Utopian idealists tend to believe that the State owns then.
However, Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao have proven poor parental substitutes. Consequently,
they are now all gone and their experiments in State ownership are history.
Some collapses haven’t been violent and abrupt. Some utopian
communities have merely found their idealism unworkable, and, therefore, have
reverted to a more traditional understanding and practice.
In the early 70s, I had spent time on a number of Kibbutzim
of the most radical and socialistic movement, Hashomer Hatziar. The Kibbutzim
of this movement had been so radical that, initially, they had rejected
marriage and the nuclear family as oppressive forms of “ownership.” However, by
the time that I had stayed with them in the 70s, all had reverted back to the
traditional nuclear families, although some tasks remained communal.
However, this discredited ideal of the State ownership of
children stubbornly continues. In “To Whom Do Children Belong,” Melissa
Moschella attempts to defend parental rights. At the beginning of her book, she
quotes Melissa Harris-Perry:
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“We have to break through our kind of private
idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families and
recognize that kids belong to whole communities.”
Well, why shouldn’t children belong to their State? Doesn’t
the State have a right and responsibility to ensure that children grow up into
responsible adults? Of course! However, who can best ensure the welfare of the
children and their positive adjustment to society?
Under the various utopian schemes, children have been made
into the pawns of the prevailing ideology rather than the beneficiaries of
parental love. The same critique can be made today.
Now, many school districts are pandering to the ideology of
transgenderism. As a result, they are proscribing gender specific pronouns and
encouraging young children to explore sexual alternatives. Besides, this
ideology has become so militant that parents are no longer allowed to exempt their
children from teachings they regard as inappropriate. Often, they are not even
told about the schools’ advocacy of transgenderism.
About transgenderism and the State usurping the responsibility
of the parents, psychiatrist Boris Vatel has written:
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The NYC Commission on Human Rights maintains
that gender identity is "one's internal deeply held sense of one's gender,
which may be the same or different from one's sex assigned at birth. This
statement intentionally uses language to distort reality. Except in cases of
rare medical conditions resulting in ambiguous genitalia, no one's sex is
"assigned" at birth any more than the fact of belonging to the human
species is assigned at birth.
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More significantly, this statement erroneously
implies that a person's beliefs about himself carry more legitimacy than the
physical facts that contradict such beliefs. Using the Commission's reasoning,
can we declare an alternate "age identity" to be legitimately
different from one's true age? What about "race identity" or even
"species identity"? If one accepts as legitimate the logic by which
men may identify themselves as women and insist on being considered as such by
others, there is no reason to reject as invalid any number of other
idiosyncratic identities that have no basis in reality. (Salvo Magazine)
Vatel compares the delusion of a boy thinking himself a girl
with the delusion of subordinate thinking yourself the CEO of the company. Vatel
argues that responsible psychotherapy has to challenge delusional thinking and
not exalt it and pander to it through sex-change therapies.
If choice is exalted to encourage a boy to think he is a
girl, why not also to encourage a Black to think he is a White, or a human to
think he is a bird or a cow.
The parent understands the absurdity of such thinking, even
more so, the potential damage to her children. The State doesn’t care. It has
other concerns.
King Solomon, in his surpassing wisdom, understood this. When
two women came before him, each claiming maternity over a certain baby, Solomon
ordered that the baby be cut in two – one half given to each claimant. At this,
the real mother cried out:
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“Please, my lord, give her the living baby!
Don’t kill him!” But the other said, “Neither I nor you shall have him. Cut him
in two!” Then the king gave his ruling: “Give the living baby to the first
woman. Do not kill him; she is his mother.” (1 Kings 3:26-27)
In contrast, the State might have answered, “Fine! If I can’t
have the child, then no one else should.”
The State can never provide parental love (and it has no
interest in providing this), and the parents will never sacrifice their child
to a vague, politically correct ideal. This is why parents must retain control
over their children!
