You'll get a lot more out of a discussion if you don't argue with a caricature of your interlocutor's opinions. I'd love to go on about about libertarian ties to right-wing, Christianist movements, which themselves are inextricable from white supremacy and a hostility towards women, but it's unfair to assume that you, personally, hold any such beliefs.

So let's talk about children, and the state.

The state believes that parents do not own their children. This is relatively uncontroversial, if you want somebody to be able to protect children from the depredations of shitty parents. Kids are fragile and easily influenced, and they can't make adult decisions. They're defenseless, particularly against their parents.

Generally education is considered critical to a child's welfare, and for good reason. Basic literacy and arithmetic are important if you're to have citizenry capable of participating in a democracy.

Put it all together and perhaps you see why a society might be just a wee bit concerned about how parents treat their children, including whether and how they educate them.

> The state believes that parents do not own their children.

I think the fundamental problem here is that some people believe that children simply must be owned by somebody so when you say "parents do not own their children" their mind automatically inserts "...instead, the state does."

Of course children are not owned at all. Neither parents nor the state owns them.

If parents abuse their children, it is the responsibility of the state to intervene; just as if a homeless man mugs you, it is the responsibility of the state to intervene. If somebody abuses their elderly parents, it is again the responsibility of the state to intervene (yet nobody thinks that implies that the state owns the elderly...). What do we pay them for, if not to provide protection from other dangerous members of society?

You hit the nail on the head. I was trying to understand Rick James's position, and it occurred to me that if you thought of parents as having the right to total and complete control over everything about their child (as some conservatives do) - what we're calling ownership - then the thought of transferring that right to the state is indeed pretty disgusting.

Commenters are articulating this pretty well, though. Children have their own rights, and the state enforces them. Even a "ward of the state" is not owned by the state, the state is just the entity which is currently responsible for meeting his needs.

And I think it's pretty clear that you libertarians believe you own your children. We're coming at this from extremely different perspectives, but realize that the thought that parents own their children is as disgusting to me as the thought of the state owning children is to you.

To (some of) us, children are people. They are not owned. They have rights. The state is the only available instrument to protect the rights of the weak against the strong.

What about the rights of the children? The parents do not own them either, and society has sometimes a duty to protect children from their parents.