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“The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom.”
In Greek mythology, the Hydra was a serpent with many heads. Each time one was cut off, two more grew in its place. What began as a single threat multiplied the moment someone tried to defeat it.
South Carolina’s proposed “Parental Rights Act” (H. 4757) is being presented as a measure to restrain government and restore parental authority. It affirms what many already believe: parental rights are inherent. They do not originate in the State. They precede it. But the structure of the bill raises a deeper question:
If parental rights already exist, why does protecting them require creating new layers of enforcement, new compliance standards, new staffing, and new administrative pathways?
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THE $17.7 MILLION QUESTION
According to the state’s own fiscal impact statement, implementing H. 4757 could cost roughly $17.7 million in new General Fund spending next year, with recurring costs thereafter. The bulk of that projection stems from expanded healthcare consent requirements, potential conflicts with federal Title X funding, additional staffing at the Department of Public Health, enforcement capacity within the Attorney General’s office, and administrative burdens placed on school districts.
Each head removed – secrecy, lack of transparency, bureaucratic overreach — appears to generate new ones: minimum standards issued by the State Board of Education, model policies for districts, compliance review processes, administrative exhaustion requirements, and private causes of action.
The effort to restrain government becomes a vehicle for expanding it.
John Locke wrote in his Second Treatise that parental authority arises from nature, and that government exists only to secure pre-existing rights — not to define, manage, or expand them. The American experiment was built on that premise. The State protects liberty by limiting itself.
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ENFORCEMENT IS EXPANSION
The bill also directs the State Board of Education to adopt minimum standards for implementing parental rights and to issue a model policy for districts. Local education agencies are expected to align with those standards, and appeals ultimately run through the State Board. That is not just recognition of natural authority; it is the construction of a statewide compliance architecture. Rights become subject to uniform interpretation, administrative review, and state-level enforcement. The more standardized the framework, the less local and organic the authority becomes. Each mechanism may be defensible on its own. But taken together, they form infrastructure, which requires personnel, which requires budgets, and what then? Budgets become permanent.
Republicans may call this accountability. Democrats may call it oversight. The label is irrelevant, but the pattern is familiar: power expands, and taxpayers fund its expansion.
Locke warned that government exceeds its proper function when it substitutes its own machinery for natural authority. A statute that simply restrains state interference costs nothing. A statute that constructs a statewide compliance regime around family life does not shrink the State. It formalizes its presence.
The irony is difficult to ignore: a bill meant to restrain government grows new heads of government. A law meant to secure natural rights expands the very apparatus meant to limit itself. Like the Hydra, the more we attempt to sever overreach, the more it seems to regenerate in new administrative form.
This is not a partisan objection. It is not red versus blue. Both parties have proven willing to expand the apparatus when it suits them. The deeper question is structural: does protecting liberty require building bureaucracy? If parental rights are truly fundamental, they do not require new staffing charts, new enforcement layers, or tens of millions in recurring public spending. They require clear, narrow, enforceable limits on state action, and limits don’t need a budget line.
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LIBERTY IS NOT A BRAND
This is not a movement-versus-movement objection either. In recent years, many organizations have branded themselves as defenders of liberty, parental authority, or freedom. Some do valuable work. But liberty is not preserved by branding, and it is not strengthened by blind allegiance.
A bill does not become small-government simply because it is championed by a group that uses the words “liberty” or “freedom”. Political marketing is not a substitute for structural analysis. If we trade skepticism for team loyalty — whether to a party or to a freedom-branded coalition — we risk expanding the very machinery we claim to resist.
We must all read the bills, think for ourselves, and quit reaching for our own echo chambers for confirmation bias.
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THIS IS NOT THE BILL OF RIGHTS
Supporters of this bill often argue that enumerating parental rights in statute is no different than the Bill of Rights enumerating freedoms in the Constitution. But the comparison breaks down under scrutiny.
The Bill of Rights is a limitation on federal power — a declaration of what government may NOT do. It does not create enforcement agencies, administrative complaint hierarchies, staffing expansions, or regulatory frameworks to manage speech, religion, or due process. It restrains the State. H. 4757, by contrast, constructs a system to administer, oversee, and enforce parental rights through expanded bureaucracy. That distinction matters. One limits government power. The other organizes it.
The Hydra was not defeated by striking at it blindly. Each careless blow only strengthened it. South Carolina should be careful not to mistake multiplication for protection. When every attempt to restrain government produces new structures of oversight and enforcement, the problem has not been solved — it has been replicated.
Natural rights do not need new heads of administration to survive.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR…
Jennifer Brecheisen is a Christian, Homeschool mother, wife, and artist. She is an active advocate for liberty as a John Birch Society chapter leader, and as the Vice Chair of the Chester County Libertarian Party.
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2 comments
No real mention of what “parental rights” need to be protected from the state, just bloviating about “muh liberty” as usual. Might as well summon the elder lich Murray Rothbard and talk about the “parental rights” of auctioning off your children in the free market.
Nah, plenty of bad parents out there, many of which will tell you the damage they do to their children was “well-meaining” in some sort of way. Just look at how many right wing morons are giving their kids raw milk.
One of the most laughable absurd laws SC ever passed was a statute that prohibited a patent that pays child support and medical insurance for their kids from seeing their own child’s school report cards.
Cases where it was used like a weapon by vindictive malicious parents against the other parentS. Pure evil.