The War on Opera

[AntiochusIII]

Actually you raise a very important question here. Who has the right to raise our children, the gov or the parents?

Obviously not the government as-is. If one is to choose the former, it would more likely be society--and thus the government as society's agent, otherwise, if the government acts on its own merits, then it is, in my opinion, overstepping the boundaries of its authority.

We are not Lycurgus' Spartans anymore, in other words. We don't need superhuman robots.

However, I don't have time to ponder the question yet, so I cannot answer it. It...involves...personal matter, in fact, now that I think of it. And is an important question that might've been answered somewhere within all those social contract theories.

Really, the question is: Who's children are these? Are they humanity's children? Or the parents child?

All I can say is, if we are to agree on the latter, the parents' child will then be subject to the parents' whim, but if we are on the former, then individual rights on this matter are baseless and we would move towards a more conforming (in a Confucius sense) society.

An example of contradiction:

The government does not allow a parent to physically punish a child, but allows the murder of that child before its birth.

I bring this up because it is fundamental to your question. If it is "humanity's" child, then clearly we must not allow the child to be murdered just as we would not want it to be raised through violence.

If it is the parnet's child, then we are allowed to both slay it before birth and offer up violence as a form of corrective discipline.

Let's not go into Abortion here. It will only cloud up the perspective of possible participants.

Clearly, rational minds must find middle ground here. But where is that misddle ground? Should the government be responsible for telling us what values we should instill in our children? If so, then who ultimately decides the values of the government if the government chooses values for us?

The government has no right whatsoever in forcing values onto us, at least in the United States' form of social contract, presumably based on Locke's. However, applying to this case: is it right if those parents will instill racism, nazism, or whatever supremacy crap into a child because the children belongs in their authority? If not, who will replace them in choosing the values in which a child would grow up with?

Just to clarify my question.