More ‘Just Words’ From Obama
Barack Obama spent part of his Father’s Day “by calling on black fathers, who he said are “missing from too many lives and too many homes,” to become active in raising their children.”
“They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men. And the foundations of our families are weaker because of it,” the Democratic presidential candidate said Sunday at a largely black church in his hometown.
“We can’t simply write these problems off to past injustices,” Obama said to applause Sunday. “Those injustices are real. There’s a reason our families are in disrepair, and some of it has to do with a tragic history, but we can’t keep using that as an excuse.”
“Any fool can have a child. That doesn’t make you a father,” he said. “It’s the courage to raise a child that makes you a father.”
Obama is being hailed in certain liberal quarters, and assailed in other liberal quarters (for “singling out” black men and “blaming the victim” just like the racist white establishment wants him to).
I don’t disagree with a single word Obama said (as applied to the specific statements quoted above). There is a crisis in the black family that has been taking place for decades. And at the very core of that crisis is the absence of black fathers from the homes of their children. The question is whether we can take any positive steps toward ending the destruction of the black family through liberal approaches.
Let me begin with one of Obama’s “solutions” and play devil’s advocate for a little while.
The AP article states that “Obama often speaks about the importance of parental involvement. In Washington, he’s sponsoring legislation to get more child support money to children by offering a tax credit for fathers who pay support, more efficient collection and penalties for fathers who don’t meet their obligations.”
But how does that view logically square with the sacred liberal doctrine of “a woman’s right to choose“?
How ‘A Woman’s Right to Choose’ Is Inherently Unfair to Men
At the moment a man (white, black, or otherwise) and a woman conceive, standard liberal doctrine is that nothing of any value whatsoever was created. You merely have what the abortion industry lovingly calls the “products of conception.” There is no life in any meaningful sense. There is no child. There’s just valueless, meaningless goo.
Well, that man (please don’t call him a “father“, because you have to have a child to be a father) goes his merry way. And of course, the woman (please don’t call her a “mother” for the same reason as above) gets to go “choose.”
How on earth is the man responsible? He didn’t father a child; he contributed half of the ingredients to some gooey thing called “a zygote” that some leftist philosophers agree will become a child a child at birth (mind you Peter Singer doesn’t think so; a newborn merits fewer “human rights” than does a pig on his view).
Now, on this liberal view, I can see requiring a man to pay for half the cost of an abortion. After all, he was 50% responsible for creating the goo creature “fetus,” and it is only fair that he should be half responsible for taking care of the mess.
But “child support“? Requiring “penalties for fathers who don’t meet their obligations“?
What kind of nonesense is that?
All that poor man did was take part in producing a goo creature. He didn’t “father” “a child.” Liberal theology requires that we affirm that denial.
If he “fathered” “a child,” after all, then logically abortion kills a child. No liberal should tolerate that kind of talk.
And – as wrong as it is to say he “fathered” “a child,” it is even worse to claim that it is in any sense “his” “child.”
If this goo creature “fetus” were “his” “child,” after all, then he would have a right to decide what happens to it. Which he most certainly does not – and MUST NOT – have according to all the tenants of liberal thought that worships “a woman’s right to choose.”
If it is “his child,” then no one could kill it or take it away from him. The goo creature “fetus” is not his child, even in theory: it is not a child at all, and – whatever you want to call the goo creature – it is not his, because the woman and the woman alone gets to make all the decisions for it.
If it is “my shirt” then no one can take it off my back. If it is my dog then you’d BETTER not hurt it. But when it comes to being “a father,” the term “my child” doesn’t mean a whole heck of a lot.
Just to make sure we’re tracking together, allow me to restate: According to liberalism, it aint a child, and it certainly aint his. It is nothing more than a goo creature, a thing, the “products of conception,” and ALL rights without a single exception must necessarily go immediately to the woman. A father gets all the rights he deserves in liberal thought: absolutely none.
Now, if a woman subjectively “chooses” to be “a mother,” then suddenly the man who helped produce the goo creature “fetus” becomes “a father,” and he darned better take his responsibility seriously. She gets to choose for both of them. For all three of them, in fact. That is the fundamental injustice of abortion.
It is her sole, solitary decision whether to kill the goo creature or cherish the child. It is her sole, solitary decision whether the man with whom she became pregnant becomes “a father” or not. It is her sole, solitary decision whether the “father” is forced to pay child support or not. And it is generally her decision whether “the father” has visitation rights or not (she can always move away with her child, if nothing else).
Here’s an anology that I really hope some liberal takes me up on. A liberal and I get a car together (make it a Ferrari, as I want nothing less than the very best in all my analogies). I of course get to possess “the right to choose” in this relationship, and I choose that the liberal doesn’t get to drive it. That is my choice. But once a month, when it comes time to make the car payment, I decide that it is the liberal’s Ferrari too – requiring him to meet his obligation and pay support. And dad burn it, Mr. Liberal, “our” car needs a garage, and you sure better not shirk on providing gas for “our car.”
Liberals have been puzzling over this part for decades now. But somehow, for some incomprehensible reason, men (and yes, most definitely black men) don’t seem to appreciate this deal.
How can you possibly hold a man responsible for “child support” when at the time of his involvement it WASN’T a child at all, but merely the “products of conception“? And, given the fact that abortion is strictly “a woman’s right to choose” – with a man being absolutely forbidden from interfering with her decision – how can you possibly require that a man be held accountable for a woman’s decision not to choose abortion when she could easily have done so? Come on: if it used to be a product of conception and subsequently became a child, and if women and women alone get to choose abortion to kill the P.O.C., then whose freakin’ fault is it that that meaningless little P.O.C. became a child?
How does the expression go? Fatherhood and a quarter will get you a cup of coffee (adjust for inflation accordingly).
The liberal doctrine of a woman’s right to choose abortion assumes that women should have only rights, and that men should have only duties imposed upon them. After all, the more stupid an idea is, the more necessary it is to have a fall guy. Otherwise, people might start holding the idiots who came up with the stupid idea responsible.
But there is more. The same root evil underlying abortion has been the root cause resulting in the destruction of the black family.
The Terrible Idea Abortion Shares With American Slavery
Barack Obama’s views on black fathers are nothing new. Bill Cosby spoke out years ago (and was unrelentingly attacked as an “Uncle Tom” for his troubles by so-called “Civil Rights leaders.” And some forty years ago, Senator Patrick Moynihan issued a report trying to understand and help resolve the dilemma of the black family. He too was excoriated by the “black community” for his troubles, and labeled as a racist.
Chapter III of the report, titled, “The Roots of the Problem,” contains the following analysis on why American slavery was so devastating upon its victims.
The most perplexing question abut American slavery, which has never been altogether explained, and which indeed most Americans hardly know exists, has been stated by Nathan Glazer as follows: “Why was American slavery the most awful the world has ever known?” The only thing that can be said with certainty is that this is true: it was.
American slavery was profoundly different from, and in its lasting effects on individuals and their children, indescribably worse than, any recorded servitude, ancient or modern. The peculiar nature of American slavery was noted by Alexis de Tocqueville and others, but it was not until 1948 that Frank Tannenbaum, a South American specialist, pointed to the striking differences between Brazilian and American slavery. The feudal, Catholic society of Brazil had a legal and religious tradition which accorded the slave a place as a human being in the hierarchy of society — a luckless, miserable place, to be sure, but a place withal. In contrast, there was nothing in the tradition of English law or Protestant theology which could accommodate to the fact of human bondage — the slaves were therefore reduced to the status of chattels — often, no doubt, well cared for, even privileged chattels, but chattels nevertheless.
Slavery has always been hard for slaves, but there was something far more sinister to the phenomenon of American slavery. Many peoples have historically become slaves, and yet fully recovered within a fairly short time of the end to their captivity. What was different in the unique case of American slavery was the complete dehumanization of slaves. In contrast to the description of slavery in the Bible, and in contrast to the institution of slavery in Brazil (which endured another 20 years after the United States abolished slavery), American slavery denied the dignity and humanity of Africans in bondage.
It was that denial of humanity and human dignity, more than anything else, that has so traumatized the black descendants of those slaves to this very day.
The horror of abortion, like the horror of American slavery, is that it denies the dignity and humanity of its victim.
When you deny the humanity, dignity, and ultimate incommensurable transcendent worth of a class of human beings, then any depradation or violence can be justified. It was what the American industry of slavery did to blacks, it was what the Holocaust did to Jews, and it is what abortion does to the unborn.
Just as the institution of slavery could not have endured if the human status of blacks was acknowledged, so also the institution of abortion could not endure if the human status of the unborn is acknowledged.
And what impact does that denial of humanity, of human dignity, of transcendent value of the unborn have?
It goes far beyond the status of those who are killed.
If the humanity, dignity, and incommensurable transcendent value of the unborn is recognized, then it necessarily becomes a duty for parents of that marvelous unborn little human being to love, care, and support their child.
This is why ultrasound technology has proven so powerful. The Sep. 30, 2007 Constitutent Insight Report provided concluded that 89% of women who see their unborn children in an ultrasound when seeking an abortion opt out of it and choose to keep the baby. This is because they come to see with their own eyes that their babies are human beings for the first time.
If that status is denied, then the “duty” to love, care, and support becomes a “choice,” and one can choose to love, care and support their child the way they can choose to love their dog. Whether children are precious little human beings or worthless products of conception is entirely up to the choice of the pregnant woman.
Women can renounce any responsibility for the life they helped to create by choosing death for their “products of conception.” Men are denied that recourse, but they can make the philosophically identical choice by choosing to walk away.
If a woman can choose to renounce her child even to the point of choosing to kill it, why shouldn’t a man be able to choose to walk away?
The Abandonment of the Concept of Justice by the Legal System of the Welfare State
Insanity gives birth to more insanity and Injustice gives birth to more injustice, just as a lie gives birth to more lies to cover for the first lie. Liberals who justify abortion on the grounds that the goo creature who is conceived is most definitely not a child turn around and attempt to force man after man to pay child support in order to fund the welfare state they have created.
Douglas M Richardsonposts his own story of being forced to pay child support to the man who had an affair with his wife. If being a cuckhold isn’t bad enough for you, take your problems before a judge. A man named Andy Bathie who donated sperm to a lesbian couple was made to pay child support, despite having no involvement in the children’s lives.
In Bernie Goldberg’s book Bias, he includes a chapter titled “Targeting Men.” He related a 1998 story he covered “that would have sent shivers down Kafka’s spine,” about a man named John Johnson who was forced to pay child support for a woman he’d never even met based on a legal technicality. He described the case of Tony Jackson, a working class black man with a wife and family, who was put on the hook by the court for $13,000 in child support even after a DNA test proved he was not the father. An undercover LA police officer was similarly ordered to pay $14,000 in child support based on the affidavit of a former girlfriend even though he was similarly cleared by a DNA test (see pp. 144-147).
A man would get fairer treatment by being cast into a pit of starving feral dogs than he would receive at the hands of a typical liberal family court judge. At least he could have a chance to fight the feral dogs.
The very theory of abortion based upon a woman’s right to choose fundamentally denies men equal rights under the law.
And if, after all, the life of a baby is up to “a woman’s right to choose,” then what does fatherhood amount to? Basically, the prestige and power of fatherhood, like what was once said about the vice presidency, is “not worth a bucket of warm spit.” Why stick around? Being a father means nothing. The goo creature you conceived certainly isn’t worth anything.
The Logic of Abortion Annihilates Objective Human Value
Look at a newborn baby and consider, “You are here only because your mother chose to let you live. If she had chosen differently, you would not be a human being; you would have merely been yet another goo creature to be dismembered and sucked out of a womb.”
That is quite a foundation for recognizing and affirming human value, isn’t it? Only a liberal is morally stupid enough to lack the capacity to understand the horror and chaos that would inevitably result from denying the fundamental human status and dignity of precious unborn human beings.
As terrible and self-defeating as it is, it is nevertheless incredibly common for those who have been victimized to perpetuate victimization. Think of the Stockholm syndrome. Think of the fact that children of physical and sexual abusers tend to become physical and sexual abusers themselves. The descendants of black slaves who were denied their fundamental right to human dignity deny that status to their own children.
The Black Family Has Born the Brunt of the Horror of Abortion
And what are the results of this liberal doctrine on the black community? Kenneth Blackwell writes:
The statistics on African American abortions are shocking. Even though African Americans are only about 13 percent of the U.S. population, one of every three abortions in the United States is performed on a black woman. Three of every five African American women will abort a child. Some 1,452 African American babies are killed each day in abortions. Let’s compare these statistics to the number of African Americans who have been killed by crimes of racial violence. Statistics show that between 1882 and 1968, 3,446 blacks were lynched in the United States. That number is bypassed by the number of African American abortions every three days. Let’s project the favorable consequences had the aborted babies been allowed to live. Had the 13 million babies aborted since Roe v. Wade in 1973 been allowed to live, today’s African American population of 37 million could reasonably be projected to exceed 50 million today. In other words, today’s potential African American population has been reduced 25 percent by abortions. And the 13 million African American abortions are estimated to have enriched the U.S. abortion industry by some $4 billion since Roe v. Wade.
Some in the black community are calling abortion a genocide – a genocide of black mothers against their own children.
And what then becomes of all these surviving “goo creatures” who were allowed to live merely as a result of the complete subjectivity of “a woman’s choice”?
Jeff Jacoby, in a Boston Globe article titled, “Destruction in black America is self-inflicted,” wrote:
In a new study, the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics confirms once again that almost half the people murdered in the United States each year are black, and 93 percent of black homicide victims are killed by someone of their own race. (For white homicide victims, the figure is 85 percent.) In other words, of the estimated 8,000 African-Americans murdered in 2005, more than 7,400 were cut down by other African-Americans. Though blacks account for just one-eighth of the US population, the BJS reports, they are six times more likely than whites to be victimized by homicide — and seven times more likely to commit homicide.
Such huge disproportions don’t just happen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously warned 40 years ago that the collapse of black family life would mean rising chaos and crime in the black community. Today, as many as 70 percent of black children are born out of wedlock and 60 percent are raised in fatherless households. And as reams of research confirm, children raised without married parents and intact, stable families are more likely to engage in antisocial behavior.
Conclusion
End abortion. End it once and for all. Affirm the ultimate dignity of every human being.
Barack Obama is right: fathers should bear a fundamental duty to provide care and support for the child.
But he is completely wrong in believing that “more efficient collection and penalties for fathers who don’t meet their obligations” will solve the problem of fatherlessness. His unequivocal support for abortion – which is tantamount to the denial of the most fundamental right of a father: the right to fight to save his child’s life – is more responsible for the abandonment of the role of the father as any other issue.
Fathers should bear the duty to care for and support their child from the moment that child is conceived. And mothers should likewise bear the similar duty to care and nurture her baby from the moment her baby is conceived. Either both parents have such a duty, or neither do. It is as simple as that.
There was a time when walking out on one’s children was regarded by society with revulsion as the ultimate act of cowardice and weakness. Abortion undermined that attitude just as surely as it undermined the right of an unborn child to live. Only a complete moral idiot would attempt to argue that a woman has a fundamental right to kill her child, but a man cannot have the right to walk away from supporting that very same child.
Ending abortion would not solve the problems of fatherhood overnight. Nothing will. But we can never hope to solve the abandonment of the institution of fatherhood until we end the institution of abortion.
Today, that “product of conception” is 11-years old and goes by the name Samuel Armas:
Start Thinking Right 