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Announcement :: Children |
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Children's Rights? |
Current rating: 3 |
by Robert Kepka
(No verified email address) |
06 May 2003
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Those who sexually prey on children will love this plank. They would probably be immune from prosecution unless it could be proven they forced the child in some sexual act. |
Children's rights?
I wonder how many of you have taken the time to read the 2002 Libertarian Party platform. Specifically, the "Domestic Ills, Population" section. The third paragraph reads "therefore we call for the repeal of all laws that restrict anyone, including children," in engaging in voluntary exchanges of goods, services or information regarding human sexuality, reproduction, birth control or related medical or biological technologies.
As a Libertarian I can agree with this plank, but not with "including children." How can we emancipate a child for sexual purpose and for none other? What this does is give the child the full rights and responsibilities of an adult in sexual matters. Children are minors for the very reason of their inability to handle these responsibilities, and the freedom to make adult decisions bears responsibility.
This may also undermines parental authority. Since the child has been given the same rights in sexual matters as an adult, what would prevent a 12-year-old who wanted to engage in prostitution from suing a parent for the right to engage in this practice? And what recourse would a parent have against another adult who encouraged the child?
Those who sexually prey on children will love this plank. They would probably be immune from prosecution unless it could be proven they forced the child in some sexual act.
There is a good reason for children to not have the full rights of an adult. They don't have the ability to handle the responsibility. Nor do most children who have reached the age of consent. What 16-year-old has the ability to provide for her or his own self and raise a child? Well, today they have the state to support them, and I am sure we do not want that to continue.
As it is, this is a bad plank and should be removed.
-- Robert Kepka, Sebastian, Florida |
See also:
http://www.lp.org/action/pagetools.php?function=print&page=%2Flpnews%2F0211%2Fmailbox2.html
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Comments
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How To Break A Conservative Libertarian Masquerading As A Liberal |
by pro-human
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
07 May 2003
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Please be aware that there are those who seek to infiltrate Indymedia to spread a Conservative, Isolationist agenda, as you can well see from the conversation below (from DC Indymedia). I don't think there is anything we can do other than to remove their masks and make them admit their agenda -- let them be judged by their true ideals and not the ones they hide behind to gain sympathy.
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Something for the pro-war's to be proud of
by Liberty, anythingtohere (at) yahoo.com
from BBC website
Iraq is thought to be having a cholera outbreak due to contaminated water and poor living conditions following the war....also increase in digestive problems....
jingo all the way, hurrah what ho...all hail US and UK...
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I smell a Conservative Isolationist
by pro-human
Hmm, the name of the poster is Liberty - as in Libertarian?
Libertarians persue a policy of "America First" (a.k.a. "Everyone and Everything else Last") which is best descrived as live and let die. Their view is that America has no business trying to help anyone accept Americans, the rest of the world is on its own.
Isn't that right Liberty?
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Please
by Jason
The "concern" on the pro-war side for the welfare of the Iraqi people is as fake as their "patriotism". Where was the outrage from these people during the 80's when Rummy was shaking hands with the "Butcher of Baghdad"? There was none because no right-wing voices were telling them to care.
If you're so outraged at France for doing business with Saddam, where is the outrage over Dick Cheney doing business with him from 1998-2000? There is none. In fact, you make excuses for it.
It's just hilarious that the same people who railed against Clinton for being a draft-dodger, say nothing about W. doing the same thing. In fact, they call him a hero.
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Libertarians masquerading as Liberals
by pro-human
Your criticisms are hollow because you offer no alternative. Why is that? Because you honestly don't care about anything other than a Conservative Isolationist agenda.
So why don't we skip ahead -- how would you go about removing the world-renounced dictatorship of North Korea? Do you think your method will be free of any harmful secondary affects like cholera?
You see, I want a world in which dictatorships aren't free to hide within the graces of the UN -- where China can't occupy Tibet, Israel can't occupy Palestine, and Syria can't occupy Lebanon. But I'm not naive enough to believe that there is a way to achieve these things without negative consequences.
I also believe believe that it is in America's best interest (as well as our moral obligation) to do more than bitch and moan -- and that Isolationists such as yourself are the scourge of the modern world.
All you want to know is how much will it cost and why you should have to pay for it.
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note for pro-human
by sightseer56
Yes, the primary principle is America First. If not us supporting ourself, who? That dosen't mean everyone else has to be a distant last, but they should definitely be second to our own national interest. Please don't start that tattered crap that if we just all joined hands and sang "We are the World" everything would be great. Unfortunately there are those in the world that will present a threat to us and/or to international order. They musy be eliminated. At least that was we can hope to have a sembelance of peace. We should provide aid and assistance to those who are our friends and simply ignore those who are not. After all if they can afford to insult us it must be because they don't need us. Let them strike out on their own. If they survive fine, if they become extinct fine. As far as the maniac leadership, that problem could be handled by selective removal of the problem short of war. We certainly have the capability, let's use it.
In the real world of both people and nations, you do not turn the other cheek when slapped. You pick up a club and beat the other guys brains out. Threat eliminated!
Again, that's real world and not focus group nonsense.
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Libertarians come crawling out...
by pro-human
I knew it!!!
What you don't seem to understand is that your view is not the view put forth by Indymedia, which seeks to unite people worldwide to help people worldwide -- there is no room for an America First attitude.
Get it?!! |
See also:
http://dc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=68365&group=webcast
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Libertarians Mock The Left, May Day |
by Edwin A. Locke
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 3
08 May 2003
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Celebrate capitalism on May Day
by Edwin A. Locke, Libertarian Party
May Day will once again be celebrated by left-wing and environmentalist protesters united by a single emotion: a virulent hatred of capitalism, especially global capitalism. Why the hatred?
The advantage of a global economy based on free trade and capitalism is so obvious and so enormous that it is difficult to conceive of anyone opposing it. The benefit is based on the law of comparative advantage: every country becomes more prosperous the more it invests in producing and exporting what it does best (in terms of quality, cost, uniqueness, etc.), and importing goods and services that other countries can produce more efficiently.
For example, let us say that Nigerian companies can produce T-shirts for $1 a piece whereas U.S. companies can only produce them for $5 a piece. Under free trade, Americans will buy their T-shirts from Nigeria. This division of labor benefits people in both countries. Nigerians will have more money to buy food, clothing and housing. Americans will spend less on T-shirts and have more money to buy cell phones and SUVs, and the investment capital formerly spent on T-shirts will be put to more productive uses, say in the area of technology or drug research.
Multiply this by millions of products and hundreds of countries and over time the benefits run into the trillions of dollars.
How, then, do we reconcile the incredible benefits of global capitalism with the anti-globalization movement? The protesters make three claims repeatedly.
First, they argue that multinational corporations are becoming too powerful and threaten the sovereignty of smaller nations. This is absurd on the face of it. Governments have the power of physical coercion (the gun); corporations do not; they have only the dollar -- they function through voluntary trade.
Second, anti-globalists claim that multinational companies exploit workers in poor countries by paying lower wages than they would pay in their home countries. Well, what is the alternative? It is: no wages!
The comparative advantage of poorer countries is precisely that their wages are low, thus reducing the costs of production. If multinational corporations had to pay the same wages as in their home countries, they would not bother to invest in poorer countries at all and millions of people would lose their livelihoods.
Third, it is claimed that multinational corporations destroy the environments of smaller, poorer countries. Note that if 19th-century America had been subjected to the environmental legislation that now pervades most Western countries, we ourselves would still be a third-world country. Most of the industries that made the United States a world economic power -- the steel, automobile, chemicals and electrical industries -- would never have been able to develop.
By what right do we deprive poor, destitute people in other countries from trying to create prosperity in the same way that we did, which is the only way possible?
All of these objections to global capitalism are just rationalizations. The giveaway, and the clue to the real motive of today's left and their hangers-on, is that all their protests are against -- they are anti-capitalism, anti-free trade, anti-using the environment for man's benefit -- but they are not for anything.
In the first third of the 20th century, most leftists were idealists -- they stood for and fought for an imagined, industrialized utopia -- Communism (or Socialism). The left's vision was man as a selfless slave of the state, and the state as the omniscient manager of the economy.
However, instead of prosperity, happiness and freedom, Communism and Socialism produced nothing but poverty, misery and terror (witness Soviet Russia, North Korea and Cuba, among others). Their system had to fail, because it was based on a lie. You cannot create freedom and happiness by destroying individual rights; and you cannot create prosperity by negating the mind and evading the laws of economics.
Furious over the fact that their envisioned utopia has collapsed in ruins, the leftists now seek only destruction. They want to annihilate the system that has produced the very prosperity, happiness and freedom that their system could not produce. That system is capitalism, the system of true social justice where people are free to produce and keep what they earn.
The fact that free trade is now becoming truly global is one of the most important achievements in the history of mankind. If, in the end, it wins out over statism, global capitalism will bring about the greatest degree of prosperity and the greatest period of peaceful cooperation in world history.
We should scornfully ignore the nihilist protesters -- they have nothing positive to offer. We should not only allow global capitalism; we should welcome it and foster it in every way possible.
It is time to rephrase Karl Marx: Workers of the world unite for global capitalism; you have nothing to lose but your poverty.
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Edwin A. Locke, a Professor Emeritus of management at the University of Maryland at College Park, is a senior writer for the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, California. |
See also:
http://www.lp.org/lpnews/0305/forummay_locke.html
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