Quote:Freedom is an ideal that we should strive to attain.   No argument.    The argument comes when your freedom conflicts with my freedom.   For example, if you refuse to vaccinate your child, you are allowing your child to endanger others by potentially catching some disease and infecting others.   Your child could then wind up in the hospital, and if enough children wind up in the hospital for the same reason, not getting vaccinated, then the health care system gets overloaded and cost go up for all of us, especially when some of them can't pay their hospital bill.  

 

I don't know where to draw the line.   But we have to start by acknowledging that, as the old saying goes, your freedom ends at the point of my nose.  

 

It's not a simple question, where to draw the line, because sometimes, more freedom for you means less freedom for me.  

 

As far as your idea that the parents should be the final authority over what their children learn, and not the state, what if the parents wanted to teach their children to be terrorists or criminals?   That's an extreme example, but it illustrates my point that there is a line somewhere where the state has to step in, for the good of all of us.   That line does exist.