The following is an insightful and potent piece. The author (not me) chooses to remain anonymous.
Comments?
Some musings on a Winter Morning:
A central core of western philosophy (Locke, Mill, Rousseau, Bentham, etc.)
was that the right to control the fruits of one's own labor was the
hallmark of personal freedom. A slave's labor belonged to the master but a
free man controlled the earnings of his labor and the disposition of those
earnings.
In modern society, the only person who does not have a legislative or
judicial claim to earnings is the worker. All the laws are written to
describe who will get the benefit of the Government's coercive power in
taking pieces from the worker. Income taxes, property taxes, sales taxes,
child support, alimony, property division. Nothing is written to say that
the worker is entitled to keep any part of his labor with the result that
some find themselves ordered to pay cumulative amounts exceeding 100% of
earnings.
Since government has assumed unlimited power to take the fruits of the
worker's labor, the worker is no longer valued. The Government controls
the distribution of the earnings and the government is the object of the
respect and deference formerly enuring to the worker. Among the
consequences:
Child custody no longer goes to fathers since the father's earnings are no
longer important to the "best interests of the child". Indeed, the very
fact that the father is working to earn the wages is held against him
because of the time required to earn the money. The father's wages can
simply be taken and redistributed by government after the government's
selection of the proper "custodian."
Child support is disconnected from child rearing. The old rule was that
you had an obligation to support your own child in your own home and
transfers only arose if you refused to care for your child such that the
child became a burden to others who could demand recompense. Now, the
child is a profit center and the appeal goes to government, asking it to
seize more from the father who is barred from supporting the child driectly
in his own home.
Hostile media portrayals of men and fathers reflect reality rather than
create it. If Homer Simpson is kept around, it must be due to some
irrational love of the foolish old oaf because, otherwise, he could simply
be turned over to the government to process the child support and spousal
support payments at a distance not requiring actual contact with him.
Fatherhood is diminished not because of hostile TV spots but because the
real world value of the father has been usurped by government which can
take and redistribute the father's earnings, rendering the father useless,
powerless and easily dismissed or derided.
Spousal support is just grown-up child support. The former spouse does
nothing but invoke governmental power to continue taking from the earner
while ceasing to do anything in return.
Divorce is rampant since the government can simply take and redistribute to
the party who earned nothing and, in fact, distributes most generously to
the party who contributed least. In marriage, the earner has a voice in
the spending of the earnings. In divorce, the non-earner is "entitled" to
take the wages of the worker without any restraint on how the money is
used.
Domestic violence allegations/sexual abuse allegations/child abuse
allegations all become opportunites for invoking governmental power to take
even more from the worker. Don't just leave the marriage, retain or
enhance the income stream and transfer of property by adding some
inflammatory allegations.
It's not just divorce. Education is no longer a matter for parental
decision since the government can simply take the money to fund whatever it
pleases.
Child welfare is no longer the province of parents since the government has
hordes of minions to decide what is better than parental choice.
Plato's "Republic" suggested an end to families with communal child rearing
and philosopher kings guiding all. Aristotle shot holes in that nonsense
but Aristotle didn't anticipate the growth of the modern bureaucratic state
with its social worker communalism and its judicial kings.