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Sons and daughters; young persons, infants, adolescents

Biologically, a child (plural: children) is a human being between the stages of birth and puberty. The legal definition of child generally refers to a minor, otherwise known as a person younger than the age of majority. Child may also describe a relationship with a parent (such as sons and daughters of any age) or, metaphorically, an authority figure, or signify group membership in a clan, tribe or religion; it can also signify being strongly affected by a specific time, place or circumstance, as in "a child of nature" or "a child of the Sixties".

Notable Topics

  • Day Care - Taking care of children while parents work

Articles

Ban People – They Kill, by Paul Craig Roberts, 17 Apr 2007
Discusses potential gun bans after the 2007 Virginia Tech shootings and laments the change in attitudes regarding guns, knives, movie violence and teacher and parental authority from when Roberts was a child
When I was a kid, a youngster could walk into a local hardware store and buy a gun. There were no restrictions. If a kid was so young that he couldn't see over the counter, the store owner might call a parent for approval. We all had guns, and we never shot ourselves or anyone else. ... In my day, parents and teachers had authority. Today teachers have no authority, which is why they have to call the police to control the kids. Child Protective Service has stripped parents of authority. Children are taught at school to call CPS if they are spanked by parents.
The battle to make America wet again, by Nicholas A. Snow, 8 Mar 2017
Recounts how the 18th Amendment and National Prohibition Act were repealed, particularly through the efforts of the Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform (WONPR)
WONPR was important for repeal because it was successful in publicizing the negative unintended consequences of Prohibition. As [Pauline] Sabin explained, 'In pre-Prohibition days, mothers had little fear in regards to the saloon as far as their children were concerned ... Today in any speakeasy in the United States you can find boys and girls in their teens drinking liquor, and this situation has become so acute that the mothers of this country feel something must be done to protect their children.'
Related Topics: H. L. Mencken, Prohibition, Voting
Becker, Gary S. (1930-2014), by Aaron Steelman, The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism, 15 Aug 2008
Biographical essay
For those couples that remain married, earnings can have a significant effect on the number of children they have and how much they invest in their offspring's education. In general, as wages rise, Becker argued, families will tend to have fewer children and to invest more in each child's human capital. This theory has been borne out by the experience of the United States, Western Europe, and Japan, where fertility has generally fallen as wage rates and per capita incomes have risen.
Related Topics: Gary Becker, Labor
Benjamin Tucker, Individualism, & Liberty: Not the Daughter but the Mother of Order, by Wendy McElroy, Literature of Liberty, 1981
Bibliographical essay covering the people and radical movements that influenced Tucker in his founding and publishing of Liberty, its major themes and contributors
Another major debate, children's rights, pointed up a third difference between the [British Individualists and their American contemporaries]. This exchange was, at bottom, the fundamental conflict of egoism versus natural rights. The egoists claimed that rights derived from contract and, thus, were unhappily led to conclude that children were unable to contract any rights whatsoever. The British, however, had not participated in the earlier egoism controversy in Liberty and took a straight natural rights stand. To them, children had all the rights that any human being could claim.
Benjamin Tucker's Liberty, by Carl Watner, Reason, Apr 1979
Examines several of the themes discussed by Tucker in Liberty, e.g., anarchism, natural rights, monopoly, and how his views changed throughout the years
Later [Tucker] emphasized that the child, like the adult, has no right to life but should be accorded the immunity from assault or invasion due all human beings. In May 1895, Tucker reprinted the letter of an English individualist dealing with the question of parental responsibility for support of children. [He] agreed with the conclusion that we must not interfere to prevent neglect but only to repress positive invasion and that no person, parent or not, may be compelled to support any helpless being, of whatever age or circumstance, unless he has made that being helpless by some invasive act.
Blessings of Discrimination, by F. A. Harper, In Brief, 1951
Discusses the human ability to discriminate, e.g., to feel the heat of a stove, which Buddha considered an "essential" virtue, contrasting it with the policy of nondiscrimination on employment, association and other areas
When a child is born, his development is watched with anxious anticipation by those who wish him well. He begins to laugh and scream with pleasure and displeasure about more and more things, as his capacity for discrimination increases more and more. This is not a tragedy; it is a blessing. A child without any sense of discrimination is cursed with the threat of self-destruction ... Due to some defect or short-circuit in Beverly's central nervous system, she has no sense of pain. When she falls down, or bumps her head, or puts her hand on a hot stove, or cuts herself with a knife, there is no pain. A blessing to Beverly? No.
Capitalism For Kids by Karl Hess, by Carl Helstrom, The Freeman, Jul 1988
Concise review of Capitalism for Kids concluding with "I wish it had been around when I was a kid"
Karl Hess has written a book for children and for those who care about children. ... As he sums up in a section for parents toward the end of the book, 'The proposition of this book has been, simply, to put in terms that young people can appreciate, the meaning of capitalism and the free market, to encourage them not only to understand it but to become a part of it, to share its ethics of individual responsibility, and its rewards—and to do it while they are very young.'
Related Topic: Karl Hess
Childhood Ends at Puberty, by Charley Reese, 15 Apr 2006
Recounts the early life of Benjamin Franklin and argues for ending formal basic education by 13
... we do young people a grave injustice by branding them as children until they are 18. Worse, we keep them confined in the world's most ineffective public education system. ... Basic education should be finished by the age of 12 or 13. After that, young people should be apprenticed, enrolled in commercial or vocational schools, freed to work or, if they have the IQ for college, enrolled in the university system. ... Franklin's IQ might have been high, but his experiences were the norm in his time. Childhood ended with puberty, and young men and women were expected to get about the business of life instead of trying to amuse themselves until the age of 18.
Child Labor and the British Industrial Revolution, Part 1, by Lawrence Reed, Freedom Daily, Sep 1999
Contrasts the situation of "free labour" and "parish apprentice" children, as defined by J.L. and Barbara Hammond, during the British Industrial Revolution, the latter being mostly orphans placed in the custody of parish, i.e., government, authorities
The Hammonds divided the factory children into two classes: "Parish apprentice children" and "free labour children." ... Private factory owners could not forcibly subjugate [the latter]; they could not compel them to work in conditions their parents found unacceptable ... The situation, however, was much different for "parish apprentice" children, and close examination reveals that it was these children on whom the critics were focusing ... These youngsters, it turns out, were under the direct authority and supervision not of their parents in a free labor market, but of government officials.
The Control Cult, by Butler Shaffer, 21 Apr 2007
Comments, in the wake of the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting, on those who believe the causal factors can be identified and controlled by the state, and how this extends not just to gun ownership but many other areas such as "global warming"
Government schools—unable to grasp the reality that children are, by nature, self-directed, spontaneous, and exploring people eager to devote their energies to what interests them—become upset when their conscripts refuse to suppress their inquisitiveness. The children get labeled "hyperactive" or "suffering" from "attention deficit disorder" (i.e., do not adhere to the teacher's prescribed agenda) and must, therefore, have their energies controlled by drugs, counseling, and other "behavior modification" techniques that squeeze the childhood sense of personally-relevant curiosity from them.
Democracy and Government Schools, by Sheldon Richman, Freedom Daily, Jan 2007
Discusses the current state of government education, including "creative solutions" such as charter schools and vouchers, and the influence of the "religion of democracy" in achieving a free market in education
Roughly 90 percent of American children attend government schools ... But schools are not factories ... Those early advocates of state schools saw children as plastic to be shaped according to their "scientifically" derived model of the Good Citizen. If the inputs were to specification, then the output would be to specification. Science was to be harnessed in the service of producing ... Americans ... But children, many need reminding, are persons, and persons are by nature complex, characterized by sometimes conflicting assumptions, preferences, intentions, expectations, and so on.
Don't Look for Grown-Ups in Government, by Sheldon Richman, 16 Oct 2013
Responds to pundits demanding adult, i.e., responsible, behavior from politicians, in particular with regard to lifting the debt ceiling (which kept the U.S. government partially closed in early Oct 2013)
[T]he pundits are demanding that the "grown-ups in the room" finally put a stop to the childish goings-on in Washington. That would be nice—except there are no grown-ups in the room ... Politicians ... operate at a level of irresponsibility that we don't tolerate in children ... Let's start with the money politicians spend: Like children, they don't have to earn it. It comes to them without effort. But unlike children, they have others take it by force through taxation ... The upshot is that politicians are more irresponsible than children—children don't have credit cards.
Related Topics: Economics, Society, Voting
Drug Legalization: How to Radically Lower the Number of Murders in New Orleans, by Walter Block, 27 Jan 2007
Suggests drug legalization as a remedy to the increased murder rate in New Orleans and then considers six objections to such a plan and its potential effects
I now wish to consider, and reject, several objections to this very sensible plan ... 2. This plan to legalize drugs would give a social imprimatur to abuse such substances. Children would be led to try them.
No, no, no. One cannot infer approval from mere legalization of an act or substance ... Right now, addictive drugs have about them the lure of the forbidden; youngsters are more likely to be tempted by them. Under legalization, no drug purveyors would hang around school yards, as they now do, and try to get kids to try their deleterious wares.
The Drug War's Immorality and Abject Failure, by Anthony Gregory, Freedom Daily, Jul 2006
Discusses how drug use differs from criminal, property-rights violations, the justifications for the drug war and the many areas where it has had detrimental effects on society: inner cities, rule of law, foreign relations, etc.
One of the worst arguments for maintaining the drug war is that even if the program cannot work, making drugs legal sends the wrong message to children ... What kind of conflicted message do children get in a world where millions of drug users live productive, relatively normal lives and manage to avoid punishment, and yet the ones who get caught are punished more severely than burglars and rapists? How can a child learn about property rights and the founding principles ... and yet be taught that his home or vehicle can be searched one day, as long as some police officer thinks he might have drugs?
Economics 101, by Walter E. Williams, 7 Jun 2000
After describing some basic economics principles, examines worthwhile rationales for public-policy mandates such as setting a 5 mph national speed limit or requiring gun safety-locks to prevent child deaths from gun accidents
But you might say whatever it takes to prevent the accidental death of our children is worth it. Then I suggest that you prioritize things a bit. The number of children killed accidentally by guns is 142. We'd save more child lives (1,010) by closing swimming pools, save 201 lives by banning cycling and 675 by banning pedestrian activities. Again, if we only look to the benefit (saving lives), we might outlaw these activities, but what would be the cost? Our children would lose all the joy and entertainment from swimming, bicycling and playing in the streets.
Related Topics: Economics, No Free Lunch
Les Economistes Libertaires, by Carl Watner, Reason, Jan 1977
Discusses the French economists of the 19th century and in particular Gustave de Molinari and his thoughts on the provision of security and defense services by private agencies
[Frédéric] Passy hastened to add that the moral course for all parents would be to educate their young, but to involve the State (in a coercive manner) in family affairs is wrong. Children are to be protected from direct violence, whether it be from parents or strangers; but an act of omission, such as not educating children, ought not to be made punishable. Passy denied in the most absolute manner the right of the State to prescribe the good. Only directly oppresive acts can constitute crimes, and the fact that parents failed to instruct their young could not be considered an aggression.
The Egregiously Destructive War on Drugs, by Gennady Stolyarov II, Mises Daily, 30 May 2006
Discusses the adverse effects that the war on drugs has on innocent people who don't consume drugs
The War on Drugs harms innocent schoolchildren, who are at risk of being suspended or expelled by draconian public school administrators for bringing in sugar, salt, aspirin, or other "drug look-alikes." ... When compared to the expropriation of honest, productive citizens, the punishment of innocent children ... and the corruption of culture, the harms of drug consumption are slight indeed.
Finding the Flaws, by Joseph Sobran, 25 Mar 1997
Discusses how governments naturally attempt to influence each other, the democratic flaw of voting for benefits at others' expense, in particular children, and how the U.S. Constitution has failed to avoid this outcome
[The] American voter has learned to force nonvoters to bear his expenses, by deferring payment to the next generation. The next time you pass a playground, look at all those little nonvoters, oblivious of what awaits them, and ask yourself if it's really honest to teach them that they will someday enjoy self-government. In what sense are they governing themselves, if, before they even enter the voting booth for the first time, they are already saddled with huge debts they had no part in incurring and will have no way of escaping?
Freedom of Education, by Jacob G. Hornberger, Mar 1993
Imagines a potential discussion between an advocate of religious freedom, a proponent of a system, established one hundred years ago, of public, i.e., government-sponsored, churches and an advocate of religious "vouchers"
Advocate of Religious Freedom: If we get rid of public churching, parents would have the freedom and responsibility of raising their children in the manner they deem best. Some parents would send [them] to private churches. Others would use the home to teach [them] about God. Still others would teach their children that there is no God. A minority would teach them to worship Satan. But don't you think that parents, not the state, should have the ultimate right of control over these decisions? ... If children are not forced to learn about God, maybe they will be more apt to do so on their own.
Freeing the Education Market, by Sheldon Richman, Freedom Daily, Mar 1993
Examines the effects of compulsory public education on literacy rates and suggests market alternatives
Surely, today's children are not more dumb than in the past. So, what is the problem? The problem is that government runs the education system ... The school system is an authoritarian, procrustean bureaucracy to which every child is expected to adjust himself. Ignoring the uniqueness of each individual, it expects all children of a given age to be learning the same things in the same way. If a child does not meet expectations, the system assumes there is something wrong with him, not the school ... Given a biologically normal child, learning is inevitable. Think how much children learn during their pre-school years.
Henry David Thoreau and "Civil Disobedience," Part 1, by Wendy McElroy, Freedom Daily, Mar 2005
After some background and biographical material, describes the event (Thoreau's imprisonment) that led to writing "Civil Disobedience" and Thoreau's reaction to those who paid the tax on his behalf, his jailers, his neighbors and Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Civil Disobedience" ends on a happy note. After Thoreau's release and unpleasant experience with his neighbors, the children of Concord had brightened his mood by urging him to join a huckleberry hunt. Huckleberrying was one of Thoreau's valued pastimes and his skill at locating fruit-laden bushes made him a favorite with children. And, should a child stumble, spilling berries, he would kneel by the weeping child and explain that if children did not stumble, then berries would never scatter and grow into new bushes.
Interview with Nathaniel Branden, by Nathaniel Branden, Karen Reedstrom, Full Context, Sep 1996
In two parts; topics range from David Kelley, objectivisim, Ayn Rand, his memoir Judgment Day, Barbara Branden, Leonard Peikoff, homosexuality, self-esteem and more
I love children, get on famously with them, and my grandchildren are one of the great joys of my life ... I am so work-focused; I always knew ... that children would spread me too thin and I did not want to be the father who wasn't there ... We both stop children on the street and get into long conversations with them at the drop of a hat ... The only painful aspect in all this for me—it's very painful—is that our first grandson, Brandon ... was killed in an automobile accident early last year ... It was Brandon, who was born a few months before Devers and I met—his name is pure coincidence—who opened me up to the world of children.
Iraqi Sanctions: Were They Worth It?, by Sheldon Richman, Freedom Daily, Jan 2004
Analyzes the sanctions imposed on Iraq during the 1990's, and Madeleine Albright's memoirs, Madam Secretary (2003), where she attempted to recant on her 1996 statement that the sanctions were "worth it"
It is interesting that Albright, in making her infamous statement ..., did not question the 500,000 child-death figure. It is almost certainly an exaggeration, if not an outright falsehood ... Nevertheless, there is every reason to believe the number of deaths was substantial. In 1999 Richard Garfield, a professor of clinical international nursing at Columbia University, put the likely mortality figure at 227,000 for children under 5 from August 1991 to 1998, most of them directly or indirectly attributable to the sanctions. (Welch notes that Garfield has raised his "likely" estimate to 350,000.)
Killing Iraqi Children, by Jacob G. Hornberger, 19 Jun 2006
Comments on a Detroit News editorial condoning the bombing, rather than the arrest and prosecution, of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and the "collateral" death of a five-year old girl
[K]illing Iraqi children and other such "collateral damage" has long been acceptable ... to U.S. officials ... This U.S. government mindset was expressed perfectly by former U.S. official Madeleine Albright when she stated that the deaths of half a million Iraqi children ... had, in fact, been "worth it." By "it" she was referring to the U.S. attempt to oust Saddam Hussein from power through the use of the sanctions. Even though that attempt did not succeed, U.S. officials still felt that the deaths of the Iraqi children had been worth trying to get rid of Saddam.
Let the Immigrants Stay, by Sheldon Richman, 9 Jul 2014
Discusses the plight of unaccompanied Central American children migrating to the U.S. who face deportation by the Obama administration
[The] perilous conditions that unaccompanied children face at home and on their northward journeys are direct results of evil government policies. If the borders were open—that is, if the natural right to be free of aggression were respected—children would not need to be entrusted to shady men who can extort large sums of money on the promise to transport the children ... if the U.S. government ... did not push the [drug] war on Latin American governments, those children would be safer to start with. Many children leave today because of drug-related violence, or for fear of being impressed into drug gangs.
Related Topics: Government, Rights
Libertarianism and Legal Paternalism [PDF], by John Hospers, The Journal of Libertarian Studies, 1980
Discusses laws "designed to protect people from themselves" arguing that in general such laws are illegitimate
Infants cannot take care of themselves at all, and children cannot in many ways. Children do make decisions, hut lacking experience they often fail to comprehend the consequences of their own proposed actions. Views on children's rights are a hotbed of current controversy; but there is probably no parent who has not at some time used coercion in order to prevent some harm to the child or bring about some good. A degree of paternalism concerning children is also embodied in the legal system: for example, if parents demonstrably abuse their children, the State takes the children out of the parent's custody for the children's own good ...
A Matter of Conscience, by Kevin Benderman, 18 Jan 2005
A ten-year veteran and Army Sergeant explains why he refused to deploy to Iraq for a second time
Why do we tell our children to not solve their differences with violence, then turn around and commit the ultimate in violence against people in another country who have nothing to do with the political attitudes of their leaders? ... The young people that I went with to the combat zone looked at it like it was a video game they played back in their childhood ... Why can't we teach our children not to hate or to not be afraid of someone else just because they are different from us? ... Can't we teach our children to leave war behind in history where it belongs?
Related Topic: War
The New Witchcraft, by Joan Kennedy Taylor, Free Inquiry, 2002
Discusses the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996, after the Supreme Court in Oct 2001 heard the case against it, but before it rendered its judgement in Apr 2002
Could sexual images of children be used in successfully treating pedophiles, and actually lessen the frequency of child molestation? We will never know, because a study to find that out would now be criminal. Pedophiles—those who have sexual thoughts about children, not necessarily child molesters—are defined as evil. Anyone who says he has any reason to possess these evil images must be a pedophile. ... Child molestation, whether to create a saleable image or to gratify a sexual impulse, is indeed something to be horrified about. ... However, when it comes to making thoughts unconstitutional, we'd better think twice.
Related Topic: Freedom of Speech
Obesity Not a Government Problem, by Charley Reese, 19 Jun 2006
Argues that although humans, including children, have become less active than our ancestors and thus more prone to be obese, it is not government's role to interfere with people's eating habits
People who keep records know there has been a steady decline in the physical fitness of children. I was leafing through an old book published in the 1920s. There was a picture of about 300 Boy Scouts running down to a lake for a swim. There wasn't a fat kid in the bunch. You'd be hard-pressed to find 300 boys with no flab on them today. There is a paradox. All children are growing taller, and athletes tend to be more muscular even without steroids because of better nutrition and weight training. But a handful of student athletes does not a healthy student body make.
Related Topics: Government, Life Extension
UpdOn Moral Education, by Herbert Spencer, Education: Intellectual, Moral and Physical, 1861
Condensed from "Moral Education" chapter, from Spring 1966 issue of Left and Right; contrasts the parental practice of punishing children with the approach of letting children be guided by the natural consequences from their actions
And if education be a preparation for the business of life, then every child should also, from the beginning, have daily experience of this fact. ... Proper conduct in life is much better guaranteed when the good and evil consequences of actions are rationally understood, than when they are merely believed on authority. ... Bear constantly in mind the truth that the aim of your discipline should be to produce a self-governing being; not to produce a being to be governed by others.
A Passion for Life, by Butler Shaffer, 1 Nov 2003
Discusses how political systems break the human spirit, how to live well one must live with passion, reflecting on the events of the Enlightment and the Industrial Revolution as inspiration and why personal liberty, not just economic freedom, is necessary
So many of us live dispirited lives because we have given up on ourselves ... Not wanting our children to be left out of the system, we accede to their being labeled "hyperactive" or suffering from "attention deficit disorder," when their only offense has been to pursue the self-directed exploration that is the essence of life ... If we are to become emotional about our own existence, perhaps we need do no more than rekindle that enthusiasm for life we experienced as children, when the word "why?" was our response not only to the unknown but to those who sought to restrain us.
Related Topics: Life, George Orwell, Politics
Pete vs. Joe, by Thomas Sowell, 17 Mar 2003
Counters the argument of those in favor of admitting Pete Rose to the Baseball Hall of Fame by relating the story of Shoeless Joe Jackson and discussing the results of permissiveness
Those who say that we should admit Pete Rose to the Hall of Fame and then 'move on' and 'forget about it' have profoundly misunderstood human beings. What we do today affects what other people will do or not do tomorrow. What have we gained over the past several decades by weakening rules, accepting excuses, and looking for easy ways of avoiding the unpleasantness of enforcing norms? Has permissive parenting produced better children? Or even happier children? This 1960s trend produced not only rising teenage crime rates but rising rates of teenage suicide as well.
Related Topic: Baseball
A Philosophy Lesson [PDF], by A. Barton Hinkle, Regulation, 2011
Argues, with various examples, that many current problems stem from the lack of proper (philosophical) reasoning, such as category errors (e.g., being unable to distinguish between stick drawings or plastic molds of guns and actual weapons)
Kilmer Middle School in Vienna, Va., banned hugs, high-fives, and all other physical contact ... What once was a difficult choice between Type-1 and Type-2 errors—whether to let a child take his Play-Doh on the plane because it's probably exactly what it looks like or seize it because it might be plastic explosive planted by a clever terrorist—has morphed into a policy that Type-1 errors don't matter, at least, not when their costs are borne by children and other political weaklings. That's why we ban high-fives and treat a schoolchild taking an aspirin ... as if she'd just shot heroin ...
Protecting Opinions That We Loathe, by Joan Kennedy Taylor, First Amendment Cyber-Tribune, Jan 1997
Argues against the 1996 Child Pornography Prevention Act (which was overturned in 2002 by the Supreme Court for being too broad)
I for one would certainly prefer not to have to defend [those who enjoy child pornography]. The sexual assault of children by adults should be severely punished, whether such assault is done by seduction or force; the reproductions of such assaults to be sold as pornography makes those pornographers accessories to those crimes. ... Harm to children should continue to be our standard, but the CPPA moves from properly decrying 'the use of children in the production of sexually explicit material' to the possible use of images to 'whet ... sexual appetites' or seduce children.
Related Topic: Freedom of Speech
Roots Of Economic Understanding, by F. A. Harper, Ideas on Liberty, Nov 1955
Explains the rudiments of economics by specifying required attributes (desirability, scarcity, exchangeability) then delving into how people, from the earliest age, become cognizant of economic concepts, but ending with criticism of econmic ignorance
Even in infancy the child is a budding economist. We do not know precisely when he first ponders problems of value and distribution, and the law of diminishing returns. Probably the age when this first appears varies widely from child to child. But I suspect there is economic consciousness in most of them at a very young age, and long before we as parents realize that it is there. Some child psychologists assert ... that when the infant clings to his bottle of milk, he is asserting a rudimentary sense of economic perception—a consciousness of something which is desired by him and also scarce.
Sanctions: The Cruel and Brutal War against the Iraqi People, Part 1, by Jacob G. Hornberger, Freedom Daily, Jan 2004
Tells the history of the U.S. government sanctions against Iraq imposed by the United Nations before military action in the 1990 Gulf War, exacerbated by military targeting during the war and kept in place after the war
There are disputes over the exact number of children who died as result of the sanctions ... the U.S. government ... implemented and maintained a cruel and brutal policy ... to target the civilian population [knowing] that it would cost the lives of countless innocent people, including innocent children. ... As Anupama Rao Singh, the United Nations Children's Fund representative in Baghdad, put it, "Ten years ago, malnutrition was almost non-existent. From 1991 to 1998, children under 5 were dying from malnutrition-related diseases in numbers ranging from a conservative 2,690 per month to a more realistic 5,357 per month."
Related Topics: James Bovard, Iran, Iraq
Sanctions: The Cruel and Brutal War against the Iraqi People, Part 2, by Jacob G. Hornberger, Freedom Daily, Feb 2004
Continues the account of the U.S. government sanctions against Iraq, describing the "oil for food" program, the resignations of two senior United Nations officials in protest and the influence on the 11 Sept 2001 attacks
"Oh, but it's not our fault that those children are dying of infectious diseases," U.S. officials continually cried, "because medicines aren't prohibited by the sanctions." Their cries were a sham and a lie, for they knew full well that the medicines that made their way into Iraq were totally inadequate to treat the ever-growing numbers of children infected ... a devastating 1999 UN Security Council report on the sanctions ... concludes, "In marked contrast to the prevailing situation prior to the events of 1990-91, the infant mortality rates in Iraq today are among the highest in the world ..."
Stop the Cannon Fodder, by Charley Reese, Antiwar.com, 27 Jan 2007
I'm glad that I discouraged all my children from serving in the military, even though I had served. It is important, I believe, to separate the natural and noble feeling of love of country from the present reality. The young people dying in Iraq are not dying to protect their country. As usual, they were lied to ... [T]hey are dying because of political opportunists in Washington ... Do not hand your precious one-of-a-kind children over to cynical men who will squander their lives without blinking an eye. It is a sad thing to die for another’s profits.
Related Topics: Iraq, War
Teaching Basic Economics to Fifth Graders, by Arthur E. Foulkes, 21 Jun 2006
Recounts the experience of teaching economics to fifth graders, one concept per week, for five weeks, focusing on trade, money, savings, competition and prices
On the third week ... we divided the class into two "villages"—one made up of people who "live for the day" ... and the other village made up of savers ... Soon an intelligent villager came up with the idea for a net to help catch fish ... [W]hile at first many students had said they would prefer living in the "party" village, by the end of the class, most said they would prefer living in the savers village ... My goal with these fifth graders was not just to introduce them to the basics of economic science, but to inoculate them against future attempts to teach them bad economics.
Treating People Like Garbage, by Sheldon Richman, The Goal Is Freedom, 4 Oct 2013
Prompted by the "closing" of the U.S. government during Oct 2013, examines two examples of how the state behaves towards people: an Iraq war veteran and his family, and the genocide of Bengalis in March 1971, with the support of Nixon and Kissinger
Among the scenes [in a commercial for the Wounded Warrior Project] is one of [a] young daughter reading to her now-[seriously injured] dad ... The biggest victim here is the daughter, who now must see her young dad in that pathetic condition, likely for the rest of his life. He volunteered for the military (no doubt after being propagandized as a teenager), but his daughter was not asked if she was willing to sacrifice her dad ... We often hear public policy justified in the name of "the children." A noninterventionist foreign policy can genuinely satisfy that criterion.
Treating Us like Children, by Sheldon Richman, Freedom Daily, Nov 1998
Comments on an amendment to an appropriations bill that would outlaw Internet gambling, overwhelmingly approved by the Republican-controlled Senate, and discusses the "democratic paternalism" evinced by this action
As usual, the prohibition is being defended in the name of protecting children. Apparently, the government must go to extraordinary lengths, including invading the sanctuary of the home, to keep children from becoming addicted to online gambling. We are led to believe that children are commonly sitting in front of their PCs, their parents' credit cards in hand, and gambling away the family savings. But how, pray tell, are children getting those credit cards in the first place? Do parents really leave them lying around? This has the strong aroma of myth, the kind of fantastic story that's told and retold ...
Vices Are Not Crimes: A Vindication of Moral Liberty, by Lysander Spooner, 1875
Contrasts crimes and vices, discussing the need to legislate or take other governmental action against the former but not the latter, countering several potential arguments in favor of vice legislation, in particular laws regarding spirituous liquors
Every man must necessarily judge and determine for himself as to what is conducive and necessary to, and what is destructive of, his own well-being ... in so far as [parents] practise coercion, or restrain a child from anything not really and seriously dangerous to himself, they do him a harm, rather than a good. It is a law of Nature that to get knowledge, and to incorporate that knowledge into his own being, each individual must get it for himself. Nobody, not even his parents, can tell him the nature of fire, so that he will really know it. He must himself experiment with it, and be burnt by it, before he can know it.
Wants, Efforts, Satisfactions, by Frédéric Bastiat, Economic Harmonies, 1850
Examines the concepts of sensation, pain, wants, satisfactions and connects them by the concepts of activity or human effort to postulate that the exchange of services in a social framework are what constitute the science of economics
No theory, no flights of oratory can succeed in keeping fathers from loving their children. The people who delight in setting up imaginary societies may consider this regrettable, but it is a fact. A father will expend as much effort, perhaps more, for his children's satisfactions as for his own. If, then, a new law contrary to Nature should forbid the bequest of private property, it would not only in itself do violence to the rights of private property, but it would also prevent the creation of new private property by paralyzing a full half of human effort.
Related Topics: Economics, France, Labor, Metaphysics
The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men, by George Leef, The Freeman, Jan 2001
Review of the year 2000 book by Christina Hoff Sommers
But far scarier than the girls-as-victims crusade is the one aiming to change the way we raise boys. Our horribly patriarchal, capitalist, competitive (add as many adjectives of opprobrium as you wish) society raises boys in bad ways. For one thing, it promotes violence, and second, it makes boys unhappy and maladjusted ... Sommers again shows how ridiculously feeble the support for all that is, but still the idea has gained wide acceptance. ... The meddling educational "progressives" have much to answer for, and Sommers asks why on earth we should entrust to them even more power to shape our children.
Related Topic: Compulsory Education
The War On Drugs Is Lost, by William F. Buckley Jr., Ethan A. Nadelmann, Kurt Schmoke, Joseph D. McNamara, Robert W. Sweet, Thomas Szasz, Steven B. Duke, National Review, 12 Feb 1996
Symposium with essays from William F. Buckley Jr., drug policy researcher Ethan A. Nadelmann, Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke, former chief of police Joseph D. McNamara, judge Robert W. Sweet, psychiatrist Thomas Szasz and law professor Steven B. Duke
Thomas Szasz
... In a secular society committed to individual liberty and personal responsibility, the legislator's task is to enact laws to govern the behavior of adults, not children (whose management is primarily the responsibility of their parents) ... Drugs are ... not the only dangerous artifacts in our environment. Electricity, household appliances and cleansers, and countless other products of human inventiveness endanger, injure, and kill children. We accept these inventions that ... make our lives healthier and safer, and adapt ... by teaching children to cope ... with the risks they pose.
War on Drugs Taking People to New Lows, by Dimitri Vassilaros, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 14 Mar 2000
Discusses a plan by an Allegheny County, Pennsylvania District Attorney to create a "nationwide drug intelligence network"
Three weeks ago, there was a SWAT-type drug raid ... Forty officers were on the grounds of a high school in an affluent Belmont County community. A few (ones who weren't clad in black from head to toe) went into the school and arrested eight kids, charging them with selling pot. Will Zappala's database include the names of kids arrested for dealing—as well as their customers and other kids with whom they've been associating? Maybe your kid made a purchase. Maybe your kid pals around with one who did. "Where does it end?" is the question asked by many who claim to care about civil liberties.
Related Topic: War on Drugs
We Need Freedom, Not School Standards, by Sheldon Richman, Jun 1996
Compares the levels of education of Americans before and after 1840, when Horace Mann and others architected "public schools" and various levels of government got involved in education
Horace Mann, the father of the American public school, put it bluntly, "We who are engaged in the sacred cause of education are entitled to look upon all parents as having given hostages to our cause." The public schools were designed to mold children according to the plan of social engineers like Mann. "Children are wax," he said ... Children were to be imbued with an artificial national culture and with skills that would ready them for the new industrial system. Every child would learn the same thing at the same point in life. The individuality of the student played no role in that system.
What Do You Call Someone Who Wants to Get Their Hands on Your 5-Year-Old?, by Vin Suprynowicz, 3 Feb 2007
No net gain for a price of millions: One would think that makes universal tax-funded kindergarten a non-starter. But parents will overwhelmingly enthuse over the prospect of getting someone else to fund their all-day child care a full year earlier, and the program will be adopted with much glee and celebration.
Related Topic: Compulsory Education
What Would Schools Be Like?, by Marshall Fritz, Issues & Views, 2001
Discusses how schools would be different if they were no longer controlled by the government, and after talking to a Columbine survivor, points out the purpose of government schooling
After liberating schools from the government, what will they be like? ... Unlike today, teachers will engage children with the questions that challenge our species, e.g., Where did I come from? Is there any purpose to life? What is happiness? Why are some things 'right' and others 'wrong?' How do we know? Under the banner of 'separation of church and state,' today's 'public school' teachers are pretty much forbidden from this, resulting in demeaning education to mere schooling and turning children into test-taking robots. It would be like Wendy's offering to 'smally' your burger by taking the meat out.
Related Topic: Compulsory Education
W(h)ither Public Schools?, by Sheldon Richman, Separating School & State, 1994
Chapter 1, made available online on 19 May 2004 to celebrate the tenth publication anniversary; discusses how even mild "public school" reforms are treated as "deadly threats", why a new vision is needed and the role of the family in educating children
To grow, children need assistance; ... they need information and good examples from the adults. But they do not need adults or institutions to develop them into human beings. This is not just semantics. The common conception of education casts children in a fundamentally passive role. They are empty vessels that only adults with special skills—teachers—can fill ... [T]he architects of the public schools ... spoke of children as formless lumps of clay or dough, raw material requiring the able fingers of expert educators. Only such a vision could have yielded the schools our children labor in today.
Why Pay For Things?, by F. A. Harper, The Freeman, Jan 1956
Explains the options to how people can obtain things, in terms a five-year old can understand
'Why do we have to pay for things?' asked a five-year-old boy at dinner one evening. ... One way to do it would be for everyone to grab what he can. ... A boy's bicycle, for instance, would not really be his. Any bully could take it away from him; a bigger bully could take it away from the first thief, and so forth. ... The other way to decide who gets what is for each person to own things. ... If as a small boy you had been given a bicycle, or had bought a toy ship, for instance, these are yours until you want to give them away or sell them.
Related Topic: Private Property
Why We Consent to Oppression: Self-suppression paves the way for political suppression, by Peter Breggin, Reason, Sep 1977
Examines the questions posed by La Boétie in his "Discourse on Voluntary Servitude" from a psychological perspective, particularly how childhood self-suppression leads most adults to more easily accept government oppression
Every child is brought into the world as a helpless creature. He is literally a captive or a prisoner ... [He] quickly begins to display all the qualities of any self ... Usually within a matter of days, ... its communication of selfhood conflicts with the needs, demands, or problems of its captor parents ... The chronic, painful struggle ... is so fearful and demoralizing that the child inevitably and invariably turns upon itself to deny some of its attributes in the interest of making peace and surviving within the family, and later within educational, religious, and political institutions.
Winning the Battle for Freedom and Prosperity, by John Mackey, Liberty, Jun 2006
Updated from speech given at FreedomFest 2004; after a brief background on himself, Mackey criticizes the freedom movement from a marketing and branding perspective and suggests a different approach by de-emphasizing some issues and prioritizing others
How many people in the audience believe drugs should be legalized? ... pornography? ... prostitution ...? I believe all three should be legalized—within certain parameters which protect children ... The legalization of drugs, pornography, prostitution, and guns, as issues, are all too closely associated with the freedom movement. Aligning ourselves with these issues has hurt our brand tremendously ... Parents don't want their children's lives ruined by drug experimentation, or their innocence prematurely lost to pornography and prostitution, or their lives ended with a bullet.

Interviews

Cold Comfort: An Interview with John R. Lott, by Michael W. Lynch, John Lott, Jacob Sullum, Reason, Jan 2000
Focuses primarily on Lott's More Guns, Less Crime (1998): what led him to write it, approving, critical and other reviews and interpretations of the data presented
My guess is that if you go out and ask people, how many gun deaths involve children under age 5, or under age 10, in the United States, they're going to say thousands. When you tell them that in 1996 there were 17 gun deaths for children under age 5 in the United States and 44 for children under age 10, they're just astounded. There's a reason why they believe these deaths occur much more frequently: If you have a gun death in the home involving a child under age 5, you're going to get national news coverage. Five times more children drown in bathtubs; more than twice as many drown in five-gallon water buckets around the home.
Curing the Therapeutic State: Thomas Szasz interviewed by Jacob Sullum, by Thomas Szasz, Jacob Sullum, Reason, Jul 2000
Subjects discussed include involuntary commitment, the insanity defense, ADHD, government drug policies and physician-assisted suicide
Reason: What do you think the consequences of prescribing Ritalin for all of these kids will be?
Szasz: We may not know ... for another 20 or 30 years. In social terms, it gives the impression to people that behavioral problems are medical and should be handled with drugs; it imposes a certain stigma on the child, possibly on the family. It medicalizes educational and child-rearing problems, and it may cause biological problems in the person taking the drug. I don't know if the average person ... realizes that if a 30-year-old man has a pocketful of Ritalin, he can go to jail for years.

Books

Capitalism for Kids: Growing Up to Be Your Own Boss
    by Karl Hess, 1987
Partial contents: Money and You - What Kind of Person Are You? - Capitalism and Other Isms - The Wonderful World of Work - Your Friend, The Computer - The Family That Works Together - Investing Time and Dollars - Are You a Volunteer?
Related Topic: Capitalism
Dumbing Down Our Kids: Why American Children Feel Good About Themselves But Can't Read, Write, or Add
    by Charlie Sykes, Oct 1995
The Einstein Syndrome: Bright Children Who Talk Late
    by Thomas Sowell, 2001
Contents: Patterns: Family and Child - Adults Who Talked Late - Children Who Talk Late - Groping for Answers - Tests and Evaluations - "Early Intervention" - Coping with Uncertainties
John Rosemond's Six-Point Plan for Raising Happy, Healthy Children
    by John Rosemond, Jan 1989
Making The "Terrible" Twos Terrific
    by John Rosemond, Jul 1993
Talking Back to Ritalin: What Doctors Aren't Telling You About Stimulants and ADHD
    by Peter Breggin, Jan 1998

Videos


Let's raise kids to be entrepreneurs, by Cameron Herold, TED Talks, Mar 2010
Cameron recounts his own childhood entrepreneurial stories and encourages others to nurture the same spirit in children
Related Topic: Entrepreneurship

The introductory paragraph uses material from the Wikipedia article "Child" as of 16 Nov 2018, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.