While German (Baptist) parents fight for the right to educate their children themselves,[1] Texas parents fight for license after a divorce.[2] Using "the child's best interest" as its justification and standard, some Texas courts have issued restrictions on who a parent may have in their home overnight while their children are in the house. The restrictions are aimed at live in girlfriends (or boyfriends), and I understand and happen to agree with the Judge's rationale on this case. Yet I must disagree with his action, and the situation in Germany explains why.
If the state's view of the child's best interest, and the state's "right" to protect that, superseded the parent's right, even if only in the case where divorced parents disagree, then we are at risk of following Germany down the path wherein a state can exercise its interest to see a child educated "properly." We thus then open the door to state mandated indoctrination. Currently some (most?) states offer an exemption from the state mandated educational requirements for religious beliefs. Still, the Home School Legal Defense Association[3] exists and is active even in states like Virginia that offer parents relatively high levels of control over their children's education. This demonstrates that even here parents are not immune from persecution when they choose to resist the state's ideas of "proper education." In Germany, the parents have lost their rights and authority "in educational matters" "in order to protect the children from further harm.â[4] Noteworthy here is how indistinguishable this statement is from the sort of thing you might see from a court acting to ensure "the child's best interests."
Also noteworthy is how Germany's action is seen, at least by this writer, as part and parcel with the strong concept of statehood here. This argues strongly for Mr. Ethan Blanton's repeated insistence that states have no rights. He may be correct that such an absolute position must necessarily be held if we are to restrain the state into its proper, limited, sphere. I remain unsure. Along the same lines, I question how the term "state," used in this article, differs from Mr. Andrius Ciziunas' use of the word "nationality." Mr. Ciziunas and I have disagreed on the definition of that word (nation/nationality) several times, only to discover that the dictionary allows for both definitions.[5] I personally think that to the extent that "nation" is codified into a "state," its use to refer to a in-exit-able subset of people becomes particularly problematic.
Still, as "nation" so defined need not be codified into a "state," as, for example (an example particularly close to Mr. Ciziunas' heart), Lithuania was not a state while under Communist occupation, this train of thought is rather tangential and hypothetical. This form of extreme patriotism, statism, is problematic whether or not one drags in a concept of nation into it; we need not needlessly inflate the importance of something of such inherently great import.
[1] Colen, Alexandra. "Hitlerâs Ghost Haunts German
Parents" The Brussels Journal (online). 2005-08-02
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/139
[2] Council, John.
"Court Restricts Overnight Visitors for Divorced Parents" Law.com
2005-08-08 http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1123232713113
[3] http://www.hslda.org/
[4] see 1 above. the latter quote
here is in fact a quote there, from the court's ruling.
[5]
Schierer, Luke. "Nationality and family" Random Unfinished Thoughts.
2005-07-23
http://www.schierer.org/luke/log/20050723-1918/nationality-and-family