On Sat, April 11, 2015 12:47 pm, Andrew McGlashan wrote:
Murray Rothbard (the founder of modern "libertarianism") believes that parents should be allowed to starve their children to death.
More bullshit.
Ummm.. That's actually true. He considered parental neglect to be "liberty". Rothbard believed that whilst a parent or guardian doesn't have a right to harm a child, they do not have any responsibility to care. In the 'Ethics of Liberty' he states a parent "may not murder or mutilate his child, and the law properly outlaws a parent from doing so. But the parent should have the legal right not to feed the child, i.e., to allow it to die... the law, therefore, may not properly compel the parent to feed a child or to keep it alive." Essentially Rothbard had a one-eyed view of "liberty". It applied to negative liberty only (i.e., the absence of force) rather than positive liberty (i.e., enabling action). Unsurprisingly he also supported the abolition of child labour laws. "Supposedly 'humanitarian' child labor laws, have systematically forcibly prevented children from entering the labor force, thereby privileging their adult competitors." He also supported selling of children, to generate a "flourishing free market in children". Still, he did hold their moral right to run away, and thus assert their independence. In a later chapter of the same book he claimed that it was ethical for legal forces to torture criminal suspects... On which, if a crime is confirmed, they are exonerated. Which generates a very interesting motivational structure... -- Lev Lafayette, BA (Hons), GradCertTerAdEd (Murdoch), GradCertPM, MBA (Tech Mngmnt) (Chifley) mobile: 0432 255 208 RFC 1855 Netiquette Guidelines http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1855.txt