On July 1, 2021, Ben Shapiro released episode 1288 of “The Ben Shapiro Show”. The main focus of this episode is the cultural impact of the LGBTQ sexual revolution, and specifically around a recently published Op-Ed from the Washington Post, “Yes, kink belongs at Pride. And I want my kids to see it”. The article, written by Lauren Rowello, weighs in on the issue of whether “kink”, public and soft-core expressions of sexuality, should be allowed at Pride parades. Rowello comes down firmly in the positive, going as far as to say that she would like her children to be exposed to “kink” as to inculcate in them that expressions of sexuality are natural and should be affirmed. Shapiro is highly critical of the idea of children being exposed to “kink”, and believes Rowello’s argument in favor to be ludicrous. It is Shapiro’s overarching takeaway from this article that is worthy of note, however. Shapiro argues that in an issue such as this involving children, there is no possible Libertarian solution.
Here are the relevant quotes from the episode:
“All right, well today marks the first day of non pride month, which means that all of the corporate logos go back to normal. All of the corporations stop with their virtue signaling, and they’re not expected to keep up with woke virtue signaling. So, no, I guess that pride is, is over. And we’re back to regular. Life is the way that this, this nonsense works, but not before the worst column of pride month came out in the Washington post by a person named Lauren. Romello a writer lives in the Philadelphia area. And so this, this person wrote a piece in the Washington post titled yes, kink belongs at pride, and I want my kids to see it. Now I tend to be pretty libertarian about things, right? When I don’t think the government should really be in the business of compulsion, unless somebody is hurting somebody else.
And this starts to get dicey. When you are talking about children, there is a battle that is brewing about the future of our nation’s kids, and it is unavoidable. It is not avoidable. There is no libertarian solution to it. Okay? The libertarian solution typically, which is let everybody do whatever it is that they want, as long as they’re not hurting anybody else that libertarian arguments ceases to apply. When you’re talking about the impact on children who do not have the power of consent, do not have fully rational Characteristics are not capable of making decisions. Then we, as a society have to decide what the rules of the road are going to be. And this has come up in the context of, for example, critical race theory recently, where the right has said quite correctly, that children should not be indoctrinated with the nonsense of critical race theory, which suggests that racially essential characteristics determine your value and your perspective on matters of politics. And whether you have a chance of success in the United States, kids should not be indoctrinated with that. It’s a violation of, of children’s ability to thrive. And it is in fact, a form of emotional and intellectual child abuse to teach kids that they are victimizers or the victimized.
And so when it comes to kids, we all do have a fairly large say in what the societal standard should be. Because again, there’s a non-consenting party. Who’s now part of this bargain and the same thing holds true when it comes to social policy. So the left has decided, and this is again, I think an unavoidable battle that is going to come to your town. It is going to come to your state. It’s going to come to your household in the unavoidable battle is you have a group of people on the left. And they suggest that if you raise your child in a traditional manner, if you raise your child to believe that a traditional family structure is better, okay, that a man and a woman raising a child is better than a man and a man or a woman and a woman.
If you believe that men and women exist and that these are not malleable categories and that a man cannot become a woman. And that if a child suffers from gender dysphoria, you should participate in, for example, watchful waiting, right? You should simply wait to see how things develop. You should not give into the delusion that your child actually is a member of the opposite gender. The left believes if you do that, that’s a form of child abuse and CPS should arrive at your door.”
Shapiro’s argument, as best I can summarize it, is that Libertarian structures work smoothly so long as the individuals within those structures have the ability to consent. When exposed to certain ideas, the Libertarian expresses that individuals have the right to believe what they wish, so long as they do not hurt anyone else. Children, however, do not have this same faculty of consent. Therefore, when we are faced with the prospect of exposing them to certain ideas, to state that they can believe what they wish is not a legitimate answer. They do not have the ability to consent, and as such, do not have the ability to pick and choose what ideas they decide believe and internalize. Therefore, society must play a role in what kind of ideas children are exposed to.
Shapiro does not clearly state the ideology of Libertarianism and how it may apply to situations of children and their parents. Thus, we will elaborate on them here. Libertarianism is an ideology developed out of the Non-Aggression Principle (or NAP for short). This principle states that it is morally illegitimate for anyone to initiate aggression or violence against another, unless aggression has been initiated against you. You cannot utilize force or the threat of force against anyone else unless they have first done so to you. Put simply, violence is permissible only in self-defense. Every positions that is championed by the Libertarian, such as drug legalization, foreign policy, intervention in the economy, etc., are all deduced as consequences from this one principle.
Thus, the Libertarian ideology is one that crucially revolves around the concept of consent. If two people consent to an action, there is no ethical argument that can be raised against the legality of their interaction. This does not mean that the Libertarian has to unreservedly approve of all voluntarily taken actions. The Libertarian may still object to the actions of others on other grounds, but he cannot object to them on legal grounds. If one decides to never save a dollar from one’s income and instead spend it all as soon as it is acquired, the Libertarian may object to this form of financial management as being foolish and destructive, but he cannot claim any form of illegality to it.
So far, this system appears to work perfectly fine. As long as actions are consensual, there is no legal problem; if they are not consensual, then the law steps in. However, this system seemingly runs into trouble when the concept of children is introduced. It does not seem as if children can truly consent to actions in the same way that fully-functioning adults can. Any experience with children will reveal as much. It then appears that Shapiro may be correct and that Libertarians are faced with a fatal problem with their ideology. After all, if Libertarians cannot explain one of the most foundational aspects of nature within their ideology, how could such an ideology be taken seriously?
There are several different ways in which Libertarians have approached this problem, the most popular of these being from Murray Rothbard and his writings on the topic. He recognized the problem that this presented to Libertarians, but did not believe that this issue necessitated an abandonment of Libertarian principles. Rothbard recognized that children cannot consent until they reach a certain level of development. This means that children are not current actors, but future actors. For them to be able to reach this state of future-action, they must have the guardianship of a parent. How can we conceive of this necessary relationship through a Libertarian lens? Rothbard did so by viewing that parent-child relationship as being one of a pseudo-property relationship. The parent of the child has a guardian-status of control over him which permits him to have control, to a limited extent, over the child. There are limits to what the guardian can do with the child, of course, as the child is not like any other object of property. The child is a future actor, and therefore, the oversight the guardian can have is limited. This limited guardianship is expired when the child reaches an appropriate stage where they can set off on their own and declare their own self-ownership. At this point, the guardianship that the parent held over the child is erased and the child is a child no longer.
This property-rights position on the parent-child relationship may seem extreme. However, this view is not substantially different then the order that persists naturally. The parent of the child wishes to raise them to be well-adjusted and functioning individuals. To do this requires some sort of control over the child’s actions, if for no other reason than to prevent the child from inflicting harm accidently on themselves. The parent must guide the child into adulthood. However, no one who think to assert that this parental control is absolute over the child. This picture of commonly-accepted practices of parenthood are identical to the diagnosis of the situation laid out by Rothbard. As radical as it may appear on its face, Rothbard’s position on this matter is nothing unnatural.
Now that we have a full understanding of Libertarianism and how it may be applied to parenthood, let us turn back to Shapiro’s arguments. Shapiro states:
“Now I tend to be pretty libertarian about things, right? When I don’t think the government should really be in the business of compulsion, unless somebody is hurting somebody else.
And this starts to get dicey. When you are talking about children, there is a battle that is brewing about the future of our nation’s kids, and it is unavoidable. It is not avoidable. There is no libertarian solution to it. Okay? The libertarian solution typically, which is let everybody do whatever it is that they want, as long as they’re not hurting anybody else that libertarian arguments ceases to apply.”
Strictly speaking, Shapiro is correct. Children are not able to consent, and thus, Libertarian principles cannot apply to their actions. However, Libertarian principles can apply without difficulty to the parent-child relationship, as shown by Rothbard. However, it is what Shapiro subsequently states that is truly concerning:
“When you’re talking about the impact on children who do not have the power of consent, do not have fully rational characteristics, are not capable of making decisions. Then we, as a society have to decide what the rules of the road are going to be. And this has come up in the context of, for example, critical race theory recently, where the right has said quite correctly, that children should not be indoctrinated with the nonsense of critical race theory, which suggests that racially essential characteristics determine your value and your perspective on matters of politics. And whether you have a chance of success in the United States, kids should not be indoctrinated with that. It’s a violation of, of children’s ability to thrive. And it is in fact, a form of emotional and intellectual child abuse to teach kids that they are victimizers or the victimized.
And so when it comes to kids, we all do have a fairly large say in what the societal standard should be. Because again, there’s a non-consenting party”
Shapiro argues here that because there is a party in society that cannot consent, this party being children, that society as a whole has a say in how these children are taught and the values they are inculcated with. The Libertarian recognizes that the parent has control over the child, and as a necessary result of this fact, has a hand in determining what principles and values that child is exposed to. This is an inseparable aspect of the parent-child relationship that is recognized by Libertarians. However, Shapiro states that because children cannot consent to what is being taught to them that everyone in society has a say in what values be instill within them. Shapiro is blatantly leaving the door open for full totalitarianism in parenthood with this argument.
If everyone in society has a say in the values taught to children, then the parent, for all intents and purposes, no longer exists. Almost anything that can be taught to children is the result of some pre-conceived value held by the parent. If the parent believes it to be best to instruct the child to clean their room, this is obviously coming from a previously-held value of cleanliness by the parent. However, the child has no way to consent to this value from the parent. If Shapiro is to be consistent, he must argue that society should have a say in whether or not the child should be taught to clean their room. In this kind of society, the parent appears to be more of a temporary renter of the child, following the dictates of society, as opposed to a true guardian.
Furthermore, how would the will of society be enforced in matters of parenthood? There must be some entity to ensure that the values society wishes to instill in children are enforced. The only entity fit for this task would be the state. The state then becomes the actual singular parent for children and oversees their growth and upbringing, following the dictates of society. Shapiro must not only accept this fact, but also that the state must punish any parents that believe differently. If parents try to instill in their children values different from those upheld by the rest of society, the state must intervene to stop the parent from their dangerous and seditious action. If this activity persists, the only option is to jail the offending parent for their crimes.
Thus, when Shapiro states that society must have some role in directing the teaching and raising of children, his intention is to prevent the teaching of “critical race theory”, but he sets an extremely dangerous precedent for the role of society in the life of the child. He dismisses the Libertarian solution in an effort to prevent critical race theory from being propagated, but in the process destroys the role of the parent. For an individual that so fervently espouses “traditional and family values”, such a position is confusing at best and hypocritical at worst.
Shapiro attacks the Libertarian position on parenthood, arguing that the Libertarian cannot account for parenthood. Rothbard, along with other Libertarians, have shown why this supposed predicament for the Libertarian is nothing more than a fabrication. However, in his rejection of a Libertarian solution, Shapiro throws out the baby with the bathwater. If society is to play a role in the development of children, how can there be any true role for the parent? How can the parent to be said to even have any say in the life of their own child? The ghastly conclusion that one is force to draw from Shapiro’s argument is that they fundamentally irrelevant.
The Libertarian does not compromise his principles when he posits that a child-parent relationship exists. However, when Shapiro rejects this idea, the position he is forced to take betrays all of the socially conservative values he holds dear. I do not believe that Shapiro intends to betray these values, but his fallacy clearly shows to us the dangers in rejecting individual liberty in one area while simultaneously proclaiming the inherent responsibility and role of the individual in society. Shapiro is forced to retreat to a state-oriented solution, which ultimately twists him into an intellectual pretzel. Any proponent of social conservatism would do well to learn from his intellectual mistake. If you wish to proclaim the individual and his existence over that of the state, this position must be consistently applied. If not, the inevitable result is totalitarianism and a betrayal of liberty.
