Gods and Monsters — Part One
There have been two reports in as many days of unspeakable cruelty and barbarism by people toward their supposed loved ones, both of which had nothing to do with Katrina or any other disaster.
An Indian woman has been rescued by police after being locked in a shed for 25 years by her family.Annapurna Sahu, 44, from Dhenkanal in the eastern state of Orissa, was confined to a tiny, windowless outhouse with just enough space to lie on the floor. A makeshift lavatory had been made for her in a corner, leftovers were brought to her twice a day and every few days she was given a bucket of water for washing.
The woman’s father … claimed he put her into “quarantine” when it became obvious soon after she left school that she was disturbed.
…
But social workers who examined the woman said that although weak and emaciated, she showed no signs of mental illness.
Sheriff’s deputies removed 11 disabled children from a home where they were made to sleep in cages less than 3 1/2 feet high, authorities said.The children’s adoptive and foster parents, Mike and Sharen Gravelle, denied that they’d abused or neglected the children during a custody hearing Monday in Huron County. No charges had been filed as of Monday night.
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Some of the cages were rigged with alarms … others had heavy furniture blocking their doors. The children didn’t have blankets or pillows.
There are of course, many ways to spin these two horrible stories. On the one hand, we might observe that out of however many billions of people who live and have lived on earth throughout human history, the fact that stories such as these happen so rarely and evoke such shock and revulsion actually speaks very highly of our species. War, crime, power lust and schadenfreude notwithstanding, overall most of us are mostly good most of the time. And shouldn’t our government reflect that, rather than always assuming the worst or weakest in people?
On the other hand, given that these were, directly or indirectly, “family-on-family” travesties, one must inevitably ask, as I have previously, just how far libertarianism specifically and natural rights theory generally get us when it comes to family law and family relations. Where does the right to raise one’s family as one sees fit end and the right not to abused and neglected by “loved ones” begin? Does it have to devolve into a case-by-case analysis, or can we formulate a general theory of family law libertarianism?
As two (arguably) less horrific but no less newsworthy examples:
–Did we learn anything, anything at all, from Terri Schiavo, who was in a sense “loved to death”?
–Or from “Zach,” whose parents “loved” him so much that they confined him against his will to an anti-gay indoctrination camp?
Finally, we should note again that no natural disaster occurred in any of these stories. When law and order are disrupted, indeed when civilization itself breaks down, monsters are not created, they are merely unleashed.
Similar thoughts from Ace Pryhill.
Similar Posts:
- Gods and Monsters — Part Two
- Canadian Bigot Parents Screech over Gay Teacher’s Desk Photo
- “Are You a Good Human, or a Bad Human?”
- California Court: No Right to Homeschool
- Inmate of Ex-Gay Facility Exposes the Nightmare
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The problem with a libertarian "bill of rights" for children, as it were, is that there are often exceptional circumstances that people are thrust into because the family itself is going through difficult times, or because of beliefs of the parents. I am not saying that anyone would rightly say that imprisioning the Indian woman was socially acceptable or morally licit, however, there are many people who disagree over basic things like spanking children as a means of building dicipline.
This is one of the major problems with libertarinan theory (well, this is actually a sub-set of the larger issue of how to treat people who are not actually responsible for themselves, whether they are children, retarded, prisoners, etc.) to my mind, and I will try to think my way through it, but my guess is that it is a largely intractable problem withough being able to peer into mens' hearts.
What's remarkable is that the woman _doesn't_ exhibit mental illness after being locked in a windowless outhouse for 25 years, regardless of whether or not she was crazy when she went in.