It Couldnt Happen Here - Road to the Middle Class

LET US TALK about something important. No, not the burning question whether the recent Hurricane Katrina was caused by global warming, but something even more important: The power of the government to take your children away from you.

Maybe there is nothing to worry about on this score. But then again you can’t be too careful where government power is concerned. In Britain, things seem to be getting beyond the “nothing to worry about” stage, according to Cassandra Jardine.

Again and again, I have heard parents say that social workers seem to make an instant judgment about their fitness as parents and then assemble the evidence to support that decision. One woman sobbed down the phone from South Wales that she had been accused of neglecting her children because one of them was underweight; even those of her children without dietary problems have been taken from her. A cluster of women from Sheffield contacted me about the high-handed behaviour of social services: one had had her two children taken because she had left them with a 12-year-old while shopping; another had had her younger children taken because her eldest had mental health problems; a third because she and her partner had been arguing. From the Isle of Wight, I heard from a woman whose three-year-old cowered whenever the doorbell rang because twice she had been taken into care by social services on the basis of inaccurate information.

Maybe that is just the British welfare state. But here is a curious story from the excellent Minette Marrin about the rights of parents over their adult disabled children. How many rights do they have? Not very many.

In both these areas, the removal of children from their homes by the state and the control of adult mentally disabled children, the presumption is clearly in favor of the government, its experts, and its functionaries. If the local social worker starts a file on you and your family, then you could very easily find yourself fighting to prove that you deserve to raise your children. If you have an adult disabled child, well, the government is the one with the money, after all.

We have got into this situation gradually, without ever really getting a chance to decide what is right. We set up government child protective services to help abused children, and then the experts and the social workers went to work. Their interest, of course, is to increase their power and increase their discretion and reduce the power of parents to “make a nuisance.”

But the question is: do government child service operations result in positive outcomes, compared to other approaches? Where should the level of proof be set when the government removes a child from its parents? And what kind of say should parents have in the treatment of their adult disabled children even if the state has custody of them?

Let’s have a dialog. Sooner rather than later.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Living Under Law

Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

German Philosophy

The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

Knowledge

Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches… they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Living Law

The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital

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