, it starts with the takeover of the family. We can no longer write off such ideas as "wacky" since we live in an era of particularly implausible and wacky government policies now coming to fruition. So please read, digest, and fight on.
"Imagine you cannot raise your own child without special permission from the state. In this matrix, getting permission means getting a license. And getting a license means the state performs psychological evaluations and background checks and passes judgment on your fitness to be a parent." The above is an excerpt from my Federalist essay today: "Licensing Parents: A Statist Idea in Libertarian Drag." In it I focus on an article I read recently, entitled "Licensing Parents," which was written by an academic named Andrew Cohen and appeared on a website that claims to be libertarian and run by several pretty well established academics whose slogan is "free markets and social justice." Though it ran a couple of years ago, I thought it noteworthy to see the whole concept of children as state property dressed up as a libertarian idea. My article today did not discuss a piece on the same topic which ran last month in Wired: "It's Time to Reconsider Restricting Human Breeding," by Zoltan Istvan. I hope to get to that later. I expect to see more of a drumbeat on the idea of licensing parents as the government takes over more and more functions of the family. (The best friends these programs have may be folks who claim to be for limited government.) Along with those policies comes a watering down -- and basically a takeover -- of all of our personal relationships by the State. Naturally, it starts with the takeover of the family. We can no longer write off such ideas as "wacky" since we live in an era of particularly implausible and wacky government policies now coming to fruition. So please read, digest, and fight on.
"Imagine you cannot raise your own child without special permission from the state. In this matrix, getting permission means getting a license. And getting a license means the state performs psychological evaluations and background checks and passes judgment on your fitness to be a parent." The above is an excerpt from my Federalist essay today: "Licensing Parents: A Statist Idea in Libertarian Drag." In it I focus on an article I read recently, entitled "Licensing Parents," which was written by an academic named Andrew Cohen and appeared on a website that claims to be libertarian and run by several pretty well established academics whose slogan is "free markets and social justice." Though it ran a couple of years ago, I thought it noteworthy to see the whole concept of children as state property dressed up as a libertarian idea. My article today did not discuss a piece on the same topic which ran last month in Wired: "It's Time to Reconsider Restricting Human Breeding," by Zoltan Istvan. I hope to get to that later. I expect to see more of a drumbeat on the idea of licensing parents as the government takes over more and more functions of the family. (The best friends these programs have may be folks who claim to be for limited government.) Along with those policies comes a watering down -- and basically a takeover -- of all of our personal relationships by the State. Naturally, it starts with the takeover of the family. We can no longer write off such ideas as "wacky" since we live in an era of particularly implausible and wacky government policies now coming to fruition. So please read, digest, and fight on.
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