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12/6/03 Responsibility: A Liberal Blind Spot Soothseeker encounters occasional reminders that one reason liberals and conservatives don't agree is because they define reality in completely different ways. One such difference recently came to light in an Ellen Goodman column arguing that our political scene leaves too little room for the needs of children. Her case in point is the recent expansion of Medicare to include a massive prescription drug program for elderly patients. She poses the question "why $400 billion is going to elders on Medicare instead of, say, uninsured workers or kids programs such as universal preschool and child care." Her answer is that children are not a political constituency because society doesn't view them as an important bloc. She misses the point. Society views them, primarily, as their parents' responsibility. Goodman writes, "Kathy Rodgers, the head of NOW LDEF, points out, 'No one ever says, "It's my responsibility to educate my own child, or to doctor my own child when she's sick."' How do you shift the dialogue to the responsibility of demanding help?" Goodman and Rodgers are constructing a straw man. They imply that parents are not responsible for the healthcare and education of their children because they are not doctors or teachers. That implies that if you don't have your own chickens, you can't be responsible to feed your children eggs. And thus that we all have to stand there begging for help. Their point demonstrates that they have no idea (or aren't willing to let the idea enter into their argument) what responsibility for children entails. I am responsible to feed my children, but I don't have to grow and process all the food products they need. I can purchase them from others. I am responsible for my children's education, but I can fulfill that responsibility by hiring someone else to educate them. I can fulfill my responsibility for their healthcare by paying medical professionals to care for them. "Well, nobody asked us to have these children," she quoted a mother as saying during a workshop about child care. What that mother understands is that the responsibility for rearing children, and all of the other demands that entails, falls on the people who freely chose to bring children into the world. Goodman willfully refuses to understand the point. She writes: "But if we don't have a kid-care constituency, ... is it fundamentally because Americans don't regard children as a common good? Because nobody asked us to have them?." No, Ms. Goodman. It is because individuals choose whether, when, and how to bear and raise children, and thus the primary responsibility is not shared. If the government did not require you to have them and cannot prohibit you from having them under unfavorable circumstances, it is not obligated to feed them, clothe them, educate them, or provide them with healthcare. It is the government's responsibility to ensure that there is an infrastructure in place so that you can obtain those things in free exchange with other members of your community. When Hilary Clinton titled her book "It Takes a Village," she missed the point she should have been making, and it was lost on liberals what it truly means to say that a community has to participate in raising children. It means that someone in the community has to make shoes for the children, for example, and that the parents have to contribute something of equal value to the cobbler in exchange for his efforts. Her conclusion: "We need a new mirror that reflects child-raising as something more than a private luxury." It is regarded as much more than a private luxury: it is a private right and a private responsibility. The problem is that too many people do not share the attitude in the mother's statement quoted above. Many feel that they should be privileged to bear as many children as they feel like bearing, and to expect the government to provide whatever needs those children may have. It is those irresponsible people who impose greater costs on society by making such a slight commitment to their own children that they grow up with severe emotional problems that lead to crime, violence, and a continuing cycle of the same irresponsible parenting. It is a self-perpetuating social problem that we subsidize when we kowtow to those irresponsible parents by relieving them of their responsibilities and satisfying their belief that it is ultimately our responsibility, and not theirs, to raise their children. Unfortunately liberals have already agreed with the irresponsible parents, and are working hard to try to shame everyone into believing that the standard of personal responsibility that built this nation is inhumane, and that we must now abandon it in favor of the sort of socialist impulse that makes the government the primary caretaker of children and adults alike. I prefer to be free and responsible for myself and my own family. It is Soothseeker's hope that you do, as well. Modified: 09/10/2004 |
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