Wednesday, May 16, 2012

The Tyranny of Liberalism


Just so we all understand what is happening to us and why, we'll be running occasional excerpts from James Kalb's The Tyranny of Liberalism, perhaps the best book published in recent years on Tolerance Regime that is now consolidating its power.

Pay attention you conservatives out there who don't even realize you're liberals but really are. With each step liberals take to dismantle traditional society as we have known it, you can turn to the appropriate page and have Kalb's explain to you why this is.

Here is Kalb's description of the general problem with what he calls the "politically correct managerial liberal regime" :
In a society that claims to be base don free speech and reason, intelligent discussion of many aspects of life has become all but impossible. Such a state of affairs is no passing fluke but a serious matter resulting from basic principles. It is the outcome of rationalizing and egalitarian trends that over time have become ever more self-conscious and all-embracing until they now make normal informal distinctions--for example, those between the sexes--seem intolerably arbitrary and unfair. Those trends have led to the politically correct managerial liberal regime that now dominates Western public life and makes demands that more and more people find unreasonable and even incomprehensible. 
What defines that regime is the effort to manage and rationalize social life in order to bring it in line with comprehensive standards aimed at implementing equal freedom. The result is a pattern of governance intended to promote equality and individual gratification and marked by entitlement programs. sexual and expressive freedoms, blurred distinctions between the public and the private, and the disappearance of self-government. To implement such a program of social transformation an extensive system of controls over social life has grown up, somethings public and sometimes formally private, that appeals for its justification to expertise, equity, safety, security, and the need to modify social attitudes and relationships in order to eliminate discrimination and intolerance. 
The last are never clearly defined, but in practice they turn out to include all attitudes and distinctions that affect the order of social life but cannot be brought fully in line with market or bureaucratic principles, and so from the standpoint of those principles are simply irrational. "Discrimination and intolerance" are thus held to include those attitudes, habits, and ties--sex roles, historical loyalties, authoritative cultural understandings, religious commitments and teachings--on which independent, informal, traditional, and non-market institutions and arrangements normally rely in order to function and endure. 
Because such arrangements operate on principles that are regarded as irrational, and because they are difficult to supervise and control in the interest of rationality and equal freedom, they have no place in advanced liberal society and are edged out as the social order progresses.
Get your copy form ISI Books now.

60 comments:

KyCobb said...

Stinks when you are no longer allowed to force people into predetermined boxes so you can pretend everything is nice and neat, don't it?

Old Rebel said...

This is a very concise and useful introduction to leftist ideology. What's amusing is how the left, from limousine liberals to militant communists, denounce the "discrimination and intolerance" of traditional society. They'd have you think their totalitarian ideology would give everyone a hug and a gold star, when in fact, they are more rigid and exclusive than the worst monarchy.

Lee said...

> Stinks when you are no longer allowed to force people into predetermined boxes so you can pretend everything is nice and neat, don't it?

Hey, Martin, how does it feel to inhabit the predetermined box KyCobb just forced you into?

KyCobb said...

The White Supremacist Old Rebel, who celebrates the good ole days when slaves were happy because their massas treated them so well, says liberals are totalitarian. My irony meter explodes.

KyCobb said...

Lee,

I think Martin can speak for himself. If he's an open-minded guy who doesn't expect people to comply with "sex roles, historical loyalties, authoritative cultural understandings, religious commitments and teachings," then he can correct me.

Lee said...

> I think Martin can speak for himself.

Then why are you speaking for him?

KyCobb said...

I'm not, I asked him a question. He is perfectly free to say, no I don't think people should be expected to comply with, "sex roles, historical loyalties, authoritative cultural understandings, religious commitments and teachings."

Old Rebel said...

KyCobb,

And then there's the irony of a commenter on a site dedicated to logic who can only call people names.

Singring said...

Old Rebel, are you, or are you not a member and/or supporter of the League of the South?

Old Rebel said...

Singring,

Member, supporter, BoD member, and blogger.

And proudly so.

KyCobb said...

Old Rebel,

You mean like "limousine liberals"? You posted that the government should adopt policies to ensure the U.S. remains a white majority country so that caucasions will win the coming race war. I think the label is accurate, but if you want to deny being a white supremacist and explain why its not applicable to you feel free. If you want, we can also debate the relative level of totalitarianism between the modern civil rights regime and the Old South you celebrate, in which the majority of the people living in South Carolina had all the rights accorded to cattle.

Old Rebel said...

KyCobb,

Just responding in kind. Respond with arguments, and I reciprocate.

The phrase "the coming race war" is something that emerged from between your ears, not from anything I said.

"White supremacist" is totally meaningless in this context. It could have been applied in the former Rhodesia or South Africa, where whites were a dominant minority, but not here. Again, that's a phrase you used, not me.

If my reading comprehension skills and memory serve me correctly, Martin's post is about the tyranny of modern liberalism, not on the "old South."

Why do you keep trying to change the subject? Say something pertinent to the conversation.

Singring said...

'Member, supporter, BoD member, and blogger.

And proudly so.'

As I thought.

Then do you approve of and agree with the content of this article, entitled 'Our Survival as a people' penned by League of the South President Dr Michael Hill:

http://dixienet.org/rights/our_survival_as_a_people.php

In particular, do you agree with these select statements from the article:

'Our white European-American ancestors had no trouble enunciating the obvious truth that Western Christian civilization was superior to all others.'

and

'None but the most crack-brained utopians believed in social, political, economic, and cultural equality, nor did they believe in the equality of the races in intellect and accomplishment.'

and

'Because Christian liberty has been the product of Western civilization, should the white stock of Europe and American disappear through racial amalgamation or outright genocide, then both liberty and civilization as we have come to know them will cease to exist.'

or how about this one:

'Slavery (and not "man stealing") was successfully defended from a Biblical standpoint through the War for Southern Independence and beyond, but after the South's defeat and subsequent "reconstruction" the institution's legitimacy was systematically undermined in the name of "equality" and misappropriated "Christian ethics."'

or this:

'Sold into slavery by their own people (or by the Muslims whom many blacks hold in such high regard today), Africans were transported out of a heathen and idolatrous continent and set down in the most Christian section of America--the South. There they were instructed in the Christian religion of their masters, given cradle-to-grave security, and generally treated quite humanely.'

It goes on and on and I honestly don't have the stomach to keep going through this vile stuff.

But there it is - if you agree with those above statements, then I don't see how anyone who calls you a 'white supremacist' can be anything but 100 % accurate.

Art said...

"Discrimination and intolerance" are thus held to include those attitudes, habits, and ties--sex roles, historical loyalties, authoritative cultural understandings, religious commitments and teachings--on which independent, informal, traditional, and non-market institutions and arrangements normally rely in order to function and endure.

The Constitution pretty plainly assails "sex roles, historical loyalties, authoritative cultural understandings, religious commitments and teachings" at almost every turn. Which means that Kalb is, in essence, stating that the USA was not intended to, and will not, "function and endure".

Martin, there are nations that share your desire for obedience to "sex roles, historical loyalties, authoritative cultural understandings, religious commitments and teachings", and I rather suspect that you would be much happier in one of them. There would be no PC authorities to tell you to stop beating or killing homosexuals, or to cease the torture and imprisonment your wives (that plural sure sounds sweet, no?), or to stop stealing from and tormenting (if one call call beheading or torching torment) those whose religious tendencies are not yours. I am pretty sure you could make the small adjustment from one Abrahamic god to another.

Art said...

One has to wonder just what historical period Martin pines for, when he praises the wish to submit to "authoritative cultural understandings, religious commitments and teachings".

Maybe it's the 4th century, when the seeds of Christian anti-Semitism that permeated Catholic (and Protestant) Europe for 16 centuries took hold. (I rather suspect that this particular Christian virtue is alive and well in the outlying quarters of the New South.) Those were some mighty powerful "authoritative cultural understandings, religious commitments and teachings" - they gave us history's bloodiest conflicts and an unapologetic cleansing of Christian Europe of Jewry.

Maybe it's early 19th century America, Old Rebel's Eden, where it was not only permissible, but demanded that "lower" races be bought, sold, and treated like the subhumans that the League of the South considers them to be. Makes one especially thankful for the Southern Baptist church, created to oppose emancipation and all the awful, debilitating social and moral evils it brought.

Maybe it's pre-1920's America, when women were expected to accept their lots as chattel, the property (more worthless than slaves) of their menfolk, not really permitted to participate in society except in the role of incubator.

Just what period to you pine for, Martin? And why is not that period grounded in the sorts of liberalism that Kalb decries?

Old Rebel said...

Singring,

Still not sure how this pertains to Martin's post, but if our host will tolerate us ...

Surely you see the benefit of upholding Western Christian civilization. Western cultural practices worth defending include the rule of law, our respect for private property, and for the rights of the individuals. I do indeed see it as superior to Third-World civilization, and would not want to live under those standards.

Equality? The communists slaughtered over 100 million souls in the name of equality. If you believe in evolution, you cannot imagine that people - or peoples - could be equal in talent, drive, and attitude.

Slavery is in the Bible. That's not arguing it should exist today. The point is that Christians held slaves, and were not violating their faith by doing so.

And yes, Africans sold their fellows into slavery. That's history.

The "white supremacist" dodge is an attempt to paint someone as some kind of neo-Nazi just because they want existing immigration laws enforced. It's basically dishonest. But that's leftist ideology for you.

Now can you explain what this has to do with Martin's post?

Martin Cothran said...

Art,

"The whole of the nonliberal past is comprehensively blackened. Traditional ways are presented as the simple negation of unquestionable goods liberalism favors. Obvious declines in civility, morality, and cultural achievement are ignored, denied or redefined as advances. Violence is said to be the fault of the persistence of sex roles, war of religion, theft of social inequality, suicide of stereotyping. Destruction of sex and historical community as ordering principles--and thus of settled family arrangements and cultural forms--is presented as a supremely desirable goal."

Kalb, p. 9.

Martin Cothran said...

Art,

By the way, a friend of mine used to make a living suing the University of Kentucky for civil rights violations. How does it feel to be a part of an institution with a history of racism?

KyCobb said...

"The point is that Christians held slaves, and were not violating their faith by doing so."

With friends like Old Rebel, Martin doesn't need enemies.

One Brow said...

Old Rebel,

Surely you see the benefit of upholding Western Christian civilization. Western cultural practices worth defending include the rule of law, our respect for private property, and for the rights of the individuals. I do indeed see it as superior to Third-World civilization, and would not want to live under those standards.

Many of those standards (rule of law, private property, respect for individual rights) were realized by Enlightenment and/or English common law, and are post-Christian. Western civilization is not necessarily Western Christian civilization.

If you believe in evolution, you cannot imagine that people - or peoples - could be equal in talent, drive, and attitude.

There are no biological reasons these differences to exist among peoples (as opposed to individuals). Any observed differences are cultural/social.

I noticed you did not reject the notion of "racial amalgamation" meaning the death knell for "both liberty and civilization". Do you reject that claim?

I don't particularly care if you fit the label "White Supremacist" or not, but if you care, saying you find the notion of "racial amalgamation" to be a nonsensical fear would be a good start to showing it did not apply.

One Brow said...

Martin Cothran said...
Obvious declines in civility, morality, and cultural achievement are ignored, denied or redefined as advances.

Conservatives, as a whole, show no greater inclination to improve the level of civility, morality, or cultural achievement than liberals, as a whole.

Destruction of sex and historical community as ordering principles--and thus of settled family arrangements and cultural forms--is presented as a supremely desirable goal.

Maintenance of sex and historical community as ordering principles has been used for centuries as jutification for exploitation, exclusion, and subjugation. The destruction of that which justifies exploitation, exclusions, and subjugation is a desirable goal.

One Brow said...

Martin Cothran said...
How does it feel to be a part of an institution with a history of racism?

Horrible, for me, but since I live in this reality, I have little choice.

Martin Cothran said...

One Brow,

Surely you don't work for an institution with a history of civil rights violations do you?

Martin Cothran said...

That would exceed the allowable per thread hypocrisy limit on this blog.

Singring said...

'If you believe in evolution, you cannot imagine that people - or peoples - could be equal in talent, drive, and attitude.'

My apologies, but I have no interest in discussing any matter here or anywhere else with an apparent white supremacist and racist, so this marks my last exchange with you.

Lee said...

Old Rebel:

> Slavery is in the Bible. That's not arguing it should exist today. The point is that Christians held slaves, and were not violating their faith by doing so.

Thomas Sowell wrote a book on slavery, forget what the name of the book was (a whole wing in my library is devoted to Sowell, it's hard to keep up). Anyhow, Sowell points out that slavery manifests itself differently depending on the time and culture.

At the time of Christ, as I recall, slaves comprised basically two different types of people: those who had been conquered and those who owed money they were unable to repay.

However, there was nothing like the systematic oppression to which Africans were subjected from the 17th to the 19th centuries, and particularly in the American South. A stronger culture has a duty to help weaker cultures, not subjugate them and treat them like animals.

I'm not accusing you of necessarily concurring with such treatment, just pointing out that slavery as it existed in Jesus' life wasn't exactly the same sort of institution. Slaves in Jesus' day were generally accorded more freedom and were not prohibited on pain of death from becoming literate. The goal of the Roman Empire was peace and commerce, and they were willing to conquer and employ cruel means toward this end. There was no exalted goal of Western slavery, just cheap labor.

A rule of thumb is that when a Christian country is behaving even more cruelly than the Roman Empire, something has gone very wrong. Fortunately, we had our saints in this struggle too, notably William Wilberforce and John Newton (who wrote "Amazing Grace"), but there was considerable guilt to atone for. I'm thankful for the Christian contribution to the abolition of slavery -- we should set a higher standard -- but we were never required to adopt the world's standard in the first place.

I have posted before that slavery is not as dead as some people seem to think, even in our own country. "Debtor's prison" is a form of slavery, and though we don't call it that, you can wind up in prison if you miss child support payments -- if it walks like a duck, etc. And in my opinion, when we buy Chinese goods, there is a degree to which we are simply outsourcing slavery.

Congratulations, by the way, on rendering Singring speechless. No mean feat.

Art said...

If you believe in evolution, you cannot imagine that people - or peoples - could be equal in talent, drive, and attitude.

Um, I don't think Martin would agree with where this argument goes - namely, that one's religious affiliation is a heritable trait. (Except for the heritable part, this is actually similar to arguments Dawkins and others make.)

Who'da thunk that the New South would be so attuned to the claims of the New Atheists. This blog continues to surprise.

KyCobb said...

Lee,

"you can wind up in prison if you miss child support payments"

However, inability to pay is a defense. I'm sure you aren't arguing that it is immoral to require parents to support their minor children.

Art said...

Art,

By the way, a friend of mine used to make a living suing the University of Kentucky for civil rights violations. How does it feel to be a part of an institution with a history of racism?


So now Adolph Rupp was a racist?

Martin, I do wish you would make up your mind.

In case my point is missed - I don't believe you, Martin, or anyone else can actually point to a real historical age that reflects the Wagnerian opera that you are imagining as the ideal for Western Christian civilization. You, and Kalb, are making stuff up, suggesting that liberals have deconstructed a society and culture that actually never existed. Except in your own minds.

Then there is the fact that, had such a utopia ever existed, it would have evolved through the liberal tyranny that Kalb is so agitated about. Like almost every other aspect of so-called Christian morality and ethics, the concept of "tradition" is rather a relative and transient one.

One Brow said...

Surely you don't work for an institution with a history of civil rights violations do you?

To my knowledge, neither company I work for has been found in a court to have committed civil rights violations. However, that is not the same thing as having "a history of racism", and which was the question offered.

Also, I don't see anything hypocritical about working for companies that have renouced their racist histories, even if they went to the extant of being convicted of civil rights violations, and actively seek to fight the influence of racism today. In fact, I say such companies represent the goal of the civil rights movements.

KyCobb said...

OT, but Old Rebel might find this article interesting.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/census-minority-babies-are-now-majority-in-united-states/2012/05/16/gIQA1WY8UU_story.html?tid=pm_local_pop

The premise that under the current Administration the US is changing demographically due to unlimited illegal immigration is simply false. There has been no net illegal immigration in the last few years, as many undocumented workers have gone home due to job losses here caused by the Recession, and there is unlikely to be significant amounts of illegal immigration in the future due to improving economic conditions and declinging birth rates in Latin America. Nevertheless, the US is on pace to become majority-minority in about thirty years because the majority of babies being born here are non-white. The median age of non-hispanic whites in the US is 42, past the prime childbearing years, while the median age of non-white racial groups is in the 20s and early 30s. You could seal the border with a wall, landmines, and sharks with lasers on their heads, and the U.S. is still going to become majority-minority.

Lee said...

> However, inability to pay is a defense.

Does that defense always work? When it doesn't work, is the judge always right?

> I'm sure you aren't arguing that it is immoral to require parents to support their minor children.

I am willing to argue it shouldn't be a criminal offense to miss child-care payments.

KyCobb said...

"Does that defense always work? When it doesn't work, is the judge always right?"

No more than in any other kind of case, and probably less than most since whether you have the ability to pay is a pretty straightforward issue. Surely you aren't arguing that there should be no criminal law enforcement until we achieve a perfect criminal justice system.

"I am willing to argue it shouldn't be a criminal offense to miss child-care payments."

So we should return to the era when non-custodial parents mostly just ignored child support orders? Why would deadbeats ever pay their child support if they know there will be no consequences if they don't?

Martin Cothran said...

Art,

Who said anything about Rupp? Can you say, "changing the subject"?

I'm talking employment discrimination at UK. Forget about Rupp.

You really need to deal with this, Art. If you continue to repress it, it could come out in another form, like making wild charges about religious history.

Lee said...

> Surely you aren't arguing that there should be no criminal law enforcement until we achieve a perfect criminal justice system.

What other financial debts can someone owe that are punishable under criminal law?

Lee said...

...I mean, where non-payment is punishable under criminal law?

KyCobb said...

Lee,

Child support isn't just another financial debt. Your children aren't a credit card company. Besides, do you know who ends up supporting the kids when the non-custodial parent won't? The taxpayers. It can't be the conservative position that deadbeats shouldn't have to support their kids because they can be signed up for welfare.

Lee said...

> Child support isn't just another financial debt. Your children aren't a credit card company.

Thanks for answering the question. I'll take that to mean my suspicions were correct: no other debt has a criminal liability.

So we do have debtor's prison.

And it is a form of slavery.

Feel free to justify it if you choose. Just wanted to make it clear what in fact you are justifying.

Lee said...

Should add: I know of a case... well, I don't know all the details. Here's what I have heard from the ex-husband and his current wife:

Husband is a small-business owner, very small business, as a private home improvement contractor and handyman. No store-front, just him, a van, and a bunch of tools.

Husband and first wife divorced (in Arizona), she got custody of their three children, he owes $1300/mo in child support.

He re-marries woman with five kids. They promptly have three more. She does not work outside the home -- can't, really.

Total of eleven kids now depending on his paycheck.

Along comes recession. Business stinks. Sometimes he doesn't have a paycheck.

But every month, the story is the same: scrabble together $1300, or else he goes to prison.

I've been suggesting that this is essentially the life of a slave. But on second thought, I think I'd rather be a slave.

KyCobb said...

Lee,

I find it interesting that on this issue we have reversed roles, and you have the bleeding heart. When your friend married a woman with five children, he knew he already had three children of his own he was obligated to support. Noone made him have three more children, that was a choice he made. If he couldn't afford to support the family he already had, he should've held an aspirin between his legs. Children aren't the moral equivalent of slaveowners; they didn't ask to be brought into this world. If your friend wanted to be free of parental obligations, he should've gotten snipped.

Lee said...

> I find it interesting that on this issue we have reversed roles, and you have the bleeding heart.

Liberals seem to believe as a matter of faith that conservatives are heartless. So I'm not surprised at your surprise.

> If your friend wanted to be free of parental obligations, he should've gotten snipped.

Well, he never said or even suggested anything of the sort. To all appearances, he loved all of his kids very much, even the ones that weren't his. He did not seem to want to be free of his obligations, it simply worried him that he had so much trouble meeting them.

So maybe we should just throw him in prison. There. That ought to show him. And just think how much better off his kids will be.

We were not really friends, though we were on a friendly basis. He did some work for me. His current wife happened to be the daughter of a writer that I admired and turned out to be very articulate and well-read.

KyCobb said...

Lee,

"So maybe we should just throw him in prison."

That's the "tough on crime" approach that has given us the largest inmate population in the world, no?
I spent several years enforcing child support orders civilly, and usually criminal charges aren't brought until every other option has been exhausted, though some county prosecutors are more aggressive than others in seeking criminal charges. He could try moving for a reduction in his child support obligation based on his reduced income. The Court wouldn't take into account his need to support his new family, however, because prior-born children take priority.

Old Rebel said...

Lee,

"Congratulations, by the way, on rendering Singring speechless. No mean feat."

Ha! As Peter Brimelow said, "A racist is someone who is winning an argument with a liberal.”

You make some valid points about slavery. Have you ever read Time on the Cross by Fogel and Engerman? It's a cliometric study comparing the living conditions of Northern sweat shops and Southern plantations. It concludes that slaves had a better standard of living.

And you're absolutely right about modern-day slavery. We are all supporting it when we buy junk from Red China.

Old Rebel said...

Art said:

"early 19th century America, Old Rebel's Eden, where it was not only permissible, but demanded that "lower" races be bought, sold, and treated like the subhumans that the League of the South considers them to be.

Now you're just making stuff up. To point out the actual historical record of a period is NOT to defend those practices. It is a fact that almost all African slaves were purchased from Africans. "Roots" was fiction.

The League does not consider any other race "subhuman."

However, we do consider leftists arrogant and dishonest.

Lee said...

> If he couldn't afford to support the family he already had, he should've held an aspirin between his legs.

You know, KyCobb, taxpayers would be a lot better off if we denied aid to dependent children to women who can't hold the aspirin between her legs.

Your sympathies don't seem consistent.

KyCobb said...

Lee,

My sympathies are primarily with the children. If parents can support their children, they ought to rather than make taxpayers do it. But I don't want children to go without if their parents can't support them. So I am consistently in favor of children being supported, preferably by their parents.

Lee said...

> So I am consistently in favor of children being supported, preferably by their parents.

So how does throwing a father in prison help his children?

Art said...

The League does not consider any other race "subhuman."


Just not worthy of citizenship in the New South.

KyCobb said...

Lee,

"So how does throwing a father in prison help his children?"

It doesn't. The threat of prison helps the children. By your logic, we shouldn't imprison murderers because it doesn't help their dead victims. If you tell noncustodial parents that we will never imprison them in the hope they will voluntarily pay their child support, huge numbers of them will simply quit paying. This isn't hypothetical; back in the day when child support orders weren't enforced, very little child support was paid.

Lee said...

> It doesn't. The threat of prison helps the children. By your logic, we shouldn't imprison murderers because it doesn't help their dead victims.

And by your logic, owing a debt is the same as murdering.

Which is why I said earlier that we have resurrected the debtor's prison, and by extension the institution of slavery.

KyCobb said...

Lee,

People who think that supporting their children is the equivalent of slavery probably shouldn't have any. Are you willing to pay higher taxes to support all these abandoned children so that their deadbeat parents don't have to be enslaved? BTW, you can also be imprisoned for not paying your taxes, so you are offering to be a slave to these children so that their deadbeat parents can be free, unless you just want to repeal child labor laws so these shiftless good-for-nothing kids can support themselves.

Art said...

unless you just want to repeal child labor laws so these shiftless good-for-nothing kids can support themselves.

Another one of those "traditional institutions" that them durned liberals did away with.

Lee said...

> People who think that supporting their children is the equivalent of slavery probably shouldn't have any.

I absolutely agree. I'm just questioning whether it ought to be considered a felony punishable by prison.

> Are you willing to pay higher taxes to support all these abandoned children so that their deadbeat parents don't have to be enslaved?

Well, I think that principle is already regnant, is it not? Another successful attempt by liberals to legislate their morality on the rest of us. But legislating morality is okay, as long as it's liberal morality.

> BTW, you can also be imprisoned for not paying your taxes

Well, since my name is not Geithner, you're right, sort of. I can be imprisoned for tax fraud. My understanding is that this is not the same thing as failure to pay. If you're right, though, it certainly isn't unusual that the government would claim certain prerogatives for themselves that they deny to others. Perhaps redress is one of them.

In none of your remarks are you contradicting my claim that child-support law is a form of debtor prison and, by extension, at least in the same ballpark as slavery.

The difference seems to be that you like it and I don't.

One Brow said...

In none of your remarks are you contradicting my claim that child-support law is a form of debtor prison and, by extension, at least in the same ballpark as slavery.

By adding "a form of" and "in the ballpark of" to your proposiiton, you make it uncontradictable. If you disagree, try contradicint this:

"The NBA Championship series is a form of enslaving one team tot he other."

KyCobb said...

Lee,

"The difference seems to be that you like it and I don't."

I am still curious as to what your alternative is. Sometimes life makes you choose the least bad alternative. If you were King, and decreed that child support orders were henceforth unenforceable, what would you then do about the millions of children who lost their child support as a result?

Lee said...

Usually, you make more sense than this, One Brow. But maybe it's my fault for not being clearer.

Let's say "the ballpark" consists of coercion. Slavery of some sort exists when one person can coerce another into working for him. When it was institutionalized in Western law, there existed a relationship based on actual "ownership" -- property, and treated as such legally.

But I don't think this sort of nominal ownership is necessary to establish a master/slave relationship. Slavery, I believe, pre-dates its legal institution in this and other cultures. If one primitive tribe defeats another primitive tribe and conscripts its women and children to do the work, they may not have an institution of property to worry about in the Western sense -- but that doesn't change the essence of the relationship. The ability to coerce someone to work and take away his freedom is slavery too.

And that's what I'm saying about modern child-support law. No, it's not as extreme as the full-Monty, titled, institutionalized, nominal slavery found in the American South before 1865.

But the essence is there: coercion. Coerced labor. Work and pay, or go to prison.

Lee said...

> If you were King, and decreed that child support orders were henceforth unenforceable, what would you then do about the millions of children who lost their child support as a result?

I would say, hmmm, maybe the destruction of the institution of the family wasn't such a good idea after all. But I already knew that.

KyCobb said...

Lee,

Wow, so as King, you would do absolutely nothing while countless children abandoned by their parents thanks to you are deprived of shelter, food, clothing and health care? I have to say I'm glad you aren't King.

Lee said...

> I have to say I'm glad you aren't King.

You're right about one thing. You don't understand the conservative mindset at all. I wouldn't want anyone to be king, not even me. I prefer having institutions that are designed to pit one branch of government against the other -- keeping them off of the people. Despots are for leftist and third-world countries. Admiring despots is for Thomas Friedman and any American journalist and celebrity who's ever sucked up to Castro or the Chinese. I don't need power over other people, I just want to keep their power in check.

So now, where were we? Oh yes... About child-care, I'm not a liberal, so I don't have all the answers. One thing I think I do understand at least to a modest degree is the concept of tradeoffs.

I also understand politics well enough to know politicians like to present tradeoffs as if they are solutions.

Which is to say, before we run off and right a wrong, we need to make sure that in doing so we're not creating a set of brand new wrongs.

I suspect that the laws to imprison the so-called "deadbeat dads" was a successful initiative from man-hating feminists.

But if by some strange fluke of the universe, imprisonment for non-payment of child care happens to be our best shot at justice, which I doubt, at the very least we should face up to what it is, and quit morally preening when we proclaim ourselves a society free of slavery. To our own selves be true, or something to that effect.

I have noticed that liberal policy can be every bit as unjust and tyrannical as any despotism. By coincidence I just happened to come across this old article.

http://www.sptimes.com/News/061800/Perspective/Can_it_truly_be_Fathe.shtml

The gist is that, though DNA evidence can acquit someone of murder or rape, more and more the courts are not seeing it as a reason to set free someone who has become the designated slave of a woman who lied about his paternity. It's an old article, but if the editorialist was right about the direction the courts were taking, that's scary stuff.

> "As court after court weighs in on the question, it's apparent that it doesn't really matter who the real father is. If the courts have a man on a string paying support, they're going to keep him hanging."

So being concerned about the kids, above all else, in cases such as this, mean somebody can wind up in prison for failing to support another man's kids. And that's okay with the courts.

So, back to the concept of tradeoffs... While I sympathize greatly with kids abandoned by their fathers, I'm not quite ready to nuke every human right the fathers have to make the world otherwise perfect.

KyCobb said...

Lee,

The King thing was just for purposes of a hypothetical; I wanted to know if you had an alternative way to support children. Apparently you don't care if children are fed, sheltered and clothed or not.

A couple of points. I've done a lot of child support litigation, so I know a few things about this. First, child support isn't about punishing fathers, its about supporting children. The child support laws are gender neutral; I've had a lot of child support cases against mothers. Those were mostly brought by the state after a woman abandoned her kids with a grandmother or aunt who then signed them up for welfare programs, but I have also sought child support for fathers from mothers.

Second, once a man has established through a paternity test that he is not the father, his current child support obligation will be terminated. However, if he had acknowledged paternity or allowed a default judgment to be entered against him, and allows unpaid child support to accrue before requesting a paternity test (usually after he has been indicted for non-support), then he will have to pay that back child support unless the court determines the woman engaged in fraud. IOW, if you are sued for child support and suspect the child isn't yours, you have to take at least enough initiative to request a paternity test; you won't even have to pay for it unless it comes back positive. You can't just ignore it and hope it goes away, because the child needs support. My personal preference would be that before an unmarried man was allowed to acknowledge paternity or to have a child support order entered against him, that a paternity test be mandatory.

Your position seems like an extreme libertarian position that might be taken be a sexual hedonist rather than a conservative position. I would think that the conservative position would be that we have to take responsibility for our actions, and we have an obligation to support our children that we can't just walk away from. You don't have to hate men to think parents shouldn't be able to simply abandon their children. If this is the conservative position, then it certainly supports the old canard that conservatives quit caring about children as soon as they are born. The notion that any obligation we owe to others is the equivalent of slavery is just silly. Take responsibility for your own actions; if you view supporting your own children as slavery, then get a vasectomy, because kids need a lot of support. They don't need a sperm donor who thinks he ought to be able to have his fun and simply walk away without consequence for himself, like that guy in the news recently who has thirty kids with a bunch of different women.