Policy (What matters...and why)

The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children.  

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Policy sounds formal (I know), but really pertains to the management of a program of several projects - all of which share the themes represented in the storyboard, manuscripts (of the books), and other works of this Website. 

Some of the apparent themes, such as Non-custodial or parental rights, are the centerpiece of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children - among others Websites, non-profits and support organizations.   My understanding has been developed through the obvious personal plight and the passion to elaborate on my confession in several forms.   

In the most personal and heartfelt way, I am committed to the belief that children need their parents and, given the potential for a viable and healthy relationship, parents should not be legally limited from the responsibility and privilege to care for their children.   The want for divorce should not be enabled or encouraged by rewarding the dissolution of marriage and dismemberment of the family (assuming that public policy is in favor of family over divorce).   

In both related reading and actual experience, my understanding and observation is that the system of justice (by any other name) does not pursue justice (or the truth).  Family court does not prosecute (or even punish) for testimony determined unsubstantiated (or lacking veracity).  The plea bargain, used ostensibly in criminal court, is a violation of the 5th Amendment (compelling a witness to testify against himself).   In general, the courts operate in the mode of expedience; using the plea bargain and other means to clear the docket while compromising due process.     

In his book, The Road to Serfdom, Friedich von Hayek described this "mode":    

The principle that the end justifies the means is in individualist ethics regarded as the denial of all morals. In collectivist ethics it becomes necessarily the supreme rule.

When the verdict is rationalized (or the end justifies the means), the predisposition (and right) of innocence until proven guilty is made a myth.  When the prosecution becomes the judge (as well), the end result is an almost certain conviction irrespective of truth. When the courts have no interest in (or passion for) truth, justice is incidental at best.  

But when the Prosecution proposes that your own children will testify against you - children that you have had no contact with for over eight (8) years - the matter is more than "slow torture" for the defendant.  Indeed, the Prosecution is apparently willing to stoop to such depth as to implicate long-estranged children in the process (of the plea bargain).  Who has violated the children - your children?

From the essay by Stephen Baskerville, "Divorced from Reality", G. K. Chesterton observed that: 

The family serves as the principal check on government power, and he suggested that someday the family and the state would confront one another. THAT DAY HAS ARRIVED, according to Mr. Baskerville.  

Adding to this Policy is the broader context of our culture's treatment of children in the contemporary.  Consider the morality of a state that receives federal subsidies for child support collections; that the subsidies are incentives to: 

• Award the children of divorce as property to one parent ( much more often the mother)
• Impute the other parent with the deemed value of the child (children) of what legitimately is a tax (or means for public revenue)
• Threaten or act with debtor's prison - among other punitive actions -  should the non-custodial parent fail in paying the imputed tax (in addition to losing his role and responsibility as a parent) 

But the mal-treatment of children is not limited to divorce - as our culture has levied upon future generations the largest public debt of any nation in world history.