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Editorial See other Editorial Articles Title: How to turn a free people into slaves A commonplace of the American Revolution held that citizens must have a love for liberty and a willingness to sacrifice and fight for it. Otherwise, no paper constitution alone can ever preserve their freedom. Today, it is becoming equally commonplace that this spirit of liberty is leaving Americans, that we are becoming “a nation of sheep,” as Judge Andrew Napolitano puts it in a new book, who acquiesce in the progressive abrogation of our Constitution and liberty. This is plausibly attributed to several factors: mass affluence, cultural decadence, the loss of religious faith. But I believe one major factor has been seriously overlooked: the breakdown of the family and the growth of divorce. Moreover, this is not some nebulous “cultural” contributor that somehow saps Americans’ willingness to defend their freedom. The cause-and-effect is directly demonstrable. The reason is that we are now raising our children according to the principles of tyranny. Divorce sends many harmful messages to children and future citizens: that we can break vows we make to God and others; that family members may be discarded at will. But among the most destructive are about the role of government: that government is their de facto parent that may exercise unlimited power (including remove and criminalize their real parent) merely by claiming to act for their greater good. While feminists push divorce-on-demand as a “civil liberty,” in practice divorce has become our society’s most authoritarian institution. Some 80% of divorces are unilateral: the action of one spouse alone and over the objection of the other. One spouse’s “freedom” to leave a freely contracted marriage, therefore, means tyranny over the other spouse in forcibly separating him from his home, property, and most seriously, his children. And while marriage is an agreement freely entered into by both parties, with only a nominal role for the government, unilateral divorce must be enforced by the coercive machinery of the state. Otherwise, the involuntary divorced spouse may continue to claim the right to live in the common home, to enjoy the common property, and above all, to parent the common children. These must be curtailed, or at least controlled, by the state. This entails a massive extension of government power – and straight into precisely the realm from which its exclusion until now virtually defines freedom and limited government: the realm of private life. The moment either spouse files for divorce, even if the other is legally unimpeachable, the government takes control of the children, who become effectively wards of the state. Unauthorized contact by a parent becomes a crime, and the excluded parent can be arrested and incarcerated without trial through a variety of other means that by-pass constitutional due process protections: domestic violence accusations, child abuse accusations, inability to pay “child support,” even inability to pay attorneys’ fees. Legal jargon and clichés like “divorce,” “custody battle,” and “child support” have led Americans to acquiesce in this massive intrusion of state power over their freedom. We don’t say that the government arbitrarily took away someone’s children; we say he “lost custody.” We don’t say a legally innocent citizen was interrogated by government agents over how he lives his private life; we say there was a “custody battle.” We don’t say a citizen was incarcerated without trial or charge for debt he could not possibly pay and did nothing to incur; we say he “didn’t pay his child support.” These clichés and jargon inure us to tyranny. But worst of all, we are raising generations of children to believe that police and jails exist not to protect us from dangerous criminals but to keep away one of their parents, and that the criminal justice apparatus may be marshaled against family members who have committed no legal infraction. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 1.
#1. To: X-15 (#0)
very excellent article.
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