Republicans Must Transform The Welfare-State Imperium into Marriage
Twelve years after “welfare reformâ€, marriage is still in the emergency room, father-absence is still the greatest problem we face, and federal government is more aggressive than ever entitling illegitimacy at the direct expense of marriage.
Feminists and lawyer-politicians in both political parties have collaborated for the past 45 years to get what they want. Feminists gained sole control of about half the families in America, while lawyers made a killing murdering marriage.
It is a marriage made in hell. Millions of Americans are intimately aware of this fact because so many have been enticed or dragged into the system – leaving most of them in great economic and social distress – clamoring for relief that cannot possibly be delivered regardless of the amount of deficit expenditures.
The machinery of the feminist kleptocracy is simple to understand: Heavily entitle women to have children out of wedlock or to divorce for no reason whatsoever while ensuring that children remain chattel of women. Promise them more money than their husband or boyfriend makes. Promise them victim-status, free health care, and free day care. Then, blame it all on men and strip them down to their BVD’s to pay for it.
Republicans wonder why so many Americans are unhappy with them. The reason is plainly visible on page one of the newspaper every day. Just read about all those single-mom strippers, imputed rapists, spousal murderers and child sexual abusers (of both sexes), and messed up children. Most “deadbeat dad” stories involve a man persecuted for more money than he makes. For every publicized deadbeat dad, there are thousands of invisible men and their friends and family who are equally upset.
Primary responsibility for this problem now rests on the Republican Congress. Many states would like to enact pro-marriage reforms, but are unable to do so because federal mandates require that federal monies be spent executing the anti-family agenda of feminism.
Republicans at the federal level and the RNC have absolutely refused to consider any change. They have gone out of their way to zip the tent shut to anyone who might have better ideas. Americans are clamoring for relief from this divisive and dangerous oppression – and Republicans still refuse to respond wisely.
It is a classic Abilene paradox that will probably cost Republicans their majority this fall. Certainly, Democrats didn’t treat marriage any worse than the Republican Congress has. Where a lot of Republican supporters have noticed this, you can bet a lot of Democrats have too.
As a sturdy Republican supporter since 1990, I must confess to being exceptionally disappointed with Republicans at the federal level. At the state level, Republicans tend to be pro-marriage and reasonably sensible. Tom Cruise was probably a sensible guy before he landed in the middle of a very famous Botticelli painting.
Why Republicans are so averse to reforms that many Americans want and need begs for explanation. Welfare is a trap — a self-fulfilling prophesy — not a safety net helping a few women in trouble. Women would not be stripping for a living after becoming destitute single mothers if government did not lead them down the reprehensible path of feminist greed, spending billions of other people’s money debauching women’s natural reproductive desires down to the lowest moral denominator. Men would not settle for cheap girlie entertainment, or turn gay, or give up on marriage entirely if Republicans had not spent the past twelve years pimping women straight out of the marriage market.
The promises of pro-family reforms made in the 1994 races basically called for gently phasing out the Great Society and letting marriage do what it has always done best. But after winning, Republicans went deeper into predatory socialism than Lyndon Johnson ever dreamed of. Many were astonished to watch Republicans attempt to fly this prehistoric granite blimp just to impress a few feminists who will never vote for them in a billion years.
Marriage education is all well and good. But it is useless in the face of a welfare system that is the structural equivalent of paying women large sums of money to drink and drive.
There are so many excellent things that the Republican Congress could do. We can end the need for the vast majority of divorces and end most family violence and child abuse, by enacting laws that help the responsible marital partner get the spouse abusing drugs or alcohol into treatment. Drinking and family causes far more human wreckage than drinking and driving does.
We can end father-absence and substantially reduce the numbers of under-parented, seriously troubled children by requiring states to order some form of 50/50 joint custody (such as time-shift shared parenting) in order to qualify for child support enforcement funds. DNA testing must never be used to perversely replace living fathers with valueless checks. It must be used to assure that children have fathers and mentors in their lives.
We can reduce divorce and illegitimacy by enacting policies that expect marital responsibility and help spouses work through the normal problems and processes of marriage and aging.
Conservatives have worked for years to end abortion by “choiceâ€. Now, we must end entitled abortion of marriage by “choiceâ€. A solid policy based on personal responsibility looks like this: “If you want a divorce, and you don’t have a really good reason for it, there’s the doorâ€. Could anybody (except for perhaps a few ditzy radical feminists) not vote for this?
Conservatives should not become advocates of shot-gun marriage. But we must end federal policies that entitle shot-gun illegitimacy and divorce.
The answer is right here in front of us. It is called the “marriage marketâ€. It is so simple, so fundamentally-important, and biblical too. A free marriage market promises a much happier, more competitive America, and a balanced budget to boot.
David R. Usher is President of the
American Coalition for Fathers and Children, Missouri Coalition
_______________________________________________
| More from David R. Usher
Stumble It!
April 21st, 2006 at 10:02 am
[...] Republicans Must Transform The Welfare-State Imperium into Marriage [...]
April 21st, 2006 at 11:06 am
I don’t know, David. I believe that a fast-growing number of men…especially those of us who are consciously aware of these issues, but even those who sense it intuitively…feel a deepening sense of hoplessness that things will ever turn favorable for us, or for our sons.
April 21st, 2006 at 11:33 am
At a time when America’s leadership both in the global economy and militarily is increasingly being challenged (and this will only increase over the next 20 years and beyond with China’s ascendency) America will never be up to the challenge if it it weighed down by a whole host of very expensive social problems created by the feminists and their governmental and corporate lackeys over the last 45 years. Thus, if these other issues are of value to the Republicans, meaning America’s place in the global economy (which affects the governments tax base)and it’s security, then they will have no choice but to address the issue. America is rotting from within and a rotting America will dry up and die, or, it will address it’s social problems effectively. Destroying men and families is no longer an option.
Having said that, I believe all men of today should have a back up plan. Fight for your rights and those of your sons and the future generations of men, BUT, also think about your own interests. What I am saying is that on one level you owe America absolutely nothing. The VAWA has stripped you all of your Bill of Rights protections. The government and it’s agencies has turned it’s back on you. The courts and the rest of the legal system has one set of rules for men and another set for women. A large majority of American women have turned on men as seen through the divorce statistics. This proves that most women have bought into at least some of the feminist agenda. The feminists said they wanted to destroy marriage-and they have. They have spent 45 years at war with men and now boys. Therefore you owe America NOTHING. Let the rotten system destroy itself if that very same system does not have enough sense (meaning the pols)and enough self-preservation to understand that sticking up and enforcing the rights of men and boys IS THE KEY to saving America and allowing it to meet it’s future challenges. When America dies the pols will go down with it. Do the pols have a strong sense of self-preservation? Yes. They simply need to be told that the gig is up, the clock has run out on destroying men and families. The moment of truth for the pols is here and now. If they are not told, then this truth will eventually become unmistakeably clear to everyone, but by then it will be too late. Men should think of themsleves and stay out of anything that entangles them potentially within the clutches of the feminist hate machines. No marriage to American women. Work for yourself. And think about the possibility of living the remainder of your life somewhere else. Have transportatble skills.
David, another home run. You have word-power. You would make a great national candidate.
April 21st, 2006 at 12:36 pm
A good article has been written by Patrick J. Buchannan called “How Great Powers Become Great”
(see http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=14208)
He discusses the China challenge. Americans are faced with a government and a corporate elite that are disinterested in the average American citizen. The government does little well for what it was meant to do, and does a lot of damage especially in areas it should stay out of. The corporate elite have no loyalty to America.
If America does not defend the rights of men and boys who will save America and who will have enough of a stake in America to want to go to war for it?
Answer: not the men.
April 21st, 2006 at 1:09 pm
David:
I always read your pieces eagerly because as far as, I can tell, you are one of the most prominent advocates of marriage reform. I would hesitate to venture a guess as to what is the more influencial factor causing Republican apathy…money or feminism (votes). I believe the money impacts the states individually in not wanting to lose the flow, while the fear of appearing anti-woman scares the testosterone out of the national congress.
Having said that, I find a common thread through the lack of initiative in many issues that I call painfully obvious. That thread is ignorance and apathy. It is not uncommon to daily talk to men and women alike who still have no idea what the truth in in divorce issues. Old stereotypes hold, and men are seen as the offenders though the data overwhelmingly stand in contradiction. I’m not sure how to address this part of the problem. If most people, men and open minded women alike, really understood these things, there would be a clamoring to fix it. I didn’t dig in until I was knee deep in an unwanted divorce myself. Then I became obsessed and learned all this. It’s so easy to look away when the neighbors divorce.
My divorce was not concluded, and I remain husband and father…I’m one of the lucky ones.
April 21st, 2006 at 3:02 pm
David:
I wrote this for another column, but I wanted you to see it too.
As Ruth Ginsberg has said, “we no longer need an equal rights amendment.†Since welfare laws are now interpreted to apply to all divorces, giving essentially equal guardianship rights to mothers and fathers, feminists have effectively destroyed the stability marriage once offered American families. Since patriachy has become a dirty word, fathers have become emasculated, and women have enjoyed free sex without any responsibility that comes with a marriage vow.
The answer is not to compromise God’s plan for family government, but to restore it. Real men, and the lawyers that represent them, have to protect their natural right to guardianship, and limit the State’s use of it’s parens patriae power to cases where custody is actually an issue. That is, where there is a demonstrated need for the State to intervene to strip a father of his natural right to parent.
Congress needs to stay out of the marriage business. It’s a state issue. They need to stop funding the VAWA, and require states receiving funds under the child support program to implement procedures to verify the state has what they call a pecuniary interest (in recovering or avoiding public assistance grants).
Congress, however, is not the problem. The state is responsible for assuring that our due process rights are protected against unwarranted intrusions in domestic relations matters. They cannot, under these funding schemes, demand the states do something their constitutions do not allow. This program fails all four requirements of the South Dakota v. Dole test. In fact, before TANF amendments, there was a statute in Minnesota requiring an investigation and a report on need for public assistance conveniently omitted in later legislation.
April 21st, 2006 at 3:22 pm
David R. Usher’s pro-marriage advocacy is almost entirely a “macro-level” socio-political-economic argument focused on reforming large systems of power.
Basically, if I “get it,” the idea is that by revitalizing marriage and traditional family as the basic social form, then the quasi-socialist-feminist Big Sister will become unnecessary and will wither and die.
It’s a logical argument with one huge flaw – simply, that our current illogical and dysfunctional anti-family system is WORKING quite well, in fact performing beautifully, to serve its feminist apparatchicks of both genders (never forget Sen. Joe Biden’s betrayal of men during the VAWA hearings….).
Just one obvious example of how well the anti-family industry works is that divorce is really GOOD for the domestic economy. Every time a woman files (70% of all cases) for a quickie no-fault divorce, and a single-household family is busted up, then you need two of everything that used to be fine with just one – i.e. 2 blow driers, 2 microwaves, 2 refrigerators, stoves, washing machines, lawnmowers, six tee-vees, furniture for two households… etc. etc.
So the economics of family destruction look pretty positive in an increasingly Wal-Marted economy where formerly middle-class Americans need to pretend they are still economically O.K. by purchasing cheap appliances made in China.
(I’m suggesting that divorce is a better retail engine than is marriage…)
On a “micro-social-personal” level, the pro-marriage idea has to overcome men’s growing awareness that marriage is a REALLY BAD DEAL for men.
Until all the feminist laws have been repealed, the misandrist courts reformed, the offices at N.O.W. christened as a quaint museum of a failed hate movement…
What right-thinking man would enter into marriage?
I do not dispute the elegant economic logic of David Usher; however, I would like to invite him to write about the psychological challenges of convincing men to gamble on a very poor investment (i.e. marriage).
Would you purchase stock in a company that historically has tanked 50% of the time, and has also been forecasted to fail at even higher levels in the future?
And would you still buy into that company if they treated their shairholders like evil oppressors?
April 21st, 2006 at 3:40 pm
Dear right2parent:
Yes, government should stay out of the marriage business. But the idea that federal government should be involved is so deeply metasticized that it is politically impossible to simply “pull the plug”. My concept of re-pointing federal programs to serve pro-marriage purposes is highly tractionable, and in fact is necessary in order to reverse the cultural trends actively. Secondly, this will cost a lot less.
Congress IS the source of the problem. It rains down mnay billions on states, who are required to do feminist bidding in order to get the money. Everything that happens at the state level is subsequently twisted to maximize the revenue.
Dear Disaffected:
Divorce and illegitimacy are NOT good for the economy (this is something economic conservatives get wrong). Alan Carlson recently discussed this in an article: see Indentured Families Social conservatives and the GOP: Can this marriage be saved? . In fact, it is a huge drag. Poor men and women can’t afford to buy things new. They buy used stuff at yard sales and furnish their homes with old furniture and appliances picked up off the street on trash day. Houses are not bought, they are sold in distress sales. New cars are not bought, they are reposessed. Folks buy a junker and nurse it along from one day to the next — or they take a bus or walk.
Divorce is a leading cause of personal and small-business bankruptcy. See: Divorce and Bankruptcy Reform (linked on Eagle Forum). This translates into higher credit card costs to everyone. Businesses are taxed higher, and are pushed to move the living room into the board room. The only folks who make money off divorce are trial lawyers and feminist psychologists.
Divorce is NOT good for business. Divorced individuals miss more work and perform more poorly than married counterparts. In fact, being fired often comes shortly after a divorce because folks often become dysfunctional during and after divorce. Marriage is good for business because it assures that both parents can share work and parenting responsibilities, and be able to show up for work consistently.
Last, our taxes are high because we have spent more on the welfare state since 1964 than the national debt. This is why Congress just had to increase the debt ceiling to $9-trillion —because Republicans didn’t do anything to restore a free marriage market).
April 21st, 2006 at 4:55 pm
David R. Usher,
Every “bad” economic transaction you have defined above … i.e. divorce etc., benefits some seller.
I would argue that it’s not primarily divorce that is creating the “yard sale” economy…
It’s globalization, i.e. bringing formerly middle-class American families and workers down to a Chinese wage.
Have you written about how NAFTA creates divorces?
What do you predict as General Motors and hundreds of other Fortune 500 companies “disinvest” some 500,000 workers — fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, and not a few newly weds who thought they had a future with GM or the American Dream local Corporation?
Where does your pro-marriage philosophy intersect with global economic realities?
In other words, how does the “free market” enter into your logic?
A “good marriage” requires a viable “good economy,” right?
How will a pro-marriage movement, hopefully successful, prevent America’s slide into a Third World decline?
If everybody got married tomorrow, would gas cost only $.98 a gallon?
April 21st, 2006 at 5:33 pm
disaffected: these sellers do not create GNP any more than graveyards or pawn shops do. They lower GNP and raise taxes.
NAFTA does export low-income manufacturing positions, which seriously affects marital decisions because the welfare state tends to peg child support debt at what the state gives out, which is often higher than what low income men earn. To balance this, federal goverment should stop collecting all taxes on salaries that pay less than $13/hour (there is no need for income redistribution between lower-income families). This will make it 15% cheaper for corporations to hire low-skilled Americans to manufacture here (again, the problem is government). Businesses can benefit from a higher ROI due to the increased number of capital turns (6-7 turns/year), where products made overseas are owned while sitting on ships (3-4 turns/yr). JIT manufacturing is feasible here, where it is not feasible overseas. But, increased trade increases other low-skill jobs (such as in hotels and travel).
Illegal immigration is causing much more disruption, because it displaces American workers with illegals working for nothing.
Unions are a different issue: Look at France drowning under its own unwillingness to allow competition. Unions often spend more time pushing feminism and socialism than anything else (ask any union member). Even if Unions did what they are really supposed to do, it will not work in a global economy because you can’t unionize China too. However, these things have a way of quickly rebalancing themselves: In Korea, salaries rose quickly during the 1980s and 1990’s, putting the Japanese out of business in steel. Much of Sony’s equipment was made by Korean companies, because the Japanese government was unwilling to reform business practices. Now, the Chinese are taking Korean jobs. Salaries in China are rising fast, except in remote areas where there is nothing but farming. China’s explosive growth is slowing substantially due to this internal economic rebalancing. Moral: the global economy means that change will take place. This can be benefiicial if pursued intelligently.
Regardless of issues regarding the global economy, we will much more competitive if we restore marriage. We can’t compete with China, which has virtually no welfare state. They can spend 100% of their profits on infrastructure and business development, while we are being dragged underwater by social expenditures. I know about this because I have worked in China, and seen the tremendous advantages they have because they didn’t socialize the family.
Business in China was in dire straights because Mao communized it. They learned from us and are backing out of this aspect of communism — which is why they are doing so well. But they are being extremely careful not to let lawyers and feminist ideas (that come with western-style democracies) into the country, because they KNOW our social systems are dangerous and counterproductive. This is a major reason why they filter the internet so heavily. Chinese students I got to know at the University of Chengdu were fascinated with us, but were firmly opposed to “liberal” western social policy. I was in Chengu during the Women’s Conference in Beijing (Where Hillary said some horrendous things about men that were never aired over here). Chinese women did not like her at all, because they understand the value of marriage and having a husband.  From what I see, if China liberalizes politically it will not include feminism or western-style socialist social policy — but Chinese government is afraid of this possibility and will liberalize very carefully over time.
We have little choice but to restore a free marriage market if we wish to compete with them in the long term. Much of their cost advantage rests in the fact that our social costs are out of control. They face a different problem: they have much infrastructure to build. Most buildings are poorly made (from the communist era), and much of the country has no infrastructure. This will tend to keep them busy.
Singapore is another country that has done extremely well — it is among the richest in the world. It is a benevolent dictatorship where you can’t find any feminist books in the bookstore, and they filter out smut and feminism via government-owned gateways. It is a melting pot far more successful than ours — they have Chinese, Malays, Indians, Brits, and Americans who get along fine because life is based on cooperation, not the politics of class and race division. They have holidays all the time, celebrating every holiday of every legitimate religion with equal gusto and respect. The folks I worked with over there frankly think that American social policy is insane.
Now: I am not a proponent of dictatorship or brute censorship. But there is room to rebalance what we do here. When I was a child, the Television Broadcasters Seal of Approval ensured that television programming would not mess kids up, or be profane or banal. Red Skelton was tremendously funny without doing it at the vulgar expense of others. These are lessons we forgot and pay for every day over here. We can change this by breaking the Cable TV cartel, requiring them to allow customers to choose and pay for only the channels they watch. If we believe in free speech, we must also believe in a free market where consumers can refuse to pay for banality.
Here is the common thread: Fighting free trade is just as risky in the global economy as it is in the marriage market or the cable TV industry. The consequences of artificially inflating or deflating a market, or allowing a cartel to control it, will result in deeply punishing consequences.
April 21st, 2006 at 5:40 pm
Sadly, I have to agree that there is no evidence whatsoever that the government has any interest at all in making things right for the family in this country. Back when welfare reform was the big issue in Congress, I wrote the letter which follows. It attracted a rather nasty outcry from feminists, but practically no interest from politicians of either party. It’s been 11 years now, and virtually none of the issues I raised back then have been addressed. Indeed, many have been made worse. I can only assume that they care only for their own ambitions, and not a whit for the long-term health or even survival of this nation.
===========================
February 20, 1995
Hon. Newt Gingrich
Rm. 2428 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Sub: H.R. #666, proposed welfare reform measures
Dear Rep. Gingrich:
I have been following with considerable interest the debates in the Ways and Means committee, as well as in Congress in general, regarding welfare reform and the means by which it shall be accomplished. I have obtained a copy of H.R. #666 and find myself deeply angered and dismayed by many of its provisions.
I have known for years that Congressional Liberals simply did not “get it” on these issues. I understand that they preferred to treat men, not just as the guilty party in virtually all divorces, not just as unsuitable parents, but as dangerous predators who should be allowed no parental function but financial. I have despised them for that vilification. Unlike them, however, I am fully cognizant of the very real and very important role which fathers play in the creation of functional, productive and most of all responsible adults.
Imagine my surprise, then, that Congressional Conservatives have taken up where liberals left off! As much as Conservative rhetoric has decried the breakdown in the family, as much as Conservatives decry the social problems which single motherhood creates, Conservatives do not seem to get it either! This is readily apparent in the proposed legislation.
Certainly women have a biological advantage in dealings with very young children. Group advantage, however, in no way implies individual superiority. Nor does a biological advantage with small children translate into an advantage with children of all ages. To imply otherwise, as the provisions in H.R. #666 which would demand of men increased support levels without a corresponding reform of custody law and increased visitation enforcement is preposterous. This is especially preposterous in the face of very strong evidence that, as a child matures, the father’s role becomes increasingly important while the importance of the mother’s role declines. Even in the absence of this statistic, it is ludicrous to assume that, of all the couples who divorce each year, the woman is the appropriate custodian in fully 92% of the cases!
Granted, very young children require the physical care, affection and closeness that mothers typically provide. It is equally true that older children require the lessons of self-reliance, toughness and persistence that fathers typically provide if these children are to become responsible and independent adults. Indeed, I would argue that it is the lack of these paternal lessons which is responsible for the rootlessness, alienation, irresponsibility, underachievement and violence which characterize the children of our overwhelmingly matrilineal inner-city culture.
As a society, we have accepted the fact that general differences in the abilities of different groups should not be cause for the exclusion of qualified individuals from employment. Yet we impose that very same group limitation upon men seeking custody. We impose this limitation even when examination of the capabilities and temperaments of both parents indicates the father as the more appropriate custodial parent. No other case comes to mind where such discrimination on the basis of birth group would be so tolerated. We rail against double standards in every other area, but we blithely ignore this double standard which vilifies divorced and never-married fathers as inherently irresponsible.
Meanwhile, thanks to an egregious legal bias which renders toothless any law requiring reasonable visitation, we deny divorced men their right to truly participate in the rearing of their children. We deny these men their right to convey their own uniquely “male” values such as the spirit of self-reliance and rugged individualism upon which this country was founded and prospered. Our children suffer for this sin, not of, but against, their fathers. Nowhere will that be so evident as in the area of welfare dependency. There has been much discussion lately about how to resolve and end the cycle of dependency that our present welfare state has created. Despite this learned discussion, the solutions proposed even now by Ways and Means do little to resolve the problem. Indeed, any reasonable person need look only to history to see that these efforts will be far more likely to exacerbate the problem. As always, the problem is the politics of pandering.
Politically, it is very appealing to collect child support money from fathers. It is but a simple matter to paint these men as “deadbeats” who are not living up to their obligations — and then promise an angry constituency to take these straw men to task. As draconian in nature as collection practices have already become, however, these measures have been abysmally ineffective at helping the very children for whom those laws were created: the poorest. Because Federal subsidies granted to local agencies are keyed to the dollars collected and not their effectiveness at helping those most in need, the principal effect of these draconian measures has been to create a legal atmosphere in which middle-class women are rewarded for divorcing their husbands. The poorest women, meanwhile, are not helped in the least. Yet these are the very ones mired in deepest poverty and whose children are most in need.
In short, the very poor are being used as an excuse to make the very worst of laws, laws from which they will never benefit and neither will society. This is doubly unfortunate. Fathers already perceive this system as absurdly unfair. Draconian collection procedures, especially measures unaccompanied by a correspondingly-strict enforcement of visitation rights, will result only in a growing resistance to compliance. Worse yet, turning fathers into slaves of the state will only serve to further de-motivate and demoralize young men, a factor which can only further reinforce the cycle of dependency. The greatest absurdity, however, is that we would tolerate this idiocy simply to accommodate the spineless cowardice of limp-wristed politicians so afraid to appear “anti-woman” that they would make men the slaves of the state.
Perhaps you scoff at the idea that many men have become slaves of the state. In that case, I invite you to interview a man who has discovered, years later, that he has a child. Mind you, the mother never informed him. Indeed, a pathetically lax legal system allowed the paternity of this child to go unquestioned until she applied for welfare. Only then did the state become concerned with the father.
Conservatives are strong on incentives. I ask you, then, to consider the incentive we offer this “new” father. What will be his motivation after suddenly discovering that not only has he been robbed of ten years of his child’s life, but he must pay 10 years’ worth of back support for the privilege? This is no small sum. It is indeed, an amount similar to what he’d pay for a house. What is the point of remaining productive if the fruits of that productivity are denied? And what is the benefit of doing one’s duty to a child that one cannot see, much less participate in their upbringing?
Finally, consider the incentives of those men who, in the good faith that they’d fathered no children elsewhere, have married and had families. Now those families must suffer, and for what? To reward an errant mother’s lack of forthrightness or outright deception? It is time to change these laws.
Current law, including those changes being considered by Ways & Means, gives the custodial parent, overwhelmingly the mother, virtually absolute control over how that child will be raised. This absolute power extends even to what that child will have and is allowed even if these female decisions severely and adversely impact the father. If this seems “fair,” consider that in marriage, the father had an equal input into the child’s upbringing. In divorce, the father has no say at all. It is this powerlessness in life’s most important decisions which fuels men’s opposition to the present system.
The vast majority of men are not opposed to supporting their own children. Indeed, most men are willing to support the mother of those children as well, especially within marriage. Is it too much to ask that men be assured that their contributions are being used in a manner consistent with their values? To take a man’s money without giving him any control over how that money is spent is plainly un-American! It’s akin to taxation without representation. No freedom-loving American would recommend it. No real American male would tolerate it — especially not in the name of “reform.”
The issue in Ways & Means is welfare reform. The objective of this reform is to reduce the cost to government. I would suggest that this should not and cannot be done on the backs of men. Men simply won’t stand for this any longer. I’d like to suggest some alternative ways of viewing the problem. I believe these will lead to solutions which will work.
There are two parts to this problem: The first is single mothers who never married the father. The ones who hit the welfare system the hardest are typically the ones who became pregnant while still girls under the age of 18. These people are not going to be helped in any way by going after the fathers because the fathers are almost uniformly unable even to provide for themselves, much less for a child and his mother. And these fathers are unable to so provide not only because of their youth, but because they are usually the products of the very cycle of dependency that they are now helping to perpetuate! Without ever having the guidance of a father themselves, even if they haven’t fallen prey to the problems of delinquency and underachievement which plague the products of father-absent homes, they often have no notion of what responsibility even means, much less how to find satisfaction and fulfillment in a responsible life, and their achievement handicaps render a large number of them unable to accomplish much more than to eke out a bare subsistence for themselves. Trying to “get tough” on these men (mostly boys, actually) will accomplish nothing but to give the politicians something to hoo-rah about. As for the girls, the lack of a solid male role model is strongly correlated with high rates of promiscuity and teen-age pregnancy, only further fueling the welfare cycle.
Would it not be better to seek solutions for the dearth of solid male role models which lies at the root of this problem? Would it not be more productive to recognize that there is no “quick fix” for social decay that has been 30 years in the making?
The second part is the explosion of divorce. It is this explosion in divorces which has resulted in what feminists often refer to as “the feminization of poverty.” This poverty results from underskilled and undertrained women who have been misled. They divorced with the belief that, despite having developed no solid means of supporting themselves, they may somehow expect to maintain the same standard of living they enjoyed while married. They retain this belief even if they have the children living with them. Ultimately, this mistaken belief results in their conclusion that the cost of their maintained standard of living should be borne either by the man or by the state.
Practicality suggests that this belief is most unfortunately misguided. The plain truth is that two can live together much more cheaply than they can when living separately. “But no matter”, say those who cater to the feminist lobby. Despite their lip service to the child, their dictums amount to a most unflattering and un-American, “the important thing is not to do what’s best for the child, but what will keep the woman most comfortable, and to hell with the man’s needs.” Herein lies the origin of a presumption in favor of the woman when it comes to custody. Judges and politicians fear that, without his payments of child support, she will end up on welfare. In that case, they reason, it is a whole lot easier to dump this problem on the ex-husband. Let him foot the bill.
This approach is far less taxing on the political brain than it would be to deal with the problems directly, either with the problem of divorce or with that of underskilled women. Politicians know that since the money is paid to her, and not directly for the benefit of the child, at least a portion of what he pays will go to support her. There is not only no accountability for how the funds are spent, but a vocal and aggressive resistance to any attempts to instate any such accountability. It is simply a statist and socialist redistribution of wealth. Mind you, this redistribution of income is not without cost.
Redistribution of male income to female recipients affects over half of the male population at some point in their lives. Perversely, the more politicians stack the support formulae in her favor, and the more tax benefits they can give her as “head of household” or by way of earned income tax credits, the greater the transfer of wealth. All of which works toward one thing: less worry about her potential indigence and greater votes at the ballot box. Of course, all this works precisely against the one thing which would prevent our societal breakdown: a stable family. It works against a stable family by encouraging women to seek divorce. Should anyone doubt this, note that women are the initiator in 60 to 80 percent of divorces. In short, our policies encourage the one greatest factor which causes the problem we are trying to eliminate.
Would it not be better, instead of encouraging divorce, to encourage couples to remain married? We currently make it economically and morally attractive to divorce. Why not make it morally and economically attractive to remain married? Or is all this talk of “family values” just a lot of hot air?
Toward the above ends, I would suggest the following as at least a starting point for discussion of the issue of how to break the cycles, both of welfare dependency and of juvenile crime and underachievement:
1. Remodel welfare programs to stop forcing the men out of the home, and turn the formula on its head. Stick to the notion of ultimately withholding AFDC funds from single mothers and instead apply it to job training for parents who are willing to commit to marriage. Help those who are willing to adopt the family unit, the one which definition includes a father, as their model.
2. Require that all birth certificates have a name entered in the space marked “father”. Make sure that the father is aware immediately that he has a child. Then take the extra step of forcing the legal system to recognize not only his parental obligations, but his parental rights as well but mostly the right of his child to know him and to grow up with a more complete sense of identity. No more looking at fathers as of no use except as a wallet. Start seeing him as a parent, and an equal one at that. Most men will gladly accept the role if only they are shown that it will be respected.
3. If the mother is unable to care or provide for the child by herself and she does not wish to marry or is divorcing the father, then either:
a) barring clear unfitness on his part, if the father is able to provide for the child without assistance, award physical custody to the father so that there need be no welfare and no messy child support enforcement, or
b) if neither is able to care for the child and they do not wish to marry or if they are divorcing, then the child should be placed in a group home where he or she will at least have a chance to be taught the value of honesty, integrity and responsibility, and will be able to grow up safe from the crime and violence so endemic to the inner cities and housing projects where he or she would otherwise be forced to live.
4. Take the tax code back to what it used to be. Let’s roll the tax code back to what it was before the government decided to punish families financially and reward single parents. It is obscene that a legal marriage in which both parents work outside the home to make ends meet should receive a less favorable tax treatment than a single parent filing as head of household. Make it crystal clear that economic interests on a personal level are better served by combining resources in marriage, and the economic interests of the entire nation will be better served as well. Start rewarding commitment and personal responsibility, and stop
punishing it.
5. When deciding custody, expand the definitions of “nurturing” and “parenting.” Let’s make those definitions include the forms of nurturing men provide. Let’s stop focusing exclusively on the physical care aspects of child rearing. Let’s return to valuing those lessons men are wont to teach, the ones about honor, duty, justice and personal responsibility. These are the lessons that elevated this country above all others. Let’s celebrate that and rejoice in these lessons and the values they evince, rather than acquiescing to those who seek to destroy all which possesses the faintest hint of the masculine. But mostly, let’s recognize that nature was thinking of more than genetic diversity in her requirement for two parents. Let’s allow our children to benefit from the broader perspectives and capabilities allowed by two parents as intended by nature.
In summary, I fear that, in their effort to be “doing something”, conservatives may be losing sight of what really matters. The culture war in which we are most assuredly engaged can be won neither by appeasement nor by any compromise of the values we cherish. Nor can it be won by capitulation to rhetorical excess of the sort which appears to be going on in Ways & Means.
Conservatives must soon understand that the battle lines in the culture war we are fighting have not been drawn along racial lines, but along gender lines. The real enemy is the radical feminist fringe which has been so influential in the disenfranchisement of men from families of all races. It is here where the battle must be fought. If we fail to fight it here, the strength of the family will never be returned to our culture. Indeed, any strength it might have brought to that fight will continue to be outflanked.
I apologize for the length of this missive. I realize that it is a lot to wade through. I trust you will appreciate, however, that I wanted to get this off my chest in a coherent and complete manner.
Yours very sincerely,
April 22nd, 2006 at 1:36 am
Federal goverment should stop collecting all taxes on salaries that pay less than $13/hour?
Maybe you would see a future for marriage at a dollar-a-day?
That is what a married American husband will soon have to support his family.
Your idealism has been bankrupted by globalism.
Your principles are correct. (Once they mattered, long ago…)
But they have no current purchase power….
Get it?
As you know, marriage has always been an economic contract.
The contract today has no VALUE. (A soon-to-be-unemployed-man has no special alure for a woman seeking to drop outof the career market to have babies….)
Economy has refuted men’s desires?
With respect, David ….
you have a Goliath to slay.
I always side with the revolutionaries ….
I always lose.
April 23rd, 2006 at 3:17 am
I don’t like mixing economics with fundamental rights like parental rights. In my view, parental rights exist and should be acknowledged and enforced whether the effect on the economy is good or bad.
I don’t give a flip whether people are driving $45,000 SUVs or riding bicycles in comparison to parental rights. Nothing is worth anything if bond between parent and child is not recognized.
Children should not be raised by the state. They should not be raised only by women. Men should not be slaves to support children that they cannot see. Again, this true regardless of GNP, etc.
All that said, I think the analysis that divorce improves the economy because it creates market for more hourse, blenders, etc. is hogwash. There is always nearly infinite demand for goods and services. What drives the economy is the energy of the people (e.g. their ability to produce goods and services). Divorce especially when combined with loss of children and enslavement destroys that.
Now, does it help the economy to have an additional home built and purchased compared to having additional happy people buying vacations, college educations, etc. I seriously doubt it.
April 23rd, 2006 at 3:18 am
Now, having been demoralized by a divorce and partial loss of my children, I am going to lay down and take a nap rather than work.
April 23rd, 2006 at 8:48 am
http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=14233
April 23rd, 2006 at 9:20 am
Dear Denis,
Yes, this piece is also published on Human Events. Phyllis Schafly, who wisely defeated the ERA, is one of the few conservatives who sees that what we are working on is truly the right thing. We don’t need an ERA, we simply need to stop funding deeply destructive programs. Everyone should check out Eagle Forum’s fathers section sometime.
Dear Snootfish:
I will say this again and again: divorce does NOT produce positive GNP. It produces a lot of services that produce net negative GNP. These services essentially act as “stimulators, “enforcers”, “pallbearers” , “clean-up”, “lock-up”, and “cover-up” — all driven by federal funding, and all at the final expense of the taxpayer. Note that these “services” consist primarily of feminists and lawyers, who have passed-the-buck all along and now want Congress to enact a larger nanny state (providing free health and medical care to poor single mothers) to continue hiding the problems. This is why Congress has been unable to pass anything — we can’t afford any more entitled non-marriage than we already have – especially where there is no place for Congress to pass the buck to!
These ”economic activities” produce spiralling federal deficits, which we all pay for in higher taxes and a higher debt ceiling. The net effect of all this on the economy is quite negative. Any economist who ways otherwise is either a fool or a liar.
Activist politicians and judges, with the cooperation of business interests in these dessicating (feminist), businesses, are the ones that turned divorce into an economic activity under the I.C.C. One of these was VAWA, where one of the I.C.C. provisions (allowing federal civil tort suits) was found unconstitutional. The rest of VAWA is also unconstitutional for the same reasons — it is just a matter of time before the rest of VAWA is thrown out.
Alan Carlson talks about the economic misconceptions of the Republican Party in his article Indentured Families Social conservatives and the GOP: Can this marriage be saved? Alan’s piece is a pre-eminent analysis that is being pooh-poohed by our economic-conservative leaders with gusto.Â
The answer is not to bring “marriage” under the I.C.C. Divorce and illegitimacy have no business being under the I.C.C. as it is not an “interstate commercial activity” like trucking, for example. This imperium must be ended and replaced with simple, targeted, “soft paternalist” programs that expect personal responsibility within marriage, helping spouses work through the common problems and processes of marriage and aging (when they ask for help), in order to restore a healthy marriage culture. This, in turn, will produce positive GNP with substantial positive ripple-through effects, and no drag, (as predicted by Reaganomics).
April 23rd, 2006 at 12:59 pm
David-I have to salute you. I think you are one of the best in the Men’s Rights Movement. You always provide a lot of information. I learn a lot from you.
Could it be that Bush is intentionally deciding to bust budgets and ramp up spending? Could this be a stealth strategy? The fact that he has never vetoed a single spending proposal and has really increased government spending with the Medicare drug coverage and elsewhere makes me think it is more than irresponsibility. Perhaps it is a strategy to contain future spending by a Democratic President AND more importantly, a way for Bush to force the country into making hard decisions. Someday in the not too distant future there will have to be hard decisions. The Baby Boomers will start retiring. HUGE TAX INCREASE will have to be made OR HUGE CUTS IN GOVERNMENT SPENDING will have to be made. It’s not politically feasible to do one or the other now, but it will be politically feasible soon. Which will happen? I think huge budget cuts will happen. Any more tax increases and the people I believe will revolt. That leaves huge budget cuts. The VAWA will no longer be something the country can afford. Ditto with the many other government freebies to feminists and the lawyer class.
April 23rd, 2006 at 8:29 pm
Republicans are increasingly victims of their own absolute unwillingness to restore a healthy marriage market. The buck has been passed ever since 1994. Welfare spending is actually much larger than ever — it is just we call the unrecoverable amount “child support debt”. Single-mother households are the largest part of the problem (75% of Hillary’s National Health Care plan was for single mothers — i.e. — a new welfare state designed to pass the buck onto the backs of taxpayers.
I keep pointing out that Republicans could easily have a balanced budget while fighting the war in Iraq and rebuilding New Orleans, while making the lives of millions of Americans much happier, if they simply applied conservative economic principles to the marriage market and set it free. Even a child can understand this!
Until they do what they promised in 1994, lots of voters will be extremely unhappy with them, for many different reasons. The game of exporting voter ire over fireplace issues to Iraq won’t work any more. The focus is on the home front. It is my assessment that this is the true reason why so many voters are upset with President Bush — who thinks that marriage education programs is all there is to social issues. He should know better — I met him and spoke with him briefly in 1999. Apparently he did not listen.
I predict this will likely cost Republicans their congressional majority in 2006. No leading Republican presidential contender has the foggiest notion of any of this. Unless they change their priorities, the 2008 races will backfire in their face because Democrats are gearing up for a social issues assault, the likes of which have never been seen before.
My prediction is this: we are going to have to move cases to the new Supreme Court. Neither party and no recent president has been willing to deal with these issues. This is unlikely to change. VAWA, UCCJA, and URESA have many unconstitutional elements. Feminists made their advances in the courts. Now it will be our turn.
April 23rd, 2006 at 10:11 pm
David R. Usher observed — “This imperium must be ended and replaced with simple, targeted, “soft paternalist†programs that expect personal responsibility within marriage, helping spouses work through the common problems and processes of marriage and aging (when they ask for help), in order to restore a healthy marriage culture.”
Are you advocating that the very government you distrust should be aggressively intruding into family life?
How does your proposed program play out?
A woman (or man) files for a “counseling intervention” in order to stop a divorce?”
The “pro-marriage” agency takes on her/his case, and mandates a six-month counseling program, during which all financial assets are put in a state-mandated escrow account?
What happens if the “save-our-marriage” program fails?
David you really need to think through the fascisistic possibilities of your ideology.
Being “helpful” is the seed of tyranny, yes?
April 23rd, 2006 at 10:34 pm
And, upon closer inspection of grammar –
“expect” = REQUIRED
“helping” = COERCION
“healthy marriage” = ENFORCED SERVILITY
What exactly in your presciption for men leads to anything like freedom?
April 24th, 2006 at 12:30 am
Yes, we must expect marital responsibility of “both” spouses. Feminism only expects responsibility of one spouse (who is considered optional furniture in the family).
Helping = “soft paternalism” (look it up if you do not understand this), or see “The Avuncular State” [The Economist]. Here, government does not have the right to arbitrarily invade your life. If a spouse has a serious drinking or drugging problem, the other spouse can request government assistance performing an intervention to get the sick one into treatment (chemical dependency is a preventable and treatable disorder). In Missouri, we have a list that gambling addicts can voluntarily put themselves on. If they sign themselves up, casinos will not permit them to enter. It works, too. Soft paternalism gets the job done without any invasion of privacy or big brotherism or sisterism.
Healthy marriage: whatever husband and wife agree is normal. Normal is what happens to you when you get everything that is not normal out of your life. If a spouse is fooling around or gambling or abusing drugs or alcohol, there should be pro-marriage options that help the responsible spouse get the other into treatment, or in some cases, marriage counseling (such as with the 4 year boredom, retirement, or other soft-stresspoints of marriage). If the wayward spouse insists on continuing their behavior, they will be shown the door in the event that a divorce is necessary. This policy applies only to a very limited scope of major items that disrupt marriage. Thre rest is up to spouses to work out, as they should. Again, there is nothing in my policy concept that remotely suggests forcing anything on anybody.
Marital responsibility =Â If you want a divorce, and you do not have a real good reason for wanting one, there’s the door (no matter what sex you are). If you are married, and insist on doing things that destroy the marriage, and you refuse to be responsible to the marriage, there’s the door (no matter what sex you are).
The alternative is to leave things as they are, where 70% of divorces are filed by women, usually for no reason whatsoever, and who get sole or near-sole custody of children 80% of the time.
April 24th, 2006 at 12:46 am
PS: Disaffected,
I cannot help but notice strong hints of chronic pessimism in your postings. Misery is an optional illness. Perhaps try really considering what we can do to make America better, and then do something about it?
April 24th, 2006 at 6:38 am
David said:
“My prediction is this: we are going to have to move cases to the new Supreme Court. Neither party and no recent president has been willing to deal with these issues. This is unlikely to change. VAWA, UCCJA, and URESA have many unconstitutional elements. Feminists made their advances in the courts. Now it will be our turn.”
That’s what I was talking about above. The flow of money will stop when the U.S. Supreme Court says it can’t be used to coerce the states into doing something a state constitution forbids (spending public funds for a private purpose). The parameters for this review are clarified in South Dakota v. Dole, 483 U.S. 203 (1987). The child support program doesn’t need to be dismantled. It performs a legitimate function with respect to recovering funds from absent parents of dependent children, but its application to fit parents of children who are not dependent on state support is overbroad.
You said:
“Marital responsibility = If you want a divorce, and you do not have a real good reason for wanting one, there’s the door (no matter what sex you are). If you are married, and insist on doing things that destroy the marriage, and you refuse to be responsible to the marriage, there’s the door (no matter what sex you are).”
This is still the law of the land, outside of the special circumstances under which welfare laws direct the placement of state wards, however, not every child is a ward of the state. It’s the excercise of the state’s parens patriae power that allows government’s interference in matters of guardianship, whether its within an intact marriage or not. This power is not unlimited or absolute. The natural right to guardianship is an absolute right, in that the burden is on the state to show there is a legitimate reason to interfere with it. Finding fault in a divorce, or refusal to assume responsibility for an illegitimate child determines fitness to maintain the right to their custody and control.
Government “help” with a situation that may determine fitness can be worked into state laws regulating the termination of parental rights. These may be ways to avoid governmental interference, rather that stepping in too soon. First, however, it must be determined it is necessary, under a strict scrutiny review (providing due process protection) unavailabe in a proceeding for the placement of a state ward. First it has to be determined that fitness is an issue.
President Reagan once said “The ten most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help you’.†I would like less “help,” thank you very much.
April 24th, 2006 at 9:58 am
I am concerned as well about the notion of any government involvement, even in such a passive sense. The slippery slope has no boundaries. Although aware the pitfalls of simply putting fault back into divorce law (fault fraud, false accusations etc.)that, with best efforts to safeguard it, would be a good place to start.
It becomes circular and self healing at some point. I usually think of these things as to how the church is also complicit in the divorce extravaganza. The church dedicates so many resources to the symptoms of divorce, including addiction, but only offers divorce recovery seminars for those in its midst. These actually assist the one who wants the divorce. (I do get back to the point here).
With less divorce would there not be eventually less addictions? I submit that yes, divorce creates a measurable amount of societal ills, not all, but many.
So addiction as a problem leading to divorce would lessen 20 years out as less divorces today would create less addicts then.
Yes? No? Utopian?
April 25th, 2006 at 10:51 am
David does not mince his world when he discribes the state of man and female relationship of family.
Of all the relationships God values the husband and wife relationship above all. He could have put first an uncle and nefue or two sisters or a mother and a son, but instead he placed first a husband and wife first.
When this relationship fails we all fail.
April 25th, 2006 at 12:19 pm
More Feminist Pork to Slaughter the Family
Besides VAWA money, the Social Security Administration offers $4.1 billion to states that establish support Orders; collect on amount due; and, create arrearage. (See 6B, 6C, & 6D).
http://www.ssa.gov/OP_Home/ssact/title04/0458.htm
For a year and half, the Kane County Circuit Clerk of Illinois refused to accept from me about $15,000.00 in cancelled checks as proof of payment of child support paid. The four staff members are divorced women.
I also observed after our meetings that they had no training or experience in accounting. For example, the supervising clerk did not know what “prorate” means.
They are apart of the misandry job creation machine of our government. These divorce industry participants are incented to create problems to solve.
While most men do not have an MBA, I stood my ground on sound accounting principles and common sense,even after I was ordered in arrearage of child support (read: deadbeat dad). After two years, scores of court appearences, I did received $21,000 in credits without apology from the family judge, yet I wondered how a man without training would have faired.
April 25th, 2006 at 9:52 pm
David R. Usher….
I truly wish I could understand your principles.
But I do not.
They are incoherent.
You are in fact advocating for more government intervention into a family’s private life.
Please educate me.
(And I am not baiting or berating you… I think you are a very important voice in the men’s movement.
But I think we may not be able to be allies…. because you may be walking a path towards fascism …)
—
(DRU) — “If a spouse has a serious drinking or drugging problem, the other spouse can request government assistance performing an intervention to get the sick one into treatment…”
“… pro-marriage options…”
—
So, this is three other reasons a woman can dial 911 and make a false accusation?
Or will the benevolent bureaucrats act with wisdom and grace?
At what exact point would your program restrict government from “helpfully” intervening in an about-to-divorce scenario?
At what precise social location would you say…. “this is now private?”
You are treading on very dangerous terrain, David.
April 25th, 2006 at 10:22 pm
Shit I missed David’s most revealing earlier statement —-
“The consequences of artificially inflating or deflating a market…”
That’s the best description of ROMANCE I’ve ever read!
You are POETIC, when you choose that path, Dr.Usher!
April 26th, 2006 at 7:38 am
Feminists have spent 40 years dismantling the rights of men and fathers. Men and women stood by and simply watched. Even today very few men worked to stop the VAWA, yet many know and understand the consequnces of it’s passage. The result: women are now high risk for men to be involved with. In marraige. If she calls 911 the man is finished. It’s that easy. Not only marriage.It’s dangerous to work with them. If SHE SAYS she’s uncomfortable than you may have broke a sexual harrassment law or at least a company policy and your job is over. Maybe your career. This is all government involvement. It has resulted in a marriage strike that will only grow. It has resulted in men turning away from women. These laws would take as long, 40 years, to correct. So what do we do about it? Work on this for 40+ years? America cannot survive 2 more generations of the current situation. The problem today is less about a different type of government involvement and the end of other types. It’s about too many men standing by to let feminists get anything they want. Feminists hate men as much as OBL hates America. We fight OBL with great loss of lives and treasure but not the feminists. Strange.
April 26th, 2006 at 8:09 am
Disaffected,
I spent six years working as a volunteer in a Betty Ford style chemical/co-dependency treatment center. I do not advocate using 911 for anything. In fact, this plan would make using 911 (which is the only path today) unnecessary. Â
No matter who requests assistance from the court to get a chemically-abusing spouse into treatment, the treatment center will figure out who the problem is. These people know the games that chemical abusers play. The chemical abuser(s) WILL end up in treatment no matter who asks the court for help. Please note that chemical dependency treatment centers are not run by feminists. They are run by people who work on the problem. They have no investment in feminism. They are highly dedicated to helping folks recover from chemical dependency, and nothing more.
This plan has been vetted by a couple of brilliant pro-marriage attorneys. We spent hours discussing how this idea could be abused. The outcome: there is no way this policy could turn into another tool of feminism.
Government is force, and it is going to intervene someplace. We might as well have it apply that force in ways that help get marriages back on track, when a spouse asks for proactive help. The alternative is to leave things as they are. If you don’t like that idea, then we have to go with this, unless of course you happen to have a better policy in mind.
April 27th, 2006 at 5:39 am
David, I’ve got a better policy in mind. Let’s get our government to respect the sanctity of our homes, and our right to due process before they intervene where they may have no compelling interest. Your proposal is no better than the domestic abuse laws. When a parent’s right to be left alone can be shortchanged by a trigger happy family police, we aren’t strengthening marriage, we are inventing another way to screw it up. The way to strengthen marriage is to limit government interference, not to ignore due process protections. When you say “it is going to intervene someplace,” you are throwing in the towel. I’m not ready to accept the abuses that so called Family Courts get away with now, and I certainly wouldn’t add fuel to that fire.
April 27th, 2006 at 11:54 am
What is your plan for getting the government out of marriage? Feminists have made marriage the province of government in many ways. They use lies and statistics to say crimes are being committed. There is price to be paid by a husband and father by simply being accused of wife or child abuse. There is no corollary price to be paid for a false wife or child abuse accusation.
For sexual harrassment there is a price to be paid for being accused. There is no corollary price to be paid for a false sexual harassment accusation.
Rape accusations alone can destroy any man. There is no corollary price to be paid for false rape accusations. The accusers identity can be kept private. Those accused have no such right.
I could go on.
What are the details of The Plan to get the government the hell out of our lives? It sounds good in principle…but how?
April 27th, 2006 at 10:49 pm
David R. Usher-to-Earth! (Collect call…)
“Normal is what happens to you when you get everything that is not normal out of your life.”
WTF?
No matter who requests assistance from the court to get a chemically-abusing spouse into treatment, the treatment center will figure out who the problem is. It will be the “primary aggessor..” i.e. the man.
We saw this working out perfectly well in the former Soviet Union, where husdabads were routinely committed to psychiatric gulags for precisely the same reasons you advocate for beneficial family interventions.
You, David R. Usher —
Need to closely interrogate your own tendencies towards fascism… and soon.
Please begin by defining for all of us your entire social definition of N-O-R-M-A-L?
A simple list of “normal” vs. “abnormal” behaviors would be delightful!
April 27th, 2006 at 10:55 pm
Er…
that mispelling would be “husbands.” What path are you advocating?
Is a neighborhood “marriage friend” going to show up at my door every month to inquire aout the health of my love life?
I’ve LIVED in Cuba! (Really, during the Mariel harbor exodus period.)
It was not fun.
What degree of surveillance would your program require?
April 27th, 2006 at 11:16 pm
OK…
I may have finally figured it out.
And please forgive the serial posts.
David R. Usher seems to want government to impose a pro-marriage regime, because he basically does not believe men have the intellectual sense to decide for themselves whether to marry or not.
When men have little sense, it increases taxes.
That’s pretty much the whole thesis, right?
April 28th, 2006 at 6:07 am
Maybe this too out-of-the-box. I did a word search and there is no mention of vasectomies on this thread. If men are committed to changing attitudes then they have to get people’s attention.
Clearly there is a conspiracy at work here. You have to fight back, and the only way to overturn a government conspiracy is through civil disobedience.
If celibacy is not an option for men, then vasectomies are the only other choice. Look at it this way. Most men will loose their children anyway. So stop having them.
April 28th, 2006 at 6:52 am
The state has veto power over your fatherhood.
Real men do not marry the state.
A vote for fahterhood is a vote for socialism.
April 28th, 2006 at 7:10 am
One final thing. If you do not believe in abortion, if it is against your beliefs, then until you can be sure that your sexual behavior does not become party to an abortion; just say no.
One thing is certain – your kids will never hate you for it.
May 6th, 2006 at 11:35 am
Dear Disaffected,
If you are not working for the feminists, don’t make outrageous claims. My position goes towards dismantling the welfare regime, which has disentitled half the marriages in this country. I advocate return to a constitutional, healthy, unfettered free-marriage-market system. This is the only model under which men will not be scared away from marriage or healthy relationships with women, and where women won’t see men as little more than objects for reproductive, social, and fiscal abuse. Selling women into sex slavery is just as reprehensible as what we do: selling men into bondage to government by backing organized feminist takeover of marriage and family.
“Soft paternalism” is how we end invasive government. Under soft paternalism, government has no right to involve itself in a marriage unless one of the spouses requests positive assistance (such as to get a drunk spouse into treatment). The scope of intervention is narrowly tailored to help in a very limited set of circumstances, and tracked on the court record so that if a divorce ensues, we know who was irresponsible to the marriage and who should not get custody of children.
I well know the difference between invasive and non-invasive programs. Example: the Parents As Teachers program was invented by Sen. John Danforth, a leftist progressive liberal Republican. It was founded at a meeting held in Liberty, Missouri on the notion that it is too dangerous to allow a woman to go home with a new baby without having a social worker in the living room. Under the requirements of the P.A.T. Planning and Implementation Guide (euphamistically known as “Pat’s Pig”), all schoolchildren must be placed into one of 12 risk groups. None of these risk groups is “normal”. And, federal funding comes with every child P.A.T. identifies as “at risk”. It was passed in Missouri by former MO State Representative Kaye Steinmetz (D), head of the House Committee on Children and Families, and an outspoken feminist legislator. Danforth later turned it into a federal law.
We can and must recover from 40 years of “shotgun divorce” without returning to a state of “shotgun marriage”.
All readers must understand that we can’t just “turn off” government. It will do something whether we like it or not. The goal is to educate legislators and all conservative and libertarian grassroots organizations to turn away from invasive feminist policies in favor of non-invasive, marriage supportive programs that cost a lot less and guarantee very substantial subsequent reductions in federal social entitlement spending, and spending on crime, as these problems abate naturally.
Moral: we cannot simply turn off the bad. We must offer up a replacement that promises tangible social, economic, and political benefits. When the marriage market is set free, men and women will naturally participate in it. Heterosexual marriage is the only institution that naturally erases all physical, economic, social, and culturally imposed disparities that exist between men and women. When we let marriage do this again, America will be a much safer and more prosperous country, with lower taxes, a robust military, and a balanced budget to boot. The principles and facts prove this will be the result if we follow this course of political reform.
May 29th, 2006 at 6:09 pm
How are child support orders enforceable by means intended to, including blatantly, to force employment not declared null and void by the Antipeonage Act, 42 U.S.C. §1994, and the crime of peonage, 18 U.S.C. §1581?
And if the attorneys representing these men failed to raise these issues, why are they still allowed to practice law?
July 17th, 2006 at 12:46 am
All,
We will not see the new Supreme Court take up these issues easily. First, Federal courts have long avoided hearing anything that has to do with divorce, since they don’t want to have divorces heard in the federal courts. This, of course, is an avoidance of the issues.
Second, the new Supreme Court will move slowly. Rightly or wrongly, Justice Roberts believes in incremental change from settled law, on the grounds that upheaval in the legal system would cause great disturbance. They are particularly worried about having to deal with constitutionality of the welfare-state (which was touched on briefly when the Supreme Court threw out tort suits based in the I.C.C. with regard to VAWA). They know that once this gate is opened, a lot of settled law will go out the window.
It is up to the men’s movement to organize and apply maximum pressure inside the Beltway to end the Welfare State Imperium and restore fatherhood as a norm in America. In particular, this means not voting for any politician that does not specifically call for change and propose intelligent policies to effect the change.