Several stories that I’ve read lately have really made me sick. While there are cases of child abuse, neglect, and downright harm that go unpunished—such as the officer in my local paper who got off raping a 14-year-old girl AFTER he’d already been accused of harming another girl the same age previously, or the case of the girl who was abducted for 18 years and forced to live in tents and have two children by her abuser, whom was supposedly kept under the “watchful” eye of his parole officer—other ridiculous cases of families being broken apart over nothing are occurring instead.

Take this example. Supposed medical experts—who are already known to have a strong bias against fat people, mind you—are saying that if children are found to be obese, they should be taken away from their parents forcibly—or forcibly given surgery to “correct” their condition—and placed into foster care. Yes, because we all know that the foster care system will be such an improvement over his or her family life.

As Melissa McEwan points out over at Shakesville (and as man economic experts have also testified to), obese children are not usually a result of poor parenting, but of consuming so many empty calories from being impoverished due to the cost of food, the crappy economy, and crappy wages—in other worlds, the government’s handiwork. And that very government is going to split apart our families?

I don’t think so.

I read another story about a family of four who, when faced with a layoff, had to live in their car, and then in a homeless shelter, which proved to be dangerous; finally, they moved into a storage facility, where the father got a job.

The kids were healthy and fine with their parents. With their schooling, food, access to water and a tub, and beds, and a safe place to sleep, they were definitely better off than children in many different countries. But someone called protective services, who came to take the kids away for—what, exactly? With over a million kids living on the street, being raped and uncared for by parents, why were these a priority when their parents were obviously doing the best they could? Could the parents have not instead, perhaps, given assistance somehow through a housing grant?

It seems like the great goal of the American government is to destroy the family—indeed, this is something that many unschoolers believe already, especially given how so many schools are pushing for earlier and earlier preschool, or lowering the minimum and increasing the maximum mandatory age to attend school. It seems as if they want people to get married and produce plenty of progeny, but once the children are born, they want to remove them as soon as possible.

For what, who knows? Plenty of people speculate it’s to create plenty of mindless, poor worker drones to pay taxes. Others say it’s to keep people docile, since they retreat into a traumatized shell when separated from their loved ones, and prevent them from uprising against an obviously corrupt system operated not by the people, for the people, but by the businesses for themselves.

Whatever the reason, perhaps the left, who calls for freedom, and the right, who calls for less government intervention, could somehow work together and get the government to stay the hell out of our lives unless they’re really needed.