Machan's Musings - What About the Children?
by Tibor R. Machan
Those who prize a free society, one where government concerns itself with protecting individual rights, keeping the peace and fending off attacks from enemies, have one very tough problem to overcome. This is the fact that millions of people who have no business doing so keep having children.
In a truly free society persons may not be prevented from acting freely unless they have committed crimes against others. Prospective parents who fit this description are, therefore, quite free to engage in sexual unions, and these unions often bring children into the world. But many such prospective parents cannot afford having children, and quite a few proceed to rely on the government to provide the children with their basic necessities, including day care, education, and medical services. (Others will forgo their own proper development in life because they realize what awesome responsibilities they have assumed.) When the children depend on the state, withdrawing the government-provided services does not deprive parents, but rather their children, of what they need to flourish in life. And children have nothing to do with getting themselves into this kind of fix, since they rely on others to furnish them with what they need to live.
Accordingly, when champions of individual liberty advocate cutting government's size and scope, they are faced with a very serious obstacle. This is the understandable concern we all have for the innocent children who have been brought into this world by irresponsible parents. It is difficult to accept policies that would lead to children having to suffer, even if those who had the children brought this about.
How can this problem be faced in a way that does not put innocent children at grave risk?
Of course, in a free society there would be many institutions ready to take up the task of caring for kids and others who are helpless without support from others. Even in a welfare state, there are hundreds of such institutions, so if government did not offer the help it takes from others who aren't responsible for these individuals there would most likely be even more such institutions. But there cannot be any guarantee that every child would be taken care of. Indeed, not every child is taken care of even when they become wards of the state. But when government, which has the use of force at its disposal to transfer resources to those who need and want them, isn't available, it looks as if demanding that it refrain from making such transfers amounts to cruelty.
Never mind that it is cruel enough to demand, by the force of law of responsible taxpayers (who have kids only when they are willing and able to care for them) to fend for kids they did not produce. But it is also undeniable that most folks who aren't loyal to the ideals of liberty believe that helpless children and other incompetents ought not be left on their own. And they are willing to enlist the force of government to do what they should be doing if they are sincere in their concern for such children and others, namely, provide them with help out of their own pockets.
In light of this, some would just abandon the ideals of a truly free society. They would accept at least the level of government expansion and expense, apart from its rights-protective mission, required to save the kids.
But with this concession to expanded government the floodgates are opened for sure. There is no end of people who would use that precedent to then lobby for government support of transfers to what they deem to be vital projects—as, indeed, they do in the welfare state all the time. How else do we explain that tobacco farmers, failing car companies, airlines without passengers and thousands of other clients march to Washington and other centers of government to demand they, too, be provided with funds taken from taxpayers who haven't been guilty of producing their losses? It is because once some segment of society, even if it is just helpless kids, gets government aid, everyone starts thinking, "Hey, there's stuff there for us, if we get there fast enough via our representatives in Congress."
My reason for raising this problem isn't to join up with those who will give up on the ideal of a truly free society because some problem seems intractable. I doubt, seriously, that the welfare state really does solve the problem even here, given how many kids go unattended and are merely cared for in perfunctory ways.
Rather, I want to point out that there will always be something that a good theory does not fully address. There will always be something we will need new thinking to solve. The task of interpreting essential sound principles to cover problems is never-ending.
In this case, too, there are suggested solutions in need of serious consideration so as to save freedom from those who would toss it aside at the slightest provocation. Adoptions, for example, could be made far easier, and that would probably hold out a great deal of hope for the helpless kids, hope that is now barred because of the red tape and tedious obstacles to adopting kids. And there are probably other options, not yet thought of, that would emerge, were we to insist that liberty may not be breached even in heart-wrenching circumstances.
Still, here is a matter that needs a solution that can also be made to fly with the general public; otherwise, we are left with a powerful excuse and great pressure to give up on liberty.
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