I believe Slavery was an Evolutionary Step...

Maybe we live on different planets. What I see is that in the past, women were targeted for prostitution more than men. In the current, men are targeted and exposed with regularity, while women all become trafficking victims. The only evidence needed is a man somewhere participating in the money collection and the prosecution is in full swing. It's human nature to find someone else to blame for the situation. Many prosecutors have even made public statements that they are no longer prosecuting prostitution, and have made their reasoning clear: Because they believe most prostitution is trafficking in some way or another. Although, anyone who has been close to addiction knows full well that is not how and why most women of the streets are out there on the streets..

I agree, of course, that men should never abandon their responsibilities toward their children.

Men should be required to be financially responsible and, of course, be given equal custodial rights as a reward, similarly to how we often hear custodial effort associated with the burden women bear. They should go hand in hand.

Another massive influence on babies-without-marriages is society's boundless efforts to permit sex outside of marriage. A pretty simple solution would mostly solve the problem, or at least have a very big impact: Promote the idea that, although most people may not be perfect in this regard and that's fine, but at least promote the idea that it should be between a married couple. Amazing how the simplest of traditions solve the most complex-seeming problems.

There are major financial incentives not to marry, too. Those all need to be eliminated. Stop rewarding babies-without-marriage financially and you will be amazed how quickly the problem shrinks. Eliminate many of the ways women tend to gain the upper hand in divorces and you also may find more men willing to commit to something that no longer seems like such an unreasonable risk/reward ratio.

You are right that there are plenty of irresponsible men who leave their children and families. We just disagree about a question of degree and to a smaller extent, the reasons.
 
We just disagree about a question of degree and to a smaller extent, the reasons.

I think we can agree that the current trend towards respecting women is good. The reasons that they were disrespected, however, are going to sit less well. Many major religions including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam treat women as inferior to men. You can name many good things that religion offers, but that misogynist attitude is not one of them.
 
Another massive influence on babies-without-marriages is society's boundless efforts to permit sex outside of marriage
Too many players in national sports use the number of baby mommas they have as a way to keep score. Not sure why we would want these people to be role models for young boys and girls. Here's one example:
Granted, you have to be pretty dumb to get involved with someone like this but he must be a smooth talker.

I'm not sure we're even trying to catch/prosecute the coyotes. That would make the cartels angry with us.

I think property owners should be able to shoot on sight to protect their own property. My heart is hardening. The people crossing illegally are doing it deliberately. They are paying thousands of dollars each. They are coming to suck off the teat of the welfare state. They are not stupid, they know what they are doing is illegal and they don't care!!! That weighs the scale on the criminal side rather than the victim side.
 
There are major financial incentives not to marry, too. Those all need to be eliminated. Stop rewarding babies-without-marriage financially and you will be amazed how quickly the problem shrinks. Eliminate many of the ways women tend to gain the upper hand in divorces and you also may find more men willing to commit to something that no longer seems like such an unreasonable risk/reward ratio.

Or you MIGHT just look at it in a different light...

You want to stop rewarding babies-without-marriage: In so doing, you completely deny the concept of that social safety net that everyone demands. You are against abortion... but are you against babies starving after they are born? Now you are penalizing the mother AND the child, because what mother is going to starve her child? Where is that Christian charity? Have you thought that through?

You want to eliminate women getting the upper hand in divorces: That shows your failure to recognize that women are also disadvantaged in the world of work so a guy who has a job will be hurt less than the woman who now has another mouth to feed. Ever hear of "the glass ceiling"? It is not a myth. It is a harsh reality for all too many women. My wife got the house in her divorce from her first husband, but because she had been busy caring for HIS babies, she lacked an advanced education. He got a new wife within months after the divorce. She got time-limited alimony. Just as well, because his ability to pay was diminishing rapidly after his 2nd divorce and 3rd marriage.

You complain about something that seems like such an unreasonable risk/reward ratio: But that is actually the point... if the guy is looking for an easy evening with no consequences, try five-finger Mary. Otherwise, the woman bears ALL of the risk while the guy gets all of the reward. Try keeping your pants zipped.

Your use of that particular style of logic is absolutely indicative of NOT understanding the problem. And in fact, it may make YOU a part of the problem since you appear to condone guys "sowing their wild oats" and "plowing fertile fields" and other farming euphemisms. You have been indoctrinated by your misogynist, female-suppressing religious background that is SO insidious that you don't even recognize it.

Isaac, you are a generally good guy. If it seems like I'm rubbing your face in something unpleasant, just remember I am responding to your own words. I honestly don't think you realize just HOW indoctrinated you are.
 
The Constitution does not provide for any charity. Somehow, we keep adding more and more to the point where there are places where you are better off on the dole than working. There is something wrong with that picture. Of course unwed mothers and babies shouldn't starve. They used to be taken care of by charities and the community. Now we expect the state to take care of them. I am OK with that but many welfare programs should come with a work component. Unless you are physically unable to work, welfare should include work and/or job training as well as high school degree programs where necessary. The objective of most welfare should be a hand UP not a hand OUT. The expectation is that after some reasonable amount of time, the recipient (adults of course) should be able to enter the workforce and become self sufficient.

My parents were quite poor when I was young. We originally lived in a run down slum. Then they were accepted to a low income housing community where everyone needed at least one child to qualify and the rent was scaled. The more you earned, the more you paid and if you exceeded the income limit, you had to move out. This was a small town. In order to continue to live in your unit (most were duplexes), you had to mow the lawn and keep the outside neat. Plus you had to also take care of the inside. Management would fix things that were broken and give you paint if you wanted to paint inside. My mother loved to paint. I think we painted our kitchen 5 times in the 13 years I lived there and other rooms almost as much. The hardwood floors always gleamed. My brother and I went back to visit a couple of years ago and drove through the old neighborhood. Our unit happened to be vacant so we looked in the windows. It was still pristine with gleaming hardwood floors 70 years after the house was built! Public housing does NOT need to become slums. You simply have to hold the residents to a certain standard.
 
Or you MIGHT just look at it in a different light...

You want to stop rewarding babies-without-marriage: In so doing, you completely deny the concept of that social safety net that everyone demands. You are against abortion... but are you against babies starving after they are born? Now you are penalizing the mother AND the child, because what mother is going to starve her child? Where is that Christian charity? Have you thought that through?

You want to eliminate women getting the upper hand in divorces: That shows your failure to recognize that women are also disadvantaged in the world of work so a guy who has a job will be hurt less than the woman who now has another mouth to feed. Ever hear of "the glass ceiling"? It is not a myth. It is a harsh reality for all too many women. My wife got the house in her divorce from her first husband, but because she had been busy caring for HIS babies, she lacked an advanced education. He got a new wife within months after the divorce. She got time-limited alimony. Just as well, because his ability to pay was diminishing rapidly after his 2nd divorce and 3rd marriage.

You complain about something that seems like such an unreasonable risk/reward ratio: But that is actually the point... if the guy is looking for an easy evening with no consequences, try five-finger Mary. Otherwise, the woman bears ALL of the risk while the guy gets all of the reward. Try keeping your pants zipped.

Your use of that particular style of logic is absolutely indicative of NOT understanding the problem. And in fact, it may make YOU a part of the problem since you appear to condone guys "sowing their wild oats" and "plowing fertile fields" and other farming euphemisms. You have been indoctrinated by your misogynist, female-suppressing religious background that is SO insidious that you don't even recognize it.

Isaac, you are a generally good guy. If it seems like I'm rubbing your face in something unpleasant, just remember I am responding to your own words. I honestly don't think you realize just HOW indoctrinated you are.
You often equate sentiments I describe as existing, and that sometimes, in some contexts, are grounded in truth, as if they were my own personal pov. Ie I'll describe something that some guys experience, then you'll requote it as if I had said that was the whole thing all the time.

You act as if I am on the lunatic on the fringe, I think you forget that billions of people are successfully living out the general life, marriage, faith, relatively content family experience which I describe.
The question is which of us is leaning more on bias vs experience or history?
I'm not sure.

I know, Doc, I don't take offense to what you say at all. I have enough observation & personal experience or testimonies bearing out most of my assertions - too many to leave me "wanting" for anyone's validation nor causing me to seek agreement for any such purpose
 
I think we can agree that the current trend towards respecting women is good. The reasons that they were disrespected, however, are going to sit less well. Many major religions including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam treat women as inferior to men. You can name many good things that religion offers, but that misogynist attitude is not one of them.
Doc I just know you'll "like" this
It encapsulates just too many viewpoints I just may agree with a bit ... From my indoctrination, of course, certainly not from real world common sense observations! ;)


I guess my fave quote is
"When you're a woman coming to the gym, the first rule is to expose your body so you can get men to look at you and then become offended and angry that men are looking at you. Everyone knows this!"
 
You act as if I am on the lunatic on the fringe, I think you forget that billions of people are successfully living out the general life, marriage, faith, relatively content family experience which I describe.

No, Isaac, I categorically DO NOT think of you as a fringe lunatic. I merely pointed out that a given position has consequences and I gave some logical (if not exclusive) examples of such consequences. I have both a blessing and a curse... I can imagine myself in various situations. When I am working on my novels, it can be a blessing to step through scenes logically (or illogically, since I AM working on a fantasy series). But the curse is that I can imagine the path people are on and can imagine which way it leads. It pains me to see such suffering, both actual and potential. But I am powerless to do much about it except to point out to people when their decisions will likely lead to poor results.

I don't play chess because often I'm too slow at imagining sequences and the die-hards play chess on a timer. But as a programmer, I can see pathways in my head and design complex code "shooting from the hip." (I don't always hit the target; I'm not perfect, after all, and have never claimed otherwise.) If I have any oddity in my life, it is the ability to switch between the forest and the trees quickly... and not always pick the same tree. It is part of that same ability to see things in logical progressions. It is the quintessential skill for system analysis, and I did that for the U.S. Navy for 28 1/2 years, and for TANO Corporation for 12 years.

As to your "billions of people...living the life" claim, a larger number of billions are not, due to poverty, disease, poor education, and oppressive governments.
 
You'd be surprised. If there's one thing I've seen a lot of in Mexico, it's people living in poverty and poor education, and to an extent oppressed by crime, cartels and a corrupt useless government - living with what appears to be a lot more happiness than most Americans. They are happy because they value and preserve their family and their faith above all else.

Some of the poorest, most "oppressed" people are quite a bit happier than the most well-off Americans.

Anyway, and the examples I mentioned of men, women, divorce, marriage, they are all from personal experience with friends and people I know.
One of the greatest characters I have ever known got screwed over in a divorce/custody in a way that I realized was actually really common. Men used to have the upper hand, but they don't any more.

What I support is real equality. Not solutions that offer misandry as a solution to former misogyny.
 
What I support is real equality. Not solutions that offer misandry as a solution to former misogyny.

I have no problem with the idea. But it has to start in childhood by teaching children about fairness to include gender fairness. For instance, a divorce court finding is already too late since one side or the other suffered before they got there.
 
I have no problem with the idea. But it has to start in childhood by teaching children about fairness to include gender fairness. For instance, a divorce court finding is already too late since one side or the other suffered before they got there.

I will cautiously agree with that statement, of course, gender fairness is a loaded term.

A little bit of honest "telling" about sexuality, in the vein of what we thought they meant when they started it decades ago, is probably a good idea.
It being ultra-forbidden just makes it seem more interesting.

Then there are the other extremes, where some people think it means this

I'm just saying it's a matter of perspective, and you're right, indoctrination to some extent.

I've seen men who expect their wife to do everything in the world except the one thing the man does (9-5).
That obviously seems wrong.

Then again, I see a LOT of women--in fact curiously, I will admit, often in religious/church settings--who see the man's job is to take care of their every want, need hope and dream....Which is an OK thing to expect of your spouse, IF you also take the exact same approach. I.E., if both people are approaching the relationship with a "I am frequently thinking of your wants and needs, and how to help you be happy" [selflessness], then a relationship seems to be pretty amazing and great. If only one gender is taught that, it becomes ... just a tad exploitative.

Both genders have gotten it terribly wrong at various points in history. And I will admit - I see a bit of that 'leaning' going in the wrong direction right now in the very modern Christian churches. The husbands following the wife around like a dog on a leash, with her controlling and dominating every imaginable aspect of their lives, in return for giving the husband that one little thing he wants every few days. It's a bit silly.

Great marriages occur when both people are genuinely trying to be selfless and sacrificially loving as often as they can muster.

Frankly, I'm still working on that myself! But I can tell that's the key.
 
Great marriages occur when both people are genuinely trying to be selfless and sacrificially loving as often as they can muster.

A friend of mine noted for a lot of philosophical reading once quoted to me this line: "A good marriage requires both parties to contribute 110%."
 
Maybe more people should see "the untold truth about slavery" on YouTube by Thomas Sowell
Maybe read some of his books? Typically and as is often started, much of his work is much challenged and ignored by vested interests.

You are not likely to find copies in your local library. One worth a look is "Barbarians Inside the Gates and Other Controversial Essays"{*} Although Thomas Sowell has written many books on the the subject as well as other associated subjects.

Also maybe take a look at the support from Jason L Riley in his 2022 lecture. (Jason Riley, ABC Lecture, 8 Aug 2022 - YouTube )

{* Definitely not to be confused with Barbarians at the Gate, or Barbarians LED by Bill Gates}
 
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Once you class a people as inferior, then you can enslave them, kill them, ra** them, butcher them without remorse.

This was the same method used by Hitler when he spoke of "the Master (Aryan) Race" and, by implication, said that Jews were a lesser race that could be eliminated.
 
The koran specifically tells Muslims that if non-Muslims refuse to convert or be subjugated, they must be killed.

Oct 7 was the worst act of terrorism since the ra** of Nanking by the Japanese in the 1930's. It didn't kill the most people. 9/11 for example, killed more but Oct 7 was targeted at individuals in their homes. It had NO military objective. Its objective was to kill, ra**, maim, capture as many civilians as possible and to terrify Jews everywhere.
 
"Its objective was to kill, ra**, maim, capture as many civilians as possible and to terrify Jews everywhere."

Not to mention being an attempt to normalize anti-semitism, which appears to have been all too successful on college campuses.
 

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