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It's also quite a large number of public charges for a single family - a strong argument for sterilization in extreme circumstances.

There is no evidence in the article that the family is on the state dole, in fact quite the contrary: "Mr. Smith said he will remain a stay-at-home father while his wife works as a housekeeping supervisor for a hotel in Dickson City. It's her paycheck that pays the bills..."

Most of the available facts should be regarded favorably by conservatives. All of the charity at issue was provided privately, by volunteer funds and volunteer labor. And the recipients were treated as human beings rather than welfare case numbers. The family was required to contribute its own money to the work, which promotes responsibility. Furthermore, the father is raising his children rather than abandoning them to the state or dumping them in day care. In short, a private charity success story.

Given all the good news, why does a poster on Free Republic call the circumstances sufficiently "extreme" as to warrant state-coerced sterilization? Isn't that what we condemn totalitarian regimes for?

I'm not in the "forced sterilization" crowd either and I'm willing to say yes, there is a lot of good here. However, to have qualified for HFH to begin with, they were already in trouble with the number of children. In this day and age there is very little excuse for having 4,6,8, 10, 14, etc. children that you cannot provide for properly.

My preference, of course, is that they should be able to breed themselves into poverty all they wish, as long as nobody is sticking a gun in my face to make me pay for it.

I would hardly call limiting excessive procreation in circumstances where the family can't pay for it - 18 children! - totalitarian.

Just the fact of public schooling means they are on the dole - the legal plunder you want to stop - for around $6k/kid/year, so that's $124,000/year the taxpayer is paying (minus a miniscule amount of taxes collected from them, if any) versus the $10,000 one-time private charity they are receiving.

I don't see what's so conservative about this story.