By Ryan Love | United States

The relationship between parent and child is a sacred and time held one. It is a foundation pillar of society. It is the right and proper duty of the parent to assure that their children learn the moral, ethical, and educational building blocks of society, and how to employ them to be good and proper members of said society.

Recently, however, there have been case by case examples of the state eroding this sacred pillar. As was the case in Buffalo, New York when a single mother had her children ripped away from her by Child Protective Services for deciding to home-school her children.

This relays to us a very serious problem, particularly for conservatives and libertarians: the state’s power over the individual’s body is simply too great. The fact that the government can, without proper and reasonable suspicion of malice or wrongdoing, take the children out of the arms of a carrying parent is an egregious miscarriage of justice.

The fact that the state can initiate force without any sort of consent by the governed is a dangerous and horrifying prospect, one that has been made increasingly apparent in recent times. This is not the first account of wrongdoing either. All across the country, CPS officials have been flagged for behaving in reprehensible ways. Be it abuse, wrongly removing someone’s children, or placing kids into abusive foster homes, there is little moral basis for the government to take children away from their parents.

For the single Mother in Buffalo, she had her lifeblood, her beloved children ripped away from her simply because she refused to believe that state-sponsored schools were good for her family. She followed every bit of excessive bureaucratic red tape to the letter, and yet, it was all to no avail.

Why is the government granted this right in the first place? Of course, this is not to say that there are not instances in which child abuse does occur. But rather, that there may be better alternatives in addressing the needs of children especially when the interests of the child are at stake. For instance, could not other familial members work to help the kids? Or could CPS be reserved for more serious and heinous allegations, removing their power to take children from parents because they decide to home-school altogether?

What is worst of all is that CPS seems to operate with no rhyme or reason. On the one hand, they are destroying families lackadaisically, on the other they aren’t investigating truly abusive homes to the degree that they need to be. Without the true competition of the market, can we be surprised that CPS and the government at large is failing us? I would say not.

Ultimately, when we look to our society we can see a lot of good. Western Civilization has provided millions-if not billions- with a great and unprecedented quality of life. At the same time, there are many ways in which we can improve. One of them may be reconsidering the power of the State, and how it impacts the lives of families.