1

Why stop at tongue piercings? Having metal and plastic hang from the body just looks bad. I don't notice female earrings and notice male earrings for the wrong reasons. No child of mine would be allowed to look like a brigand until he is eighteen.

Peikoff's point seems to be a similar conclusion I reached where parents should have no say in changing of non defective parts of the body. Although his point that the child should be prohibited until eighteen makes sense because that is when you would be considered legally competent.

I am a slacker too. I pretty much read Diana's website and talk with my friend to find out more. But I think of objectivism as having no sacraments which you must oblige. If I see I made an error in my analysis I just correct and continue living.

Oh and your comment " or the evil of the [???]." reminds me of a saying I saw on another comments post from a different blog. "Circumcision, the cure looking for a disease."

2 I was missing out on most Objectivist blogs, sites, podcasts, and discussion boards as well.

Recently, I have started using Google Reader to pull together dozens of RSS feeds so that new posts related to Objectivism or my other interests come to me in a single interface. 

The entries are queued individually so that I can read some, skip through some, and save specific others for later.  It allows me to mark items for later action and add notes for my later reference.  Also, I can add notes to an unrelated web page and save it into the same interface for later action.  Further, it maintains a searchable history (unsure how long).

Its very intuitive to use, but I plan to make a YT vid about it sometime in the next week that I will ask McKeever to add to the Objectivist Group vids on YT.

3 What if there were a procedure that isn't mandatory on health grounds but is only worthwhile while the child is young? IIRC, certain growth-promoting procedures are like this, but it's not like being short is going to kill you.

4 I would probably not let my son get his ears pierced, either, but a girl... I dunno.  I'd think about it.  Overall, I like his summary and conclusion, so I'm inclined to agree.

Re: [???]  I thought he said, "subject," referring to the penis at first, but after listening to it several time, I'm really just not sure.

Re: Google Reader.  Yeah, I need to get with the technology.  There are lots of ways to do this, but my slackassitude gets in the way.

Re: Growth hormones and the like.  I would say those are acceptable.  Being short won't kill you, but neither will being illiterate.  You should still teach your child to read.  Being taller is, on balance, far more beneficial than being tall for a number of reasons, but it would depend on the extremity of their condition.  I mean, you don't want to make a giant, but neither do you want to leave them a dwarf.  So, you'd have to judge your child's condition and determine whether or not a given treatment is in their best interests.

5 I wasn't allowed to get my ears pierced until my 8th grade graduation.  That seemed insanely late to me at the time, but thinking back on it now, I liked that it was something of A Big Event.  Plus, by that age, I certainly was mature enough to be able to make an informed decision about whether I wanted them pierced or not.  And I was able to care for them as required after the piercing.

6 Though I read a lot of the blogs and generally make thorough rounds in the Objectivism universe on the internet, I have to tell you that you aren't missing much by skipping the forums. They are largely frustrating and don't really accomplish much, anyway. I haven't posted on one in quite some time. 

7 Ear piercing seems open and shut to me.  I think that something as simple as an ear piercing can be left up to an older child.  I got my ears pierced when I was 12.  It was barely painful. They ended up getting infected because I did not use gold studs and I have sensitive skin, but the whole episode really did not harm me and the holes and infections healed.  This is simply not the same thing as mutilating a baby through circumcision, with life long lasting detrimental effects.  I'm with you Flib.

There's the obvious cases of parents just letting their kids die because of their weird religious beliefs, but let's talk about the really thorny issues that are not so easy.  Two years ago, I would have said that a parent preventing their child from having chemotherapy for cancer should definitely be prosecuted for child neglect or the child should be forced to have the chemo against the will of the parent.  I'm honestly not so sure any more that my previous position was correct, though I would admit it might depend on the stage of the cancer. 

Here's the thing.  I don't want to see the day in this country when parents are prosecuted for not putting their fat eight year old on a statin drug to reduce his cholesterol just because some supposed expert who believes in pseudoscience says so.  And we're kind of getting there.  Those are the new American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines.

In short, I am very nervous about medical professionals stepping in as authorities to sue a parent and trump a parent's medical decisions for their child. So I am not sure I agree with Peikoff on this (I'd need to hear more, I think, and I haven't listened to it) on the particulars, although I agree with his basic principles. 

 It is the mainstream (and supposedly scientific) opinion that feeding unpasteurized milk to your kid is dangerous and in certain states I am sure you could be prosecuted for it.  I am sure many people would agree with that type of prosecution but it's dead wrong. 

8 Well, aside from the rather marginal health issues that could come into play, eg. unpasteurized milk, even extreme issues like chemotherapy, blood transfusion, insulin (recent news stories for instance) are prone to abuse by the nanny state and anyone else who is prone to unprincipled policing of people's lives.

I see this primarily as a reason to strategically attack the bad ideas that are floating around out there.