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Dads Against Discrimination Inc ABN 82 053 905 623 IS THIS WHAT WE WANT FOR OUR KIDS?| Back to Articles | THE WASHINGTON TIMES 29 September 2000
THE TYRANNY WITHIN Tyranny is creeping up on us. If you don't believe it, consider the most prominent hallmarks of the Nazi and communist regimes, which sought to supplant democracy in the 20th century. In National Socialist Germany and the Soviet Union, there were no First Amendment rights. No one could voice an opinion contrary to the politically correct views enforced by the Gestapo and the KGB. Media and education were used to instill politically correct thinking and bring denunciation upon anyone who departed from politically correct thinking. This is precisely the situation that exists today in the vast majority of American colleges and universities. Verbal and facial expressions that are contrary to political correctness result in sensitivity training (a form of brainwashing) or expulsion for the offender, who may have done nothing more than laugh. If the source of mirth is an ethnic joke, a blonde joke or a hilarious claim by a multiculturalist, the hapless offender discovers that his constitutional protections do not exist. In Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, there were victim groups that were championed and oppressor groups that were suppressed. In Germany, the "victims" were Aryans, who were said to be under the financial hegemony of Jews. In the Soviet Union, the hegemonic group was the bourgeoisie, who allegedly held sway over an oppressed proletariat. In both countries, victims were permitted to exercise violent language and actions against oppressors. In the United States [and Australia] today, white heterosexual able-bodied males constitute the hegemonic group. Everyone else is a member of a victim group. In Germany and the Soviet Union, the abstract and imaginary group roles of oppressor and victim were given a frightful reality by ideologues. Race and class categories became the basis for discrimination and new legal systems that favored victims' groups with preferences. On American campuses, multicultural ideology has revived the concepts of race and class oppression, and added new ones based on gender and sexual orientation. Men oppress women, and heterosexuals oppress homosexuals. According to multiculturalists, our culture and values reflect nothing but the arbitrary domination of society by white heterosexual males. University of Pennsylvania professor Alan Kors says that, thanks to multiculturalism, "half a century after the defeat of Nazism, we distinguish by blood and we equate blood with culture." We now think like Nazis and explain our society and culture in terms of race (and gender) hegemony. Tyrannical states attack the family. Both the Nazis and communists are infamous for state intrusions in family affairs. In the United States, similar bureaucratic and political intrusions come from family courts. Most Americans are unaware of the existence of these relatively new "courts." Howard University Professor Stephen Baskerville is the leading authority on these courts. He says family courts are "the most dangerous institution posing a threat to constitutional rights in our society. The only parallels are the ideological-bureaucratic dictatorships of the last century." Family courts claim immunity from the Constitution and from scrutiny by federal courts. Mr. Baskerville describes them as follows: "Their proceedings are secret and unrecorded. Their orders are enforced by bureaucratic police who do not wear uniforms and whose sole responsibility is to conduct surveillance over families and private lives. As such, these police are akin to secret police. By the very nature of their jurisdiction, these courts and police are the most intrusive and invasive arm of government, and yet they are accountable to virtually no one. Such an institution is intolerable in a free society." Recently a family court judge ordered the parents of a 7-year-old boy in Berne, N.Y., to put their child on Ritalin, a behavior-control drug. The alternative was to be found guilty of "educational neglect," an offense that would open the possibility of their child being seized by Child Protective Services — a Hillary Clinton "village" institution straight from the pages of the Gestapo. The child suffered serious side effects from the drug, but parents no longer have the right to decide what is best for their children. Tyrannical states assault the individual in the inner recesses of his consciousness. He is not permitted to think certain thoughts or to express a prohibited thought privately to anyone. Recently, Janice Barton encountered a Spanish-speaking couple while leaving a restaurant in Manistee, Mich. She turned to her mother and said, "I wish these [ethnic slur] would learn to speak English." An off-duty deputy sheriff overheard the private remark, followed the woman to her car and noted her tag number. Janice Barton was sentenced to 45 days in jail for her thought crime.
This couldn't happen in a free country.
After Communism collapsed in Eastern Europe in 1989 it was popular to
daub the hands of Communist statues with red paint, symbolizing the
death perpetrated by these regimes. Someday people may do the same to
some statues in the Capital. By an overwhelming vote the House of
Representatives has just passed a measure that, while ostensibly
designed to prevent "violence against women," will almost certainly
result in the much more of it against children.
Far-fetched? Like most political chicanery today, the so-called
Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) is being billed as benefiting
children, in this case against their dangerous fathers. Yet by
removing their natural protectors this law will instead leave children
exposed to the real dangers that threaten them. Consider three
long-established facts:
First, there is no epidemic of violence specifically against women.
Last year the socialist-feminist magazine Mother Jones, hardly a
bastion of male chauvinism, reported that "women report using violence
in their relationships more often than men" and "wives hit their
husbands at least as often as husbands hit their wives." While the
politicians of feminism, such as the National Organization for Women,
refuse to acknowledge this truth, its theorists admit and even
celebrate the fact. "Women are doing the battering," writes feminist
icon Betty Friedan, "as much or more than men." In his book, Women
Can't Hear What Men Don't Say, former NOW board member Warren Farrell
provides a bibliography of studies going back a quarter century, many
by feminist scholars, establishing beyond doubt that domestic violence
is an equal opportunity problem. Martin Fiebert of California State
University has compiled a similar bibliography of 117 studies.
Second and more important, the hysteria over domestic violence is
largely geared toward one aim: removing as many children as possible
from the care and protection of their fathers. Donna Laframboise of
the National Post investigated battered women’s shelters and
concluded they constituted "one stop divorce shops" whose primary
purpose was not to shelter abused women but to promote divorce. These
shelters, which are funded through VAWA, issue affidavits against
fathers sight unseen that are accepted without any corroborating
evidence by judges eager (for their own bureaucratic reasons) to
justify restraining orders against fathers and the removal of their
children. Even feminists contend that most domestic violence takes
place within the context of "custody battles." "All of this domestic
violence industry is about trying to take children away from their
fathers," writes leftist columnist John Waters, who predicts: "When
they've taken away the fathers, they'll take away the mothers."
Third and most serious of all, the most dangerous environment for a
child is the home of a single mother. Children in single-parent
households are at much higher risk for physical violence and sexual
molestation than those living in two-parent homes. A British study
found children are up to 33 times more likely to be abused when a
live-in boyfriend or stepfather is present. "Contrary to public
perception," write Patrick Fagan and Dorothy Hanks, "research shows
that the most likely physical abuser of a young child will be that
child's mother, not a male in the household." Mothers accounted for
55% of child murders according to a 1994 Justice Department report. As
Maggie Gallagher writes in her 1996 book The Abolition of Marriage:
"The person most likely to abuse a child physically is a single
mother. The person most likely to abuse a child sexually is the
mother's boyfriend or second husband. . . . Divorce, though usually
portrayed as a protection against domestic violence, is far more
frequently a contributing cause."
By providing a gravy train of government funding to favored
ideological groups, VAWA will further empower the divorce industry to
seize control of more children, with predictable results: more
divorce, more single-mother homes, more abused children. It would be
tempting to see this as another example of the "law of unintended
consequences," except in this instance we know the consequences in
advance, because we have seen the results of the original VAWA passed
in 1994.
When even the left-wing press, including some feminists, is
questioning the dogmas and excesses of organized feminism, why are
conservatives silent and subdued in the face of such dangerous
legislation? Many believe communism survived for decades because
conservatives are incapable of organizing an effective political
opposition. Is this happening again?
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