Gardner, yes, I’m still listening. Several thoughts on the Osborne podcast: first, as a general observation, for anyone who’s interested, I believe I’ve come up with the succinct one liner for those who use the social contract/public goods argument, how everyone contributed to the wealth of the rich through state provided services. Check out the one note in my latest blog post: www.michaelmcconkey.com . Of course, I could just write it here, but I’d prefer you read the blog post.

Now, onto the matter of child-rearing and parenting philosophy: I hope it is clear that I’m not disagreeing with you or Jason about treating children well. I raised a couple myself, now adults, and I always took the same approach Jason proscribed, simply because I loved them and didn’t want to mistreat them. This should not be confused with the fact that a responsible parent sometimes has to use physical force to restrain a child either for the child’s sake or to protect others from the child. Anyone not willing to do that is not going to be a responsible parent, but that’s very different from hitting a child. That I never condoned. So, I think we’re in agreement on that.

Our disagreement lies in the view expressed by both you and Jason – and much circulated by Stephan M. at Freedomain Radio, who continues to promote this idea, despite my best email efforts: there is no methodology of parenting that will create (or prevent) libertarians. That so many perpetuate this claim in complete contradiction to the scientific evidence is distressing to me. Yes, children do respond to particular parenting styles while in the child-parent dynamic, but, by their mid-20s, genetic dispositions take over. The evidence on this – primarily, though not exclusively, based on twins and adoption studies – is overwhelming. Yes, Jason’s daughter may well turn out to be a libertarian, but this is not due to his parenting style, but due to the genes he passes on to her. The evidence is clear that if she had been adopted as a neo-natal by a family with completely different ethical standards, by the time she was a young adult, the odds are overwhelming that she would have the same views on public affairs as she would have had if raised by Jason.

Anyone interested in exploring this evidence, in a book by a libertarian, should see Bryan Caplan’s Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids. To my mind, though, the real indispensible classic on this is Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate. Pinker, who explicitly disavows his early childhood flirtation with “Bakunin anarchism” as a result of the violence that ensured during the 1969 police strike in his home town of Montreal, I believe, actually has a deeply repressed libertarian streak running through his thought. (Something I’ll be arguing elsewhere.) In any event, whether any one agrees or not with me on that, the bulk of the empirical and clinical evidence he marshals to make his genetics case against the blank slate idea is impressive -- in the strongest sense of that word..

So, be nice to your children because you love them and, well, they’re your children. And, as Caplan says, one of the very few long term impacts your parenting style can have is whether or not your children remember you fondly. Any delusions that you can turn them into libertarians in the process are misguided according to the science and ethically dubious from a libertarian perspective.