• Right to silence under threat

A crucial freedom is under threat. This is from the NZ Herald:

Momentum is building for a law change to prevent families from stonewalling police when a child has been assaulted or killed.

Public outrage over cases such as the unsolved death of 3-month-old twins Chris and Cru Kahui [what public outrage? I certainly haven't seen any - have you?] has thrust the issue into the spotlight, and the Government will soon have a report from the Law Commission suggesting what should be done.

Meanwhile, a senior Christchurch policeman who has overseen child murder cases has put forward his own proposal.

This would see New Zealand follow in the footsteps of Britain, where parents and caregivers who withhold crucial information can be jailed.

On Wednesday, a coroner’s inquest in Christchurch heard that the shaking death of 7-month-old Staranise Waru in February 2006 remained unsolved as the child’s parents were no longer willing to co-operate with police.

The parents, Nyree Hopa and Robert Waru, repeatedly chose not to answer questions at the hearing into their daughter’s death on the basis that they could incriminate themselves.

Justice Minister Simon Power told the Weekend Herald he had asked the Law Commission to speed up a review of the law that dealt with assault, injury and homicide.

“I understand that the commission’s soon-to-be-released report includes a new provision to better address situations where it’s difficult to identify the responsible offender within the family context and ensure that those responsible for protecting vulnerable children are held to account.”

The proposal put forward by Inspector Malcolm Johnston, of Christchurch, is similar to the culpable parenting law in Britain.

The right to silence would be removed, and parents or caregivers would be forced to co-operate with authorities trying to determine how a child has been harmed, and who did it.

I believe that the right to silence and the right to avoid self-incrimination [1] are essential ways of protecting individuals from the overwhelming power of the state. When the state can compel you to talk under threat of imprisonment there is no privacy left, and the police are experts at twisting what you say. Quite simply, you are screwed. Watch this video and you’ll see what I mean.

If you’ve studied logic you will know that it is impossible to prove a universal negative, e.g. ‘there is no life on other planets’ [2]. It is extremely difficult or impossible for a defendant to prove a negative, i.e. ‘I didn’t do it’. Positives can be tested and proven or disproven, e.g. if I claim that there is a copy of the Eiffel Tower on the moon it is perfectly reasonable for you to ask me to produce evidence to support my claim. Similarly, if the state is claiming that someone committed a crime (a positive) then the onus should be upon the state to prove that its claim is correct.

Removing the right to silence and the right to avoid self-incrimination simply makes it easier for the state to prove its claim that you committed a crime. When the state already has overwhelming power, an unlimited budget, and the individuals involved in prosecuting you have a personal vested interest in proving you guilty (it’s good for their careers), then removing those rights is dangerous in the extreme.

Already there are limited circumstances in which people have no right to silence and must produce documents on demand, but child abuse is the first instance of this erosion of rights which will affect the wider public. The state is using child abuse to erode your rights because beaten children attract public sympathy, and anyone who opposes the removal of the right to silence can be portrayed as protecting child abusers (boo, hiss go the politicians and the media).

Watch for a removal of the right to silence in other situations. Removing the right to silence in cases of alleged child abuse is simply a way of putting the frog into cold water before turning up the heat.

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1. As far as I know NZ does not have a legally protected right to avoid self-incimination. Here I am taking it as an implied right that is subsequent to the right to silence.

2. For a variety of reasons I believe that there is no sentient life on other planets, but I never claim that this is proven or provable.

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• So-called abused children to go onto database

The NZ Herald is reporting that

Child abuse alerts are to be placed on a national health database, so that doctors will know if there are past concerns about a family.

The little-known Medical Warning System, run by the Ministry of Health, has been traditionally used by doctors to check for patients’ allergies to drugs. But as part of an upgrade, doctors and officials plan to add notes about any record of child abuse.

So, you take little Jonny to the doctor for an ear infection and the doctor sees an alert, therefore he takes a close look at your child for signs of abuse. This is simply a means of turning doctors into unpaid policemen, if they aren’t that already: Big Brother is watching you. To put it another way, your family doctor is the eyes of Big Brother. This is a classic example of what civil rights activists call ‘function creep’, i.e. something helpful is turned into something harmful. This database plan shows that the government will take any opportunity that allows it to increase its control of citizens.

What’s the definition of abuse, the threshold for putting a child on this database? No one is sure yet, but the NZ Herald says

Starship hospital paediatrician Dr Patrick Kelly said a working group was still discussing the criteria to be used. He believed the minimum threshold would have to be a notification (a complaint about abuse or neglect) to Child Youth and Family.

If the definition of abuse is a complaint then thousands of children will be on the database without good reason, because many complaints are made when no abuse has occurred. Even if the definition of abuse was a so-called proven case of abuse we would have a major problem. Why so?  Because we live in a country where smacking ‘for the purposes of correction’ is illegal, and therefore constitutes child abuse in the state’s twisted view of the world.

So, if you give little Jonny a swat on the rump steak to teach him that flushing the cat down the toilet is a naughty deed and then Child, Youth & Family find out about it, your family doctor will be told that you’re a child abuser.

Do you, Joe Public, get any say in any of this? Of course not.

Less government, more freedom I say.

The government ignored overwhelming public opposition to the anti-smacking law.

Join the March For Democracy on November 21.

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• How to deal with child abuse: Part 2

The comments button is at the bottom right of this post.

Click here for Part 1

In Part 1 I showed that an abusive parent commits a crime against a child and this is no business of the state’s, yet the state interferes in this matter because both Left and Right believe that only the state can resolve conflict in society. Now for my four part plan for dealing with child abuse:

1) End all state interference in child abuse

As I said, conflict between individuals is no business of the state’s. Furthermore, state interference in child abuse almost always brings evil, and the state will adjust its definition of “child abuse” to whatever will allow it to steal children (for examples click here and here. For an egregious example of state theft of children click here).

Consider this: if the state cannot run a business successfully why would we trust it to care for children? A tiny minority of children are better off in state care rather than parental care, but they would almost certainly do better in private care. Going to a public hospital may save your life, but you’ll always be better off in an equivalent private hospital.

2) End the welfare system that leads to child abuse

It is not universally true but it is largely true that child abuse is committed by welfare recipients. Why is this? Our welfare system – the DPB/Domestic Purposes Benefit in particular – pays people to have children. Economists have a saying: don’t subsidise something unless you want more of it. There are multiple problems with subsidising babies:

• the sort of people who could do everyone a favour by never having children find the idea of bearing children for reward attractive
• universal welfare encourages a selfish sense of entitlement, and a person with a selfish sense of entitlement is more likely to take what they desire – be that sexual pleasure or anything else – by force without consideration for the harm that this does to other people
• children become disposable commodities (i.e. meal tickets {they attract welfare benefits} and housing tickets {they attract state housing}) which do not cost their owners anything. If your ticket dies you can just pop out another one
• the welfare system encourages lazy, shiftless people to have children. Lazy, shiftless people resent children because children are hard work, and they sometimes vent their resentment against those children
• the welfare system pays people to sit around and take alcohol and other drugs all day: common sense indicates that more abuse occurs when an adult is under the influence of chemicals
• history clearly shows that the DPB encourages teenage girls to get pregnant, and a good number of those teenage girls then get boyfriends who abuse children

3) Allow individuals and private charities to deal with child abuse

To go back to the example I used in Part 1, if I punch you on the nose I have committed a crime against you. Furthermore, if a passerby sees me punch you he has the right to defend you. Likewise, if I see a child being assaulted I have the right to defend that child. The right to defend those who are under assault is the broad basis of my proposal for dealing with child abuse*.

How might charities help? Kiwiblog recently mentioned a 14 year old who was four months pregnant and driving with a blood alcohol level five times the limit. The mother is almost certainly a smoker, fetal alcohol syndrome is likely, and the baby probably doesn’t have a great future. If there was no welfare and no taxpayer-funded abortions that kid would probably have some serious problems ahead. But a charity could step in and offer accommodation until birth and adoption of the child, conditional upon sobriety (for the good of the baby). This would solve the girl’s problems and bring a better life for the baby.

Remember that a genuinely free society would bring checks and balances to such a system, i.e. if an abuser believed that I wrongfully intervened when I protected his children then he could take me to court over it. This is difficult to imagine for people who have never known true freedom from state interference, but the free market has a marvellous way of solving problems. Everyone acts out of self-interest and conflict in society inhibits the attainment of the desires of self-interest, so it is in the interests of everyone to resolve conflict. In other words capitalistic self-interest brings conflict resolution.

Classical liberalists do not propose an unobtainable utopia of altruism (we leave that to the Marxists), nor do we propose a conflict-free society. We simply believe that a society without state interference works better than a society with state interference. If you’ve spent time in a state hospital or you’ve had contact with CYF** you’ll know what I mean.

I do not pretend to have all the answers as regards how allowing individuals and private charities to deal with child abuse will work in practice, and I’m interested in hearing your ideas.

4) Remember that life isn’t fair

Lightning strikes people, people get thorns in their feet, and children get abused. Not every case of child abuse will be detected and/or fixed by any system. Too many people think that no one should ever suffer, and therefore state surveillance and control of parents is justified because it attempts to remove suffering from the lives of children. Suffering is bad but inevitable, and there will always be some children who are abused. Life is like a baby: sooner or later it produces some brown sticky stuff.

Read this before you get out the tar and feathers

• I am not proposing that welfare be stopped overnight. Universal welfare has so grossly altered and weakened our society that any means of dealing with it has to be gradual. The Libertarianz have some ideas worthy of consideration.
• I don’t want comments of the “You don’t care about abused children” variety, so I will make this perfectly clear: I do care about abused children, and I am simply proposing a different method of caring for them
• I know that children have previously been cruelly treated in private care, e.g. work houses and orphanages, however (1) that treatment may have been acceptable at the time and (2) usually the state was in a position to alter the care given but did not do so.

What do you think of the points that I have made here?

Do you have any practical ideas to add regarding how individuals and private charities might deal with child abuse?

Click here for Part 1

Some would say that making a kid wear a hat like this is child abuse

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* The state uses the same justification for defending children, but does so from a position of imposed authority and you do not have effective recourse against the state in the event of unjust actions by the state. If I defend a child that you are abusing I do so from a position of equality and you have means of effective recourse against me. It’s much like the difference between Mum sorting out a conflict between siblings and a sibling sorting out a conflict between siblings.

** Child, Youth and Family/Cruelty to Youth and Family/state social “service”

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• How to deal with child abuse: Part 1

The comments button is at the bottom right of this post.

In a comment on my post titled Should children be taken into state custody at birth? Patrick Starr pointed out that I haven’t offered any alternative suggestions for dealing with child abuse. I have been remiss in not doing so and am grateful for the reminder.

Here’s the plan: in Part 1 I will briefly look at two important concepts, then in Part 2 I will look at the how part of dealing with child abuse. You may or may not find Part 1 radical, but Part 2 is likely to melt some of your wiring.

Without further ado, let’s look at two important concepts:

1. Who has an abusive parent committed a crime against?
2. Two views of social order

1) Who has an abusive parent committed a crime against?

If you’re walking down the street and I come up to you and punch you on the nose, who have I committed a crime against? 10/10 – I’ve committed a crime against you[1][2]. This is a private matter between you and I: why then does the state punish me for assaulting you? It is truly bizarre that I have committed a crime against you, yet I am prosecuted and punished by the state as if I had committed a crime against the state.

If a parent assaults a child, who has the parent committed a crime against? That’s right, the parent has committed a crime against the child[2]. Why should the state punish an abusive parent when the parent has committed no crime against the state? The answer lies in…

2) Two views of social order

Both the Left and the Right view society as a system riven with conflict, which the state must stop for the protection of all. To put it another way, both Left and Right believe that social cooperation can only be had if the state oversees the relationships between individuals, and deny the ability of individuals to bring about social cooperation without an overarching authority[3].

That is why the state punishes me when I assault you on the street and punishes a parent who abuses a child: the state believes that it is its duty and its right to resolve these conflicts.

This is much like those parents who are forever resolving conflicts when their children fight over toys: the parents believe that the children cannot resolve the conflict themselves. Well, of course they can’t if they never get an opportunity to practise conflict resolution, and people today cannot imagine solving conflict without state interference because the state has never allowed them to do so (e.g. ACC laws taking away the right to sue).

The Left and the Right fear that catastrophe will result if they do not resolve conflict – much as parents fear bloodshed if they do not resolve conflict between siblings – so they try and impose their version of Utopia upon society and use resolution of conflict as a justification for doing so.

Classical libertarians believe that the conflicts within society are better solved without state interference, and more on that will be found in Part 2.

What do you think about the points that I have made here?

Click here for Part 2

Some would say that making a kid wear a hat like this is child abuse

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[1] In classical libertarian terms I have violated the non-aggression axiom: “It is illicit to initiate or threaten invasive violence against a man or his legitimately owned property.”

[2] As a christian I also believe that the assaulter has sinned against God, but even if you do not share that belief my argument still holds water

[3]If I’m being charitable I say that the Left and Right are sincerely deluded in this belief: if I’m being cynical I say that they use this belief to justify their control of individuals. I believe that both are true.

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Should children be taken into state custody at birth?

In what is a concerning trend, the NZ Herald has twice this week published opinion pieces advocating extreme forms state control that will supposedly reduce child abuse.

I have already written about Tapu Misa advocating forced sterilisations, so now let’s turn to Deborah Coddington, who quotes Bob Harvey as saying:

Enough is enough. We have to toughen up and say some people right now are just not fit to be parents … some children should not actually be allowed to go home. Doctors, nurses and midwives can tell, they know as soon as that baby is taken out the door it will go into a home of neglect and dysfunction.”

He blamed, in part, the Privacy Act which “stops us sharing information. We need to think carefully about whether our laws are putting individuals’ civil liberties ahead of the welfare of our children”.

Harvey is proposing that children be taken away from parents at birth, which is no less extreme than Tapu Misa’s idea of forced sterilisations.

I agree that some people would be doing everyone a favour if they didn’t have children, but the real issue here is whether or not the state should be taking children away from parents.

Here are my thoughts regarding this pernicious proposition:

1) Who gave Harvey the right to judge who is and is not a fit parent? He is displaying a totalitarian attitude and extreme arrogance when he says “some children should not actually be allowed to go home”.

2) This proposition of Harvey’s entails a presumption of guilt, thereby violating one of fundamental legal principles that protects citizens from the overwhelming power of that state.

3) what is the definition of “neglect and dysfunction”? There is no objective standard for this and the state has the guns and prisons, so the state will always decide. Harvey implies that “neglect and dysfunction” is the threshold for state intervention, which is worryingly low however you define it. This is yet another state attempt to take control of children away from parents.

4) This proposition is based upon the unfounded assumption that children will be safe and well when raised in state care. Experience will show otherwise: click here, here and here for examples. I believe, although I cannot prove, that these articles only show a fraction of what happens in CYF “care”. How many of the suicides were due to ill treatment? Looking after someone else’s children is like driving a company car: human nature is that we don’t give the same level of care for something that is not our own.

Apart from the obvious types of abuse, CYF “care” brings another type of harm to children: instability. Children want and need routine and security, but most children in state care go through many foster homes. This leads to anxiety and difficulty with forming close relationships, amongst other things. Children tend to act out their distress, so wards of the state are more likely to be ill-behaved and delinquent.

5) “We need to think carefully about whether our laws are putting individuals’ civil liberties ahead of the welfare of our children”. People with this sort of attitude are such a menace to society that I’m tempted to introduce them to a firing squad.

Consider these points:

1. Harvey clearly believes that civil liberties are a nicety that can and should be removed when they are inconvenient.
2. this carries the implicit assumption that the state’s version of good child welfare is of higher importance than individual civil liberties.
3. this is based upon the unwarranted assumption that it is the state’s job to intervene when child abuse is occurring or may occur.
4. it is illogical to commit a mass injustice – the violation of civil liberties – in an attempt to right a small number of injustices perpetrated against children (the leftist mainstream media will always make the problem seem larger than it really is).
5. the same reasoning was behind Sue Bradford’s anti-smacking law.
6. the state will use any excuse it can to gain more control over individuals and this is a cunning way of doing it. By using child welfare to justify the violation of civil liberties, any objectors can be accused of aiding and abetting child abuse.

Samuel Dennis summed up the situation nicely with his comment on my earlier post (I am taking this out of context but I think that it is safe to do so – emphasis added):

I think we are being slowly indoctrinated that it is the State’s role to fix everything, and there are no moral absolutes, so people come up with these suggestions without even considering whether that is the role of the State or whether it is morally correct or not.

What do you think about this proposition from Harvey? Post a comment and share your thoughts.

Click here for a biblical perspective on child abuse.