Illinois Representative Joe Walsh, a Tea Party freshman, is coming under fire from the left-wing blogosphere for owing child support. According to “Think Progress,” which refers to the man as a “deadbeat,” Mr. Walsh is over $100,000 in arrears.
Child support enforcement in the United States is guaranteed to create a very large population of debtors due to the inflexible nature of the system. There is literally no excuse not to pay, despite the fact that it is a debt that few men willingly expose themselves to. In fact, it is a very handy political control mechanism, as it criminalizes men simply for having had the misfortune to be left by their wives — a very common occurrence in today’s climate.
When I was a naive kid, I believed leftist slogans about “social justice” and the like. The Think Progress site itself has “Justice” emblazoned on the header. However, any rational person can see that there’s nothing “just” about a system that doesn’t take circumstances into account and punishes fathers simply for their misfortune. It is this kind of hypocrisy that disillusioned me over the years, and led me to develop a deep distrust for the political left in the US.
Nevertheless, I think I’m relatively moderate compared to a lot of men out there. I have never signed on with the Tea Party; men of my generation tend to be a bit skeptical of mass movements, which are almost always dominated by those our parents’ age, and rarely yield any benefits for us. I thought the Tea Party might be useful in providing some balance to Obama-style Democrat politics, but other than that never felt too excited about it.
But when I read about Mr. Walsh, it struck me that a great deal of the anti-government sentiment is a direct result of family law in the US. I don’t know the exact numbers, but it’s likely that somewhere on the order of 30 million American men have been put through the wringer by ex-wives and their state agents. That’s a lot of men. Is it any wonder that a great many of them dislike – even hate – the government that put them in this position? Should anyone be surprised by this upswell of anti-government sentiment from middle America?
Governments can get away with oppressing people for a long time, but the effects are cumulative, and eventually there will be consequences. Perhaps the popularity of the Tea Party can be explained in part by the absolute disregard for American men that has become standard since the early 1980s.
