WHY DO GOOD MEN DO NOTHING?

Here's one for you, fella's. This guy's something else. Aren't you, Bruce?

At one point during my post-divorce litigation, when I was over $25,000 behind in child support,

I received letters from the county sheriff's department to "surrender" myself at their

office. I fired back a letter demanding to know when war was declared against We the People, or

even me, that I had to "surrender", since surrender is a term of war. I never got another

letter from the sheriff's department. They came a-looking for me at 5 different addresses that I

gave them, but I was never at the address that they came looking. I had an address that was a

doghouse. Several other addresses were various P.O. Boxes in different towns. I never gave them

any information or correct information. They tried to find me through my driver's license. I

had a P.O. Box for the mailing address on it, and it was for an address of a friend of mine 4

counties away. This was the "fathers' rights underground railway" way of doing things. I had

to improvise to avoid being captured by the enemy (family court and sheriffs) and it worked like charm.

I also received "notice" letters from various judges to appear before them regarding my child

support and visitation matters and they would give me "my day in court". I nastily replied

back that I was born at night, but not the night before and that if they thought I was as stupid

as them, then they were fools to think I would just show up to be arrested. I never received

any further letters from judges. I filed judicial complaints against these judges for

harassment and threats through the U.S. mails (including extortion and racketeering). The

complaints usually never went anywhere, but it took them many months and sometimes over a year

to dismiss the complaints. In the meantime, the judges were removed from my case.

The idea folks is as the article below states: Do not cooperate with them. Make it as

tough as possible when they are trying to screw you out of house, family, your salary and your

children. Answer every question on the financial case information statement with 5th Amendment or

write that you "respectively choose not to answer this question because this civil matter can be

converted into a criminal matter at a later time if your ex-wife removes the children out of state

or you move out of state, creating a federal issue between 2 states". Tell them on your case

information statements that you cannot properly answer the question because you haven't received

competent, effective legal advice to protect your 5th Amendment right to remain silent as a

protection (and right to protest under the 1st Amendment) or with regard to your rights under

the 4th Amendment (the giving of your information is an illegal seizure of your financial records,

books and other documentation and you don't have to give it under the 5th Amendment right to

remain silent, and 1st Amendment right to protest). If they try and impute income to you

for that, you tell them that you will pay what you believe is appropriate to raise your children

and what the state pays for welfare to a family of 3 (mother & 2 children; usually around $450-$550 per month).

You inform them that you will not pay any alimony because your lifestyle will be greatly impacted

and you won't be allowed to enjoy the lifestyle you acquired during the marriage, plus the

ex-wife is not entitled to alimony since she didn't bring it into the marriage and under Equal

Protection of the Law, you're entitled to alimony as much as she is. If the wife makes

substantially less or was a "stay at home mom" (even after the kids went to school full time)

you state that if she is too incompetent and needs to receive alimony, then she's too

incompetent to raise the children and you should either be granted full custody or at least equal custody 50/50.

As Wendy McElroy states below: You need to fight everything. You are at war. This is no time to

be a pussy and give in to the wife thinking she'll come back to you or give you favorable

treatment to see your kids more often. You are at war. If slapped with a restraining order,

demand a Trial by Jury and scream loud and long for it and don't give in to a hearing or trial

before just the judge. Same goes for child support enforcement. Demand appointment of a

competent, effective attorney at all times, and for one who is knowledgeable in criminal law, civil law and family law.

Don't think the lawyers are going to help you if you just dump your case in their laps and go

about your own business. You have to manage your case like a general directing a massive assault

against an enemy. You're the general. The lawyer is the mercenary. He's only as good as

the ammunition and weapons you give him. Without being on your divorce, child support, visitation

or custody case 24 hrs. per day, 7 days per week, 52 weeks per year, then you lose. War is

hell. It must also be prosecuted on a full time basis.

Bruce Eden, Director

DADS (Dads Against Discrimination)--New Jersey & New York Chapters

 

Why Do Good Men Do Nothing?

By Wendy McElroy

In his book Thoughts on the Cause of Present Discontents (1770), the British philosopher Edmund Burke wrote, "When bad men combine, the good

must associate; else they will fall one by one." This sentiment has survived as "All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do

nothing."

Why do good men do nothing in the face of evil, especially when evil aggressively invades their lives?

The question has red-hot relevance to those who value the tradition of individual freedom into which America was born -- a tradition that

includes freedom of speech, the right to bear arms and to demand due process.

These traditional freedoms are crumbling under the wheels of run-away government.

Through dozens of 'alphabet agencies' -- the IRS, BATF, CPS, DHS, et al government aggressively enters the lives of good men who do nothing to protect themselves or their families.

Some people are paralyzed by fear; some by denial. But many others are immobilized by an apathy that strips away the emotional will to act in self-defense. In psychological terms, apathy is a state of constant indifference that is generally associated with depression. Apathy leaves an individual unresponsive to the world and creates a disconnect between what he

believes, how he feels and which actions he takes. For example, a man might fully recognize that food is necessary to life but, because he doesn't care, he doesn't eat.

 

Translated into political terms, he might realize that a gluttonous government is feasting on his liberty, his wealth and even on his

children's future but, because he feels only numbness toward government, he doesn't act in self-defense. He obeys even when the command is self-destructive.

 

The question of why people passively obey government has haunted the history of political discourse. In 1552, Étienne de la Boétie addressed what he called the most important problem confronting freedom: people consent to their own enslavement. His analysis of 'why' resulted in the world's first book on non-violent resistance, The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude.

Modern historians ask the same question. During the mass arrests of Stalinist Russia, people reportedly slept in their clothing not in order

to flee more easily but in order to be fully dressed when seized. In Hitler's Europe, Jews reported on their own to deportation centers and to their deaths. Why?

 

Part of the complex answer lies in what psychologists call 'object specific' apathy. That is, a person's numbness is directed toward a specific situation and may not be manifested in other areas of his life. The same man who is passionate about music or his wife may feel impotent in the area of demanding or even wanting his own freedom.

This response is a form of 'learned helplessness.' It is 'learned' because the response comes from relentlessly teaching an individual that he has no control over a situation and, so, his efforts are futile. The original and now-famous experiment from which the term 'learned helplessness' derives involved shocking dogs with electricity until they developed the psychology of submission. When applied to human beings, 'learned helplessness' is most often used to describe people who have been institutionalized, for example, in prisons, mental institutions or orphanages. There, the regimentation strips an individual of the smallest choice and punishes the expression of preference. In time, many institutionalized people accept the inevitability of their environment. Some of them lose all ability to feel their own preferences.

The depth of learned helplessness that comes from being institutionalized is rare. But most of us absorb a degree of this apathy through constant exposure to a society that attempts to control almost every choice in daily life: smoking, eating fast food, gun ownership, telling a rude joke at work, marriage and divorce, boarding an airplane, medical care, banking. making a phone call. It is difficult to find a choice that isn't scrutinized by bureaucracy and covered by some form of government control. The message is clear: Conformity is rewarded; the 'wrong' choices are punished or otherwise discouraged. The public school system is just one example of what could be called the institutionalizing or bureaucratizing of daily life.

The Castle, a brilliant novel by Franz Kafka, offers a window into what happens to the psychology of a man who confronts bureaucracy. Due a mistake in paperwork, the main character K. is summoned to work in a village as a  surveyor but ends up as a janitor. The Castle is the summoning authority with which K. must but cannot deal because he cannot contact the proper official. K.'s long and agonizing exercise in futility reveals the impact that bureaucracy has upon the human soul: it deadens.

K.'s error was to accept the authority of The Castle in the first place.

The foregoing observation contains good news: bureaucracy and authority require consent. And, if that consent is learned behavior, then it can also be unlearned. Something within the human spirit seems to want to shake off destructive programming. Call it a survival instinct. Perhaps it is the inbred urgency revealed by every two-year-old who yells 'no' over and over again for the simple joy of exercising veto over his own life.

Adults need to recapture the childlike joy and power of saying 'no.' The words most feared by those in authority are 'I won't.' Individuals with the habit of obedience may need to start by saying 'no' on small matters like refusing to fill in racial information on application forms. They may be shocked by how difficult it is to say 'I won't' even to petty demands.

But the difficulty is a sign of how important it is. Only when a person is able to say 'no' can he say 'yes' and have the word mean more than the obedient response of a servant. 'Yes' is properly the affirmation of a  free man.

 

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