Individual Rights v. Society

It's one of the oldest questions of human cultures, right? Where exactly do we draw the line between the individual's rights and the needs of society. In Civilization and Its Discontents, Freud basically argues that when humans established civil society -- a set of rules that more or less ensure basic safety (e.g. despite crime rates, it's reasonable to assume we won't be murdered, robbed, burgled, assaulted, etc., on a regular basis), we gave up complete freedom; which in Freud's lingo means we restrained the Id, and since the Id is pretty much insistent on getting its way, we have to come up with means of repression, displacement, transference, and projection to deal with the difference between Id's desire and these rules.

In the United States, we tend to like simple sayings like, "That government is best which governs least," as Thoreau would have it, and we are highly suspicious of government's reach into so-called private aspects of life, such as the family, religion, and lifestyles. Elegant sayings, however, rarely stand on their own, but rather collapse under the weight of several often conflicting interpretations.

We have often ascribed to the family a certain amount of latitude in terms of child-raising. For instance, nowhere is it decreed by the state that a child should eat three square meals a day, watch only one hour of television per day, or attend a public school. In fact, the family is the frontier of the individual v. the state, because while the individual confronts the state alone, the family confronts the state with a subset that has its own hierarchy. For instance, within the traditional family, the father is the head of the household and more or less sets the rules of conduct within that family. Parents often respond strongly and angrily to another adult -- let alone a representative of the state -- interfering with their behavior toward their own children.

Of course, this openness has its limits, as one man in Florida recently found out. Apparently your neighbors and the State frown upon such "disciplining" as this man was doling out to his 9 year old son:

During the past three years, the boy has not attended school, received medical attention or had contact with people outside his family, Smith said. The police report said he was home schooled but could not read children's books.

The state Department of Children & Families took the boy from the home, sheriff's spokesman Ken Jefferson said.

Relatives told police that the boy was usually allowed to use the bathroom once a day because his father was teaching him to control his body.

It's stories like these that remind me that while you need a license to drive, a license to get married, a license to hunt, and a license to own a dog, you don't need any sort of certification whatsoever to prove your fitness to procreate. And really I don't see any way around that...can you imagine the government doling out licenses to have children? It'd be like Gattaca except without the stylish cinematography.

However, it's sickening to watch losers like Mr. Piercy fall back on the old saw that he was actually protecting his child:

As officers walked him into jail, he said he was wrongly accused and was the victim of a vendetta by his in-laws. He told police he kept the child in the room because he "believed it was in the best interest of the child," Smith said.

Nowhere is it in the best interest of any child to be turned into some sicko's fantasy of a Skinner Box. His wife, who has to be just as fucked up as this psychopath, agrees that it for the boy's protection, and is apparently so shitheaded that she thinks it's normal or even acceptable operating procedure to have your husband restrict access to your own child: "her husband only let her see the boy at certain times and usually for an hour a day."

Lady, you are just as lost as your husband.

My solution is that both of them spend the rest of their lives in a new penal colony that I'd like the United States to set up. I'll call it "Florida," and to make everything more convenient, the Piercy's wouldn't even have to relocate: like most sex offenders and child abusers, they already live there.