So, for a single dad with custody of his three children, Father’s Day happens to mean a lot to me. My kids are the most important part of my life, and I work very hard at being a good father.
I also happen to have lost my own father, a West Point grad and Army vet, to advanced Alzheimer’s in the last year.
So I really, really just wanted to enjoy my Father’s Day.
But no, the liberals couldn’t let that happen. So I’m going to push back here.
Perhaps you heard how, today, the unified message coming from both liberal Republicans and Democrats was that the ‘heartless Trump Administration’ was separating kinds from their parents at the border. Numbered 2000, they said.
Boy, liberals (of both parties) sure like a good hysterical shaming, don’t they?
So, there’s two aspects of this I wanted to touch on.
First: The story itself is bunk.
I wanted to touch on the fact that the country has an established immigration and naturalization process that these migrants are disrespecting, trying to effectively jump the line. I respect the heck out of legal immigrants who go through the process and prove their loyalty to our country and its Constitution- heck, I married one. These folks deserve every good thing that our country can offer, all the opportunity and the American Dream. These folks are doing the right thing.
But the people being separated from their kids are not that.
These folks are the ones who are committing misdemeanors (for one offense) or felonies (for two offenses) by trying to sneak in and get around the process. Now, as a libertarian leaner, I am in general in favor of fewer laws- and only laws that make sense. That said, our immigration system needs to serve the interests of OUR country. It cannot be just a free for all of anyone who wants to come here without any loyalty to our country. That’s why the process exists. Now, the process and the rules themselves need reform; but the law of our country needs to be respected.
If any parent who is a citizen breaks the law bad enough, that parent will get separated from their kids. Why should non-citizens get treated any differently or better? If they want to stay together, and for sure everyone wants them to, why not just stay at home and stay together? Make your country a better place, work for the change you seek.
The hysterical stuff I’ve seen all day just sickened me. “How could you celebrate Father’s Day when kids are getting ripped from the arms of their parents?!?! What kind of monster are you?” “Trump is a monster! How could he?”
Well, it turns out the pictures of the kids in dog cages were fake:
“The person who tweeted the photo says he does not recall the source of the photo. Our researchers traced it back to a protest in Texas held by the Brown Berets, immigration activists. Protesters had children stand in a dog kettle, a simulation of what’s happening on the border. Other photos show the toddler walking around and being held by an adult.”
Not only that, but the gross misunderstanding of what was happening at the border was itself being fed by the liberal media, with an express intent of framing and embarrassing the President. And fed by the same liberal, never-Trumper Republicans.
This story is complicated. Consider the case of fraud being framed as inhumane treatment. In April, the New York Times reported:
Some migrants have admitted they brought their children not only to remove them from danger in such places as Central America and Africa, but because they believed it would cause the authorities to release them from custody sooner.
Others have admitted to posing falsely with children who are not their own, and Border Patrol officials say that such instances of fraud are increasing.
So yeah, we are being sold a bill of goods here by the same liberal Republicans and liberal Democrats who keep trying to accuse everyone who wants to have a border of any kind as “nativists” or “know nothings” or “racists”.
But there’s another aspect of this horrendous misappropriation of Father’s Day that I need to touch on.
Liberals have no problems separating kids from their fathers every other day of the year and in much, much more massive numbers.
Consider the plight of the 86% of fathers who are denied custody of their children by a grossly sexist and outdated family court system.
These fathers are separated from their kids, largely for 26 days per month. Not 20 hours, like at the border. And this could be for 18 years! This is the majority of children in the United States now. 75% of black children won’t meaningfully know their father.
Now, I fought for my kids, after my fight to keep my family together failed. But I spent tens of thousands of dollars to do it that not every father has. All for something that should be an assumed civil right.
Many fathers just give up. Some commit suicide (divorced fathers have one of the highest suicide rates in the country, surpassing almost any group). Some become the mythical “deadbeat dads”, largely because society and the courts tell them repeatedly and loudly that they are not wanted nor is their influence needed. But nothing could be further from the truth.
Consider that all but one of the mass shooters so famously discussed lately were fatherless. Fathers are needed to be a key part of how boys (and girls) know wrong from right. Now, that’s not to say that mothers are any less necessary- I happen to believe both are indispensable, and statistics back that belief up. We as a society do ourselves no favors by denigrating either men or women, fathers or mothers.
And for generations, liberals have been pushing the subjugated legal status of fathers as a presumption. It’s the one group of people that, for some reason, liberals don’t seem to think deserve “equal justice under law”.
Now, I was overjoyed to learn that several states have recently passed laws confirming a presumption of joint custody in divorce cases. Virginia itself just passed a weaker version (it’s a start!) this year, signed into law by Gov. Northam, mandating judges consider joint custody.
Why is this important? Because if we start telling fathers they are valued and welcome again, then fathers will respond by taking up that mantle. Some will take their responsibility more seriously; some will become more involved in the day to day of their kids, to their kids’ benefit.
The same people who are screaming about this fake news story at the border never say one peep- not one word- about the separation of fathers from their kids within our own borders. In fact, many make a lot of money from it.
So, on this Father’s Day, perhaps we might take a break from the hysterical politicization of a complex issue, and just celebrate fathers as perhaps the most important and underappreciated role in our society- one without which our society is disintegrating.
This article is dedicated to my father, Fred Thomas, who would have agreed with every word.
