Posted on 01/12/2009 4:57:11 PM PST by mojito
The decline of the family has now reached critical and truly dangerous proportions. Family breakdown touches virtually every family and every American. It is not only the major source of social instability in the Western world today but also seriously threatens civic freedom and constitutional government.
G. K. Chesterton once observed that the family serves as the principal check on government power, and he suggested that someday the family and the state would confront one another. That day has arrived.
Chesterton was writing about divorce, and despite extensive public attention to almost every other threat to the family, divorce remains the most direct and serious....
Most Americans would be deeply shocked if they knew what goes on today under the name of divorce. Indeed, many are devastated to discover that they can be forced into divorce by procedures entirely beyond their control. Divorce licenses unprecedented government intrusion into family life, including the power to sunder families, seize children, loot family wealth, and incarcerate parents without trial. Comprised of family courts and vast, federally funded social services bureaucracies that wield what amount to police powers, the divorce machinery has become the most predatory and repressive sector of government ever created in the United States and is today’s greatest threat to constitutional freedom.
Some four decades ago, while few were paying attention, the Western world embarked on the boldest social experiment in its history. With no public discussion of the possible consequences, laws were enacted in virtually every jurisdiction that effectively ended marriage as a legal contract. Today it is not possible to form a binding agreement to create a family. The government can now, at the request of one spouse, simply dissolve a marriage over the objection of the other.
(Excerpt) Read more at touchstonemag.com ...
Why do people continue to thing marriages 50% of the time end in divorce. THEY DO NOT. This is a common error that almost everyone makes.
I don’t get it. The data does not support that conclusion.
I think the author is confusing several issues, some I think he is right, others i disagree. Freedom to contract is a fundamental right, and he seems to be implying that unilateral divorce should not be allowed? In other words, the state would force a couple to be together against the will of one partner? Perhaps he wasn’t implying this. His points about lawyers and fees and the state machinery is well taken. His thoughts on gays adopting children is not well taken, the state itself must be the worst guardian of children.
I just wonder where in the Holy Bible it is required that the government authenticate your marriage.
He’s talking about no-fault divorce.
Judge’s used to assign blame like any business contract. Women could lose their children and men had to pay alimony. No fault changed all the responsibilities and allowed people to divorce at a whim.
OK whoa there several things are very wrong with this — first bur way down in the reading is the allegation that women are the most likely to abuse the children — actually it is the boyfriends of these dumbhead women who are the most likely to abuse the children. Second, the pitiful child suppot is described as a tax free windfall to the mothers and this is also a huge pile of caca.
Excellent article. I have a couple of Baskerville’s books, having been through the machine myself. This subject is the only thing that has ever made be ashamed to be an American. The government took everything from me at one time, and a part of me still yearns for revenge.
When the ex brings the boyfriend in - as they very often do - and abuse of the children results, I place a very large share of the responsibility for that on the ex. As to child support, what I paid wasn’t pitiful. The exes don’t have to claim it as income, but I have to pay tax on it and they get to claim the kids as dependents. And when these “stimulus checks” were handed out, the benefit of that went to the mothers. My one daughter is still a minor but she came to live with me in August and not a dime of child support from her mother has ever been forthcoming - and never will be, I don’t guess. She had the gall to think I should continue to pay her child support even though my daughter lives with me.
There's where you're wrong. First of all, it is tax-free for the receiving parent. Secondly, I make 51K and the ex makes 55K, and I pay over $1000 a month after taxes; so it's like $15K gross out of my gross salary of 51K for one child. Explain to me where that's not a windfall to her. I have no problem paying, but IMHO I'm paying twice as much as I should. I get my son four days a month. Then in the summer, I have him for two months. The ex still gets the support for those two months. Every penny of it.
Real fair, huh?
Brother, I feel for you. I’ve seen it all, just like you.
I see that you’re a lawyer. Certainly explains your views. You cash in on other people’s misery.
Every policy of the left has been targetting the destruction of the traditional family.
Everything from pushing promiscuity, to energy policy, to easy divorce, to “free speech” (porn),
has the effect and intent of destroying the family.
Here’s a study:
Protectors or Perpetrators? Fathers, Mothers, and Child Abuse and Neglect
...This brief explores what role fathers play in perpetrating or protecting their children from child neglect and abuse. The conventional wisdom; as articulated both in the popular culture and the media; holds that fathers are the main perpetrators of childhood abuse and neglect. Conventional wisdom, as this brief suggests, is not grounded in empirical research.
In fact, except when it comes to the problem of sexual abuse, mothers are more likely to abuse or neglect their children than are fathers, largely because they spend more time caring for children than do fathers.
Moreover, studies indicate that fathers, especially married fathers who live with their children, play an important role in protecting their children from abuse and neglect, a fact that is often overlooked by researchers, policymakers, and the media. (snip)
http://center.americanvalues.org/?p=70
In the state I practice in you get credit for the two months............
Actually I am representing the men most of the time........
Hey, I think divorce is an abomination
Glad to see a glimmer of common sense there. Here in Ohio, that would never happen.
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