I'm not afraid of being proven wrong, because I don't consider faith something that can be proven or falsified.  I just don't have that debate, and I have zero interest in spinning my wheels while listening to you attempt the impossible.

It's nothing personal, I've learned long ago that this is a topic best left unsaid.

That book is not my only consideration.  We literally don't have the time, nor the bandwidth, to explore this topic.  I don't have the will to discuss my faith path with anyone on an Internet forum, either.

More likely he just ignores them and his wife has to deal with it.

Woah! Little babies, and twins too!  You've got larger problems coming.  Let me know how that is all working out for you in about two or three more years.


I nver said that I was the kind of Christian that took it all as doctrine, Myrkul.

I don't know that answer.  Perhaps you could remind me?


There are lots of reasons that is so; not the least of which is that my moral code is based upon Judeo-Christian values.  Sorry to break it to you, but pimping out children is verboten, while spanking of errant children is specificly encouraged by the old documents on those topics.

I find this unlikely.  When this happened last in the US, gold was how most people saved for old age.  These days, that is done via 401k's and IRA retirement accounts.  There is much more value for a failing government to steal in those accounts than all of the privately owned gold in our modern world.  And since those accounts were created as tax-defered savings vehicles by acts of Congress, it's hard to argue that Congress can't just change it's mind on that issue, for the "greater good" and all that.  For that matter, there has been talk of 'nationalizing' private retirement accounts by certain persons on the far left of the political spectrum in Congress since the big health care law was passed.  It's simply the next box to get a checkmark in their social agenda.

For you, as well.  Are you ever going to tell me how old your daughters are, and if they have ever fought with each other?

Strangely related to this topic....

http://www.strike-the-root.com/evicting-statist-within-us

Consider me encouraged.  Again, spanking is a very rarely used method in my household.  Particularly these days, since the only three children in the household that are still younger than the age of reason are foster kids, two of whom are in the foster care system because of severe physical abuse (which, at a minimum, renders spanking ineffective) and the third is an infant who is physically incapable of getting into any trouble, since she can't even crawl yet.  My two blood children are 10 and 12, and neither has been spanked in many years; although they still occasionally end up in the corner for fighting with one another.  When the older of the two abused brothers first came to our house, at about 2 years old, he only had two emotional states, indifference and abject rage.  My son, 8 at the time; was entirely unprepared for a little boy half his body weight to attack him like a pit bull.  Yet, that is exactly what happened!  In the first week, this two year old had bloodied and bruised an 8 year old boy who didn't believe that fighting back was kosher, because the boy was (less than, really) half his size.  The two year old had finally bit my 8 year old son so hard, through a pair of jeans, there was a pretty fine image of his teeth in a blood blister.  We had to explain to my son that we could not spank him, because we had made that agreement to the state, but that he had made no such agreement; and that he needed to defend himself.  It took a few more good brawls before the 2 year old caught on to how things would go for him, but he got the message.  Don't attack his new brother, because he would get hurt doing it.  This ended the reign of terror for my 8 year old, but things remain more difficult regarding that same kid and his own little brother.  He is starting to toughen up, now days, and can give his older brother tis for tat, so I don't expect that to persist much longer; but at the time the little brother was barely one year old, and still crawling, and we were literally prohibited from excersising justice on his little brother's behalf by contract. I'm still not sure that it would have made much difference, considering that the 2 year old had experienced so much pain for no cause whatsoever, that he might not have been able to associate a spanking to his own behavior at all.  (He actually has physical scars, some on his face.  I'm talking about real abuse here)  After all, that would imply an ability to reason at a very young age; too much to expect.

I take those very same classes, as they are required annually of "resource parents" under contract with the state's Department of Child Protective Services, which I am.  Very few of the actual courses have much to say about alternatives to corporeal punishment per se, but the ones that do are incrediblely useful.  I do use those techniques, in as far as they work, but they have limits.  I'd suspect that Myrkul would consider some of those techniques to be corporeal punishment anyway, as they do involve the use of force and the deliberate use of pshycological stressors, if not actual physical pain as a deterent.  Myrkul's viewpoint simply isn't practical for a majority of children, assuming he would not consider caging them during the times for which he could not be actively holding them.  There simply is too many dangerous tools, appliances and household products to fully protect small children; and that is not even considering the hazards beyond the front door.


It makes sense to limit spanking as a deterrent anyway.  I never questioned that.  What I'm saying is that the use of corporeal punishment as a parenting tool is not criminal, not automaticly abuse, not a violation of their human rights, and between myself & my wife (and the state, in the case of foster care children).  Neither Myrkul, nor anyone else, has any say in that, no matter what he might think of it.

Corolation is not causation.  Those observations are just as likely to be associated to criminal behaviors to be learned by observation of both their parents & peers.  I would say that it is even more likely, criminality is often associated by neighborhood far better that whether or not the parents used corporeal punishment or not.

Damn Christians, keep interfering into a perfectly disfunctional social habits.

The irony of that is the above historical note was a practical observation by the Pope.  Think about that for a minute.


Then you are not an ancap!  That's a representative democracy!  And some people are not capable of doing even that, as our own past 20 years or more should be evidence enough.

Between the two of us, I'm not the one advocating for everyone to march to the same drum, forced or not.  You're the one who insists that I comply with your moral interpretations, under final threat of force.  You have already stated as much, and argued to length.  Why can't you accept that you don't get to decide mores for me?  You seem to think that you can win this argument.  You can't, and neither can I.  Because it's unwinnable.  It's not an argument that can be settled by logic or reasoned debate.  It's entirely a matter of personal perspectives.  We both look at the same basic principles and come to different conclusions.  And this is despite the fact that, on so many other things, we agree.  How on Earth can you rationally expect that a real ancap society wouldn't continually be in a state of low level civil war?  

And don't forget that followers of this kind will cling to any assertive authority.  The Third Reich depended upon it.

I didn't claim that it's black and white.  I am more than aware that all of life can be found in many shades of grey.  What matters is working towards the light as far as that is reasonable.

Different people are going to do different things.  Adjust.  The end is still the same, is it not?  Let them spin their wheels, and you just do your best to roll with the punches that they attract.  And let them do the same when your actions attract the wrong kind of attention.  You are not their keeper, nor are they yours.  This argument is futile.

"Used to"?

And yet, this is a contradiction as well.  The benevolent state apparatus that wields a monopoly on the use of force and is funded by involuntary taxation (no matter how 'fair') cannot maintain it's benevolence over time.  It may start there, but it will not end there.  It took less than a generation for that one to screw up the best intentions of the framers of the US constitution.  And they still claim that taxation is voluntary, because so is work, and the food that work buys.

Is it a contradiction for a Catholic to intervene in an abortion?


AnCap is a flawed premise as well, as I have already stated.  The premise being that all people are capable of governing themselves, which is demonstratablely false, and the only reason that some kind of government will continue exist.  The real reason that so many people have a real problem with imagining an ancap society is because it cannot exist, and that is the real contradiction.


Oh,I have.  You should try it yourself.  Step outside of your little box, and try to consider yourself from the perspectives of others.  It's incrediblely enlightening. Of course, since I'm an INTP, it's literally impossible for me to not continually question myself, as that is part of what I am.  I am also of the opinion that ancap is impossible for another, more subtle, reason; that being, if Myers & Briggs were even close to correct, there is a minority of the population that is fundamentally incapable of self-government on any practical level, and not because they have criminal tendencies.  Simply because they depend upon a perceived, external moral authority in order to form a personal code of behavior.  These are the kind of people that would condone the violation of minority rights, simply because that was the law where they grew up.  I know it's hard for you to imagine, because you believe that since you think a certain way, that most people think in the same way.  This is not the case.  These same people would be lost and easily swayed in an ancap society, lacking any dominant moral authority, and in just a few generations your stable ancap society would self-destruct.

If I were to guess, Cunicula probably falls into this catagory.  And no, that is not necessarily a bad thing.

All three lead to regimes with two or more classes of citizens, eventually.  There is no solution to that.

You forgot the part about the parents holding those same rights 'in escrow' and excersing them on his behalf.  That is the part for which we disagree.

You can look at it however you wish to look at it.  But no matter how you look at it, you have no say in it.  Until you accept this basic truth, you will continue to spin.


No, you're missing the point.  Let me offer a slightly different analogy for you to ponder.  As a Christian, I'm also not okay with a much worse violation of the rights of children, namely abortion.  I find it morally abhorrent, and quite literally murder of a human life.  To take your perspective, I'd be within my right to shoot abortion doctors as serial murderers.  After all, if I'm morally obligated to defend the victims, what other option do I have?  There can be no peaceful disagreement, in your worldview.  Every perceived violation of human rights must be met with force if reason is not sufficient, after all.  But I can't do that, now can I?  Certainly some have done exactly this, and they have gone to prison as murderers.  The problem is that some aspects of Juris Naturalis have a consensus.  I.E., Thous Shalt Not Murder, Thou Shalt Not Steal, Thou Shalt Bear False Witness, etc.  What does not have a consensus is "what, exactly, is 'murder'?  Is fighting in a war, even one that would qualify under the 'just war' doctrine, murder?  For some, the answer there is yes; but for most, the answer is most certainly no.  So the same rationale applies to yourself, and your desires to interfere in how I raise my children.  If you were to actually see me spank a child on the street, your moral code compels you to intervene.  Yet, if you harm me in doing so, the law will not respect your moral obligations any more than it would respect mine, or those of the 'honor killing' types.  I respect that you really do believe that what I am doing is wrong, and do believe that you are sincere in your good intentions.  However, we both know how the path to hell is paved.  Furthermore, you can't seem to wrap your head around the fact that you are bound by your absolutist ancap philosophy.  While I could change the legal definition of the beginning of life to conception by lobbying congress and convincing a significant majority of the current population that my views are correct, and then proceed to engage the government's monopoly on force to suppress the crime of abortion; you would have to lobby the whole of your society and achieve a consensus, and even then you would be powerless to react should someone come along later who disagreed.  It is not a contradiction for me, as a libertarian and not an anarchist, to expect the government to use it's regulatory powers or monopoly on force to protect the rights of children (as I interpret them).  It is, however, a contradiction for you, as an ancap, to attempt to impose your interpretations of same upon myself, in any fashion whatsoever.


The requirement that a population surrender a subset of their sovereign rights in order to grant those powers to governments, with the intention of securing the remainder isn't an illusion.  It's the very premise on which our version of a republic was originally built upon.

On more point to be made.  While I do find pedofilia to be morally abhorrent and a violation of the rights of children, it's noteworthy to point out that there are still cultures in this world for which marrying off an eight year old daughter to one of her male uncles is normal.  I do not feel that I'm obligated, or even 'called', to remedy this problem.  If you should feel that you are, I would be more than willing to contribute to the costs of your plane ticket, as well as the costs of your funeral, but not to the fund for your daughters who would grow up without a father.