“Parental rights” is a dangerous concept. It gives people the impression that the family, not the state, is the fundamental social unit.

Stalin, Mao, and the Stasi got it right.

That is the odd take that Sarah Jones of New York Magazine takes in response to the resurgence of the parental rights movement. John wrote about her article yesterday, but I wanted to throw in my $.02.

The parental rights movement actively threatens the safety and wellbeing of children and by extension, democracy itself: https://t.co/kGW6sVSh7v

— Sarah Jones (@onesarahjones) April 8, 2023

Of course, she doesn’t put it that way. She has a much more palatable rhetorical approach. But that is the essence of her argument.

Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it,” the Book of Proverbs says. To certain right-wing Christians, the concept is simple: A child can be broken, or stamped into shape, much like any domesticated animal. Though all parents hope they’ll pass their values onto their children, for some that hope is more of a mandate. My own parents believe that Proverbs is the word of God, and they believed, too, that a righteous upbringing would produce an adult in their image. Who can blame them? The idea that a child should replicate her parents does not belong only to conservative Christianity or to religion at all. A proverb is common wisdom, and lately this one is hard to escape. Authoritarianism is gospel to modern conservatives. Nowhere is that clearer than in their assaults on children.

Parents raising their children to be decent, moral, and well-behaved is authoritarian. Better they are the spoiled brats who believe that they are unicorns and eunuchs, as they do in public schools.

We really have to shut these parents down. They even read the Bible. Take a page out of the Blue-haired alphabet BLM Antifa and, ironically, trust the authorities at the MSM and state level instead of the Good Book.

[C]onservatives betray a conviction that a child is the property of parents. Because parents own their children, they can dispose of the child as they see fit. They can deny them evidence-based medical care. They can put a child to work. They can make sure a child is sheltered from the dangers of a serious education. When a child goes hungry, that’s because a parent isn’t caring for their property — and what a person does with their property is their right.

Is this an accurate description of the parental rights movement? The Left is fighting to ensure that teenagers can’t learn life skills by getting a job (because this is an important step in learning how to be responsible). The reason is simple: people should be dependent upon the state from cradle to grave.

And that “evidence-based medical care?” She means sterilizing and mutilating kids, and study after study shows that there is little to no evidence at all to back it up. There is, however, a consensus among the Elite that it is a good way to separate children from parents.

Like any piece of property, a child has value to conservative activists. They are key to a future the conservative wants to win. Parental rights are merely one path to the total capture of state power and the imposition of an authoritarian hierarchy on us all. So it’s no surprise that children have long been a fixation to the right wing.

Because, unlike the Left, conservatives actually care about the well-being of children, not merely their political usefulness.

Above all else, there is one thing that families can provide that no state ever can: love and attention. Look at the history of orphanages, foster care systems, the juvenile “justice” system, and welfare programs…

The state takes of children as well as it takes to care for others under its protection–like prisoners. Name a place less conducive to a safe existence than a prison, where the state literally controls everything. They can’t even keep drugs out of the place.

Does anybody think replacing a family with a foster care system would be an improvement except for the most extreme cases? It exists for a reason, but that reason is to substitute (badly) for a truly broken family.

What she is really arguing is the opposite of what she claims: children are property, but the property of the state. Parents may feed and clothe their children as a kind of tax paid to the overlords–as free labor–but the care and moral education should be left to the “experts.”

It is a gross and totalitarian view, and it is the universal view of the hard Left. Not liberals, but the Left. And everywhere they gain power the Left replaces the authority of parents with that of the state. To the point of turning children against their parents.

Make no mistake–it is happening here. Leftists are not only pushing demonic practices on children, but encouraging them to keep secrets from their parents, to “trust” adults other than their parents, and even to go “no contact” with parents.

They aren’t even trying to hide it anymore. We have “sanctuary states” for parents who kidnap children if they do what the state wants, and they call it good.

It is so evil that most people can’t actually believe that it is happening, despite the fact that it is out in the open. Frilly and empathetic language is used to describe it, but this is the mailed fist in the velvet glove.

Nothing more.

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