Intergovernmental bailouts are antithetical to division of power, insulating local and state constituents from the consequences of their elected officials' actions, and punishing taxpayers in other parts of the country without cause or consent. It's frankly evil.

A point I would have made in a post twice as long, though I prefer a consumption tax solution.

The poster is aware of the difference, but was blind to his usage in this case. Thanks for pointing it out.

You've been featured in our list of Top 10 Tea Party Bloggers. Take a look.
http://www.newsrealblog.com/2011/05/05/the-top-10...

You should have access to my email in your site's dashboard. I'd like to correspond about writing for us.

Thanks.

My above response to Reason_For_Life addresses your comment as well. You appear to derive parental rights from the needs of the child. Teaching and feeding are okay because they meet needs, you say. But that is not the premise upon which parental rights are based. If it were simply a question of the child's needs, anyone could meet them. Indeed, so-called "progressive" attacks against the family rely upon the sense that "society" has both the right and responsibility to meet children's needs. But that does not comport with natural law, as I describe above. There is no fundamental difference between the notion that children must be protected from their parents and the notion that people in general must be protected from themselves. Both fuel the nanny state.

Your last paragraph highlights the crux of the matter. Your observation that the child has no choice is correct. The point is, neither do you, unless it's your child.

You distinguish an adult's decision regarding their self from a parent's decision for their child. That's the crime in this debate. You don't get to determine what decisions parents make for their children, for precisely the same reason you do not get to determine what decisions they make for themselves. There is no distinction. To assert otherwise is to concoct some collective claim to parental authority which cannot be derived rationally, because it does not exist. If a parent does not "own" their child, which I agree they don't, surely no one else does. If a parent is not empowered to direct the life of their child, surely no one else is.

This is not a principle upon which I'm prepared to give ground, because there is no middle ground. If you concede that parental authority is subject to the rational analysis of others, than there is no parental authority. And that's precisely what we see in everything from dietary dictates in public schools to prosecution of religious parents for controversial medical decisions. The state's role in protecting children is the same as its role in protecting anyone, preserving individual rights. For the reasons I articulate in the post, that means preserving the parents' right to direct their children's lives.

It is the sanctity of individual rights which should compel us to set an extraordinarily high standard for interfering in the parental relationship. I think it reasonable to expect that standard to include self-identified victims advocating on their own behalf, rather than a cadre of busy bodies eager to impose upon others. Again, I know of no such victims. Given the hundreds of millions of American men who have been circumcised over the years, if the practice is as horrific an abuse as you claim, the outcry from those actually affected would be readily apparent.

I never claimed it was painless. Neither is a spanking or having your ears pierced. Should we criminalize those practices? You're calling hundreds of millions of American parents child abusers. Forgive me if I find that absurd.

"The CDC data, reported by the New York Times, showed that the incidence of circumcision declined from 56 percent in 2006 to 32.5 percent in 2009. According to these statistics, non-circumcision or genital integrity has become the normal condition among newborn boys in the United States."
http://www.cirp.org/library/statistics/USA/

This demonstrates that people are, of their own accord, moving away from the practice. Take your case to those who remain. I see no reason to enforce it through law. If anything, the decreasing numbers strengthen the case for leaving it to parents.