What’s Wrong with the World

Libertarians are straw-men, except a few actually exist.

I have often said that I would like some time to meet a libertarian who got at least as het up about the fact that a contractor with only a plumber's license cannot make a free contract to hook up a new dishwasher as he is about the fact that some conservatives would like to pass effective laws against strip joints.

Then you need to do some Googling...

Example 1

Example 2

Example 3

Example 4

In fact, the libertarian answer to the ACLU, the Institute for Justice, makes professional licensing one of its priorities.

Most of us were sold libertarianism with the line, "It may be wrong, even very wrong, but that doesn't mean it should be illegal." But evidently it can't be "very wrong" if "very wrong" means, even indirectly, that even minors aren't permitted to do it because it's very wrong.

And there's the child problem. Most sane people realize that certain kinds of wrong things are wrong in ways such that, if nothing else, it should be illegal for children to be involved in them. (And by the way, though the particular girl strippers mentioned in this article were sixteen, it appears that there is no reason why a younger girl could not have been involved. The story mentions the case of a 12-year-old stripper in Dallas, TX. Dallas managed to find a way to stop this, but Providence just can't get its act together to do so.)

Libertarians didn't draft any of the relevant laws, aren't enforcing them as police officers making judgments on the street and aren't prosecuting them in court. You're complaining about a liberal state and blaming it purely on libertarianism which is absurd since under a libertarian system, a teenager would be a legal adult like they were in most of human history.

Most liberals and libertarians will deny that they are trying to sexualize children. For some, this is an honest denial.

Teenagers aren't children. Even our vernacular language makes that distinction in common conversation where we say "children and teens."

What conservatives won't face up to is that they aren't the students of human nature they think they are, but rather romantics. Mainstream conservatism barely understands human nature better than liberals and libertarians do.

It makes you uncomfortable to think of a 14 year old girl stripping and hooking. Makes me that way too. Where we part ways is that I know she's old enough to know it's wrong, why it's wrong and render obedience to social mores against the same. She's not a victim in any sense unless she's caught in the drug-prostitution-violence downward spiral.

It's this sentimental crap which has made the conservative understanding of what is wrong with sex, family life and marriage so out of touch with what is happening that conservatives are only now starting to find out that teen girls often do seek out the very "statutory rape" that "victimizes them," that family law courts are no better than any court run by the Castro brothers and that few churches teach anything resembling Christian marriage today.

You know what would be interesting here?...

To see What's Wrong with the World occasionally write on things like family law courts, the way that marriage is treated in church today (like abandoning Ephesians 5 and more in favor of a "partnership" or a de facto matriarchal household) and things like that where conservative blinders cause conservative ideology to slam into a brick wall.

Mike T, if you think both that a) legal emancipation from childhood should be at age 14 or something like that (this was, I hear, the age of legal manhood in medieval Wales, if that is helpful to you) and b) suicide, prostitution, strip dancing, and several other totally self-destructive things I don't have time to list should be illegal for _everybody_, legal adults included, then your position might not be too terribly destructive to society.

But I don't think you do.

You're complaining about a liberal state and blaming it purely on libertarianism which is absurd since under a libertarian system, a teenager would be a legal adult like they were in most of human history.

The complaint is often raised that contemporary conservative and/or liberal social mores, and the laws predicated upon those mores, infantilize the teenager, treating him/her as an object of the law, rather than the mature, choosing subject that he/she is. What is too often forgotten is that the lower level of social development, the lesser complexities of earlier phases of civilization, entailed earlier entries into adult life and responsibility; maturity was attained earlier, and of necessity. With the increasing complexity of our civilization, and the concomitant necessity of longer periods of socialization and education, the period of immaturity in the youth expands, also of necessity; the average teenager is not properly equipped to assume a productive role in a post-industrial society - by which is meant "striking out on his own, including entering into marital/sexual relations, with all of their consequences" - because the consequences of early failure, or the encountering of significant obstacles, in such a complex society are so profound.

It is not the case, therefore, in the sociological sense, that current laws infantilize the teenager. In objective, "this is the socio-economic structuring of our society" terms, the laws correspond, however unevenly, to our political economy. What, however, does infantilize the teenager, and everyone else, for that matter, is the consumerist economy of choosing, sustained by the liberal metaphysic and anthropology themselves, according to which we actualize ourselves through our choices of consumer goods and lifestyle options. Multiplying this infantilizing effect is the substance of the consumer offerings themselves, as witness the utter, bathetic/nihilistic poverty of most popular cultural artifacts. This is that which renders the teenager immature, a creature of desires and impulses more sophisticated, perhaps, than those of toddlers, though the mentality itself is fundamentally identical.

(I should note that our construction of a society so excessively articulated, so inordinately complicated, in which average persons, who might not be suited for a full high school education, let alone university, are excluded from any prospects of stability, is a bad thing. But y'all only upbraid me for saying so, so I'll leave it at that.)

Thanks for the post, Lydia.

What is too often forgotten is that the lower level of social development, the lesser complexities of earlier phases of civilization, entailed earlier entries into adult life and responsibility. . .

In addition to these factors, there's the fact that human lifespans were shorter until the very recent past. Society couldn't afford to delay adulthood until 18 (let alone 21) simply because the chances of making it weren't very good.

Also, the dichotomy between child/adult is a false one in this context. It is perfectly reasonable to structure a society where adolescents occupy a middle ground where they can do some "adult" things (drive, work) and not others (vote, go to war, strip).

Actually, I won't upbraid you for saying that Maximos. I just very probably disagree with your suggested solutions. I'd very much like to end the hegemony (there, I'm using the word) of the B.A. credential. It's gotta go. It's very bad for college education, if nothing else. I think _some_ businessmen are beginning to get the memo that a bachelors' degree is overrated.

I think you're spot-on regarding the recognition of realities in our present society. I think, too, that both the wisdom of former ages in encouraging _very_ early marriages and also the extent to which young people were taken to be really fully adults at (say) age 14 is sometimes exaggerated. Depending on physical size, a 14-year-old girl, still more a 12-year-old, may be physically capable of pregnancy but may be endangered by pregnancy. In Africa, the phenomenon of fistula injury is not uncommon, whereas in America, it is practically unknown. This is partly a result of the horrific practice of genital mutilation but is also a result of the commonness of early pregnancy. The fact that a girl is pubescent does not mean she is even physically ready to be, safely, a mother. Similarly, a boy usually does not have his full physical and mental growth at the age of 14 or 15, and even if other societies have more informal ways of recognizing this, they do recognize it. I read a darkly humorous article once about a 14-year-old hereditary warlord in Afghanistan who was officially an adult and the leader of his war-band but who in practice was entirely under the leadership of his older "advisers."

So I think even nature shows us that the teenage years, at least to some extent, are years of transition and therefore not of absolutely full adulthood, and different societies have different ways of dealing with this biological and psychological fact.

Sometimes those societies that allegedly recognized adulthood at a younger age didn't really do so. It's worth pondering a situation in early America where a boy could be apprenticed ostensibly at his "own will," but in practice easily at the insistence of his father, at the age of 14 and was then in indentured servitude for _seven years_, a situation leading directly to full emancipation at 21. In fact, it's no coincidence that things like the voting age and the age of investiture, the ability to marry without parental permission, etc., used in America and in Britain to be _higher_ than they are now, which to some extent gives the lie to the idea that we _now_ infantilize our teens _by_ the 18-year legal maturity date.

As you say, Maximos, I think what infantilizes our teens and, increasingly, our young people even in their 20's, is a set of cultural factors quite separable from the bare fact that the legal age of emancipation is 18. I would add to those factors the arrogant expectation too many young people have that their parents will fully support them until they are well over twenty years old, even though they don't have to obey their parents anymore at that age. Now _that's_ infantilizing. Lowering the age of legal emancipation would only _increase_ the number of years in which that unfortunate situation would obtain, in which the young person could, in theory, "do whatever he wanted," but in which his parents were nonetheless expected to provide for his every need.

Well said, Maximos. Today's teens are not able to function in the modern world, and those who try predictably end up in ruin. My grandmother married at 15, but that was a long, long time ago, in a simpler age in which people were culturally and spiritually prepared earlier for the demands of survival. Whatever else may be constant in human nature, and for whatever reasons, it is a fact that a teenager today is no match for our post-industrial, post-Christian age. Mike T.'s comments to the contrary are jaw-dropping, and serve as a perfect caricature of what's wrong with the radical individualism of today's consumer-mad, narcissistic society. Libertarians fare little better than Marxists when it comes to matching their theory with observation. I would inject here, Mike, that I too believe the individual is supreme, and our choices sacred (in the literal sense). But I submit that, paradoxically as it may seem to a doctrinaire libertarian, the only way to fully actualize our individuality is within the context of a stable, sane society. Our society has become polluted, in truth rendering it unfit for most adults, much less the youngest among us, and so we wish to nurture and prepare our children for as long as possible. We're learning that you just can't have urinating and non-urinating sections in a swimming pool. The former will always prevail.

Lydia,

Mike T, if you think both that a) legal emancipation from childhood should be at age 14 or something like that (this was, I hear, the age of legal manhood in medieval Wales, if that is helpful to you) and b) suicide, prostitution, strip dancing, and several other totally self-destructive things I don't have time to list should be illegal for _everybody_, legal adults included, then your position might not be too terribly destructive to society.

What is destructive to society is the fact that society won't acknowledge that freedom and personal responsibility must coexist in the law. It's uncool, unChristian, illiberal, blah blah blah to actually say "you made your bed, now lay down in it."

As my wife is wont to remind me, Jesus died to give us freedom in the next life, not to take away our having to deal with the consequences of our choices in this life.

Maximos,

The complaint is often raised that contemporary conservative and/or liberal social mores, and the laws predicated upon those mores, infantilize the teenager, treating him/her as an object of the law, rather than the mature, choosing subject that he/she is. What is too often forgotten is that the lower level of social development, the lesser complexities of earlier phases of civilization, entailed earlier entries into adult life and responsibility; maturity was attained earlier, and of necessity. With the increasing complexity of our civilization, and the concomitant necessity of longer periods of socialization and education, the period of immaturity in the youth expands, also of necessity; the average teenager is not properly equipped to assume a productive role in a post-industrial society - by which is meant "striking out on his own, including entering into marital/sexual relations, with all of their consequences" - because the consequences of early failure, or the encountering of significant obstacles, in such a complex society are so profound.

I agree with you on part of that. It is true that society must now, out of necessity, be cautious about things like young marriages and invest more into their kids and teens because it is a more complex age. However, I fail to see how anything has changed such that a teenager should be less capable today of fully comprehending the immorality of suicide, stripping, sleeping around, drug use, violent crime, theft, etc. much less be held legally to account for those activities where appropriate.

In fact, one could say that the effects of engaging in immoral activities are no less proportionally profound today, as the victims will potentially suffer or lose even more due to the increased opportunities and life expectancy they are denied.

I am not, for example, arguing that society should accept a 14 year old girl stripping and sleeping around, but rather that society should not hide behind these excuses in forthrightly correcting her. If anything, it is incumbent on society now more than ever to hold teenagers accountable for their behavior and have parents firmly guide them since, as you say, the consequences are so profound. Our current approach to dealing with teens, at least on the sexual side, is essentially like our approach in Vietnam: burn the village to save it. This being one of many examples of how society actively harms, rather than firmly correcting, such behavior.

The solutions are imperfect, but it would be far better to allow families to choose their own approach to punishing kids for any immoral activity that doesn't rise to the level of victimizing a third party in a way that inflicts meaningful harm upon life, limb and property. Unfortunately, the state has taken away many of their means ranging from corporal punishment, to prohibiting them from discriminating against them in business.

If there be one thing we can agree on, it's that finding a solution to this madness is a very serious challenge.

Mike T.'s comments to the contrary are jaw-dropping, and serve as a perfect caricature of what's wrong with the radical individualism of today's consumer-mad, narcissistic society. Libertarians fare little better than Marxists when it comes to matching their theory with observation.

I fail to see where my comments were draw-jopping, as I am the only one who has pointed out that our society's approach to "saving the children" often ends up putting them in prison, and everyone here knows what prison does to the long-term prospects for them. Since I'm feeling generous with links today (Lydia hasn't published my multiple link post challenging her on the libertarian position vis a vis professional licensing), here is a good example of why I am adamantly opposed to the current statist model of dealing with teen sexual immorality.

But, I guess it is jaw-dropping to say that a 14 year old girl who has sex with her boyfriend should not be treated as widdle princess who was exploited by her big, bad, beast of a boyfriend, but rather a willing partner in an immoral act for which she bears full responsibility for her part in it.

Laws are a necessary but insufficient part of what that town needs; the other parts are what should be discussed more, for they provide laws with existential intelligibility.

Otherwise, conservatives simply commit the same nominalist error of liberalism: to believe that impersonal rules and protocols are capable of creating a just society.

Mike T, there is no such thing, legally, as "responsibility" in any meaningful sense for immoral sexual activity. It's fully legal. Nobody can stop you or do anything about your doing it if you are an adult. Your talk of responsibility is pretty unclear. On the one hand, you seem to want teenagers to be treated as adults, but on the other hand, you say that parents should be able to "deal with them firmly." Which is it? In case you haven't heard, there is no way to punish your 20-year-old son who has sex with his 20-year-old girlfriend, except by cutting off the cash flow and refusing to have him home for Thanksgiving. Nor, I'm inclined to think, should there be. I'm not advocating honor-beating your immoral son. But if it's your 14-year-old son, you can insist that he live with you and, then, refuse to permit him to meet with the girl, refuse to have her in your house, ground him from places where he will meet her, send the police to bring him home if he runs away, and so forth. That's because he's not legally an adult. Which is also reasonable. The only way for parents to be able to stop their teenagers from doing these things, to deal with them "firmly," is for the teenagers not to be legally adults. I don't know if you don't get that or if I'm just misunderstanding you.

By the way, there is no notification system for held comments. I did not know that you had a held comment with links until you said so.

Albert, I'm not inclined to agree that we should be "discussing more" the non-legal things the town needs. Please notice that the policeman quoted repeatedly in the article is clearly a man with a sane mind on this subject. He _wants_ to stop teen girls from stripping. He's being told that it's legally questionable and probably impossible. In other words, the law is working _against_ the wise mores of at least some people in the town. So laws are exactly what that town needs, to empower people like that policeman to be able to do the sensible thing without risking losing his job.

On the one hand, you seem to want teenagers to be treated as adults, but on the other hand, you say that parents should be able to "deal with them firmly." Which is it?

"My house, my rules." If the teenager wants to screw around, drink, shoot up, etc. let the parents kick them out on the street if they won't accept their parents' authority in their own house. If the teenagers go down hill from there, let the state chew them up and spit them out like anyone else.

In case you haven't heard, there is no way to punish your 20-year-old son who has sex with his 20-year-old girlfriend, except by cutting off the cash flow and refusing to have him home for Thanksgiving.

That's a good punishment for a parent. If businesses still had freedom of association, which libertarians would restore, they could also do things like fire employees for sleeping around.

Nor, I'm inclined to think, should there be. I'm not advocating honor-beating your immoral son. But if it's your 14-year-old son, you can insist that he live with you and, then, refuse to permit him to meet with the girl, refuse to have her in your house, ground him from places where he will meet her, send the police to bring him home if he runs away, and so forth.

I don't see why a libertarian state should have any problem with the idea of one adult subordinating themselves to another like that. If the teen grows tired of their "parent's yoke," let them get emancipated. If they can't deal with that, then that's their problem.

I don't know if you don't get that or if I'm just misunderstanding you.

I think what you misunderstand is that I am a right-libertarian, and right-libertarians support policies which allow private citizens to reasonably enforce social mores without the state's intervention. So the teen may be perfectly capable of walking away as an adult, but right-libertarians generally support policies which would allow families to govern themselves until a teen forthrightly walks away and swears in a public court that they will assume the status of a full adult citizen.

As I have said before, most of what is attacked here on this blog is left-libertarianism like the libertarianism found in outlets like Reason. The right-libertarianism of folks like the Ron Paul supporters is quite different.

Vox Day and Ilana Mercer are two prominent right-libertarian examples online.

Rhode Island is probably the most depraved state in the union. The mayor of Providence is an open homosexual. The frontrunner to be the next Speaker of the House is an open homosexual. Rhode Islanders love homosexuals.

Interestingly, it's also the most Catholic state in the union -- to prove the adage Corruptio optimi pessima est.

Full disclosure: I live there.

In Providence, RI, police have been upset to learn that teenagers can legally work as strippers. There is no state or local law to stop it. Worse, this isn't actually new.

Yes, one policeman can't enforce a wise moral judgment. But the fact that he is in the minority in his judgment of the lewdness of stripping means that it's an issue that is much deeper than the existence or non-existence of the law. We should be talking about those things that have changed in that town, rather than the non-existence of a law that was not questioned prior to the other moral and social changes bringing about teen stripping that are the more important issues here.

If the teen grows tired of their "parent's yoke," let them get emancipated.

Should parents have any legal way to stop a teen from emancipating himself?

The laws are not "working against" anything. 50 years ago, do you think there was a law on the books that prevented teens from stripping? Presumably, there never was such a law and it was not needed. Why is its absence all of a sudden despaired of now? Was the law "working against" moral norms then?

50 years ago, the public did not regard those in the system as having a priestly ability to divine the true meaning of the law and the constitution nearly as much as people believe today.

Somewhere, along the way, people became convinced that bull$hit tastes like filet mignon.

Should parents have any legal way to stop a teen from emancipating himself?

Besides proving that the teen is mentally unstable/cannot make good on an oath to assume full adult citizen status?

Yes. Should the parent-child heirarchy be given a legal status beyond that of a contractual arrangement to be maintained only as long as both parties consider it beneficial?

50 years ago, do you think there was a law on the books that prevented teens from stripping?

Albert, 50 years ago, I would imagine there were laws on the books that prevented there from _being_ strip joints. Please remember that in the interim all such laws have been torn down by crazy First Amendment jurisprudence.

And actually, even the law cited in the article _is_ on the books and, if already on the books 50 years ago, yes, _would_ have prevented teens from stripping, because that would have been able to be recognized as a "lewd or indecent act." Perhaps you didn't understand the legal significance of Solicitor McHugh's reasoning: The Supreme Court has set down precedents that notions like "decency" are defined by "community standards." But again and again, this seemingly innocuous criterion has actually been used to _strike down_ laws or the attempt to apply laws that obviously were _meant_ to apply to places like strip joints and so forth. I'll give you an example: The famous physicist Richard Feynman was a man of pretty questionable morals in his adulthood. He tells in one of his memoirs how he used to frequent a striptease bar in his town. There came a time when some people in charge were going to try to use decency ordinances to try to shut down the bar. (Or so I interpret his story. He isn't fully clear on the legalities.) He was called into court to testify on the question, "Does the existence of this strip joint violate community standards of decency?" He testified that it did _not_ violate such standards, because he saw many men in there from many different walks of life! I gather the strip bar was saved.

_So_, the upshot is that laws from 50 years ago cannot now be applied to shut down the strip joints, and then the fact that the strip joints are legal is itself used to evacuate laws against minors' participation in acts that are "lewd or indecent" on the grounds that stripping can't be lewd or indecent because strip joints exist legally!

In other words, yes, I do think the law (as now interpreted) works against sane standards of decency in a way that it did not do 50 years ago. I also believe that law is a teacher and has deliberately been manipulated and changed by our judiciary so as to teach us the wrong things.

Besides proving that the teen is mentally unstable/cannot make good on an oath to assume full adult citizen status?

Mike, what's to prevent using the same criteria for a 12 year old, or 10, or 6...?

Unless you want the state (via a judge) to adjudicate in each individual child's case when he is NOW a legal adult, you have to set a standard at which the event occurs. Once you set a standard, moving away from that standard ought to be based on more stringent basis than that that the parent cannot prove the child is mentally unstable or cannot make good on oaths. What sort of "proof" would be available for that anyway, other than the 10,000 little (undocumented) events of ordinary life? In any case, the universal, worldwide presumption is that the parent stands in a privileged place with respect to his child under the age of legal adulthood, and you seem to be suggesting that we ditch that standard in favor of total neutrality, neither party can claim a privileged position in any respect. Which is why Matt's question is important. (This may be one of the required tenets of libertarianism for it to suppose itself internally consistent, but God forbid that anyone should end up taking this notion seriously.)

Lydia, libertarians typically don't ACCEPT that the law is a teacher, and reject that facet of law (or at least reject that there is a just basis for using the threat of coercion and punishment in order to "make a point".) So they won't give much heed to your complaint on this score.

to believe that impersonal rules and protocols are capable of creating a just society.

Albert, there is a logically fallacy in using the starting point that impersonal rules cannot create a just society and moving from there on to the result that those who insist on just laws are barking up the wrong tree, being at least futile and possibly harmful overall. There is no requirement that those who insist on just laws intend to limit their efforts to that and that alone. Far from it: we need most of the populace obeying the law even when others are not looking, and men of virtue policing the laws, and men of high ideals and virtue prosecuting the laws, and men of wisdom and virtue adjudicating the laws, and virtuous statesmen adjusting the laws for changing circumstances. Given all these, the laws would create a just society, because the laws would _not_ be simply impersonal, and they would be used rightly. But, whatever insufficiency (towards creating a just society) the law itself holds, I can guarantee that no society will ever become just without just laws, no matter how much of the other aspects of goodness are present.

Leaving aside the teenager debate more generally . . .

The lewd and lascivious standard is a slippery snake, much like a lot of 1st Amendment jurisprudence. The city solicitor's definition is a bit of a simplification cum tautology, but not much. To wit:

The 1st amendment has never been held to protect lewd and obscene expression. But the Court has for a long while now been unwilling to define these concepts in meaningful terms (with a few exceptions that are not relevant and that it would be distasteful to specify). Instead, in a surprising nod to local autonomy, the justices have declared that the standard is socially and geographically relative: if activity lacking artistic (or scientific, etc.) merit is generally regarded in a community as downright shocking and beyond the pale, then it will qualify as lewd and obscene. Now, it's not really the case that the absence of a prohibition is conclusive evidence that an activity is not lewd and obscene. If there were an explicit affirmation of the act's liceity, it might demonstrate a communal consensus in favor of the act's permissibility. A case such as this, however, presents merely a lacuna in an otherwise uniform array of laws prohibiting certain types of behavior (sexual activity involving minors). If that lacuna is attributable to oversight, it doesn't indicate a thing about the community consensus, except perhaps that the scenario is too off the walls to have occurred to regulators.

So to say "it's legal, therefore it can't be stopped or held lewd" is not really accurate in this case. Please feel free to return to debating the prevailing questions.

I think that's very interesting, Paul. Are you saying that perhaps if the state prosecutor had gone ahead and prosecuted the owner of the strip bar under the statute banning the involvement of minors in lewd or indecent activities, the prosecution might have been upheld?

Tony,

Unless you want the state (via a judge) to adjudicate in each individual child's case when he is NOW a legal adult, you have to set a standard at which the event occurs. Once you set a standard, moving away from that standard ought to be based on more stringent basis than that that the parent cannot prove the child is mentally unstable or cannot make good on oaths.

Our current system doesn't even have a rational standard for what is an adult. In some states, a 16 year old can't have sex, but can be tried as an adult for 1st degree murder (can't consent as an adult, but can be held to deadly account like one). Likewise, we let 17 year olds wield deadly force in the name of the United States, but don't let them buy a pack of cigarettes or bottle of liquor (what does it say about us that we trust a 17 year old to fight in in the infantry, but not drink a beer?)

The point is, there is no standard on what a real adult actually is. All we know is that in most states one is finally free from legal restraints at 21, despite being labeled "age of majority" three years prior.

By comparison, a strict system which unifies all adult privileges, rights, duties, etc. into a single age would be highly efficient, even if the system were constantly dealing with 14 to 16 year olds claiming emancipation.

Granted, unlike a lot of Christians I am a firm believer in the biological theory that creatures adapt to the relative hostility of their environments, which is why I take it as a given that welfare states produce weakness and muddled behavior. I have a decent amount of faith that a colder system which would show no mercy to a 16 year old who impulsively emancipates themselves, but cannot handle it yet, would eventually make it common knowledge that you better know your own limits before you take that step.

So I think even nature shows us that the teenage years, at least to some extent, are years of transition and therefore not of absolutely full adulthood, and different societies have different ways of dealing with this biological and psychological fact.

In fact, recent fMRI studies have shown that the teenage brain is somewhat chaotic in terms of its processing. This situation really doesn't settle down until about age 22 or so (if I remember the article correctly).

Jacob Bronowski often talked about the neotony of the intellect. One reason that marriage was possible, earlier, is that children were raised with examples of marriage and learned about what constitutes a good marriage at an earlier age. In a rural environment, the idea of mating is much easier to understand as well as deviancy. More than that, there are higher laws than civil laws where stripping is concerned. It is a pity that taring and feathering is not a more commonly acceptable threat. What a poor society it is that puts no stock in something beyond itself.

The Chicken

"You're complaining about a liberal state and blaming it purely on libertarianism which is absurd since under a libertarian system, a teenager would be a legal adult like they were in most of human history."

This likely has nothing to do with liberalism, liberaltarianism, or right or left libertarianism (that a reactionary, anti-labor state like Texas was involved should have led to a little reflection before posting). In a free society laws can only anticipate so much. Given some of the wording below in the RI law, we can probably assume the law predates nude dancing establishments:

"or for or in gathering or picking rags, or collecting cigar stumps, bones or refuse from markets, or in begging, or in any mendicant or wandering occupation,"

The case of the 12 year old was somewhat misrepresented. She was a runaway who fell in with a pimp who now faces serious state and federal felony charges. Dallas will likely repair the defect in their licensing ordinances - they should use 2257 type rules.

The problems of the right are clearly shown in this post. All I see is a longing for a fictitious past involving some combination of Comstock, Lochner, and social darwinism.

I don't know what state Mike lives in but no judge in California is likely to emancipate a fourteen year old and a lot more than a mere oath is involved in terminating parental rights.

Through free association, along with the restoration of the full rights of landowners to decide who they will and won't rent or sell to, Christians can live in an area effectively free of this mess. I can imagine, for instance, young couples finding it particularly hard to explain to each other why they wouldn't want to live in the nice neighborhood with high penalties for adulterous spouses written into the neighborhood association's by-laws.

Simultaneously, we must realize there are people who will reject us, move outside of our sphere of influence, and do really bad things to themselves. There are also people who would see how we live and decide they want to live like us. Sadly, we are currently under the thumbs of people who would prefer that people see no difference between Egypt and Israel; no one will make the trip if they think there is no difference!

Libertarians are not your problem. In fact, merely mentioning libertarians likely gets your traffic count up. Your problem is the modern left and the death culture. Your problem is that you keep giving them the stake to stab you with. Instead of passing that law against stripping, they'll just go pass a law none of us actually like. They'll pass health-care, complete with unlimited abortions, using your very arguments.

Gosh, Al, you don't read very carefully. Rhode Island is the state I'm pummeling. I tacitly commended Dallas, TX, for changing its laws to close this gap. What the heck a state's being "anti-labor" has to do with anything in the post is beyond me.

That this has not been dealt with in Rhode Island despite being known about for _twelve years_ is a sign of something very wrong in Providence and in Rhode Island generally. There is definitely a lack of motivation, there. I doubt that the religious right is holding up legislation against teen strippers.

Moreover, if it were up to right-wing neanderthals like me, strip joints themselves would be illegal. It certainly is a result of liberal and libertarian sexual ideas that there are no effective laws against the existence of strip joints. And that very nearly by definition. I would define anyone who thinks that strip joints _should not_ be illegal as either a liberal or a libertarian on that issue. Unfortunately, there are enough of such people throughout our judiciary and in Rhode Island--I'm not sure how the exact combination is working out in this case--for strip joints to exist in Providence for minor girls to work at.

Therefore, this does have to do with libertarianism and/or liberalism.

Now I've given your comment a more detailed answer than it deserves, Al.

August, I can only guess what you are getting at, but I think it's incredibly shallow to try to make some broad-scale comparison between arguments for outlawing sex clubs and arguments for forcing everyone into socialized medicine. So shallow that I'm not going to encourage you to try to spell out your comparison.

I'm not making a comparison. I just explained how you get what you want in a libertarian society. Then I explained why you do not get what you want in today's society.

The shallowness resides elsewhere.

My one question is the title of a famous Karl Menninger book. Anyone care to guess or knows the title (people over forty surely do). Sums up my response to the issue.

The Chicken

or know the title

The Chicken

Hi Lydia, my point was that the Dallas case was an outlier that violated existing Texas law and that folks were apparently going to serve some serious time on this. That the role of the anti-labor orientation of a conservative state in all this is beyond you demonstrates the limits of a conservative orientation in dealing with real problems (recall your Lochnerian language). I assume the then law gave the club in question the possibility of an affirmative defense based on a patently defective id check.

Dancing for compensation in a business establishment is a proper topic of labor law. If the folks who pass the laws are more concerned with not inconveniencing employers then protecting workers we will get defective legislation. If Texas law had been 2257 like, the girl would not have been hired or the owners would be in trouble.

All this comes down to the proper role of government. Liberals and libertarians are going to be skeptical of efforts to suppress vice, conservatives, not so much. Libertarians are likely to express this skepticism ideologically, while liberals are more likely to look at experience (Prohibition and the Rockefeller drug laws).

I see nothing about these establishments that would justify making them illegal, while I can see lots of reasons to appropriate regulate them just like many other businesses that create problematic externalities.

I am going to assume Mike is not typical of libertarians right or left on the matter of legal competence. I don't understand how anyone can consider a 14 year old mature enough to make these sorts of decisions.

I may be unfair here but I have the impression that RI is somewhat mobbed up at the local level. Whatever is going on, it has nothing to do with a liberal or rational libertarian approach to governance. If you have actual evidence (as opposed to ideologically driven speculation) to the contrary, please share. Allowing 16 year olds to work in adult entertainment is bad law and should be corrected.

I may be unfair here but I have the impression that RI is somewhat mobbed up at the local level.

Meaning that the Rhode Island legislature is partly controlled by the Mob, and that this is the reason for not changing the law over a period of twelve years to make teen stripping illegal? If you have evidence to the effect that Mob influence rather than liberal or libertarian approach to government is the cause of the legality of teen stripping in Rhode Island, please share. Do you also attribute the legality of indoor prostitution in RI (and hence, given the age of consent, the possibility of 16-year-old legal prostitutes) to Mob influence *rather than* to liberal or libertarian approaches to governance, or do you defend the legality of prostitution and hence not deplore liberal approaches to governance in this area?

I would note as well that Mob influence and liberal/libertarian approaches to government are by no means mutually exclusive. Indeed, I'm quite sure that the Mob has garnered significant profits from vice activities which have been made forcibly legal by liberal First Amendment jurisprudence.

I'm glad to see you admit (tacitly) that liberals see no reason to outlaw strip joints. As far as I'm concerned, this supports my point, since if there were no strip joints, no teenagers could work in them.

Just to be clear, I am writing hypothetically here as I am only dealing with impressions and would have no way of knowing if a "mob" actually exists in RI or anywhere else. I certainly can't name names.

However, I don't believe it takes much imagination to see the advantages of the sort of loose legal situation that currently seems to exist in RI with these matters. And in these matters, blue sky ideological speculation is likely to be of no value; cui bono is going to be the best analytical mode. Also, in these matters, ideology will almost always be the servant of commerce - google Delay + Saipan.

Life experience is always going to color ones views. I grew up, many years ago, in a major West Coast city. I became friends with the kid across the street and his "mother" who turned out to be a guardian (sort of). A frequent visitor was a man he called "dad" who, I teased out over the years, wasn't. He was a figure in various enterprises - gambling, prostitution, and loan sharking - all very illegal. His real mother was a 16 year old prostitute who worked a brothel owned by "dad". There was also corruption at various levels with the police and politicians. Oh, and the guy selling papers on the corner was a bookie. I could go on but you get the picture. This was all during a time that some consider a golden age in the U.S.

"Indeed, I'm quite sure that the Mob has garnered significant profits from vice activities which have been made forcibly legal by liberal First Amendment jurisprudence."

This is a really incoherent statement. Just what is "forcibly legal" anyway. Folks have to gamble, use prostitutes, and go to strip clubs? I have never encountered a road block in rural Nevada and had a state trooper direct me to turn into a brothel or force me into a casino. That you are "forced" to tolerate the foibles of your fellow citizens is a feature of a free society, not the bug you believe.

Legal things tend to be cheaper than illegal things and the profit margin narrows leading the criminally inclined to move to things still illegal.

Regulation works. Folks in porn are quite paranoid about the 2257 rules. Bars and liquor stores card. What liberals, libertarians, and non-social conservatives realize is that the only way to have effective "vice" suppression is to create a totalitarian state and that seems a steep price to pay for satisfying the outraged moral sensibilities of a few.

"Forcibly legal"--the word "forcibly" is modifying "legal," so obviously, it has nothing to do with forcing people to do the thing. I was referring to higher levels of government's striking down or watering down laws at lower levels of government, or to one branch of government's (the judicial branch) striking down or watering down laws made by the proper legislative branch--in other words, I was speaking of making things legal by illicit judicial fiat or the seizing of local/state power by the federal government that ordinary people, through ordinary democratic processes, had already made or attempted to make illegal.

Actually, I don't think strip joints or pornography used only to bother the outraged moral sensibilities of "a few." It used to be "the majority." Which doesn't mean that the majority was right, but does mean that your statement is incorrect, at least as applied to not-so-distant periods in American history. But the Anointed had different ideas from hoi polloi. Even fairly recently we have had attempts to outlaw things like electronic child pornography, whereupon the Supreme Court ruled that the federal prosecutors must identify real children being used in the pornography--that an "affirmative defense" must be available to the pornography makers that they used no actual children in making child pornography. If you think child pornography outrages the moral sensibilities only of "a few," you run in the wrong crowd.

"I was speaking of making things legal by illicit judicial fiat or the seizing of local/state power by the federal government that ordinary people, through ordinary democratic processes, had already made or attempted to make illegal."

I understood that but as the word "forcible" is meaningless except as invective in the sense you use it, I thought my use put your statement in better perspective. Declaring laws to be unconstitutional is part of the way our system functions. If you disagree with the Fourteenth Amendment I guess you could argue for repeal but at least be clear that you want Calhoun's vision of the United states. Terms like "forcible" and "judicial fiat"merely mean that you disagree with the result. One of the factors that is making our country ungovernable and hence arguably on the road to failed state status is the right's willingness to question the legitimacy of the system when the system fails to deliver their preferred result.

"Actually, I don't think strip joints or pornography used only to bother the outraged moral sensibilities of "a few." It used to be "the majority."

Yeah, and that's why prohibition worked, the War on Drugs has been such a success, one could never find an X-rated video outside of a few sinful cities on the coasts, oh, and there is no porn on the internet. All that is irrelevant though because the whole purpose of a Bill of Rights and judicial review is to prevent a majotity from intruding where they have no business.

If you are referring to Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, the Supremes were simply pointing out that the law was overbroad in the context of the First Amendment and that is why they are there. Have you read the decision?

There is no possibility of utopia, and of course no political solution is going to solve the problems of humanity. Lydia points to one of the problematic aspects of the libertarian position, and then calls the entire position and all of its insights questionable. But all political positions have their unfortunate shortcomings. This is just the typical bad faith kind of stance that we all take when we think about how we're more right than everyone else. The serious problems that the position addresses can now be safely ignored because libertarianism doesn't create a utopia. The atheists do this kind of sloppy summary execution to the theists all the time. It's supremely annoying to deal with people who won't budge out of their bad faith cheap shot approach to other ways of seeing the world, and as this includes almost everyone, no one ever really learns anything.

Terms like "forcible" and "judicial fiat"merely mean that you disagree with the result.

No, they mean that you need your head examined if you think that strip dancing (or child pornography--virtual or otherwise) is protected speech according to the First Amendment. It means that there are no penumbras and auras and that such concepts are merely instruments of power.

And if, as your reference to the Supreme Court case indicates, you think child pornography _should_ be legal under the First Amendment, then you are definitely supporting one of my points in the main post concerning the fact that liberalism has a child problem.

And it would behoove you to find out what I really think about a much wider variety of possible and actual judicial actions, Al, before you start saying sweeping things about not liking the result. As it happens, I disagree with a number of my friends on the Right concerning things like whether the 14th amendment protects the unborn child and whether a parent's right to control the upbringing of his child is somehow implicitly contained in the Constitution. When it comes to results, I'm a Scalia type--willing not to have the results I want all the time in the name of interpretive integrity. Believe it or not, jurisprudence is not merely a power game as I view it.

Fironzelle, you, too, are ignorant of my actual positions. I am very sympathetic to libertarian concerns when it comes to many economic matters, as my reference to licensing in the main post indicates, and as you would know if you read more of what I write. I am not a Crunchy Conservative. I like the free market. I am accused by my Crunchy and trad-con friends of being a "right liberal" because I do not accept their critiques of capitalism. I think a lot of things the new kind of enviro-conservative wants to do are crazy. There is no reason whatsoever to adopt some kind of sweeping ideology that requires one to support the legality of strip dancing and pornography in order to support many of the correct critiques libertarianism makes of intrusive government actions in other areas. Why be a die-hard, ideologue libertarian? I have no idea what your point is about "not creating utopia," but I believe in looking at issues as the individual issues really are, not starting with simplistic axioms about "force and fraud" and trying to derive all political positions deductively from them. I certainly do not throw out the libertarian baby with the bathwater. But legal pornography, etc., is extremely dirty bathwater that we need to be rid of. When I refer to "libertarianism" in the post, I am referring to the sweeping variety, not to moderate variants that contain common sense and morality on the issues I discuss in the post and in the thread.