The Bigger the Government, the Less You Are Needed

Thanks to Chris Jones for the heads up on this column.

It is a significant analysis of the roles of individuals and organizations as the government assumes more responsibility toward its citizens.   As a person directly impacted by some of these events I can speak to their veracity.  Men, even though they are the majority in politics and, therefore, responsible for lawmaking are further marginalizing themselves and the rest of us by creating entitlements which create nanny state hand holding.

The more their chivalry overrides the family jewels given to them as a sign of biological differences, the more they create benefits for those they view as inferior, and the more they then create reliance of these same people on government largess. Note I use the word "inferior" and not victims.  If a politician felt people were equal they would not require the level of intervention now in place.  These programs require more civil servants and more money to run. For politicians it is a never ending make work project as more people, receiving the benefits, require more help in cutting through the red tape. This keeps riding offices busy directing traffic of the would be recipients.

Men who have been through the family law regimes in many western democracies know full well the outcomes of not being needed as fathers, an important role that develops self esteem for being needed and this is just one of the many areas spoken of by the author.

The above men are now financial drones to supply their ex's with child./spousal support while relegated to visitor status to their children if they are lucky.  Eventually our meaning will have to come from supporting the ever growing size of government who we have let take over our lives.MJM

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

by Dennis Prager

Among the things left and right, religious and secular, agree on is that one of the few real needs human beings have is to be needed.

When we are not needed, life feels pointless.

The need to be needed is universal. Men need it; women need it. The sexes may feel needed in different ways, but the depth of the need is the same. Many women feel particularly alive when needed by their young children; many men feel worthy when needed by their family and/or their work. That is why most women navigate difficult emotional straits when their adult children leave home and assume independent lives, and why most men find it so crushing to lose their job -- not necessarily because of loss of income, but because of the loss of meaning that comes from no longer being needed.


Only when we are needed do we believe we have significance. Give a boy a special task -- just about any task -- and he blossoms. Give a girl a person -- in fact, almost any living being -- who depends on her, and she blossoms.

Of course, there are also myriad unhealthy ways of feeling needed. If an unwed teenage girl has a baby in order to feel needed, it is usually a bad thing for her, for the child and for society. If a boy joins a gang to feel needed/significant, it is bad for him and society.

Though not consciously intending to, over time, the left destroys people's ability to be needed and, therefore, to be or feel significant.

As I regularly note, the bigger the government, the smaller the citizen. One can add: The bigger the government, the less significant the citizen -- especially men.
This is easy to explain because it is definitional. The more the state does, the less its citizens are needed to do. One well-known example is the way welfare robbed so many men of significance when women and their children came to depend financially on the state.


And it goes further than that. In order to feel significant, men not only need to have others depend on them, they also need to depend on themselves, on their own work and initiative. But that, too, is destroyed as the state gets bigger. Fewer and fewer people work for themselves (which leads to, among other things, the disappearance of that quintessentially American ideal of the risk-taking entrepreneur).

It gets worse. As being needed and significant shifts from the individual to the state, the state increasingly determines who is needed and who has significance.

That means, first of all, politicians. Obviously, whoever controls the ever-expanding government has the most significance in a society.

Another significant group in the leftist state are media people. They are significant in a non-leftist state such as America, as well. But there is a huge difference. Since American media are largely independent of government, there are a far greater number of significant media people in America than in the much smaller world of consolidated state media in Europe or Latin America. There is nothing like the BBC or French Radio and Television in the United States. Therefore, no one in American media is nearly as powerful as are the heads of the BBC or RTF. So the American state cannot anoint who is significant in media.


Another significant group in the leftist state is intellectuals. They, too, are largely determined by the state, which funds nearly all education and intellectual life. One reason intellectuals in America and Europe are so often estranged from American culture is that intellectuals have rarely had the fame or significance here that they have had in Europe. There are no American intellectuals who have had the celebrity or influence that Jean-Paul Sartre did in France, for example.

So, too, artists take on greater prominence as the leftwing state grows. And they, too, are funded and celebrated by the state.

In the ever-expanding state that the left creates, the vast majority of individuals lose significance in that they are simply less needed as the state takes over many of their roles. Fifty years ago, the men of the local Rotary Club had prestige and societal significance. So did fathers. So did clergy. With the ascendance of the left and the expansion of their state, much of their power and societal significance has eroded.

Now, as the state expands further into health care, the same will happen to doctors as power and prestige are transferred from them to the heads of dozens of new government health regulatory agencies. Over time, neither you nor your doctor will fully decide your treatment.


Indeed, over time, if the left has its way and the state keeps expanding, you will also not decide what temperature to keep your house or how to get to work. Nor will you be needed to educate your children (that is already the job of the state, and much of Europe now bans home schooling), or to raise and discipline your children (the state will ensure you are doing it correctly, and spanking is now illegal in 25 countries). Fathers will be needed primarily (and after divorce, only) as providers of child and spousal support.

In short, you will be needed essentially for one thing: to finance the one thing that is truly needed -- the state.

http://townhall.com/columnists/DennisPrager/2010/03/16/the_bigger_the_government,_the_less_you_are_needed?page=full&comments=true

In OZ Overington writes more sexist columns ~ Children sent back to violent father in NZ

Overington must be Australia's leading gender biased feminist writer and how her editors let her get away with such sexist reporting may be a function of how testicularly challenged they are.  It is rumoured she may have a dog in the shared parenting race and could gain if her marriage is on the rocks. Is the rumour she is marriage challenged true and wants to ensure ownership of the children? 

There appears to be much more at play in this story than what is being reported but it is clear there is mutual violence between the parties. That salient point didn't make it into the headline which should have read "Children being returned to New Zealand, to be reunited with their father who has not harmed them.  Studies show the female can initiate Intimate Partner Violence in upwards of 70% of cases.  Is this violence less impactful on the children who observe it.

It appears the mom is regurgitating info from an OZ DV shelter. I've heard similar stuff from women in Canada who are indoctrinated to leave the marriage rather than be referred to non-sexist family counselling as the ideology propounded in these shelters is strictly one sided. Man is bad ~ woman is benign.

How a 13 year old could be involved sexually with a then 20 year old and then move in with him at age 14 is of interest in terms of New Zealand's social services and criminal law.  Its clear her mother had problems and was her biological father driven out of her life at an early age? It is important to understand she sought his protection in OZ not her mother's wherever she is.  Chances are pretty good she is an addict or alcoholic who did not protect her daughter.  The whole shabby affair may be another good reason to ensure the biological father stays in the child's life through share parenting not the other way around as Overington wants to portray it.

Overington is a shallow and sexist reporter.MJM

• Caroline Overington
• From: The Australian
• March 17, 2010 12:00AM

A 19-YEAR-OLD Maori woman who abducted her two children from New Zealand has lost her bid to keep them in Australia after the Family Court rejected her claim that the children are at "grave risk" from their violent father. 

The woman, who cannot be named, told Australian authorities the father had started a sexual relationship with her when she was 13, and that she had begun living with him a year later.

She fled to Sydney last June after a violent assault in front of one of the children. Her biological father lives in Sydney and she has been staying with him.

But judge Stewart Austin, in the Sydney branch of the Family Court, ruled that the woman must return the children to New Zealand, saying it would be "presumptuous and offensive to the extreme" to assume New Zealand did not have a court and welfare system able to support her.

The father made his application to have the children returned under the Hague Convention on international child abductions, which provides for the rapid return of children from one signatory country to another, except where there is risk of harm.

The mother, known in court documents as Ms Morton, argued that she and the children were at "grave risk if forced to return to New Zealand" because her relationship had been "punctuated by domestic violence".
In May last year, there was a "violent incident" in the home in front of the children. The father was convicted and sentenced to 50 hours of community service. In June, the mother fled on one-way tickets purchased by a friend.

She told Justice Austin she was "particularly vulnerable" to the man because he had been having sex with her since she was a child and because she had whanau (friends) but no family in the small town where they lived.
The judge agreed there was "an imbalance of power" in the relationship, since the father is seven years older and owns property in the area.

But the mother had been able to "muster the courage to sever her relationship with the father" when she fled from New Zealand, and she was "beginning to realise that a relationship at that age (13) was inappropriate". With that knowledge, she might be able to resist slipping back into the relationship.

The judge said the father must agree not to "assault, molest, harass or otherwise interfere" with the mother, or come within 100m of her home.

The father did not deny assaulting the woman, telling welfare agencies he had "whacked her in front of the children", but he said the mother was violent towards him, and that they "willingly engaged in heated arguments and intimidated one another".
 
Justice Austin agreed there was "little doubt" the children had been exposed to domestic violence between their parents, but said the children "were never physically assaulted" by the father.

"I therefore conclude there is little or no risk of the children being exposed to physical harm if they return to New Zealand."

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/children-sent-back-to-violent-father-in-nz/story-e6frg6nf-1225841576535