WHTT Philosophy of Freedom and Responsibility
It is important to understand that parents have the freedom to raise their children, and they must accept responsibility for any problems caused by the way they exercise that freedom. Actually, this is just one specific example of a much larger Philosophy of Freedom and Responsibility.
Since America's Great Depression of the 1930s, people have expected government to solve their problems. In response, government has grown into a huge and bloated bureaucracy which simply cannot provide an efficient solution to the many problems thrust upon it. Furthermore, when people turn to the government to solve problems, then all people lose some of the freedom to make their own choices about their lives. When government has the power to solve problems, then government inevitably exercises that power to restrict some of people's individual freedoms. For example, government solves the problems of riding a motorcycle without a helmet or driving a car without a seat belt by making it illegal to do either. Although it is almost suicidal to ride a motorcycle without a helmet or drive a car without a seat belt, people should have the freedom to make their own choices about actions which do not harm other people.
Government should legislate against those who would attempt to abuse the rights of other people. However, whenever only one person's rights are involved, the proper role of government is to educate the individual about the consequences of various actions, rather than to require that individual to behave in a way that the government decides is acceptable. A classic example of this abuse by government is the social security mess. Obviously, it is a good plan for people to conserve part of their earnings for their elderly years. The government should educate people about the importance of saving for the future. But what possible justification can there be for the government to take money by force from people under the pretext of providing for their future security?
The key complaint about social security is not just that it is badly managed, inefficient, bureaucratic, and insolvent, so that no one really expects it to be much more than a leaky broken umbrella in the future economic storms. All of those problems would be perfectly acceptable if people had the option to freely choose to invest in social security, or to save somewhere else instead. The worst problem with social security is that people are forced into it because some people in Washington decided that the government's concept of what was good for people was better than the freedom for those people to choose for themselves. One might equally argue that if people are free to drive cars and walk beside the streets, they would be exposed to great risks of auto accidents and street crimes such as theft or even murder. No doubt that is true, but the government solution would be to lock up all people in safe cages like animals in the zoo, for their own protection of course, with the government acting like a caretaker who would irregularly and bureaucratically shovel some barely edible food into the cages.
Individuals should have the freedom to make many decisions for themselves. The corollary to freedom is the responsibility of each person to accept the consequences of those decisions. For example, people should have the freedom to decide to have or not to have insurance (whether fire, flood, earthquake, medical, social security, or other). If the individuals subsequently have a problem which could have been alleviated by insurance that they chose not to purchase, then those people should not expect government to respond to solve their problem. When government has the power to solve the economic problems for individuals, then government exercises that power to force all individuals to make decisions and take actions which many people do not want to take. Freedom to make decisions and responsibility for the consequences of those decisions are the opposite sides of the same coin, and are equally inseparable.
Government power should be restricted to the areas that government can do best, such as protection of individual rights, conservation of the environment, education, courts, police, and national defense. As government is permitted to expand into other activities such as insurance, business, regulation, and control of the economy, then government becomes much too large, unmanageable, and inefficient. Even worse, an immense government treats people as if they are the servants of the government. When that happens, the natural rights of all people are progressively diminished until they completely vanish.
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