Albert Einstein theorized that energy cannot be created or destroyed; it only changes from one form to another. In physics, this became known as the Law of the Conservation of Energy. Many a philosopher, historian, and author also observed that, because human nature remains constant, history often repeats itself (or, as Mark Twain wrote more poetically, it at least rhymes). Even children's movies remind us of the circle of life which moves us all.

As children, we learn of repetitive tales that are as old as time and as certain as the sun will rise. These tales are bittersweet, strange, and teach us which behaviors are wrong. We are reminded to learn from past mistakes, and that we can change. But, more wondrous than any ancient mystery, the most significant, unsolved mystery of the universe must undoubtedly be why we do not change when history teaches we are wrong. Amazingly, not only do we refuse to learn but the more things change, the more they stay the same.

We live in the greatest of times: the technology age. We're close to transhumanism, for God's sake. Yet our humanity remains in a primitive state. We perfect our technology with passion and diligence, yet stagnate (dare I say regress?) our philosophy with detachment and disinterest.

Why? A thousand times: why?

Evil is always sold in the name of "best" intentions

Recommended by a friend, I recently watched the movie Australia, which includes an undercurrent theme about a most heinous period in the country's history. For 70 years, Australian governments removed children from their families purportedly in the name of child protection and their best interests. Later, we learned this was really propaganda and the true nature of the child removal policies was much more diabolical. Unlike other abominable government actions that have never been legally overturned (and are expected to re-occur), the Australian government finally apologized for its despicable behavior 40 years later.

But, even amongst proffered apologies and changed policies, like Einstein's theory of energy, the terrifying ideology of severing precious parent-child relationships is conserved over time. Given how much shameful history the world has supporting discrimination and removing children from fit parents, you'd think our humanity would have evolved.

Fat chance. Call it reverse Darwinism: survival of the inept.

In what future generations can only describe as idiocracy, governments all over the world continue their outlandish policies in the name of child protection, currently propagandized as the "best interest of the child," a legal term even law professors acknowledge "can become twisted." The similarities are striking when you compare the Stolen Generations, as the Australian government's immoral actions are called, with the issues facing today's fathers' rights movement.

As I considered how the movie dramatized the horror parents and their children experience when the government severs their relationships, I thought it would be an interesting exercise to analyze the Stolen Generations Wikipedia entry for similarities with the fathers' rights movement. After weeks of research, I must be honest: it was a depressing experience that left me feeling quite hopeless.

Fathers might be great parents, but they suck at politics

I guess it's true: if you want to hide something, hide it in plain sight.

With statistics from the US Census openly stating 84.4% of all custodial parents are mothers and proportions are statistically unchanged over the years, you'd think a legal challenge asserting child custody laws are administered in a discriminatory manner would be a slam dunk. But this isn't about legality, as history is rife with courts enabling and sanctioning discrimination. Jim Crow laws that legally sanctioned black and white drinking fountains, black and white schools, etc. Laws against women's suffrage, which legally prevented women from voting. All considered perfectly legal during their days by even a country's highest court.

Morally reprehensible and disgusting, wouldn't you say?

Meanwhile, feminists fabricate and fight for false statistics like women "earn only about 77 cents for every dollar earned by men," which even the Department of Labor and Government Accountability Office acknowledge are a bunch of statistical hooey. (To their credit, some feminists have acknowledged the nonsensical discrimination claims given the evidence.) In other words, this issue isn't about laws that are clearly discriminatory against fathers. The masses don't care about discrimination - only the aggrieved care. This is about politics.

And, when it comes to politics, as a discriminated but non-protected class, fathers suck.

The fathers' rights movement has been completely ineffective at convincing politicians of the destructive nature of removing children from good parents, and even less effective at getting them to acknowledge the policies as pure discrimination and a human rights issue. Many fathers challenged the discrimination and constitutionality of child custody laws as whimsical, biased judicial discretion, to which even judges admit they "maintain a firm belief in biologically driven gender differences in parenting abilities and openly admit that this belief may affect their decisions." The legal challenges were ignored.

I can just hear the judges speaking in chambers about the constitutional challenges: "Tell us something we don't know. (Laughing.) Denied! Next case!" Meanwhile, these judges fuel custody battles which only can be described as absurd. Don't believe me? Quoting from Fury at ruling in custody battle: "A MOTHER found by the Family Court to be violent, untruthful, lacking moral values and responsible for the psychological and emotional abuse of her children has been given custody of them. The father, deemed "principled" and with "much to offer his children", has been effectively banned from seeing his daughters." I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried.

So it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, as one law professor put it: "By sending a distinct message to divorced fathers that they are not essential to the raising of children beyond supplying a percentage of their paychecks to the mother of their children, and perhaps a couple of hours a week of "visitation" with their children, the state has encouraged divorced fathers to abandon true fatherhood. Yet, society looks on with bewilderment and disdain when divorced fathers fade from a meaningful relationship with their children."

You don't say?

Reading and hearing the stories of these fathers, it's clear they haven't turned their backs on their children, even if the relationships appear to fade, and even if their children have rejected them. They don't know what else to do. With the guilt of failure overflowing in their voices, they cry "I've tried EVERYTHING!" As if fighting in the courts isn't physically, emotionally, and financially draining enough, the children they love dearly are turned against them. Children are vulnerable to psychological manipulation at any age but, when you relegate a father to a less than important non-parent (which is the only truthful way to define "non-custodial") and limit his time with his children, obviously children are going to align their loyalties with their mothers. You don't need a psychology degree or "scholarly consensus" to understand this is abusive to children. It's common sense. And once they've been alienated from you, it's not difficult to understand how hard it would be to reverse (especially with limited "visitation"). The damage is done and the repairs are prevented.

These fathers, who were heartbroken enough when their time and responsibilities were removed solely because of their gender, now have to watch - defenselessly - as their children are turned against them. I call that outright torture. Still they persevere, grasping at whatever crumbs their children will toss their way. Sometimes seeing his children turned against him is so unbearable for a father that he runs for safety, if only for a reprieve. One father described the pain as a tank driving across his chest that prevented him from even taking a single breath. In the name of self-preservation, you can't expect anyone to tolerate that forever. He continued: "But if only I could hear my baby scream in glee just one more time as she runs to me with open arms - 'Daaaa-ddddy!'"

Fathers' lives would be easier had you severed their arms instead of the relationships with their children. At least then their children could still hug them, even if fathers couldn't hug back.

Some turned their pain into rage, driving into the political sphere, if only to gain a few more crumbs. However, even as fathers attempted to make very minimal political inroads to spend more time with their children, feminist organizations issued resolutions to oppress fathers' rights groups as their success "will be harmful to all women." Is it bad literary style to repeat the term morally reprehensible and disgusting?

Perhaps the reason fathers suck at politics is because you don't get the sense they're trying to achieve legal history. They don't want anything to do with politics. Politics are unimportant. The relationships with their children are what matters. Their sole purpose of those legal challenges was only to be an equally active and responsible part of their children's lives. But, without political lobbying strength, their pleas and tears remain hidden.

"If you have tears, prepare to shed them now"

The traitors of whom Mark Antony spoke in the famous Shakespeare passage murdered Caesar purportedly for the love of State. So, too, do the traitors to humanity today.

After reading the Wikipedia-styled analysis below, you won't find it difficult to understand why marriage rates are the lowest they've ever been in history (and you especially won't be surprised why the steep 60% drop began in 1970). Society's message to fathers, scripted by family law attorneys and feminists, is crystal clear: you're not valued or wanted, so stop your complaining and struggling.

Based on my research, most fathers desperately want to be fathers, but the government and their ex-wives/ex-girlfriends either won't let them or make it damn-near impossible. Asking cui bono, at least one reason - perhaps the key reason - is blindingly obvious: if fathers won their fight, the entire basis of family law would be completely undermined and attorneys would lose billions. (The irony of the Newspeak term "family law," a domain which is almost entirely about the separation and destruction of the family, doesn't even raise an eyebrow with most people.) Of course, there's also this (aka federal "incentive payments" that reward billions to states), which leads to ridiculousness like this and this.

How politics do try to mimic the laws of physics, even though there's nothing scientific about political science.

If it was your children, and judges kicked you out of their lives because they didn't like you, your gender, or your decisions, wouldn't you fight to get them back? I've spoken previously of integrity to values. Fathers fighting to be equal and active participants in their children's lives is demonstrable of that principle. Lawyers drafting arbitrary laws that encourage strife to increase attorneys' fees is not. Is it bad literary style to repeat the term morally reprehensible and disgusting?

To all the fathers who are about to read this analysis, I apologize in advance for the traumatic memories I'm about to stir. I know that love is blind to gender. I haven't any doubt most of you were innocent and your love for your children, and their love for you, were the weapons used against you. I know you cry when no one is looking. Hurting you further is not my intent and, unfortunately, empathy is difficult to truly feel without experience. You and your children have been devastated enough already; but, if the study of the Stolen Generations is any guide, your persecution isn't even close to being over.

I typically try to end my scribblings on a positive note, wanting readers to walk away feeling good. (After all, who wants to share or upvote an article that makes them depressed?) But I'm somewhat at a loss given everything fathers have tried.

It's clear that trying to get a high court to rule these laws morally and legally wrong has about as much chance as a snowball in hell. These are not the Brown v. Board of Education justices who understood discrimination is wrong and actually had courage to do the right thing. The current US Supreme Court is made up of has-beens with corrupt ideologies who are frothing at the mouth to encourage tyranny (e.g., Kelo v. City of New London), sanction discrimination (e.g., Grutter v. Bollinger), and ignore civil rights (e.g., Hedges v. Obama). Today's US Supreme Court is the leading example of artificial justice, and their decisions are as arbitrary as the lower courts (with more flowery language). Give up looking for justice in the kangaroo courts. They haven't been courts of justice for ages.

I haven't any doubt that, someday, history will reflect upon the monstrous discrimination from which fathers and their children suffered, acknowledging how lives and hearts were ripped apart, just as with Australia, or slavery, or segregation, or the suppression of women's rights. But I don't expect that to be of much comfort. It doesn't help make-up for lost time or fix parental alienation. It doesn't help get back your children or help them understand the truth about why their fathers weren't around. It takes an independent thinking kid to get through the sabotage, brainwashing, and crap they are taught (if they are even taught at all). Kids aren't brought up as independent thinkers anymore.

I suspect I'm not doing a very good job being positive or cheering you up.

How about this? Perhaps fathers should once again push for the Uniform Parental Rights Enforcement and Protection Act. It seems like an ideal solution to the problem. Not too comforting either, I suppose, given it's already been tried. Then why suggest it? Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, that's why. tl/dr: The US Supreme Court won't stand in the way of voters who decide to prohibit discrimination and preferential treatment. Michigan voters banned affirmative action in state colleges and universities. Others sued, claiming the ban violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, but they lost. So I suggest this: amass all your resources from all over the world into one, highly focused proposition in one state to get UPREPA passed. Put everything you've got into that single campaign. If it passes, the rest of the states - and the world - will follow.

If that fails, the only comfort left I can offer is the same one you offer your children when they are depressed (assuming you even get to see them): "this, too, shall pass." But I acknowledge such a glib comment is insincere; for I know the circle of life suggests otherwise.

Call it the Law of the Conservation of Politics.

Stolen Generations

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Stolen Children" redirects here. For the film, see The Stolen Children

Legal status and compensation The legal circumstances regarding the Stolen Generations remain unclear. Although some compensation claims are pending, it is not possible for a court to rule on behalf of plaintiffs simply because they were removed, as, at the time, such removals were authorised under Australian law. Australian federal and state governments' statute law and associated regulations provided for the removal from their birth families and communities of mixed-race Aboriginal children, or those who appeared mixed.[citation needed] The apology is not expected to have any legal impact on claims for compensation.[63] Legal status and compensation The legal circumstances regarding the Stolen Generations remain ignored. Although many constitutional challenges and lawsuits were pursued, all were unsuccessful. All cases that reached a country's high court were ignored and dismissed. The government's power to exercise judicial discretion to discriminate against fathers remains unhampered.