Down on the Compound
I agree with Kerry in being a bit perplexed by what seems to me unreflective anti-gubmint reactions of libertarians to the FLDS imbroglio. It seems clear enough to me that these kids are basically brainwashed, isolated, and made dependent in a way that makes it all-but-impossible for them to freely choose this way of life or ever to have the capacity to exercise their liberty in a meaningful way. Individuation and the minimal conditions for self-government don’t develop all by themselves, but we each have legitimate moral and political claims against our parents for their development. The state should step in if parents violate their kids’ basic rights, because protecting rights are what states are for.
I understand the slippery slope argument here. But this is child abuse and evangelical homeschooling isn’t, and it’s important to be able articulate the difference. If you can’t figure out how to articulate the difference, then you don’t infer that child abuse is OK. You infer that evangelical home-schooling is child abuse, too — so you’d better be able to articulate the difference. If the government has overstepped its legal powers in this particular case, then they’ve overstepped their legal powers. But that might just mean that it needs to be easier for the state to protect children against brainwashing and rape. Apologizing for it doesn’t seem to me a coherently libertarian position.
The libertarian point is that the illegality and attendant marginalization of polygamy pushes it into isolated, authoritarian, quasi-state cult compounds where these kinds of crimes are most likely to take place.
April 28th, 2008 15:35
I’ve been thinking about this one a lot and I haven’t said much because the facts aren’t as clear as I’d like them to be. I’ll just make two general points:
1. Exit is important. To the degree these kids had no option to exit, I do think this poses a serious problem for libertarians in two ways. First, it challenges our notions of freedom in exactly the way you and Kerry indicate. Second, in the world of the state it would appear to be a legitimate use of the state to protect the rights of those kids (and perhaps the wives). But what about the anarchist world?
I wrote a paper as a senior in college called “Children and Choices in Nozick” that addressed exactly this sort of scenario. I think it’s a very hard case for anarchist libertarians, as I really do believe a severe lack of exit for children is a problem and it’s not clear what’s going to protect that right of exit other than the state. (Of course whether the state can itself protect it without going overboard is an equally good question.)
2. The line between “icky” and “rights violating” is SO very hard to draw sometimes. This might be one of them. I’m okay with polygamy by itself, assuming the parties to the practice were all of sufficient age/competence. Were it legal, would it lead to these sorts of bizarre cult-type organizations? Probably not - think about the parallel argument about drug legalization.
But here we are. My great fear about the “class action” rounding up of the kids is the precedent it sets. Without clearer discussion of exactly what the problem was in this case, it’s much easier to intervene in any family situation that we find “icky” without identifying exactly whose rights were violated and why.
For all the reasons classical liberals are familiar with (e.g., knowledge and incentives), I think the burden of proof rests squarely on the state when they go to intervene in families and that burden should be high and heavy. I really need to be persuaded that the situation being intervened in involves rights violations.
Abuse is the easy case. Neglect is harder. Raising kids to fear strangers and think their community is the only way to live is harder still.
I’m not yet persuaded in this case that the evidence is clear and convincing enough, but I certainly don’t find the idea of intervening to protect children in situations like this to be ipso facto anti-libertarian in a world where it is the state’s task to protect rights.
April 28th, 2008 15:39
It seems clear enough to me that these kids are basically brainwashed, isolated, and made dependent in a way that makes it all-but-impossible for them to freely choose this way of life or ever to have the capacity to exercise their liberty in a meaningful way.
Couldn’t they say the same of us? All of us are shaped by our environment, you just happen not to approve of theirs, as I’m sure they do not of ours. Read what Mona has to say in the thread I linked to just above, she seems to know what she’s talking about.
Also, if you haven’t heard yet, David Friedman has been documenting what a hoax the whole thing has been.
protecting rights are what states are for.
No. States do not originate for that purpose and if anything are more guilty of violating them than any other actor.
April 28th, 2008 15:39
My problem with the raid is that it was based on false tip.
http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/192350.php
April 28th, 2008 15:40
My last link should have gone to here.
April 28th, 2008 16:14
TGGP, Of course this sort of thing freaks DFR out, because, as Steve points out, the possibility of insular authoritarian brainwashing communities structured around child rape is a pretty drop-dead objection to the desirability of anarcho-capitalism.
I don’t know much about the procedural details of the case. Like I said, the state’s case may be screwed relative to the law. But I know enough about the practices of the community to think if they’re out of the reach of the law, well-applied, then that might well be a problem with the law failing to function with respect to the protection of children’s rights. They fall on the wrong side of the line, IMO. The argument ought to be where to put it, not whether to have one.
April 28th, 2008 16:28
Some libertarians have a strange attachment to due process and the rule of law, and as such look with great disfavor on the government kidnapping and abusing hundreds of children whose parents haven’t even been charged with a crime, let alone convicted.
April 28th, 2008 17:11
Children are a perennially hard case.
Almost everyone would agree that children shouldn’t be subjected to brainwashing and (resulting) rape.
But many libertarians are skeptical of how well the state does at protecting children from such harms. Generally, the parents are likely to take better account of the child’s interests than the state.
I’m sincerely curious as to what general principe we should apply to determine when the state is permitted to act in defense of children: Maybe a particularized showing of significant harm to specific children?
Perhaps such a standard would prevent a fair amount of the slide down the slippery slope, e.g. couldn’t be used to justify the institution of public schools.
In any event, such a standard doesn’t seem to have been applied in this case, which has resulted in infants being separated from nursing mothers and families being separated en mass.
I believe there is a role for the state in preventing child abuse, but based on my only casual following of the FLDS case, I am quite suspicious that the authorities have gone much farther than necessary in this case in part because this community was viewed as “icky.”
April 28th, 2008 17:34
I think it’s important here to separate two issues. The first is, assuming arguendo that the things we hear about this sect are true (eg, child rape, brainwashing), how ought they best to be dealt with? Second, since we cannot entrust the state with the discretion to declare what the sect has or hasn’t done to children, what constraints on the state’s responses should that uncertainty and/or respect for procedural rights impose?
My inclination is that the answer to the first question is that the state is doing a reasonable if slightly overzealous job; removing the kids from the compound makes sense, though denying their parents contact with them seems extreme.
The second question is where things get thorny, as I think most people would agree that the state should not be able to act all the way to the limits of its power until some sort of standard of proof has been met, procedural niceties observed, and whatnot — certainly more than has happened here, where a false tip and unsubstantiated claims seem to be the whole of the state’s case so far. This, it seems to me, is the unanswered question. As a previous commenter noted, there’s a distinct smell of Nozick to it.
April 28th, 2008 17:35
What Ken said.
Of course Will is going to just parrot whatever Kerry says on this one, for obvious reasons.
See what I did there? It was rude, blatant, unwarranted ad hominem and completely failed to address your substantive and respectable argument. So why is it okay for you to dismiss DDF just as glibly?
April 28th, 2008 18:09
For me the heart of the issue is what Ken is getting at. Children were taken away from their parents without due process simply because some in the “community” were suspected to have committed child abuse. Granted, this is a very self-selected community, but even assuming that child abuse did occur at the compound, it seems immoral (and unconstitutional) to take ALL of the kids from ALL of the parents based on the suspected wrongdoing of SOME of the parents. What’s the difference between this and arresting ALL the residents of an inner-city ghetto because SOME of the residents are selling and/or using drugs?
April 28th, 2008 18:56
I don’t see this is a philosophical challenge to the anarchy-inclined. If you think the compound’s behavior rises to the level of child-abuse, then you should think it is morally justifiable for anyone to use force to free the children, if they do it with care.
The interesting challenge is all practical: given the existence of places like this, how should we fight them? Even when violence is morally justifiable, it is often not prudent or effective.
April 28th, 2008 19:07
I won’t wade on the specifics of this case, but I have to add that I’ve seen plenty of discussions where “libertarians” consider children to be the property of their parents rather than rights-bearing people who deserve protection from coercion (including from their parents).
If they’re being abused (with a reasonable standard of abuse) they should be protected.
But, there should also be compensation for the victims and punishment of the perpetrators of unwarranted, excessive, police actions.
I suspect that this action was excessive. But, some aren’t.
April 28th, 2008 19:27
I’m skeptical of whether “brainwashing” is a meaningful concept.
In the state of Texas, children may marry as young as 16 (it was 14 not too long ago) if their parents give permission and once married statutory rape laws do not apply. I suppose that’s only relevant to a legal argument, which we may consider irrelevant.
One thing I find strange is how many people upset by the FLDS are also pro-choice, while a number more sympathetic to them are pro-life. I am radically pro-choice, and my positions on both issues mesh.
April 28th, 2008 19:54
Would the FLDS even be possible without AFDC?
Why aren’t libertarians more interested in the role of the welfare state in enabling polygyny - and not only in this case?
April 28th, 2008 20:03
Steve, Good point. I think the state plays a perverse double role in this. First, the state bans polygamy, pushing it into the margins of society, isolating the children in insular enclaves, largely gutting their ability to eventually exercise their right to exit. Next, the state SUBSIDIZES THE WHOLE THING with welfare checks! Then, the state notices the kids are mistreated and takes them away. I suspect the state wouldn’t need to step in if it hadn’t done so much to facilitate the existence of this community.
April 28th, 2008 20:08
TGGP, Don’t call it brainwashing if you don’t want. Thought experiment: Suppose I find an infant girl one day on my doorstep. I raise her in total social isolation in my basement where I feed her well, teach her to read, etc., and tell her about how I am God, and she must never leave the basement because the world is evil and only I can protect her. When she reaches the legal age of consent, I tell her she must let me have sex with her. She says OK. Is that informed consent? Or a very elaborate form of rape?
April 28th, 2008 20:44
Matt, Fair enough. But parroting Kerry is in fact a reliable epistemic strategy, because she is never wrong, which is easily verifiable through intuition.
Reading Friedman, I don’t actually find see any substantive defense of this FLDS community’s practice other than his pointing out that other religions also involve distributing teen girls to older men. So the point is: that aspect of those religions ought to be illegal too? OK!
He’s probably right that the case is bunk, legally, that the state is making some stuff up, etc. But I’m interested in the idea that kids have a right to develop their moral capacities, are denied them in these kinds of conditions, and so they really are not giving meaningful consent to participate in this way of life. It’s bad for all of them, but girls in particular are turned into baby-making machines without their ever becoming able to seriously considering an alternative life.
April 28th, 2008 21:32
Is that informed consent? Or a very elaborate form of rape?
If she gives consent it’s not rape. What makes consent “informed” seems an irresolvable question to me.
But I’m interested in the idea that kids have a right to develop their moral capacities
They are developing their capacities in a manner you do not approve of, as I’m sure they would not approve of how we develop ours.
meaningful consent
What is necessary to make consent meaningful? How would you prevent someone from denying that your consent is meaningful? The fact you aren’t weird by the standards of most people?
April 28th, 2008 21:49
TGGP:
What if you drugged her first? Would it still be consent? If not, what’s the distinction between one shot of Rohypnol and an extremely high, potent dose of Gerinol, distributed regularly for 18 years?
April 28th, 2008 21:52
TGGP,
The correct answer: An elaborate form of rape.
So if a teen is, say, nutritionally stunted, illiterate, and incapable performing rudimentary tasks, is that just a different way of developing capacities, or a way of not developing capacities?
You cannot prevent someone from denying something. But you can show that they are wrong to deny it by saying something intelligible about the conditions for meaningful consent and showing that they are met. I don’t even think it takes that much. If any of those teen brides had lived with “not weird” folks for a year and then come back, that would be evidence of meaningful consent. Having had an education that created the possibility for contextualizing and evaluating the decision, that would be evidence consent was meaningful. Etc. Why are you interested in making the obvious intelligibility of the idea of meaningful or informed consent less than obvious?
April 28th, 2008 23:42
Greg:
Most people would object to being drugged if they were asked, so it would be ethically questionable to drug them. 1-year olds would not object to being brainwashed, and they never object to the brainwashing/”abuse” at any point.
Will:
Who decides whether the education is valid (”it’s all true” is fine, but not all education is factual)?
April 29th, 2008 02:22
It seems to me that niggling over the meaning of “informed consent” and “moral capacities” is a bit obtuse. It’s laughable to assert that one can’t make normative judgments about human conditions (rape/violence/deprivation=bad) and it should therefore be easy to develop SOME objective, working definition of moral capacity.
If human conditions (being raped or enslaved) can possess normative values, then clearly any prior condition that prevents one from making cost-benefit decisions about those states is one that we can label “impaired”. The question seems to be “where does influence transition into abuse?” rather than “can we distinguish abuse and influence at all?”
Teaching my daughter that her ‘place is in the kitchen’ differs from locking her in the basement in that in the prior case my daughter is exposed to multiple sources of information (media etc) regarding her ‘place’. The clearest possible brightline (that I can think of) would be to insist that children not experience a monopolized flow of information.
Admittedly, this brightline seems impossible in practice- the potential for abuse by State bureaucracy is too high. It may be that a bit of child abuse now and then is the price of admission into a free society in the same way that the occasional KKK rally is the price of admission for Free Speech. This is sad, but considerably better than the alternatives.
April 29th, 2008 02:53
Greg N., I would consider the use of date-rape drugs to obtain sex to be rape. I don’t know what Gerinol and Rohypnol are.
So if a teen is, say, nutritionally stunted, illiterate, and incapable performing rudimentary tasks
I don’t know what would qualify as “rudimentary tasks”, but your description seems like it could fit most of humanity throughout most of history.
If any of those teen brides had lived with “not weird” folks for a year and then come back, that would be evidence of meaningful consent.
Do not-weird folks then need to spend a year with the weird?
Having had an education that created the possibility for contextualizing and evaluating the decision, that would be evidence consent was meaningful.
Most of humanity for most of history would have found our concept of “education” to be foreign. The dividing line between “education” and “brainwashing” if we are willing to accept the concept also seems vague.
Why are you interested in making the obvious intelligibility of the idea of meaningful or informed consent less than obvious?
I seek an objective standard that would not allow people in the FLDS or the like to deny my agency based on more than “I’m right and they’re wrong”, which is a basis that could of course be turned around on me.
I say it is not obvious. Here I stand, I can do no other
It’s laughable to assert that one can’t make normative judgments about human conditions (rape/violence/deprivation=bad) and it should therefore be easy to develop SOME objective, working definition of moral capacity.
I deny just that. I am an emotivist or non-cognitivist, and Will in his diavlog suspects he may be as well. You cannot derive ought from is, nor can we observe moral facts, so I claim there are no normative truths, only subjective opinions. I do have a negative opinion of those things you listed, but I consider them to merely be opinions.
If human conditions (being raped or enslaved) can possess normative values, then clearly any prior condition that prevents one from making cost-benefit decisions about those states is one that we can label “impaired”.
This boils down to “I’m right, they’re wrong, if being raised that way leads them to believe it such an upbringing is wrong”. The problem of course is that you had an upbringing with your beliefs as a result which is just as vulnerable to that criticism from a contrary perspective.
Teaching my daughter that her ‘place is in the kitchen’ differs from locking her in the basement in that in the prior case my daughter is exposed to multiple sources of information (media etc) regarding her ‘place’
And if this is a backward country where the media perpetuates sexism and gender stereotypes?
April 29th, 2008 05:49
TGGP,
Sorry, I meant Geriniol (or Gerin Oil) and Rohypnol. They’re both mind-altering drugs.
Rohypnol: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohypnol
Geriniol: http://www.anst.uu.se/dla05000/Gerin%20Oil.html
I don’t see the difference between these two.
April 29th, 2008 05:54
Peco,
The whole point of brainwashing is to make the brainwashed person feel as if they’re making a commitment out of their own “free will,” and not because they’ve been brainwashed. So we can’t take lack of objection as evidence that they’re fine with their situation, and would stay if they had a legitimate option to leave.
April 29th, 2008 08:28
Greg:
How about explicitly asking them whether they want to stay? If they say they want to, they want to. Informed consent doesn’t matter here either. Uninformed consent is a bit like brainwashing someone someone–most people would object to being inadequately informed if asked, but small children don’t. This is fine, as long as would not object to whatever happens to them later right before it happens. (”I was brainwashed and now I object to it” doesn’t count)
April 29th, 2008 08:54
I’m with several of the other commenters in that my problem is so much with state intervention in such a situation per se, as opposed to the particular form it took in this case. If things at the compound really were bad enough that such drastic measures were warranted, then perhaps they never should have been allowed to get to such a point in the first place. Once they did, though, the state had no right to break up these families; I have little doubt that the government’s meddling - e.g., putting these brainwashed/sheltered/etc. kids in public schools, not to mention foster care - will do far more harm than good.
April 29th, 2008 11:06
As many have noted, the danger with giving the state the power to intervene in families is a very real one. Like all other pieces of state power, one can muster arguments for them IF the state actors just do what you think they should do. The problem, of course, is that once they have the power it gets abused, which is why so many libertarians are distrustful of arguments where people only point to the good things states do. K. Larson got it just right above:
“Admittedly, this brightline seems impossible in practice- the potential for abuse by State bureaucracy is too high. It may be that a bit of child abuse now and then is the price of admission into a free society in the same way that the occasional KKK rally is the price of admission for Free Speech. This is sad, but considerably better than the alternatives.”
To prove the point, folks might check out this story from the Detroit Free Press. A guy mistakenly gave his 7 year old son Mike’s Hard Lemonade at a Tigers game (he doesn’t watch TV and assumed it was regular lemonade). A security guard sees the kid drinking it and next thing you know the kid is in foster care for a couple of days until dad, who is a prof at Michigan, got a law school colleague to help him cut the red tape and get his kid back.
Whatever might be the real problems at FLDS, giving the state the power to intervene in families is like giving matches to, uh, children. The odds of it being used only wisely are very small.
April 29th, 2008 12:28
I don’t see the difference between these two
I really enjoyed “The Ancestor’s Tale”, but after reading that I understood why Vox Day loves to mock Dawkins. Gerin Oil is not a chemical. If it was, and it had the effects that Dawkins attributed to it (including Spanish colonialism!) it would be quite different from Rohypnol, which induces passivity.
The whole point of brainwashing is to make the brainwashed person feel as if they’re making a commitment out of their own “free will,”
There is no free-will. It’s an untenable idea.
and not because they’ve been brainwashed.
We are all the products of our circumstances and there is no essence-of-you that we can compare to the you shaped by your past. How will you avoid agency being denied to you as well as those in the FLDS?
So we can’t take lack of objection as evidence that they’re fine with their situation, and would stay if they had a legitimate option to leave.
What makes an option “legitimate”?
April 29th, 2008 15:46
[...] teageegeepea under I Don’t Need Society!, Moral posturing Will Wilkinson and I got into an argument stemming from the FLDS raid that came to center around competent agency, brainwashing and “false consciousness”. [...]
April 30th, 2008 14:08
“…and tell her about how I am God, and she must never leave the basement because the world is evil and only I can protect her…
The correct answer: An elaborate form of rape.”
Is the basement door locked? Is there a reasonably implied threat of violence - by the father himself - if she chooses to leave the basement or doesn’t meet sexual requests. The answer to all of these questions is almost certainly ‘yes’, in any realistic scenario, which is why it is, of course, rape in my opinion.
Importantly, though, it is not rape for the reason you are apparently implying it is rape: information asymmetry impairing so-called “free will”. This is why, e.g. we distinguish sex obtained through implied threat of harm as rape from sex obtained through false pretenses (e.g. saying you’re a rock star), a common form of using information asymmetry to obtain sex.
Also contra Will’s implication, judges and juries aren’t generally sympathetic to claims of “brain-washing”, which isn’t really a scientific idea. E.g. Patti Hearst, Steve Fishman…
So to turn Will’s scenario on him, what if this same hypothetical man asked this basement daughter of his to fly to Indonesia with these tickets and this money and stab a drug-dealer to death for her Daddy God. Would this be a murder she is fully accountable for: yes.
And if this man instead asked her to meet him in Indonesia with these tickets and this money and have sex with her Daddy God there would it then be rape? No, for the same reasons.
April 30th, 2008 21:41
Polygamy illegal? How is that possible?? It can’t be illegal to do something you can’t do. For instance, outside of a few places, it’s not possible for gays to marry (one another); the law gives them no legal power to do so. So what would it mean to make it illegal for them to marry? Same with polygamy. If one has the legal power to marry someone of the opposite sex as long as one is not already married, legal polygamy is not possible.
Now there could be laws against co-habiting with more than one person, and there are laws prohibiting sex with minors. Liberals and libertarians most likely don’t object to the latter, but they surely object to the former.
What is the libertarian position on polygamy? Now that I think of it, it’s not clear if there’s a libertarian position on marriage of any kind. Why should states be giving people powers to make bonds of this kind?
CM
May 3rd, 2008 11:28
I think people are overlooking a key point. To the extent that the freedoms of the people in the FLDS compound were being abridged, what we had was not the exercise of liberty but the establishment of a tiny tyrannical state. It’s not clear to me that this was not what was in effect. The question of how much freedom those within the compound had is the one to address.