Posted on 07/11/2008 3:15:24 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Freedom has always been “Paid for” in blood. Thomas Jefferson said every good democracy needs a good revolution to keep government honest....at least I think that was Jefferson.
You have captured the essence of the 'Welfare Mentality', which is why I would remove means of coercive (societal) support from the situation.
Taxing the responsible to enable the irresponsible, whether it be to support their families or bail out their mortage lender, only reinforces irresponsibility as a viable lifestyle.
The only exception I would make is child support, upon confirmation that the child does in fact descend from the parent. Keeping in mind that I am fully aware how this system can be abused, I would also remind anyone reading that despite the lack of concience in certain organs, the feet retain the ability to leave before conjugation.
In short, while such have always existed, the extramarital relations which foster such situations have become more common and more careless in the past 40 years or so.
The 'sexual revolution" was not some great storming of a cultural edifice so much as lemmings propelling themselves into the abyss for a moment's pleasure justified because 'everyone else was doing it'. Were I to choose one change in our culture which heralded the selfish abandonment of individual responsibility for instantaneous gratification inherent in the generations which have followed, that would be it.
Culturally, it is the moment when Americans quit thinking with the big head.
Placing societal expectations of responsibility on those who produce children may be the only way to reverse the trend away from personal responsibility.
If you remove the child from the mother, under force of law, you also create a ready 'victim' of the state who, unfettered by the result of their actions, can continue the same behaviour which caused the situation in the first place.
Let the responsible parties bear the burden of their actions, not society as a whole, unless individuals choose to chip in, in which case their mentoring and contrasting example of how the other half lives may well instill the values needed to make the children better members of our society. They may be young, but they are not easily fooled.
None of this need be done by a Federal Agency, and it is a matter likely best left to local and privately funded Charities who will of their nature have limits to how much they can support, and who will place demands on the parents in exchange for assistance.
I would fully agree with legislation that would require a man who begets a child to pay the costs associated with birth. I would further agree that a man who obstructs the giving of his child for adoption should be held responsible for future costs associated with that child.
I am not suggesting that a child should be taken from an unwed mother by force of law, but I am suggesting that any unwed mother who is thinking of keeping a child must be made well aware that they can expect no support from anyone beyond that which has already voluntarily been offered. I would suggest that in 95%+ (if not 99%+) of cases, mothers should look at the situation and determine that there is no realistic way they can raise the child, and so they must give it up.
To allow a mother to unilaterally decide to keep the child and then demand support from the father is to imply that such mothers can realistically expect to make things work. While extracting child support from an unmarried father may in some cases benefit the child, I would suggest that it far more often harms the child by encouraging the mother to keep a child she has no realistic prospect of raising properly.
Further, even if the only coerced support a mother receives is in the form of child-support payments, I would suggest that coerced support produces a welfare mentality. Some mothers may be able to receive support without germinating a welfare mentality in their children, but in general I'd suggest that the hazard of inducing a welfare mentality exceeds the benefits that would result from the payments.
Incidentally, on a few other related notes:
For any parent, there is hard work and great joy in those early years, not just 3AM feedings and soiled diapers. If he is gainfully employed, he may be able to afford the care the child needs when he is not present or be able in some instances to provide it himself if his work allows it.
Let either parent step up and be responsible, if they will.
While I agree that Child support payments can be abused, there would be ways to ensure that payment did, in fact, go toward support, be it credit for direct payment of bills, a grocery purchase account (for baby specific items), or other means. It need not be the surrender of a cash payment to the custodial parent which can be more readily used for other things.
If the idea is to instill responsibility in our culture, the laws should favor those who are responsible, and not favor the ready abdication thereof.
I’m waiting until after November, but I will probably have to rewrite Pres. Jillian Whitman as Pres. Mogambo.
I like the way Dennis Miller puts it:
(paraphrasing) Our founding fathers start shooting peoples heads off because someone put a small tax on their breakfast beverage.
ping in case you missed it.
Thanks.
Will check it out.
MOST FREEPERS
seem to be schizophrenic on such realities.
They see such neon handwriting on the wall . . . .
then turn right around and deny it . . . and swallow the MSM swill hook line and sinker
so as to avoid believing in any “conspiracy nut stuff.”
Go figure.
Certainly. My point was that the father should have a limited time to stake any claim. Perhaps extending for some weeks after birth, but not for years after. If, years after a child's birth, the mother is found to have wrongfully withheld information about the birth from the father, the father's claims should be against the mother, not the adoptive parents.
While I agree that Child support payments can be abused, there would be ways to ensure that payment did, in fact, go toward support, be it credit for direct payment of bills, a grocery purchase account (for baby specific items), or other means. It need not be the surrender of a cash payment to the custodial parent which can be more readily used for other things.
If the father agrees to pay child support in exchange for having visitation rights and a role in the child's life, that should be his option. If the father does not want any such role, however, and the mother lacks the means to raise the child adequately without extracting support from the father, why should the mother not give the child up for adoption? To encourage her to take any other course of action is to encourage her to be irresponsible.
If the idea is to instill responsibility in our culture, the laws should favor those who are responsible, and not favor the ready abdication thereof.
Telling women that someone else will care for them if they become pregnant doesn't exactly encourage responsible behavior, IMHO.
First, who defines "adequately"? What costs a bunch off the rack can be had cheaply at rumage sales and second-hand stores, yet is adequate clothing, etc.
To encourage her to take any other course of action is to encourage her to be irresponsible.
We are back to the difference between a hand "up" and a hand-out.
Community based organizations, commonly faith-based as well, are more likely to encourage the mother to become more self-reliant, and enable her to provide for herself and the child than some governmental agency where promotions and professional stature depend on keeping people dependent.
That is the seminal difference in paradigms.
With the government out of the business, so to speak, the emphasis is not on job security but results.
Thus, responsibility is fostered and encouraged, even if temporary help is needed. That help would be dependent on the charitable graces of the community, not on governmental extraction of money through taxes.
The objective is twofold.
To return to the idea that charity is voluntary, not the premise of government.
and to encourage people to get their act together and provide for themselves.
As a family patriarch (great-grandfather), I have been doing similar things within my own family, in that those who are struggling will get help (none will starve), but only if they are doing something positive to alleviate their own situation, be that changing their habits, spending more responsibly, improving their education, or just finding a better job.
If the idea is to instill responsibility in our culture, the laws should favor those who are responsible, and not favor the ready abdication thereof.
Telling women that someone else will care for them if they become pregnant doesn't exactly encourage responsible behavior, IMHO.
Telling the that someone else will care for them is not the objective.
Community and faith based organizations will be operating under whatever budget they can raise, not the limitless resources of a Government free to extract funds from the rest of us.
As a result, they are free to set whatever guidelines they will, and this may include a limit to the aid they will provide and conditions under which they will provide aid. Again, the idea is to have help available, but to place expectations of responsibility for improving their situation on those who seek that aid with the goal of making them self-sufficient.
Under the current paradigm, the Government flunkies actually lose caseload if someone gets 'off' welfare, and that transition is a difficult one.
Forcing them to give up a baby for adoption may instead relieve them of the need to be responsible and to become self-sufficient, and the cycle is bound to be repeated because irresponsibility has been enabled, rather than discouraged.
If the mother demands support claiming that she can't adequately raise her children without it, that would suggest that she failed the "adequately" test. That's what I meant by "adequately". I didn't mean to imply any external judgment of her child-rearing.
Forcing them to give up a baby for adoption may instead relieve them of the need to be responsible and to become self-sufficient, and the cycle is bound to be repeated because irresponsibility has been enabled, rather than discouraged.
Has there been a problem with women who get pregnant, give the child up for adoption, get pregnant again, and keep repeating the cycle? I would think that most women would rather avoid the travails of pregnancy if they weren't getting anything out of it.
It may be that a woman who decides to keep a child for herself should get some rather quick and harsh lessons in self-sufficiency, but I don't think that's usually what happens. I hardly think it's fair to the children to suggest that their mother should try to be self-sufficient in raising them and--if she fails--too bad.
As one who is raising two grandchildren, yes, there is a lot of that going on, even if the children are not given up for adoption per se.
It may be that a woman who decides to keep a child for herself should get some rather quick and harsh lessons in self-sufficiency, but I don't think that's usually what happens.
Under "Welfare" as it stands, no. Under a different system, I would expect different results, especially if the aim of the system is to make them self-sufficient instead of keep social workers employed in a growth industry.
I hardly think it's fair to the children to suggest that their mother should try to be self-sufficient in raising them and--if she fails--too bad.
Life isn't fair.
Before you think that is harsh, keep in mind that I wore hand-me-downs, we only ever had one new car, and did not have a color TV, no fancy stereo, etc. We got three stations on the old Admiral black and white set, if you turned the antenna just right. We ate mostly wild game and fish, and rarely ate storebought meat; a shotgun, a fishing rod (or cane pole rigged with bobbers and hooks) were a one time expense which cost little to feed in relation to how much they fed us.
Sound deprived?
Hardly.
I would not trade that childhood surrounded by loving family who taught me cooperation, self-sufficiency, and to put others' needs ahead of my wants for any other.
Like I said,no one starves, but they might not have a Wii or an Ipod--or a dumpster full of beer cans out back.
Poverty stems as much from bad allocation of financial resources as lack of income, and the confusion of necessary items and items you merely want.
Keep in mind, under the current system, the State does have the ability to enter the home and sieze children deemed to be 'abused or neglected'. How much of that will continue (some, I suppose will be needed) will depend on what people want.
I would however, rather spend the resources of the community on those who are providing something for themselves and their dependents in order to help make their ends meet (and teach them how to be more effective with their money) than the current system of urinating away vast resources trying to sate the desires of those who will not make the attempt to be self-sufficient.
It used to be you offered someone paying work rather than just gave them a check, and I recall my mother giving away good clothes which no longer fit us to folks who had less, asking if they knew someone who could use them. Need may not have been preserved, but dignity and self-respect were.
The current system preserves need and destroys self-respect and the dignity of those who need it, just the opposite of what needs to be done. Like most liberal designs, it is an abject failure more often than not.
“I will probably have to rewrite Pres. Jillian Whitman as Pres. Mogambo.”
I’ve got the stomach of a billygoat but that thought turns me green.
While I was technically in a rear echelon MOS, rear is a very relative term. People in my MOS are as apt to be ten-feet behind the front echelon as we are to be six thousand miles away. Then you factor in that with the job I had, the enemy was literally gunning for us, who knows.
Medics are technically rear echelon, accept when their running with infantry I guess. MP’s are rear echelon, yet they also deploy into areas that are as likely to get hot as anywhere else. Truck Drivers are rear echelon, unless someone wants tomething moved to the front.
Every MOS learns Basic Rifle Marksmanship for a reason.
Better get used to it. At this point, I lay 2-1 odds on Mogambo beating McShamnesty.
We need to take back our schools and abolish the sense of entitlement. When we start limiting who can (of CITIZENS) and who cannot vote b/c of gov’t assistance programs, a gov’t job, etc where does it end? Police officers get paid by the public (local) expense; so they would not be allowed to vote for the candidate that stood for increasing the size of the force? It seems counterintuitive. So, you run for office in order to help and lead your community, why should you lose your right to vote in other elections (you're a mayor, but can't vote for the state legislature)?
— Another scenario: You are a disabled veteran that was wounded in combat; you receive benefits from the gov’t (the gov’t tit as you say) but couldn't vote against a scumbag like Obambi that would take away your benefits.
Don't get me wrong, I can't stand programs like welfare and food stamps b/c they are so often abused and provide no incentive to work. But, if we go down this path it will be the same thing as with the tax lobby. Imagine the lobbyists lining up to pressure politicians to cancel veteran's ability to vote, or policemen, or DOT workers etc, etc. Because, eventually you will eliminate the competition and we will truly be ruled by the elites.
“To sit back hoping that someday, some way, someone will make things right is to go on feeding the crocodile, hoping he will eat you last - but eat you he will.” Ronald Reagan
PING to WPtG.. here’s another relevant thread.
Archy is the other keeper of the CWII thread. Can also find the threads using keywords CW2 and CWII.
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