Should Libertarians Spank Their Children?

Walter Block is at it again. I do understand that I’m running the risk of turning this site into a commentary volume on the collected works of Walter Block; I soldier on regardless, since Dr. Block is once again staking out a position that many libertarians find repellent, in this case the spanking of one’s children. Among many libertarians, spanking is held to be an obvious violation of the non-aggression principle, and it’s not hard to see why; the actual hitting of another human being does appear to be a fairly clear case of aggression. Here, however, Dr. Block makes the case that not only is spanking not necessarily a violation of the NAP, but that it would be defensible even if it were.

Children (and the mentally handicapped, the senile, etc.) are not yet (will never be, unless somehow cured) full rights bearing human beings. It is licit to use force, violence, whatever, "against" them, for their own good, of course. To not do so is to abnegate parental, guardianship obligations.

On the face of it, this seems rather stark and no small amount arbitrary. After all, the argument could well run, at what point do "children" become "not-children" and therefore acquire full rights? At what stage of mental handicap do rights begin to decay? Set aside the borderline cases for the moment, though, and consider the other extreme. To allow Dr. Block to explain:

A 20 month old boy (a senile old man in a nursing home), refuses to allow you to change his diaper. He wants to lie in his own filth. You are the guardian. Are you allowed to forcibly compel this diaper change? How can you do that? Why, by holding down that person, against his will, cleaning him up, and placing another diaper on him…

To think that it is a criminal act to forcibly compel a baby (or a senile old person) to have a diaper change is insane. Of course we libertarians have to incorporate this phenomenon into our understanding of our philosophy.

The force of this argument cannot be denied. An infant is clearly immature in more than just physical body; it has no real ability to make rational judgments, to assess its own needs, and to determine the correct course of action. Left to its own devices, it will not survive. This may not be lovely or perfect or fair, but it is the way the world works, and libertarians earn no kudos by pretending it is otherwise. The mere survival of the child could potentially depend on its parent or guardian acting in a way that would violate the non-aggression principle if the child were a full, rights-bearing adult. Later on, one of Dr. Block’s interlocutors puts teeth to the argument:

Dear Walter: Spanking is a "nice" word for hitting or attacking a child. In my opinion there’s a world of difference between it and restraining a child as you would do when changing his diaper. And if my experience with children counts for anything the child knows, and certainly feels this difference. Restraint will work if you’re willing to be patient until the child gets it. And in your hypothetical, what do you do if the spanking doesn’t work? Do you up the violence?

Comes the reply:

Yes, up the violence. You’ve got to save the kid’s life at pretty much all costs. Tie him down if the alternative is that he dies in traffic. Maybe, drug him. I’m not sure about means. All I know is that a good guardian, a good parent, puts that kid’s life at the very top of his to do list.

Dr. Block, as is his wont, has staked out the far side of the argument from his questioners. Does this mean that he has rejected the non-aggression principle? Clearly some people appear to think so.

I, on the other hand, do not. What the objectors fail to consider is the nature of the non-aggression principle, to wit: there is no way for the NAP to be aggrieved on its own behalf. There cannot be a violation of the NAP without a complainant whose rights were violated. Consider the following idea, which, charmingly, I developed in a conversation with Dr. Block:

You are depressed and suicidal, and you’re standing on the edge of a bridge, preparing to jump off and end it all. There is no time for rational argument and contractual negotiations; you’re going to jump in just a second. In response, I grab you and pull you away from the edge, restraining you from jumping off the bridge and trying to calm you down. Eventually, I get you home and to bed, and, the next day, calmer and with a fresh perspective, you’re thankful that I stopped you from making a terrible mistake.

Where, in this situation, is the rights violation? Extreme reductionists might argue that I violated your rights by grabbing onto you without prior permission, but is this really the case? I submit that, at most, I took the risk of violating your rights under the assumption that, in reality, you would ultimately desire that I do what I did. If I’m right, and you are in fact appreciative of my actions, then there is no rights violation, since, again, the NAP cannot be violated in the abstract.

This is an enhanced version of the concept of retrieving stolen property. Say Paul Krugman breaks into my house and redistributes my TV to himself. Libertarians would agree — universally, to my knowledge — that I have the right to reclaim my TV from Krugman whether he likes it or not, since his taking of it transferred only possession and not ownership. It is still mine. However, assume that, when I go retrieve my TV, I see your stereo also in his living room (assume for our purposes that there’s no doubt that it’s yours; maybe there’s a big "property of" sticker on the front with your name, address, and picture on it). I am clearly not free to do with that stereo whatever I want; while it’s impossible for me to steal it from Krugman, as it isn’t his, it still belongs to you, and thus my appropriation of it violates your property rights. However, if I take that stereo from Krugman and return it to you, am I violating your rights? Only in the most foolish and reductionist of senses. I suspect that we can agree that, in the situation in which you’re happy to have your stereo back, I have clearly not wronged you in any way.

Now return to the idea of forcibly changing a baby’s diaper. The baby is kicking and screaming and fussing and giving all the outward signs of not wanting this to happen. Can a libertarian change the diaper anyhow? I tend to agree with Walter Block in that, if the answer is no, libertarianism is bizarre and unworkable. Fortunately, I don’t believe the answer is no; I rely on the same principle invoked in the cases of the stereo and the suicide, which is that I make the judgment that, when you’re competent to evaluate the situation, you’ll agree that I behaved appropriately. You’ll be happy that I was attentive to you and didn’t leave you wallowing in your own filth until you learned to clean up after yourself. If I’m wrong, and you do object, then and only then can we conclude that I violated your rights, and I would be due to make restitution (though in this precise case it’s difficult to see what that would even mean). Until and unless this happens, however, the presumption must be that there was no rights violation involved, else it leads to a situation in which no human interaction is actually possible.

Consider. I come to your house to pay you a visit, and I knock on the door to announce my arrival. Well, that door is your property! I didn’t get permission before knocking, so I’ve violated your rights, yes? In fact, I walked on your footpath to get to the door, and I didn’t have permission for that, either. Then, when you answer the door, I say hello — did I get your permission before speaking on your property? Another NAP violation! Perhaps I even had the audacity to pet your dog (I mean, I don’t expect I did any such thing, but never you mind). Unless we’re willing to declare this to be a bunch of criminal behavior and state that it would be impermissible in a libertarian society — in which case a libertarian society would be idiotic — then we must conclude that the assumption is always in favor of no rights violation until and unless a complaint is made.

Which brings us back to spanking again. Libertarian theory generally considers children to be something other than full rights-bearing individuals, though it also recognizes that, in the typical case, children will eventually come into possession of the full set of rights (exactly when this happens we will set aside for now). In the interim, the parents or guardians of a child act as stewards or trustees, if you will, safeguarding the child until maturity, at which time he is ready to take full possession of himself. This is thus not really a question of rights so much as a question of obligations; the parents, as stewards of the child, have the obligation to make sure that the child is in the appropriate condition when the time comes to hand over control. Obviously, there is no outcome that could be worse than for the child not to survive to maturity, in which case there is nothing left to inherit and nobody to do the inheriting. Therefore, the parents do have an obligation to preserve the child’s life at very nearly any cost. In the bizarre case in which spanking is the only (or least aggressive, at least) means of saving the child’s life, then, yes, it is not only acceptable but mandatory to do so. The parents who refuse are in violation of trust. In the case in which the child, now mature, complains about this violation of his rights, it would be tried in court like any other such claim, at which time the parents could present their case that they used the minimum amount of force required to defend their trust — in this case, the child — which would be handled no differently from any other complaint arising from a defense of person or property. In the overwhelming majority of cases, however, I expect that no such complaint would arise.

Note that this is in no way a defense of gratuitous spanking. If you spank your child every time it so much as makes a peep because you just find it irritating, then, yes, there’s probably a claim to be made. Still and all, however, the claim must be made. I am also not insisting that libertarians must spank their children (except in the limit case in which spanking is the least violent means of averting some grave catastrophe). If you can raise your children without spanking them, more power to you, but children are not all identical, interchangeable units, and different children will encounter different circumstances, to say nothing of the fact that what works for your children may well not work for others.

In short, Dr. Block has the right of it here; spanking is, at least, potentially compatible with the non-aggression principle and, thus, with libertarianism. Libertarianism itself cannot, of course, provide any specific child-rearing guidelines, but at least it can avoid getting in the way.