2550 What Business is it of Mine How You Raise Your Kids?
Stefan Molyneux explains why it's our business how people raise their children.
Dec. 8, 2013 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
02:45
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| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| Hi everybody, Stephen Mullen from VitaMain Radio. | |
| This is a brief response to a rebuttal that I often get, which goes along the lines of, who are you to tell me how to raise my children? | |
| It's a fine question. | |
| It's a fine question. | |
| I guess my response first and foremost is, are they going to stay home for the rest of their lives? | |
| Are you going to keep them in the basement? | |
| If the answer to that is no, then yes, it damn well does matter to me how you raise your children because I'm going to have to live in a world and my daughter is going to have to live in a world and my friends and my wife and my family are going to have to live in a world populated by the products of your parenting. | |
| So yes, it does matter to me how you raise your children. | |
| You know, when I hear that, you know what it sounds like to me? | |
| To me, it sounds like some person down at the end of the street who's got a Rottweiler who beats it regularly and then has it run loose through the neighborhood children's play games. | |
| Well, if you're letting your dog off your property, it matters to me how you raise and treat your damn dog. | |
| Children are free-range creatures. | |
| They go out. | |
| They interact with other children. | |
| They grow up to vote. | |
| They grow up to run for office. | |
| They grow up to become criminals. | |
| They get bigger, meaner, stronger, and faster. | |
| So yes, it really does damn well matter to me how you raise your children. | |
| I have to live with the effects of your good or bad parenting. | |
| So don't be that dog owner who says, oh no, it doesn't matter to anyone, it shouldn't matter to anyone whether I hit my dog or not. | |
| It does. | |
| It matters in particular if you let the dog out to buy children, but it matters at a very existential level because we care about dogs. | |
| They're not your children. | |
| You no more own your children than a lawyer who has some sort of custodial arrangement over some money owns that money. | |
| No, it's escrow. | |
| You're holding it In lieu of the future, you are producing that child to the future. | |
| It is a catch-and-release scenario, raising children. | |
| They'll be out there in the world, and I'll have to deal with them, and everybody else is going to have to deal with the effects of what you do or what you don't do. | |
| So, yes, it does matter. | |
| I'll leave you with John Donne's famous poem. | |
| No man is an island entire of itself. | |
| Each is a piece of the continent, a part of the main continent. | |
| If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manner of thine own or thine friends were. | |
| Each man's death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind. | |
| Therefore send not to know for whom the bell tolls. |
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