Witch Hunt
Sam Aurelius Milam III
Throughout the land today, there is a witch hunt.  The victims aren't being drowned, or burned at the stake, or pressed under boards, but that doesn't keep it from being a witch hunt.
Who are the targets of this modern witch hunt?  These modern pariahs are fathers.  Today, a father can be deprived, against his will, of his rights, his liberty, his income, his home, and (if he resists) maybe even his life.  The imposition of this punishment is based entirely on an assumption — that a father has an automatic and mandatory obligation to pay for the upkeep of his children.
With regard to this alleged obligation of fathers, I have a different belief.  I believe that an obligation follows only from negotiation and agreement, and cannot be unilaterally imposed. If a man agrees to pay for the upkeep of his child, then he has an obligation to pay for that upkeep — not because he's the father but because he made an agreement.  If he makes no such agreement then he has no such obligation.
The widely held belief that the obligation is automatic and mandatory is an assumption, and not a law of nature.  There is no law of nature that requires a father to hang around.  This is why God in his wisdom, or nature in his expediency, put the mammary glands on the only person who could be relied upon to be there when the baby was born — the mother.  The sexual equipment given to a man makes him indispensable for only one small part of the process.  After that part is accomplished, whether it is the will of God or a fluke of evolution, men have two good feet and a nine month head start.  C'est la vie, ladies.  I have occasionally heard women whine about why birth control always has to be the woman's responsibility.  That should be obvious.  It is because the woman is the one who will end up with the child.
There are various non-coercive ways that "unattached" mothers can address the problem of raising children without the support of a man.  After all the rhetoric about equality and the capabilities of women, that's exactly what they ought to do.  Instead, they're conjuring up a witch hunt.  They justify it by casting kids in the role of pathetic victims.  Of course, they can make as many victims as they want.  The targets of this hunt are men who can be easily defamed with epithets like "deadbeat dad" or "sexual predator", thereby dehumanizing them into legitimate targets for persecution.  However, the loudly lamented plight of "the children" doesn't justify the enslavement of men.  If my attitude seems callous, then so be it.  I'm no more callous than a woman who contrives to get pregnant without first securing an agreement from the man and then uses the child as a weapon to enslave him.

For several years now, I've been a target in this witch hunt.  I've been threatened with the confiscation of everything that I own, including my home.  Recently, I was arrested at gunpoint, placed in a maximum security lock-up, taken to court in chains, and threatened with continuing confinement.  I wasn't brave enough to refuse their demands while I was in jail.  However, since I have not made any voluntary agreement and since there is no obligation under duress, I have no obligation whatsoever to make the child support payments that they demanded.  Since my agreement to pay was extracted under duress, I will pay only what I am forced to pay and only for as long as I am forced to pay it.  When they stop forcing, I will stop paying.  Like any other victim of extortion, I have only one obligation — endure my condition until I can find a way to end it. There's no greater persecution than that imposed by righteous puritans on a holy crusade, and this witch hunt has turned into exactly that.  This particular crusade is part of the larger debate about the nature of obligation and the source of authority.  Like most such crusades, this one is an attempt to compel people to behave according to a belief system that they do not share.  Such a campaign is seldom successful.  Instead, it changes perceived evils into something far worse.  Whether it's Christian vs Moslem, Hutu vs Tutsi, black vs white, or female vs male, the results are the same — hostility, resentment, and resistance.  This kind of holy crusade doesn't win converts.  It creates victims, hatred, and enemies.

Letter to the Editor
Sam.  Your examples of disastrously dysfunctional communities are in stark contrast to your statement [July 1996 Frontiersman, page 3] that "any effective intentional community will become a target of government intervention".
Effective communities cannot ignore the state but their existence is more complicated than huddling together waiting to be torched by the minions of law and order.  If we carefully examine the relationship of intentional communities to the state, we see a low profile brinksmanship at work.  The state has reasons to both leave intentional communities alone and to repress them.  Functional communities are aware of these dynamics.
Obviously our stalwart communards cannot just assume they will be safely ensconced in their redoubts.  Nobody likes being shown up by the power of a good example, least of all the state.  So don't give them an easy shot.  Pay your bills or fight them legally.  Make sure you are more upstanding than the amorphous peasants in the "hot" areas of drugs, children, and questionable firearms.  The sheep will tolerate more storm-trooping in these areas.  If you give dictocrats a clear opportunity to play savior they may take it.
However, on a day-to-day basis government doesn't operate this way.  Mostly they exist and expand by giving us stuff, primarily order and security.  And as anyone in business knows, the last thing you want to do is call attention to your competition unless your good or service is clearly superior.
Remember, to be free is to deal with all the forces of nature as they are, not as we would like them to be.  And the government impulse, like cockroaches and tornadoes, is a part of nature.

WASHINGTON — After the crash of TWA Flight 800 and the bombing at Olympic Centennial Park in Atlanta, a majority of Americans are willing to give up some civil liberties to fight terroism, a new Los Angeles Times Poll has found ....
"There's this feeling of resignation," said Susan Pinkus, who directed the poll.  "I don't think they feel as secure as they once did.  Their naivete has gone away."
Yet as the sense of security has eroded, the nation has grudgingly begun to believe it will have to relinquish some freedoms in the name of safety ....

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Sesame Suite

Bernie:		Hey Burt!
Burt:		Yah, what do you want?
Bernie:		What color is a belch?
Burt:		I don't want to know!
Bernie:		Burple.
Burt:		Ahhhgh!

Buck Hunter Shoots Off His Mouth
Dear Buck
What does DNC stand for?