Separate and distinct, yes. But to argue that children have no rights is plainly false. Children do indeed have rights. The Supreme Court affirmed in In Re Gault that a minor had the same rights to counsel, confronting the witness, etc. that an adult has. What is certain is that children do not have all the same rights and freedoms as adults have. Children and adults share those rights that are contingent merely upon their existence. Children are not accorded the rights that require the complex reasoning and accounting for variables that inform (most) adult decision-making, because we know that their brains simply aren't yet capable of it. (As an aside, I think many adults aren't capable of it either, but that's just me) Thus, children are legally required to wait until a certain age to vote, drive, drink, have sex, own firearms, operate machinery, work, etc. Children cannot be treated like miniature adults, that much is true. But the diametric viewpoint you just articulated is to abolish any rights of children and reduce their status to that of property and lo, we've wrought for ourselves a 21st century Rome, complete will all the pederasty and patria potestas that went with it. Or was that not quite what you meant? Would you accord children human rights, or would those too be merely privileges? Could a parent sexually abuse a child and aver that any expectation that the child would be free from such depravity was merely a privilege that said parent decided to rescind so he could indulge his twisted desires? Of course not, and I don't believe for a millisecond that you would not find that as repulsive as I would. I'm demonstrating how your absolutist phrasing can be turned to evil purposes frighteningly easily.sonofccn wrote:No. Children have no rights, no freedoms as we understand them. They have priviliges, which can be administered and taken away by their fiat of their guadian , nothing more. Take an adult against his will to a place, shove him down into a seat and jab needles and drills into his mouth and we have a kidnapping. A child and its going to the dentist. Children and Adults are seperate and distinct, to argue otherwise is madness.
Children do have rights, they simply aren't as extensive as those of adults, and the state is more often focused on the negative rights of children to be free from certain things, hence why we have laws against pandering obscene material to children, contributing to the delinquency of minors, child neglect, child abuse, child pornography, etc, etc. The German court has seen fit to conclude that the basic rights of the child to physical integrity supercede the rights of the parent, and I applaud that decision. I'd love to see something similar in the US, but I'm not holding my breath.
Quite correct. Suffice it to say that a rigid respect for individual rights would invariably lead one to the conclusion that liberalism and conservatism are both wholly inadequate to the task, since they both have their collective aspects that demand state intervention in private lives. Of course, the question that must be asked is whether the right to do or to be something comes before or after the right not to do or not to be?sonofccn wrote:The problem with using strong-arm tactics to impose your personal viewpoint is when you find yourself on the other end of the "stick". Rights which are unevenly and disparatingly enforced are not rights, merely priviliges which can be given or taken by the State.