“That’s just… Wrong!”

I watched the dyslexic boy I was tutoring as he internally debated his choice of words, and knew very well what he really wanted to say. While I had chided him before about dropping F-bombs, in this case I would have been just fine with it.

He was a high school freshman who just a few months earlier struggled through reading The Cat in the Hat, but that day he was wading into a large print copy of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. What bothered him was a world with parentless children, literally manufactured by the state.

I have seen many suggestions over the years for reaching some kind of financial equity in our society. Now, after over 30 years of actively participating in politics in one way or another, I have finally seen someone offer up something that could have been ripped out of a dystopian novel.

Joe Mathews suggests in the San Francisco Chronicle that parents should be forced to turn over their children to the state for redistribution. Ostensibly, this is to break the chain of wealth enjoyed by people of means. Mathews bases his concept on Plato’s Republic, a text that nowadays is examined in an extremely watered down fashion in high school or college.

Plato’s suggestions obviously were never completely adopted by any society, and for good reason. Like it or not, we are still very similar to our ancestors that archaeologists study. We are more likely to be protective of people we consider “family” than anyone else, and those ties would be hopelessly broken if Mathews had his way. Then raising children would become a job as it is in Huxley’s dystopia – no strong emotional attachments to anyone.

The problem with both Plato and Mathews is that they are both focused on creating societal equity, while ignoring the social value and necessity of family units. Huxley pointed out how destructive complete social engineering by government could be, with his society that had to constantly be numbed to maintain control.

Maybe that could be a solution to the misery that would be created by the “Universal Orphanhood” Mathews suggests. Legalize drugs, and literally hand out anti-depressants and other mood stabilizers. No matter what, someone needs to read more about human nature, and maybe gain a lot more empathy. I will be kind and not get into the medical nightmares that could be created if people had to rely completely on government to keep accurate records on genetic disorders.

Remember, this is about people, not just dollars. And finally, on a personal note to Mathews, the little orphan Annie is a terrible pop culture reference for your suggestion because she wanted her real parents more than anything, and settled for Daddy Warbucks. That reference was almost as cringe-worthy as Rick Santorum’s reference to the Lord of the Rings movies (not books!) as an example of stewardship, because the Steward of Gondor did such a great job!