Posted on 02/04/2004 2:49:21 AM PST by RogerFGay
Libertarian named president of fathers' rights group
Dr. Stephen Baskerville, a member of the Libertarian Party of Virginia, was recently named president of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children.
The coalition encourages a new system of law to put an end to the governmental practice of "taking children away from their fathers and criminalizing fathers for situations they can often do nothing about," Baskerville said.
Baskerville, professor of political science at Howard University, is widely known for striving to end what he calls a "reign of terror on fathers" being perpetrated by the federal government.
"The government is in a war on fathers today," said Baskerville, who on Jan. 5 became president of the coalition. "The (federal) Department of Health and Human Services operates what is essentially a police force to track down fathers for child support enforcement."
Baskerville says he was drawn to the Libertarian Party because it is the only one that looks at individual liberty and responsibility as a primary goal.
"This (issue) is a natural for Libertarians," Baskerville said, in that both Democrats and Republicans are ignoring it and neither party is likely to tackle it.
Extending government power into the lives of the citizens "is the essence of the totalitarian dream," he said, and politicians use children as a "weapon for the government to criminalize citizens who have done nothing wrong."
The court system has become a system for subsidizing divorce, he argues, by "providing bribes to encourage divorce as much as possible." In 80 percent of divorce cases, the parent who expects to get custody of the children files for divorce over the protests of the other parent, he said.
And in our court system, judges almost always favor women over men in custody suits.
The end result: There are between 15 million and 20 million non-custodial parents in this country, the vast majority of them male, he noted
To remedy that, the coalition wants to create fairness in child custody decisions and remove any tinge of gender-based favoritism from the courts.
Baskerville's articles and commentary on the plight of fatherhood have appeared in publications including The Washington Post, Washington Times, Insight Magazine, Crisis Magazine and National Review. He has also appeared on television shows including "The O'Reilly Factor" and "Hardball" with Chris Matthews.
The coalition's executive director, Michael McCormick, said Baskerville's incisive commentary is setting the stage for "a new national critique of prevailing government and social policies on divorced fathers and their children."
"It's an honor to have been selected to serve as ACFC president," Baskerville said. "Family and marriage issues are now on the front pages every day, and we intend to make fathers a leading voice in that conversation.
"The bitter truth is that no one can 'save the children' but their parents. We alone are responsible for our children, and we alone must protect them."
The absence of fathers in a family-based society is blamed for "virtually all of today's social problems," but fathers are blamed for being absent even when they are not allowed their right to be present, Baskerville said.
Much truth in this sentence.
Cops nowadays force couples to divorce. Violent women are kept in the home with children and men are kicked out and told to divorce her. This is not merely at the fed level. It is govenrment telling who is to marry, divorce, pay and what not, on purely arbitrary notions, without a judge ever having to ask questions or investigate in depth. Cops are sent to do the ground work and to make false reports.
Well said.
Jesus wept... That such common sense should seem such an un-common thing.
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