Will Wilkinson - Latest Comments in The State as Parent

Re: The State as Parent

Jay dee — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 11:16:25 -0000

God bless you.

Re: The State as Parent

Brian Moore — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 12:53:44 -0000

I agree completely.

Oppressive leaders always try to tap into a paternal analogy. The "fatherland" -- the Pope -- etc...

The reason they do it is not for what it says about them, but what it says about the citizens. If the people are children, then they are irrational and we must restrain them.

Modern secular society has to implicitly reject this in order to function in a civilized fashion. The structure of the state-individual relationship must not resemble the parent-child relationship.

Re: The State as Parent

Pithlord — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 02:35:39 -0000

Same with God.

Re: The State as Parent

Matt — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 18:40:33 -0000

A parental vision of the state probably tracks closely with the pernicious things you mention, since becoming a metaphoric "child" is a really effective way to put one's moral responsibility into government escrow.

Not to get all chicken-and-egg about it, but, I'd be even more interested to see if societies with brittle, imperiled family structures have greater tendencies toward seeing the state as a metaphorical parent. If you're a strung-out, glue-sniffing, AK-toting orphan at age 10, you might be inclined to seek a surrogate family wherever you can find it. I wonder if the same phenomenon scales up to the societal level.