The Tyranny of Tolerance... losing its deathgrip??

Can it be?

The socialists have suffered a setback?

A woman's "right to choose" has been denied??

The Supreme Court of the United States actually stood up for the rights of unborn children for a change???

Shocking, but true!

Check it out spacefans.

Looks like the Tyranny is loosing its grip... maybe!

Analysis: Kennedy's pivotal vote

By GINA HOLLAND
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

Wednesday's Supreme Court ruling banning a controversial late-term abortion procedure may be as important for who wrote it as for the decision itself.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, considered the court's crucial middleman, came down solidly with conservatives in writing the 5-4 decision.

Abortion cases are difficult for the court, and in the past they've been particularly trying for Kennedy. He agonized over his 1992 vote to reaffirm a woman's right to abortion. That decision enraged conservatives, who had expected the Roman Catholic Reagan nominee to help overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 case that established a constitutional right to privacy that protects abortion rights.

On Wednesday, Kennedy led conservatives in the decision that for the first time upheld a nationwide ban on a procedure that opponents call "partial-birth abortion." The ruling also opened the way for further restrictions...

This excerpt says it all:

...Louisiana prosecutors and lawmakers have been trying for decades to poke holes into Roe V. Wade, the 1973 ruling that women have a constitutional right to abortion.

Nevers, whose 2006 abortion ban law would go into effect if the high court reverses that decision, said he believes the court is moving toward such a ruling.

"I believe many of us in this country have recognized the horrible error the Supreme Court wrote in the Roe versus Wade decision," he said. "I believe it will be overturned in the near future. I guess, when it happens, it will be one of the greatest victories in U.S. history in giving the rights of the unborn child what they deserve."

Sho nuff.

Kumogakure.

Condolences, and my two cents.

Merciful God in Heaven, King of the Universe and the Just Judge,

Bless those, victims and survivors, of the Horrific tragedy at Virginia Tech.

Have mercy on the soul of the murderer, and his family. You will judge Cho Seung-hui, as you are the Just Judge.

Help us Lord, as a people and a nation, find our way. Back to your Holy truth, and back to our identity as a community.

Blessed be you O God, now and forever.

Amen.

With a heavy heart, I write this post.

As I look around my country, I feel that we as a people have lost our way. We have forsaken the Torah (law) by which Mankind should live. We have labeled bad as good, and good as bad.

The innocent perish, and the guilty go free.

Is this what our social experiment has wrought?

I think it has.

The Matriarchy destroys much more than what it saves.

As I read on the Gun Blogs (by Rustmeister):

I'd like to say at the outset that this is not an indictment of any victim's actions at Virginia Tech. Something like this should never happen, and I doubt anyone would know how'd they react when put in a similar situation.

I've already heard the cries of "America's gun culture" as the cause of this. As Nylar so ably points out below, anti-gunners are going to use this incident to advance their agenda of disarmament.

There is a cultural factor to all this. It concerns fight or flight; the most primal reaction to confrontation. Very few at VT managed to do either. Only a handful of people jumped out of windows to avoid being shot. So far, only one has been pointed out as trying to fight back by holding a classroom door closed.

How did this instinct not kick in when those folks knew there was a shooter on the floor? Because they've been taught since early childhood not to resist an attacker. Don't fight back, just give them what they want and they'll go away. Same thing for running away; you might provoke your attacker - don't do it.

Looks like we've managed to do what intellectuals have been wanting for years: we've overcome our most base instincts. We've risen above the animals. Fight or flight is a thing of the past, and we've become a bovine herd. Hooray for smart people!

One problem: there's a substantial segment of our population who haven't done away with their most base instincts. They've harnessed them, embraced them, and have no reservations using them to get what they want. They are predators in every sense of the word. They identify the weak and pounce. If the prey runs or fights, the predator simply employs their own fight or flight instinct. Many times they go off in search of an easier target. Predators don't want to work hard.

There are 60-80 million gun owners in America, depending on who you listen to. There are over 300 million Americans total. That means 20-27% of America owns a gun. Does this mean 73-80% of Americans have lost the will to fight or flee? Once all the facts are in, do the math and see for yourself.

Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.

- Thomas Sowell

Amen to that.

We have the internet, we have Starbucks, we have international flights across the globe.

We are more tolerant, more multicultural, more egalitarian than ever before.

And yet, we are more socially isolated, more dependent on chemical happiness than the real thing, forsaking marriage and childbirth, casting off the old, the weak, and the sick to die.

What kind of people are we?

Do we no longer have any sense of justice?

Do we worship Self more than we do God?

Do we just not give a damn about the lives of other people?

I leave it to you to answer those questions.

I will say this though... we as a culture are in serious trouble. This shooting rampage is a symptom of our ever-growing cancer.

We will continue into our decadent decline, unless we unleash the creature known as MANLINESS, that beast that can deal with and destroy evil.

That force that seeks justice and ambition.

That spirit that leads to mighty and prosperous civilization.

Properly channeled, the Thumos that can right wrongs, and replenish and subdue the earth.

One man (or woman) with a handgun, and the willingness and training to use it, could have ended this tragic Virginia Tech incident with a minimum loss of life.

As John R Lott notes:

Question: ...In March of this year [1998] four children and a teacher were killed by two school boys in Jonesboro, Arkansas. Won't tragedies like this increase if more people are allowed to carry guns? Shouldn't this be taken into consideration before making gun ownership laws more lenient?

Lott: The horrific shooting in Arkansas occurred in one of the few places where having guns was already illegal. These laws risk creating situations in which the good guys cannot defend themselves from the bad ones. I have studied multiple victim public shootings in the United States from 1977 to 1995. These were incidents in which at least two or more people were killed and or injured in a public place; in order to focus on the type of shooting seen in Arkansas, shootings that were the byproduct of another crime, such as robbery, were excluded. The effect of "shall-issue" laws on these crimes has been dramatic. When states passed these laws, the number of multiple-victim shootings declined by 84 percent. Deaths from these shootings plummeted on average by 90 percent, and injuries by 82 percent.

For other types of crimes, I find that both children as well as adults are protected when law-abiding adults are allowed to carry concealed handguns.

Finally, after extensively studying the number of accidental shootings, there is no evidence that increasing the number of concealed handguns increases accidental shootings. We know that the type of person who obtains a permit is extremely law-abiding and possibly they are extremely careful in how they take care of their guns. The total number of accidental gun deaths each year is about 1,300 and each year such accidents take the lives of 200 children 14 years of age and under. However, these regrettable numbers of lives lost need to be put into some perspective with the other risks children face. Despite over 200 million guns owned by between 76 to 85 million people, the children killed is much smaller than the number lost through bicycle accidents, drowning, and fires. Children are 14.5 times more likely to die from car accidents than from accidents involving guns

.

An armed society, is a polite society, only if the citizenry are armed not only with weapons, but with the will and the intelligence to use them.

The protection of the nation, through the force of arms, is not a just a right. It is also a DUTY.

United States v Miller.

The American Colonies In The 17th Century', Osgood, Vol. 1, ch. XIII, affirms in reference to the early system of defense in New England-

'In all the colonies, as in England, the militia system was based on the principle of the assize of arms. This implied the general obligation of all adult male inhabitants to possess arms, and, with certain exceptions, to [307 U.S. 174, 180] cooperate in the work of defence.' 'The possession of arms also implied the possession of ammunition, and the authorities paid quite as much attention to the latter as to the former.' 'A year later (1632) it was ordered that any single man who had not furnished himself with arms might be put out to service, and this became a permanent part of the legislation of the colony (Massachusetts).'

The government cannot, and will not protect us at all times.

They failed on 9/11, they failed during Katrina, and they failed at Virginia Tech.

The fullness of peace and prosperity that man can hope to have can only come in a society that respects the rights of Men (and of course, women and children), and obeys the Universal Law.

If we fail to change course, to encourage what is appropriate and just, and eliminate, as much as humanly possible, what is unjust and against the Law of Heaven, our civilization is surely finished.

We have yet to witness the carnage and suffering that an imploding society can unleash on itself.

To all the victims, Rest in Peace.

Kumogakure.

Tyranny of Tolerance IV

Welcome back!

On the last Tyranny of Tolerance post, I wrote that:

The author of Tyranny of Tolerance informs us that:

“Relying on “scientific” data—really extrapolations of statistical extrapolations grossly exaggerating the incidence of spousal abuse (indeed, the data clearly show that spousal abuse is trivial in comparison to abuse by unmarried cohabitants) (Tyranny of Tolerance, p. 59)…”

Ah.

Once again, "Domestic Violence" is the battle cry of the Leftists.

As seasoned MRAs know, not only do women commit intimate partner violence on par with men; women far and away beat and kill their children.

Next time, we dig deeper into the Death of Men's Rights.

As promised, we are going to take a closer look at the bloodshed that women cause.

(Serious students of the subject can look at the Enlighted CounterFem's blog here. )

As noted by my anonymous friend:

Since the Matriarchy has come to power in the United States (i.e. Roe v. Wade in 1973), over 48 MILLION unborn children have been snuffed out.

According to Guttmacher.org:

Approximately 46 million abortions were performed worldwide in 1995 (Table 1). Of these, about 26 million were legal and 20 million illegal.‡

The abortion rate worldwide was about 35 per 1,000 women aged 15–44. Of all pregnancies (excluding miscarriages and stillbirths), 26% were terminated by abortion

That, ladies and gents, is infanticide on a massively evil scale.

In comparison, the number of people killed in World War II numbered about 62 million souls.

Feminists justify their agenda by claiming that their policies protect women.

Oh really??

Let's do the math!

According to the Howard Hughes Medical Center, the probabilty of a girl child being born is about 50 percent.

If we take Guttmacher Institute figures for the number of babies killed in the United States for the year 2000:

1,312,990

and calculate the number of possible female children:

1,312,990*.5= 656495

We had, in 2000, 656495 children aborted that would have grown up to be women.

And now, let's compare this figure to the number of females killed by homicide in the same year:

656495 aborted females - 1407 female homicide victims (281,421,906/100,000)*.5)in the year 2000 = net female babies aborted 655088.

Or, the number of aborted females outnumbers the number of female homicide victims in the year 2000 (656495/1407) by a whopping 466.5 times!!

So who is the biggest killer? Feminists, or your average Joe Sixpack guy on the street??

Hint: It's not us!

Women are the biggest killers of babies, hands down.

Moving on to women and child abuse stats:

Children of divorced or never-married mothers are six to 30 times more likely to suffer from serious child abuse than are children raised by both biological parents in marriage.2

More supporting evidence via our Canadian cousins:

… Despite 100 years of hard evidence on the well-known role of women and mothers in severe and lethal child abuse, many maintain a state of disbelief and denial. This disbelief must be suspended as evidence on feminine aggression enters our consciousness.

(Medea, killing her children by Jason the Argonaut)

The Greek tragedy dramatist, Euripides, in 431 B.C. wrote "Medea," a play about Medea and Jason, and Medea's murder of their two sons. Medea, the Greek enchantress, had helped Jason obtain the Golden Fleece. When Jason deserted her for another woman, Medea, in revenge, planned and performed the murder of their two sons.

Medea said:

Let no man think I am a feeble, frail-hearted woman who sits with folded hands: no, let them know me for the opposite of that - one who knows how to hurt her enemies ...

Medea mused that the cruelest way to hurt her husband Jason was to kill their children. In pledging her maid to silence about this deed, Medea revealed the essence of today's problem of detecting and addressing child abuse and neglect, saying:

Say nothing of the plans I have prepared; don't say a word, if you are loyal to your mistress and loyal to the race of woman!

Euripides articulated the modern problem of loyalty to the race of woman and its attendant silence on feminine aggression, particularly mothers' aggression towards their children. This terrible silence is murderous.

Honourable senators, abuse and neglect in the death of children is historical. In a work published in 1972 entitled Checks on Population Growth: 1750-1850, William Langer, professor emeritus of history at Harvard University, wrote on the widespread use of infant homicide as population control.

One popular method of killing children was the use of Godfrey's Cordial, a poisonous mixture of opium, treacle and sassafras. Another was overlaying; that is, smothering the child as it nursed at its mother's breast. The perpetrators in most cases of child killing never reached the courts, and those who did, Langer informs, "...were usually let off with a light sentence; ..." Langer writes that a London coroner, Edwin Lankester, testified in the 1800s that he:

... had never known of a woman's being punished for killing her baby, no matter how flagrant the circumstances.

Langer also quotes Dr. William Ryan in 1862:

... that infanticide is not looked upon in the same light as other murders by the public generally... There is no crime that meets with so much sympathy, often of the most ill-judged kind…

… Honourable senators, in 1994, the Toronto Institute for the Prevention of Child Abuse released a study entitled "The Ontario Incidence of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect." This study reviewed the 1993 child maltreatment investigations, 46,683 total, by all 54 Children's Aid Societies of Ontario. Child maltreatment is defined by this study as any one of physical abuse, sexual abuse, child neglect, or child emotional maltreatment.

The findings were as follows:

Of the total substantiated cases of child maltreatment, mothers were perpetrators in 49 per cent and fathers in 31 per cent of the cases. In the category of child neglect, mothers were perpetrators in 85 per cent of the substantiated cases. In the category of child physical abuse, biological mothers were perpetrators in 39 per cent of the substantiated cases, and biological fathers in 40 per cent of the cases. In the category of emotional maltreatment, mothers were perpetrators in 79 per cent.

This study found that:

Boys were most strongly over-represented in the area of physical abuse, especially in the 0- to 3-year-old category where boys accounted for 59 percent of investigations.

Male children aged 4 to 11 years accounted for 55.5 per cent. The single largest number of investigated families, 35 per cent, was the single-mother family.

Honourable senators, child mortality is terrifying. The survival of male children has received little attention in recent times. Let us review the state of survival of male children. I just mentioned that 59 per cent of the investigations of child abuse are male children aged 0 to 3 years old. Male children are the recipients of most physical abuse from parents and mothers.

Dr. Eleanor Maccoby, in her book Social Development: Psychological Growth and the Parent-Child Relationship, writes that this is so even in lower primates, such as monkeys.

She said:

We should be aware, however, that even among monkey mothers, a certain amount of differential socialization takes place. For example, they administer more punishment to male than female young, just as human parents do…

Hmm... looks like mothers are doing a bang up job!

Just in case you just can't believe what you just read... one more source for your reading pleasure.

From the extremely informative Fathers for Life website:

American government agencies report numbers that are more objective, not as subjective as those Jeff White selected. In the US in 1999, 70.3 percent of perpetrators of child abuse were female parents acting alone or with others. Out of an estimated 826,000 victims of child maltreatment, nation-wide, 1,100 were fatalities. Their perpetrators break down as follows:

PERPETRATOR RELATIONSHIP [3]

31.5% Female Parent Only
10.7% Male Parent Only *
21.3% Both Parents *
16.3% Female Parent and Other
1.1% Male Parent and Other *
4.5% Family Relative
6.1% Substitute Care Provider(s)
5.7% Other
2.7% Unknown

* "Male parent" in that context most likely is just about anything but a biological father.

That means that, acting alone or with others, female parents were responsible in 69.1 percent, and male parents in 33.1 percent of cases of fatal child maltreatment.

It should be beyond doubt that women are far more dangerous to their children than men are.

Or should I say, can be. I want to stress that children need their mothers, just as they need their fathers.

According to the Supreme Court's line of reasoning however, because women are clearly a potential threat to their children, and the government has clear information that would cause it to reasonably fear for the lives of said children...

... THEN MOTHERS SHOULD BE STRIPPED OF THEIR PARENTAL RIGHTS.

Impossible you say?

Think again.

The Cultural Marxist end game is the "liberation" of all children from their parents.

The end game is to transfer all children into the hands of the State.

More about this when we discuss Plato's The Republic.

For right now, let’s move to intimate partner violence between adults.

This link gives close to 200 studies that confirm that women abuse just as much as men do.

The magnificent Media Radar.Org provides more articles and proofs that women are violent on par with men in their relationships.

DV Stats.com provides searchable Domestic Violence data that proves beyond doubt that women beat, batter, and abuse just like the guys do.

It's an Equal Opportunity society that we live in, after all.

Let’s go back to Planned Parenthood decision. This is what the Court says with respect to Domestic Violence:

Section 3209 of Pennsylvania's abortion law provides, except in cases of medical emergency, that no physician shall perform an abortion on a married woman without receiving a signed statement from the woman that she has notified her spouse that she is about to undergo an abortion. The woman has the option of providing an alternative signed statement certifying that her husband is not the man who impregnated her; that her husband could not be located; that the pregnancy is the result of spousal sexual assault which she has reported; or that the woman believes that notifying her husband will cause him or someone else to inflict bodily injury upon her. A physician who performs an abortion on [505 U.S. 833, 888] a married woman without receiving the appropriate signed statement will have his or her license revoked, and is liable to the husband for damages.

The District Court heard the testimony of numerous expert witnesses, and made detailed findings of fact regarding the effect of this statute. These included:

"273. The vast majority of women consult their husbands prior to deciding to terminate their pregnancy. . . .
. . . . .
"279. The "bodily injury" exception could not be invoked by a married woman whose husband, if notified, would, in her reasonable belief, threaten to (a) publicize her intent to have an abortion to family, friends or acquaintances; (b) retaliate against her in future child custody or divorce proceedings; (c) inflict psychological intimidation or emotional harm upon her, her children or other persons; (d) inflict bodily harm on other persons such as children, family members or other loved ones; or (e) use his control over finances to deprive of necessary monies for herself or her children. . . .

".... 281. Studies reveal that family violence occurs in two million families in the United States. This figure, however, is a conservative one that substantially understates (because battering is usually not reported until it reaches life-threatening proportions) the actual number of families affected by domestic violence. In fact, researchers estimate that one of every two women will be battered at some time in their life. . . .

"282. A wife may not elect to notify her husband of her intention to have an abortion for a variety of reasons, including the husband's illness, concern about her own health, the imminent failure of the marriage, or the husband's absolute opposition to the abortion. . . .

"283. The required filing of the spousal consent form would require plaintiff-clinics to change their counseling [505 U.S. 833, 889] procedures and force women to reveal their most intimate decisionmaking on pain of criminal sanctions. The confidentiality of these revelations could not be guaranteed, since the woman's records are not immune from subpoena. . . .

"284. Women of all class levels, educational backgrounds, and racial, ethnic and religious groups are battered. . . .

"285. Wife-battering or abuse can take on many physical and psychological forms. The nature and scope of the battering can cover a broad range of actions, and be gruesome and torturous. . . .

"286. Married women, victims of battering, have been killed in Pennsylvania and throughout the United States. . . .

"287. Battering can often involve a substantial amount of sexual abuse, including marital rape and sexual mutilation. . . .

"288. In a domestic abuse situation, it is common for the battering husband to also abuse the children in an attempt to coerce the wife. . . .

"289. Mere notification of pregnancy is frequently a flashpoint for battering and violence within the family. The number of battering incidents is high during the pregnancy, and often the worst abuse can be associated with pregnancy. . . . The battering husband may deny parentage and use the pregnancy as an excuse for abuse. . . .

"290. Secrecy typically shrouds abusive families. Family members are instructed not to tell anyone, especially police or doctors, about the abuse and violence. Battering husbands often threaten their wives or her children with further abuse if she tells an outsider of the violence, and tells her that nobody will believe her. A battered woman, therefore, is highly unlikely to disclose [505 U.S. 833, 890] the violence against her for fear of retaliation by the abuser. . . .

"291. Even when confronted directly by medical personnel or other helping professionals, battered women often will not admit to the battering, because they have not admitted to themselves that they are battered. . . .
. . . . .
"294. A woman in a shelter or a safe house unknown to her husband is not "reasonably likely" to have bodily harm inflicted upon her by her batterer; however, her attempt to notify her husband pursuant to section 3209 could accidentally disclose her whereabouts to her husband. Her fear of future ramifications would be realistic under the circumstances.

"295. Marital rape is rarely discussed with others or reported to law enforcement authorities, and of those reported, only few are prosecuted. . . .

"296. It is common for battered women to have sexual intercourse with their husbands to avoid being battered. While this type of coercive sexual activity would be spousal sexual assault as defined by the Act, many women may not consider it to be so, and others would fear disbelief. . . .

"297. The marital rape exception to section 3209 cannot be claimed by women who are victims of coercive sexual behavior other than penetration. The 90-day reporting requirement of the spousal sexual assault statute, 18 Pa.Con.Stat.Ann. 3218(c), further narrows the class of sexually abused wives who can claim the exception, since many of these women may be psychologically unable to discuss or report the rape for several years after the incident. . . .

"298. Because of the nature of the battering relationship, battered women are unlikely to avail themselves of the exceptions to section 3209 of the Act, regardless of [505 U.S. 833, 891] whether the section applies to them. 744 F.Supp., at 1360-1362 (footnote omitted)…”

Gentlemen...

If you were to examine the decision and look for any Court cited references about women abusing their children, battering their intimate partners, or committing infanticide on a wide scale, you won't find it.

YOUR SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES has banished Men from the family forever and ever. You have been relieved of your duties, because, you are a potential batterer.

Feminist friendly studies have been known to be flawed.

But...

They have made up their mind.

It's over.

The truth is the last thing our lovely Supreme Court wants to hear.

This decision is nothing but a PRETEXT to advance the Cultural Marxist agenda.

But just wait!

It gets worse.

We'll cover that... next time.

Kumo out.

Outcast Superstar!!

Gents,

If you haven't heard, OUTCAST SUPERSTAR, one of the bad boys of the Mens Rights Movement, has a most excellent series of posts concerning divorce law and marriage.

Highly recommended as a companion to the Tyranny of Tolerance series I am currently writing.

Make sure you read them all!

And after that, tell a friend.

Kumo.

No One Is Married!

Respect to the guys at Don't Marry for this awesome website.

This ties in nicely with my Tyranny of Tolerance posts.

No one is married.

According to the site's author, the divorce laws in Texas are being applied incorrectly.

It seems that when one party files a no fault divorce, the non-petitioning spouse has no legal protections whatsoever!

You don't say!!

The eminent scholar, Dr. Stephen Baskerville writes in his paper, The Real Danger of Same Sex Marriage that:

...Some three decades ago, while few were paying attention, the Western world embarked on what may turn out to be 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 result was more than the removal of government from enforcement of the contract; it allowed the government to enforce the abrogation of the contract. Regardless of the terms by which a marriage is entered, government officials can, at the request of one spouse, simply dissolve it (and the household created by it) over the objection of the other with no penalty to the moving party. Gallagher aptly titled her 1996 book, The Abolition of Marriage. It is difficult to see how legalizing gay marriage can weaken an institution that has already been legally “abolished,” nor how a constitutional amendment can protect a contract that is now unenforceable in law.

In contrast to same-sex marriage, no-fault divorce was never subject to a public debate. Gallagher once attributed this silence to “political cowardice”: “Opposing gay marriage or gays in the military is for Republicans an easy, juicy, risk-free issue,” she complained. “The message [is] that at all costs we should keep divorce off the political agenda.” No American politician of national stature has seriously challenged involuntary divorce. “Democrats did not want to anger their large constituency among women who saw easy divorce as a hard-won freedom and prerogative,” writes Barbara Dafoe Whitehead. “Republicans did not want to alienate their upscale constituents or their libertarian wing, both of whom tended to favor easy divorce, nor did they want to call attention to the divorces among their own leadership.”[39] In his famous denunciation of single parenthood, Vice President Dan Quayle was careful to make clear, “I am not talking about a situation where there is a divorce.”[40] The exception proves the rule. When the late Pope John Paul II spoke out against divorce in January 2002, he was roundly criticized from both the right and the left.[41]

Why this deafening silence, even among political figures who now claim to be defending marriage?

In the years since it was enacted, no-fault divorce has grown into a huge state and private machinery; in fact, few enterprises have forged so intimate and elaborate a public-private symbiosis. Thirty years of unrestrained divorce has created vast interests with a stake in encouraging it. David Schramm cautiously estimates that divorce costs the public $33.3 billion annually.[42]

But divorce is more than a lucrative industry; it is also a vast governmental regime. Divorce and custody are the cash cow of the judiciary, constituting some 35-50% of civil litigation,[43] and also bring employment and earnings to a host of executive and legislative officials, plus private hangers-on: lawyers, psychotherapists, mediators, counselors, social workers, child support agents, and more. Divorce litigation fuels well-known lines of political and judicial patronage.[44] “The judge occupies a vital position...because of his control over lucrative patronage positions,” according to Herbert Jacob, where appointments “are generally passed out to the judge’s political cronies or to persons who can help his private practice.”[45] Divorce also fills state and local government coffers with federal money for a host of divorce-related social problems. So entrenched has divorce become within our political economy and political culture that even its critics seem to have developed a stake in having something to bemoan. Hardly anyone has an incentive to bring it under control.

Indeed, divorce and unmarried childbearing may have political implications we are only beginning to understand, since they act as major engines for the overall expansion of government power at all levels. As Daniels and Horn point out, family dissolution breeds a host of societal ills for government to solve. Virtually every major social pathology, from violent crime to drug abuse to truancy, is directly attributable to family breakdown and fatherless homes more than any single factor, surpassing race and poverty.[46]

While this has long been recognized within social policy, the political implications have never been thoroughly pursued. “If we want less government, we must have stronger families,” President Jimmy Carter once said, “for government steps in by necessity when families have failed.”[47] But Carter may have perceived the cause-and-effect backward, for it follows that the state has a self-interest in failed families and a motive to step in and declare failure when given the opportunity. This is precisely what divorce courts do: “No-fault divorce gave judges, at the request of one-half of the couple, the right to decide when a marriage had irretrievably broken down.”[48]

In ironic contrast to marriage, divorce is often defended as a “private” matter and therefore immune from public scrutiny; some even describe it as a “civil liberty.”[49] In practice, divorce raises fundamental questions about the reach of the state into private life that have never been confronted. Far more than marriage, divorce by its nature requires active and almost incessant government intervention. Marriage creates a private household, which may or may not necessitate signing some legal documents. Divorce dissolves not only a marriage, but also the private household formed by it, usually against the wishes of one spouse. It inevitably involves state functionaries — including police and prisons — to enforce the post-marriage order. Otherwise, one spouse might continue to claim the protections and prerogatives of private life: the right to live in the common home, to possess the common property, or — most vexing of all — to parent the common children.

Few stopped to consider the implications of laws that shifted the breakup of private households from a voluntary to an involuntary process. If marriage is not a wholly private affair, involuntary divorce by its nature requires constant supervision over private life by state officials. Divorce by mutual agreement carries few consequences. But mutual agreement governs only about 20% of divorces; in the remaining 80% the government assumes control over the private life of at least one individual without that individual’s consent — and when he or she may be unimpeachable before the law.[50] In these circumstances, unilateral divorce involves state agents forcibly removing people from their homes, confiscating their property, and separating them from their children. It poses an inherent threat to the inviolability of not only marriage, but the very concept of private life.

The involvement of the judiciary, with its handmaid, the penal apparatus, indicates how marriage dissolution blurs distinctions the justice system once delineated carefully: private versus public, civil versus criminal, therapy versus justice, sin versus crime. No-fault divorce introduced novel legal concepts, such as the principle that one could be decreed guilty of violating an agreement that one had, in fact, not violated. “According to therapeutic precepts, the fault for marital breakup must be shared, even when one spouse unilaterally seeks a divorce,” observes Whitehead. “Many husbands and wives who did not seek or want divorce were stunned to learn...that they were equally ‘at fault’ in the dissolution of their marriages.”[51] The “fault” that was ostensibly thrown out the front door of divorce proceedings re-entered through the back, but now without precise definition. The judiciary was expanded from its traditional role of punishing crime or tort to punishing personal imperfections and private differences: suddenly, one could be summoned to court without having committed any legal infraction; the verdict was pre-determined before any evidence was examined; and one could be found “guilty” of things that were not illegal. “Lawmakers eliminated a useful inquiry process and replaced it with an automatic outcome,” writes Judy Parejko. “No other court process is so devoid of recourse for a defendant. When one spouse files for divorce, his/her spouse is automatically found ‘guilty’ of irreconcilable differences and is not allowed a defense.”[52]

Though marriage ostensibly falls under civil law, the logic quickly extended into the criminal realm. The “automatic outcome” expanded into what effectively became a presumption of guilt against the involuntarily divorced spouse (“defendant”). Yet the due process protections of formal criminal proceedings did not apply, so involuntary litigants could be criminalized without any action on their part and in ways they were powerless to avoid. In some jurisdictions, the defendant in a divorce case is the only party in the courtroom without legal immunity.[53]

Politically, no-fault divorce did much more than allow families to self-destruct. It permitted the state in the person of a single judge to assume jurisdiction over the private lives of citizens who were minding their own business and turn otherwise lawful private behavior into crimes. Previously, a citizen could be incarcerated only following conviction by a jury for willfully violating a specific statute, passed with citizen input and after deliberation by elected legislators, that applied equally to all. Suddenly, a citizen could be arrested and jailed without trial for failing to live in conformity with an order, formulated in a matter of minutes from limited information by an unelected judge, that applied to no one but himself (it is usually, for reasons we will see, the man) and whose provisions might well be beyond his ability to obey.[54] In effect, a personalized criminal code is legislated ad hoc around each divorced spouse, subjecting him or her to arrest for doing what anyone else may lawfully do.

Unilateral divorce thus placed the family in a legal-political status precisely the opposite of the original purpose of marriage. Far from preserving a private sphere of life immune from state intervention, involuntary divorce opened private lives to unprecedented state control. Thus the irony of those who question why gay partners should wish to have the “benefits” of marriage and thus open their private lives to the increasingly conspicuous horrors of family law proceedings.[55] Indeed, a California bill legalizing same-sex marriage was nicknamed the “gay divorce law,” because it would force individuals wishing to part company into court proceedings and to spend money on lawyers.[56] Previously, in the eyes of the law, such a couple was simply two individuals in a household, whose sexual “intimacy” was a matter of official indifference. With marriage or civil unions, they become spouses or “intimate partners” into whose private lives the state may insert its coercive authority at the mere invitation of either, with any grievance or none...

There you have it.

Once again we find that... divorce laws hurt more people than they help.

So Truthseekers... check out the No One is Married page. It's got some very useful information.

Kumogakure.

The Surveillance Society

Here's an interesting report for you privacy buffs.

In these days and times, it is your obligation to protect your identity as best you can. The time is coming where the people, or should I say Sheeple, will lay down and accept total totalitarian control via 1984.

Spychips anyone?

The Shit is real. Corporate interests and government officals want to tag you and yours like animals.

MRAs and Truthseekers CANNOT allow that to happen. We already know what the government does to innocent fathers and children. Do we REALLY want to give them nearly omni-potent power?

I don't think so.

It is up to us to spread the word, to lobby our political leaders, and to take the necessary countermeasures to safeguard our liberty and our privacy.

To that end, I give you The Surveillance Society.

Give it a good reading, and then take the appropriate countermeasures.

Kumogakure.

Rich Today, Poor Tomorrow

It is my position that the United States is in extreme financial peril.

In addition to my Men's Rights activities, I am quite interested in the financial markets, and will post articles I think are relevant to truthseekers from time to time.

Our free spending ways have created a situation where our economy is overdue for a severe downturn. Due to a combination of short-sightedness, greed, and calculating self-interest, the financial markets are riding a bubble that will soon burst, which will ruin many people who think that the good times will last forever.

The Money Masters, via institutions such as the Federal Reserve, have created a tremendous house of cards, the structure of which is incomprehensible to the average American.

Today's piece is written by Mr. Robert Kiyosaki.

Enjoy.

Rich Today, Poor Tomorrow

by Robert Kiyosaki

As promised in my last article, this week I'll explain why deflation will severely punish the upper middle class. These are the people who think they're rich because their houses and stocks have gone up in value -- that is, because of inflation.

What Goes Up...

People concerned about inflation today tend to buy big houses and nice cars. They believe that the purchasing power of the dollar is going down. But what happens if cash becomes king?

This cash squeeze is already affecting many people who thought they were rich. My wife, Kim, has a friend who's a successful architect. Her husband was a manager of a good sized advertising agency. They have three children, the oldest in high school, and earn about $350,000 a year in combined income.

Because they were flush with cash, this couple purchased two high-end vacation homes, one in the mountains and one at the beach. They live most of the year in a McMansion in Phoenix.

Things were going along fine until the husband lost his biggest client. Then he lost his job, and in less than three months their savings was depleted. They then tried to sell their vacation homes, but the values had dropped below the mortgage amount. Today, they continue to pay the mortgages on their houses and hope the price of real estate will go back up. They sold one of their BMWs at a loss.

In 2005, they were net-worth millionaires. In 2007, they're facing bankruptcy...

Be sure to check out the rest of the article.

Kumo out.