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RE: Anarchy and Compassion
Does the child not also have the natural rights to life, liberty, and property? That is where the question arises. I would trespass against a man who has shown himself deliberately trespassing against another.
Anarchism is taking responsibility for your own choices and actions. What would you do?
It's in judging when someone has "shown" themselves to be "deliberately trespassing against another" where the issue arrises. AFAIK this why we have the ideal that justice should be impartial, to attempt to remove the mistakes we can make in this judgement.
I'm not sure what I would do. I would certainly feel a heavy burden to act in some way. I would probably consult the people around me I respected and debate what to do. I imagine a verbal confrontation from the abusers peers would be best, but without violence if possible. But that might involve trespassing on their land / homestead, etc. or staking them out. What if they start shooting out? It could get complicated.
So I guess what I'm attempting to challenge is the idea that we shouldn't have to submit ourselves to the ideas of our community, even in some ultra thin sense, for example just to challenge serious abuse. @freebornsociety seems like a moral relativist to me, it seems apparent in "If the kids want to be sacrificed, you are wrong to interfere in that, imo." Establishing whether or not they want it, whether or not they have the capacity to make that decision (given they are children), and so on, is more difficult that just letting people do what they want.
I think people can probably only do everything they want, not if we have anarchism, but if we have no society.
I agree that @freebornsociety in his scenario is being a tad too dogmatic in his approach...
We should use a more rational approach, which is the one I tried to outline above?
Hope that one helps to clarify.. Ask any questions if you have any as I've pondered anarchism a lot and read almost all of Malatesta and Kropotkin :)
Thanks, but just to make my angle clear, I'm not looking for a quick way into the secrets of the great anarchist thinkers as @freebornsociety is suggesting, I've read widely, I am seeing how the ideas hold up in real person to person discussion. It's not that interesting to get a couple of books and have them do all the talking for you. (I'm not saying you're doing this)
Reading your other long comment now.