Deadbeat Dads

Two words: "deadbeat dad." You hear them all the time, those of you back home in Canada, don't you? Any man who is not paying court-appointed child support is a "deadbeat dad," isn't he?


Great phrase--the lovely assonance makes it easy to remember, and summon up on any appropriate occasion. Whoever came up with it knew what they were doing. Perhaps they worked for the Ministry of Truth. It is capable of reducing any divorced father --any-- from a human being to a cartoon villain with just two words, and in a fraction of a second. Case dismissed.

It is vital to realize this, because it is how all prejudice works. Calling someone a "deadbeat dad" is just the same in principle and in moral terms as calling them a "lazy nigger" or a "greedy Jew" -- or, to cite another example, a "pedophile." It is a trick to dehumanize people, after which you can do to them whatever you want.

Understand now that it would work in a courtroom just as it probably did with you, gentle reader. Since the prejudice is everywhere and socially acceptable--indeed, socially obligatory--just as the prejudice "greedy Jew" was in Nazi Germany, or "lazy nigger" in the postbellum US South, no Dad in the dock for child support can expect any understanding of his circumstances. The judge will, just as you just did, dismiss all evidence and testimony with a sweep of the cuff, think only of the prejudicial stereotype "deadbeat dad," and refuse to believe he cannot pay, or that he is not paying for any reason but lack of responsibility. He will, indeed, probably need to be punished pre-emptively.

It's just the way men are, right?
Which is why the fact is almost always the opposite--just as most Jews gassed in Nazi Germany were not really guilty of doing anything wrong, and most black men lynched in the US South weren't.
Most will go on, if recent personal correspondence from Canada is any indication, having stripped the man of any human characteristics, to blame _him_ for being separated from his children. Assuming that any Dad does not want to see or have anything to do with his children is like charging the nigger with the cost of the rope you use to hang him, and making him tie the knot. It is rarely the husband who chooses divorce, in the first place; it is usually the wife. It is most certainly rarely the father who decides he is not to have custody of the children, or not even to have visitation rights.
There is, in addition, a fundamental and outrageous inequity in the assumption that the right to actually live with the children and watch them grow up, and the duty to pay the bills, without seeing receipts, are morally equivalent. If it really were so, then slaves on the US South genuinely owed their labour to their masters, didn't they? It was a perfectly fair and just arrangement. What's all this fuss about slavery?
In Canada, one dare not even say such things. But so long as you go along with it, and benefit from it, as you do daily if you are a woman, you are also guilty of it.
There are, of course, fathers who are irresponsible, just as there are mothers who are irresponsible, and just as there are Jews who really are greedy. Of course. This does not justify the prejudice.

As a result, in places like the Philippines, where I am right now, or Thailand, or Vietnam, there might as well be a statue in every entry harbour, with an inscription about bringing those huddled masses of ex-husbands yearning to be free.

There are a lot of expats here. They are all men. And their stories are almost always the same story.

Thank Lady Liberty there is still, at least, a place for men to flee. Even if most of them arrive here with nothing more than the small change in their pockets.
 
This may be, as a result, the place where the future is built, as such places have been before.

Hear, O Israel!

Have you ever wondered what you would have done had you lived in Nazi Germany, with the Holocaust ongoing? Would you have been a Good German, or an Oskar Schindler? Have you ever wondered how you might have measured up to living in the US South in times of slavery? Would you have worked on the Underground Railroad—or owned slaves yourself?

There is no need to wonder. You can know. Answer this question quite simply: What are you doing now?

Because we are living now in time of Holocaust. We are living now in time of slavery. No exaggeration—indeed, worse now in numbers than in the US South, or in Nazi Germany.

The contemporary Holocaust is best-known: abortion. The abortion rate in 1995 was estimated at 46 million per year, worldwide. That is four times the number Hitler killed in all his death camps over his twelve-year reign.

But at least there are some protests. The slavery is barely even noticed.

The president of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children, Dr. Stephen Baskerville, has written, “If I have one urgent piece of practical advice for young men today, it is this: Do not marry and do not have children."

This is because the divorce courts, in Canada, the US, and the UK, effectively enslave divorced fathers and husbands. Baskerville, perhaps a little shrill, lists the following practices as widespread:

- incarcerations without trial or charge
- children asked to spy on parents
- parents being defamed to their own children
- parents forcibly and permanently separated from their children, though under no suspicion of legal wrongdoing
- parents stripped of the care, custody, and companionship of their children without explanation
- government agents entering homes, demanding and examining private papers and personal effects, and seizing the property of citizens under no suspicion of legal wrongdoing
- defendants denied the right to face their accusers
- bureaucrats authorized to issue subpoenas and arrest warrants against fathers, with no hearing and no due process
- parents forced to pay the private fees of court officials they have not hired and whose services they have not sought or used, on pain of incarceration
- parents suspected of no legal wrongdoing stripped of their property and income, and reduced to penury
- government officials using the mass media to vilify private citizens

To run through the issue in simple terms, as I understand it: any married woman can unilaterally get a divorce, and claim spousal or child abuse at the same time. If she does, she gets his children, and can prevent the father from seeing them again until they are adults. She automatically gets the house, generally representing more or less everything he owned. He gets thrown out in the middle of the night with nothing. She can then force him to pay to support both her and the children from then on; she often need never work again. The amount can be greater than his total income. This is not an obligation he can avoid by declaring bankruptcy. If he does not or cannot pay, he is thrown in prison. Even if he does pay, she can, if she chooses, get restraining orders limiting his freedom of movement, destroying his reputation, or having him imprisoned.

Yes, for much of this, she must allege “abuse.” But even if her allegations are proven false, she faces no punishment. Even if she herself later confesses they are false, the court will take no notice. The father is still punished as if they were true.

No, this is not the way the law reads. But this is how the system actually works. Not now and then, but almost always.

It fits, I submit, the classic definition of slave or slavery in detail. American Heritage: “The state of one bound in servitude as the property of a slaveholder or household.” Oxford: “A person who is the legal property of another and is forced to obey them.” Encarta: “the practice of, or a system based on, using the enforced labor of other people.”

Most men will never see this happen—just as most slaves probably lived a fairly contented, comfortable life. But it is a matter of luck—their luck in having a partner who truly loves them; or at least, chooses to rule with a light touch. But it is entirely up to the will of the woman involved. This being true, whether or not they have been divorced, or threatened with divorce, in real terms, every man who is married and has children is already a slave. He always works, and lives, with a cocked gun at his head. It can go off at any time, should he stray out of line. All it takes is her picking up the phone.

But Dr. Baskerville is too naïve. He imagines a man can escape this simply by never marrying and having children. That is hardly enough. To begin with, he must certainly never have sex with a woman, in or out of wedlock, unless he has a vasectomy—the penalties are just as severe for a child born out of wedlock as for one born of marriage. He must never share an abode with a woman—any children she has then become his responsibility.

But this is not nearly enough. Suppose a woman wants to own him? She does not have to let him go free; he still has no choices. No problem—she can blackmail him into a relationship with the threat of a charge of sexual harassment.

She used to be able to claim rape. Even if he did not sleep with her, it would be a simply matter for her to sleep with someone else, to prove that sex had occurred. Then it’s his word against hers.

That particular avenue is no longer open, thanks to DNA testing. It is sobering to realize, though, that since DNA testing has been available, consistently, 25% of rape charges have been proven false on this ground alone.

And the man still has no defense if he actually did sleep with her. By consent.

But avoiding sex altogether is not going to work either. A sexual harassment charge is still available to her. She does not have to prove anything against him. Such charges go before Human Rights Tribunals and internal committees, Star Chambers where rules of evidence and due process need not be followed. I was at a talk recently at which a former school principal explained how it works. In the case of a charge of harassment, a Canadian principal has no choices and no decisions to make: “if a lady feels [i.e., claims] she has been harassed, she has been harassed.” Another former principal who was present agreed. There is no question of a man, once charged, being found not guilty, or getting off without some punishment. She described a fairly clear cut case in which an apparently entirely innocent gesture cost a young male teacher his job.

So any woman can still take down any man, for whatever reason, married, romantically involved, or just walking down the street.

For a man living in Canada, the US, Britain, or, I expect, most of the countries of Europe, there is only one solution, and Dr. Baskerville has not hit on it. It is the same solution available to Jews in Nazi Germany, or blacks in the USD South.

You must get out of the country. You must get out, and get out now. Once the worst happens, it will be too late. Once there is a support judgment against you, or your children have been taken, leaving the country will no longer help.

Even this will only work until the hegemony of modern feminism is complete worldwide—as it seeks aggressively to be.

Sadly, the unborn have no such option.