Re: Testing your theory

Thank you. You have explained it all very clearly. There is a satisfying purity and logic to your views. I consider myself a parental sovereigntist simply because I believe that when a child is definitely deficient in knowledge or understanding to make a wise decision, it should be the parents and not the state who decides for him. As I am at least much closer than most people to you in my views on this, I hope you will forgive the differences in opinion and indulge me with further clarification on how you feel about the difficulties I see as likely to arise in families not as lucky as yours in the harmony between parents and children. I understand that other families might not be as lucky as mine in terms of the harmony created within. Call this simplistic and small minded but the way I see it is that they are just simply none of my concern. It is up to other families to assert their OWN terms and to defend themselves against meddling intruders, with violence if they deem necessary. I think it irrelevant if some people may find "faults" or "inconsistencies" in my position on parental sovereignty. To me that simply does not matter. As I said, I don't expect people en masse to "convert" to my stance. I am not trying to proselytize. I am a separatist, and I have been also referred to as an isolationist (a name I quite proudly accept). I merely expect outsiders (aka "society") to mind their own business and not interfere in MY domestic affairs. That's ALL I expect, otherwise it's WAR once they trespass on my property and intrude on my family life. Unlike you, I don't feel that parents should have the power to forbid their children things they are old enough to decide themselves. So, for example, if my son of 14 or 40 were to want to have an affair I thought was bad for him, I would think it my duty to advise or plead with him not to go ahead, but I would think it unfair to use more than heavy persuasion to stop him (though fair if he were say 10). Mostly this comes down to a belief in individual freedom, but that difference in principle is not what I think it interesting to discuss. I am not concerned if outsiders don't feel that I should have the power to raise my own offspring however I see fit, just as long as they do not put those sensibilities into ACTION and actually INTERLOPE into my domestic affairs. I do NOT take kindly to that sort of behaviour AT ALL. I do however fully respect your own feelings in raising your own offspring. That is after all what parental sovereignty is all about. You feel more of a limit than I, that is your own personal judgment and that's fine. You are one who tends to think in terms of age whereas I tend to think of other factors such as knowledge and experience rather than age itself. You said you wouldn't want to go beyond heavy persuasion to stop your 14 or 40 year old son from doing something you thought was a bad idea, yet you would outright stop your 10 year old if he did the same. This all because of age. Whereas I would instead be looking at things quite differently and certainly not age per se. I have no time for ageism. For example, let's say I had two sons, one 50 and the other one 7 and both wanted to go out and participate in some sport that if one indulging in that sport was not in any way skilled and had practice in would likely be risky and result in potentially dangerous outcomes. Now if my 7 year old had knowledge and some experience in that sport I am going to let him participate in it, but if my 50 year old son still happened to be under my authority and he had absolutely NO experience in that risky sport, I would put my foot down and say "No son, the young one can because he knows his stuff, YOU however DON'T, therefore I will not allow you to put your life at risk." Extreme sports are one thing as they often can involve risk, REAL risk. I don't however feel the same way about sex. There is very little risk in it and I feel casual about it and consider it pretty well a no brainer activity, even for a 4 year old with limited language skills. Sex rarely can do any physical harm and if a child who is old enough to speak has absolutely no interest in sex, then he can simply say "no". If he does have a curious interest he can say "Sure, why not? Let's do it." It will be easiest if I present a hypothetical story for your comment. Supposing you had had a 6-year-old daughter who had been much more difficult with you than you have actually experienced. Let us imagine that one day she got into a huge sulk over being told what to do, went to her room and slammed the door. When she didn't appear for lunch, you went to see and found she had disappeared, leaving a note saying she had gone to live with a lady she had met in the street and bought her an ice-cream and was nicer than you. Next, a few hours too late, when you showed a photo of her to the station-master at your local railway station, he said he had seen her boarding a train with a woman in dark glasses. What would you do? Presumably you wouldn't want or even tolerate help from the police, and in your ideal society they would be forbidden to help if you admitted your daughter had left of her own volition. I fear that short of excellent luck with a private detective, it is likely you would never have seen your daughter again. To begin with, you are correct, I wouldn't ask for the police to help me given that I do not think the matter something of their responsibility in the first place. As to what I would do, that would depend on a lot of factors so it's hard just to give one answer on that. If I really liked my 6 year old daughter and wanted her back even though she was a rebellious handful, no doubt I would go out and try and find her and get her back, and if I had more money I'd also hire a private detective. If she hid away though there wouldn't be really much I could do, so I would be shit out of luck. If my daughter happened to be an absolute nightmare though and she and I couldn't stand each other at all, there may be a chance I might just think "Well, GOOD RIDDANCE! You have no gratitude for everything I have done for you, so maybe you might find better opportunities out in the world on your own. Maybe meet some idiot who is prepared to put up with you!". I admit this is an extreme story, but extremes are necessary to test the soundness of theories and it is at least possible. Unfortunately, there are some genuinely nasty people out there. I expect you've heard of the likes of Ian Brady. If little children could be abducted with impunity provided the child said "Yes", I fear many more of them would act. Again, I have no concern whether my own ways of doing things are regarded by others as "sound" or not. They are welcome to draw their own conclusions. If they like my particular stance and personal ways of doing things then they may want to emulate them. If however they are averse to my ideas they will then obviously reject them. Ultimately that's THEIR choice to make for themselves. But as long as they keep entirely out of MY domestic affairs then that is all that matters to me. As for your reference to "abductions", naturally if my 4 year old daughter said "yes" to some guy who said "would you like to get in my car and we'll go for a drive", that in itself would most certainly not be an abduction. If he stayed out for a long time with her and I got really worried about her and he eventually returned her, I would feel relieved but also angry, only at MYSELF of course for having been stupid enough not to have told my daughter in advance not to go away for hours or days with some complete stranger. I would NOT be angry at the guy who drove off with her because all he would be "guilty" of is going along with what my daughter willingly agree to in the first place. If however he at some later point had put her under DURESS then that of course would change EVERTHING and then become THEFT (of my daughter). This of course is not something that can happen to a 4 year old, it can happen to a 40 year old too. The key is awareness and any wise parent will instil this into their offspring from a very early age. As a parental sovereigntist I also of course put huge importance on parental responsibility. It is my responsibility alone to teach my offspring the potential dangers of strangers. Failure on my part to do so of course risks me having my offspring stolen and perhaps never seen again. This leads to my main point. A generation or two ago, children were far freer than today to do things like roam around the countryside without adult supervision and I believe they had much better childhoods as a result. All that has changed largely due to the paranoia generated by pedophobia and underlined by real cases like Brady's. If your principles were to be accepted by society, it would have to get much worse, as even people like me who have tried desperately to allow their children an old-fashioned freedom, would not dare let their children go off for adventures on their own. Don't you feel at all that that would be something to regret? The thing is, an adult is potentially at just as much risk from being hurt of abducted by criminal elements as children anyway. Women and girls alike (being the fairer sex) in particular are at far more risk of being raped or abducted than both men and boys. This is because men and boys tend to be much more aggressive when accosted by hostility. A quiet spoken timid petite woman is at far more risk of being raped and abducted than an assertive strapping athletic boy who will punch and kick and shout at his attacker. If parental sovereignty was to became something mainstream and standard, then state-imposed AOC laws would become redundant. This in turn would lead to a general public ease when it came to the subject of paedophilia and hebephilia. It would no longer be anywhere as collective as it is now. Desperate MAPs sexually frustrated because of today's AOC laws could feel a much greater sense of freedom and ease. They would also know that they would no longer be persecuted by any legal system and that they would also no longer be almost universally feared like they are now. Brothels would go up all over the place and sex workers would be of all ages, including those in the age brackets that MAPs have a taste for. Therefore no NEED for frustrated MAPs to stalk and abduct children, youths and young adults behind bushes anymore, given that their sexual proclivity would no longer be illegal.