Epiphany of a Patriot

I used to be a patriot. I still remember driving to work in a surreal fog on the morning of 9/11, awash in the emotion and pain of my recent separation from my ex-wife, ex step-daughter, and daughter. I was aghast when I heard the radio broadcast relaying that a plane had hit the WTC, and then further shocked still when the second impact was reported. I would alternate between extreme sadness for the victims and rage toward the perpetrators in the days that followed those heinous events, though the pain I felt I was sharing with the American community as a whole somehow seemed to offset in some measure the personal despair I was experiencing as the breakdown of my family and my life overtook most every fiber of my being. I had moved out of the family home less than two weeks earlier after my daughter's mother demanded a divorce and was already badly missing my little girl.

In the weeks following 9/11 American flags were very hard to come by. I gave up searching and instead printed an 8.5" x 11" full color flag I had located on the internet. I taped that flag in the rear window of my truck with heartfelt pride just days after 9/11 and there it had been, stoically, proudly, ever since. There were more than a couple of occasions in the weeks and months of aftermath when I found myself breaking down into sobbing tears as I drove down the road and deeply contemplated the orphaned children, dead parents, and countless scores of lives affected by that savage terrorist-inflicted tragedy. I would often play Lee Greenwood's 'Proud to be an American' and well up with pride as I cried tears of righteous nationalism for the victims of the tragedy and the violated values of American morality and freedom. I wrote letters to the President urging him not to listen to the naysayers and in support of his foreign policy decisions. Historically I've been a news junkie and scholar of world events, even obsessively, over the years and I was riveted by the intensity of American nationalism, the prospective clash of civilizations, the international proliferation of ever-more-devastating weapons, and a variety of other compelling and newsworthy issues that brought to the surface my inner feelings of patriotism. After all, this country, our America, was certainly the bastion of light in a darkening world, poised to lead the civilized and free across the globe in the pursuit of the worldwide dissemination of democracy alongside our superior morality, ethicality, and lofty values. I was a true patriot.

As the months and years passed I would discuss, debate, and even argue long and hard with family members, friends, acquaintances, and anyone who would engage me about national security, global warming, radical Islam, China's economic growth and threat to Taiwan, Russian nuclear assistance to Iran, and the European/American steel rift. I would pontificate at length about our need to seal the country's borders, support the Patriot Act, consider pre-emptive action overseas, and repeal the death tax. I would weigh into local radio talk shows to voice my view on how American military action was too politicized and wasn't being conducted in accordance with the most important principles of troop protection. I would bristle over the stories on corruption at the United Nations and how the security council and member states had undermined the U.S. in the runup to the Iraq invasion. I watched the Presidential debates with fervor and conviction, though I considered myself neither a Republican nor a Democrat. I'd make note on an almost daily basis as to the status of the legislative battle over judicial nominees, allegations of Executive Branch corruption as they related to Halliburton, and the Democratic assertions that the judiciary was being hijacked by John Ashcroft's religious values on behalf of the right wing of the country. I would ponder the Republican charges of purposeful congressional paralysis by the Democrats, the debate over oil drilling at ANWAR, and the California fiscal crisis. The global migration of the American labor force and associated adverse implications on the U.S. economy would cause me much consternation and I would spend significant amounts of time researching, considering, and engaging in discourse over the potential ramifications of the outsourcing of America. There were a plethora of issues I would pay close attention to, study, and attempt to work through in the privacy of my own thoughts as well as in the company of others who expressed concern about such issues. I was a true patriot.

All the while, in the years subsequent to my divorce and unwanted separation from my daughter, I was being dragged through the family law system in the state of NH. I don't bring up NH in particular because it has any significance other than being mine and my daughter's state of residence. I ended up spending over thirty thousand dollars in litigation and GAL expenses trying to stay an integral part of my daughter's life, even as her mother was doing everything within her power to keep us apart (and continues to engage in an attempt to alienate my daughter from me to this day). Though I am one of the fortunate non-custodial parents in the United States who had the means to fight for access to my daughter, for both of our sakes, I still had many days where I felt perilously close to the emotional breaking point as my daughter's mother and her immoral and unethical attorney used the court system against me wherever and whenever possible. I was then, and am now, being bled dry to the tune of over 25% of my income (after taxes), such that I am unable to save money for my daughter's college. And this is true despite the fact that I essentially left my ex-wife and her stepdaughter, who had nothing to their names when I met them 6 years prior to the divorce, financially set for life. I was fortunate enough to hit it big during the high tech boom of the late 90s and provided them with a fully furnished half million dollar home and no mortgage, luxury SUV and no car payment, fifty thousand dollars in the bank, and not a penny of debt. My child support now goes toward helping pay for trips to France and Mexico and ski vacations for my daughter's mother and her new husband (husband #3), while my 8 year old daughter reports having to pay for her 3rd grade backpack with her birthday money. The NH courts refused to grant me a penny of offset for the afterschool program I have my daughter enrolled in on the days she is with me, nor for any of her clothes or other necessities at our home together, or toward any expenses whatsoever incurred at our home for utilities or anything else. If you are a non-custodial parent you obviously understand the situation and need no further information as you are likely living in a similar state of disbelief at how you have been treated by the blind scales of American family justice.

Point is that with all of the pain I have come to realize has been, and is being, inflicted on parents and children around this country under the guise of 'family law' I suddenly decided, during an epiphany last week, that perhaps my patriotism has been misplaced. Yes.... Yes, it has. What of the high moral ground we stand for as Americans? What of the better lives we have planned for the children and families of other 'uncivilized' countries around the world? Hmmmm... I haven't had the opportunity to pay much attention to the world or national news over the last two months as I've been focused, obsessively, instead on doing everything I can to support the effort toward family law reform in New Hampshire. I've found during that effort that there are scores of individuals who claim to represent the always politically correct, but always amorphous, 'best interests of the children'. These people are mostly attorneys and other divorce industry insiders, but there are also child advocates, feminists, and others who directly advocate the continued abrogation of equal parenting rights through opposition to equal parenting protections for fit parents. These people seem to think, in their wisdom, that Judges and Attorneys and GALs (usually another word for Attorneys) are better suited (while getting paid handsomely) over the course of hours to decide what is best for American children than those children's fit parents are, even in those cases of no-fault divorce (or no-fault separation outside of marriage) where one of the parents is forced unwillingly into a dissolution of the family unit. And this parent who is forced unwillingly into said family dissolution is overwhelmingly the one who these Judges, Attorneys, and GALs decide shouldn't get to be equal parents to their children... Hmmmm... Try as I might to ponder the thoughts and rationale of such intelligent, educated, and self-righteous people I am truly at a loss to come to grips with their direct contribution to the destruction of the American family through emphatic support of the status quo, its massive incentivization of divorce, and the associated uneven hand dealt non-custodial parents (usually Fathers) by American family courts. Heck, who can make sense of what our family law system does to our military heros as they return from the overseas battle for freedom only to be met by stolen children, outlandish support arrearages, and nowhere near the justice and freedom they've been taught they're risking their lives for overseas...?

Yes, I have had a sobering and heartfelt epiphany. Last week, after three and a half years, I took down that American flag in the back window of my pickup and boxed it up. I won't be cuing up Lee Greenwood again any time soon (and will change the station if he comes on the radio), and I don't much care about Iran's nuclear ambitions, Syria's support of Iraqi insurgents, China's pinning the Yuan to the dollar, or France's bad attitude. The Democrats and Republicans can duke it out on CSPAN or FOX or CNN or wherever and I've little concern. American labor exodus....? Social Security reform...? The one and a half billion dollars slated for the preservation of marriage (forgive me if I don't chuckle)...? Gay marriage...? Who cares... Not this non-custodial parent. For I have seen the light. Until family law policy and the associated devastation of the lives of children, parents, and families in the United States is reconciled, there is no high moral ground. And I shan't pretend there is. The soapbox of lofty American values is a weak mirage and nothing more. I can't speak for every NCP, but this one no longer has a dog in this fight...

I will attempt the cure. It may not help you, but others may at least see what is happening. If it does help, all the better. Briefly, you should be patriotic because it is not a matter of the perfection of the thing loved, but a transcendent tie of loyalty, that sees clearly all the faults of the country, and wants to change them precisely because of that transcendent tie.

A wiser man explains -

"The point is not that this world is too sad to love or too glad not to love; the point is that when you do love a thing, its gladness is a reason for loving it, and its sadness a reason for loving it more. All optimistic thoughts about England and all pessimistic thoughts about her are alike reasons for the English patriot. Similarly, optimism and pessimism are alike arguments for the cosmic patriot.

Let us suppose we are confronted with a desperate thing -- say Pimlico. If we think what is really best for Pimlico we shall find the thread of thought leads to the throne or the mystic and the arbitrary. It is not enough for a man to disapprove of Pimlico: in that case he will merely cut his throat or move to Chelsea. Nor, certainly, is it enough for a man to approve of Pimlico: for then it will remain Pimlico, which would be awful.

The only way out of it seems to be for somebody to love Pimlico: to love it with a transcendental tie and without any earthly reason. If there arose a man who loved Pimlico, then Pimlico would rise into ivory towers and golden pinnacles; Pimlico would attire herself as a woman does when she is loved.

If men loved Pimlico as mothers love children, arbitrarily, because it is theirs, Pimlico in a year or two might be fairer than Florence. Some readers will say that this is a mere fantasy. I answer that this is the actual history of mankind. This, as a fact, is how cities did grow great.

Go back to the darkest roots of civilization and you will find them knotted round some sacred stone or encircling some sacred well. People first paid honour to a spot and afterwards gained glory for it. Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her.

Let us reiterate for an instant that the only right optimism is a sort of universal patriotism. What is the matter with the pessimist? I think it can be stated by saying that he is the cosmic anti-patriot. And what is the matter with the anti-patriot? I think it can be stated, without undue bitterness, by saying that he is the candid friend. And what is the matter with the candid friend? There we strike the rock of real life and immutable human nature. I venture to say that what is bad in the candid friend is simply that he is not candid. He is keeping something back -- his own gloomy pleasure in saying unpleasant things. He has a secret desire to hurt, not merely to help.

This is certainly, I think, what makes a certain sort of anti-patriot irritating to healthy citizens. I do not speak (of course) of the anti-patriotism which only irritates feverish stockbrokers and gushing actresses; that is only patriotism speaking plainly. A man who says that no patriot should attack the Boer War until it is over is not worth answering intelligently; he is saying that no good son should warn his mother off a cliff until she has fallen over it.

But there is an anti-patriot who honestly angers honest men, and the explanation of him is, I think, what I have suggested: he is the uncandid candid friend; the man who says, "I am sorry to say we are ruined," and is not sorry at all.

And he may be said, without rhetoric, to be a traitor; for he is using that ugly knowledge which was allowed him to strengthen the army, to discourage people from joining it. Because he is allowed to be pessimistic as a military adviser he is being pessimistic as a recruiting sergeant. Just in the same way the pessimist (who is the cosmic anti-patriot) uses the freedom that life allows to her counsellors to lure away the people from her flag.

Granted that he states only facts, it is still essential to know what are his emotions, what is his motive. It may be that twelve hundred men in Tottenham are down with smallpox; but we want to know whether this is stated by some great philosopher who wants to curse the gods, or only by some common clergyman who wants to help the men.

The evil of the pessimist is, then, not that he chastises gods and men, but that he does not love what he chastises -- he has not this primary and supernatural loyalty to things.

What is the evil of the man commonly called an optimist? Obviously, it is felt that the optimist, wishing to defend the honour of this world, will defend the indefensible. He is the jingo of the universe; he will say, "My cosmos, right or wrong." He will be less inclined to the reform of things; more inclined to a sort of front-bench official answer to all attacks, soothing every one with assurances. He will not wash the world, but whitewash the world.

We say there must be a primal loyalty to life: the only question is, shall it be a natural or a supernatural loyalty? If you like to put it so, shall it be a reasonable or an unreasonable loyalty?

Now, the extraordinary thing is that the bad optimism (the whitewashing, the weak defence of everything) comes in with the reasonable optimism. Rational optimism leads to stagnation: it is irrational optimism that leads to reform.

Let me explain by using once more the parallel of patriotism. The man who is most likely to ruin the place he loves is exactly the man who loves it with a reason. The man who will improve the place is the man who loves it without a reason.

If a man loves some feature of Pimlico (which seems unlikely), he may find himself defending that feature against Pimlico itself. But if he simply loves Pimlico itself, he may lay it waste and turn it into the New Jerusalem. I do not deny that reform may be excessive; I only say that it is the mystic patriot who reforms.

Mere jingo self-contentment is commonest among those who have some pedantic reason for their patriotism. The worst jingoes do not love England, but a theory of England. If we love England for being an empire, we may overrate the success with which we rule the Hindoos. But if we love it only for being a nation, we can face all events: for it would be a nation even if the Hindoos ruled us.

The same women who are ready to defend their men through thick and thin are (in their personal intercourse with the man) almost morbidly lucid about the thinness of his excuses or the thickness of his head. A man's friend likes him but leaves him as he is: his wife loves him and is always trying to turn him into somebody else. Women who are utter mystics in their creed are utter cynics in their criticism.

The devotee is entirely free to criticise; the fanatic can safely be a sceptic. Love is not blind; that is the last thing that it is. Love is bound; and the more it is bound the less it is blind.

This at least had come to be my position about all that was called optimism, pessimism, and improvement. Before any cosmic act of reform we must have a cosmic oath of allegiance. A man must be interested in life, then he could be disinterested in his views of it. "My son give me thy heart"; the heart must be fixed on the right thing: the moment we have a fixed heart we have a free hand.

For our Titanic purposes of faith and revolution, what we need is not the cold acceptance of the world as a compromise, but some way in which we can heartily hate and heartily love it. We do not want joy and anger to neutralize each other and produce a surly contentment; we want a fiercer delight and a fiercer discontent. We have to feel the universe at once as an ogre's castle, to be stormed, and yet as our own cottage, to which we can return at evening. No one doubts that an ordinary man can get on with this world: but we demand not strength enough to get on with it, but strength enough to get it on. Can he hate it enough to change it, and yet love it enough to think it worth changing? Can he look up at its colossal good without once feeling acquiescence? Can he look up at its colossal evil without once feeling despair? Can he, in short, be at once not only a pessimist and an optimist, but a fanatical pessimist and a fanatical optimist? Is he enough of a pagan to die for the world, and enough of a Christian to die to it?

In this combination, I maintain, it is the rational optimist who fails, the irrational optimist who succeeds. He is ready to smash the whole universe for the sake of itself."

- GK Chesterton, "The Flag of the World", Orthodoxy chapter 5

And, by the way, I will still do everything in my power to support the family law debacle in that is tearing the country apart at its very foundation. Until such time as that happens, though, the rest is nothing but lip service. Now back onto your high horses and into battle with the forces of darkness overseas... If you *real* patriots are still reading... {raspberry sound}

Marc

Dear legislator,

I am horrified to learn that Congress is considering spending my tax dollars to promote marriage.

I insist that you OPPOSE ALL MARRIAGE PROMOTION programs currently being considered as part of Welfare (TANF) reform.

These programs represent an APPALLING act of government intrusion into one of the most personal and private decisions a person makes. Not
only that, but with our current budget crisis, spending $1.5 billion on unproven marriage programs is just not fiscally responsible.

They also put parents and children's lives at risk. Many who receive welfare support are victims of domestic violence or who have made allegations to that effect. You should be providing victims with support to escape and recover from abuse, not incentives to stay in unsafe relationships.

Instead of spending money to promote marriage, you should ESTABLISH EQUAL PARENTING as the law of the land. Quit making fathers into wage slaves under the guise of a noncustodial parent. Quit teaching women to make babies to collect a welfare dollar and subvert and extort a dad. Invest in education, training, child-care, domestic violence, mental health and substance abuse services – programs which are known to help lift people out of poverty and help them become self-sufficient.

Please DO NOT SUPPORT any marriage promotion programs.

Instead, I urge you to support the following measures, which will help women become self-sufficient.

1. Tell any mother or father applying for benefits that equal access of the child for the other parent shall be first considered. Benefits shall then be based on the individual, since the child will receive equal care from each and both parents.

2.Provide Federal tax deductions to each and both parents for the monies they spend raising their children no matter where that child sleeps.

Please visit www.nhfamilylawreform.org for an education on just what is wrong with current family law policy and how it is causing the associated breakdown of the American institutions of Marriage and Family, thus endangering the entirety of American society. Once you understand the real issues I am confident you will become a staunch
supporter of the real reforms that are necessary. It is not rocket science, but you must pay attention to the true underlying issues if your powerful voice is to help facilitate reconciliation of the massive family problems we have in this country. The federal and state governments in this country have incentivized American divorce to the point where it has become an irresistible force that will never be bandaged away. The foundation needs to be fixed and the incentives removed.

Rome did not fall in a day. Please do what you can to prevent the slide of America toward the destiny of Rome...

Sincerely,
Marc Snider
Merrimack, NH

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