Tag: family building

Everything You Want to Know About Diamonds: The Hope at the Smithsonian and What Marriage Really Means

I have always loved museums—the Smithsonian in Washington, DC, the British Museum in London, and the way National Geographic captures the wonders of the world in ways that make you stop and think about where we came from and what we’re really made of. They stand as caretakers of our shared human story, holding onto artifacts and treasures that remind us of the long arc of civilization, even when I don’t see eye to eye with every choice they make or every story they tell. I’ve said it many times, and I’ll say it again here: institutions like these sometimes cling to timelines and narratives that don’t hold up under real scrutiny, not because the evidence demands it, but because their beliefs about history shape what they’re willing to accept. That’s why I famously got into it with a curator at the British Museum over their crystal skull display. They had this thing presented as an ancient Mesoamerican relic from around 1000 BC, but the details didn’t add up. A skull like that, carved with such precision without ruining the quartz itself, struck me as something that could have been done even further back—with tools and techniques we have only come to know in more modern times. The museum’s insistence that the skull was more of a fake felt less like science and more like a way of fitting the piece into their preferred timeline of human development, regardless of what the physical evidence suggested. We’ve seen technology rise and fall in cycles throughout history; civilizations have come and gone, and what looks “primitive” to us today might have been achievable with the ingenuity we underestimate. That argument stuck with me because it revealed how even the best caretakers of history can let belief override discovery. But that doesn’t stop me from appreciating what these places offer. The Smithsonian, in particular, has a fantastic collection of all kinds of good stuff, from artifacts spanning continents and eras to displays that spark real conversation. I recommend that anyone visit if they get the chance. It’s not about agreeing with every exhibit; it’s about seeing what’s there and letting it provoke thoughts about our own place in the grand scheme.

During one of my visits to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, I found myself drawn to the minerals and rare jewels section, which is exceptionally well curated. The lighting, the layout, the way the pieces are presented—it all invites you to linger and really look. And right there, on a rotating platform that lets everyone get a good view from every angle, was the Hope Diamond. They call it one of the most valuable gems in the world, estimated somewhere between $200 and $350 million depending on who you ask, and crowds gather around it like pilgrims to a shrine. It’s a 45.52-carat blue diamond, cut in a cushion antique-brilliant style, with a deep, almost hypnotic grayish-blue hue caused by trace amounts of boron in the stone. It phosphoresces a strong red under ultraviolet light, which adds to the mystique. The history of this thing is wild: it started as a much larger rough stone from the Kollur Mine in India back in the 17th century, bought by French merchant Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, then passed to King Louis XIV of France as the Tavernier Blue. It was recut over time, stolen during the French Revolution, resurfaced in England, owned by the Hope banking family (hence the name), and eventually made its way to the United States. Harry Winston bought it and toured it around before donating it to the Smithsonian in 1958—famously mailing it in a plain brown package for just a couple of bucks in postage, with a million-dollar insurance policy. Since then, it’s only left the museum a handful of times for special exhibits. People stand there staring, whispering about its supposed curse (which I’ve always thought was more legend than fact, cooked up to sell papers and add drama), but mostly they’re thinking about its sheer value. “The largest diamond in the world,” some say, though I know from digging into it that it’s not literally the biggest ever found—that honor goes to stones like the Cullinan, a 3,106-carat rough beast from South Africa in 1905 that was cut into over a hundred pieces, including the 530-carat Cullinan I, now part of the British Crown Jewels. Or the Koh-i-Noor, that legendary 105-carat diamond with a history stretching back to the 13th century, now also in the Crown Jewels and considered priceless for its cultural weight. There’s the Golden Jubilee Diamond, at over 545 carats, the largest faceted diamond in the world, and others like the Pink Star, which sold at auction for tens of millions. But the Hope Diamond holds a special place because of its color, its story, and that aura of rarity. Blue diamonds like this are incredibly scarce—only about 0.1 percent of all diamonds are type IIb like this one—and the Hope’s size and provenance make it a standout. I watched families, couples, tourists from everywhere cluster around that display case, phones out, kids pointing, adults speculating on what it would feel like to own something worth more than most people’s lifetimes of work. It wasn’t just the rock; it was what it represented.

That got me thinking about why diamonds—and precious metals and stones in general—have held such power over human imagination for so long. Before modern economies with paper money and digital transactions, wealth was tangible: gold, silver, and rare gems. You showed your status and your ability to provide security through what you could acquire and trade. In the context of courtship and marriage, this goes back deep into our evolutionary roots. Anthropologists talk about the “costly signaling” theory—the idea that expensive gifts prove commitment because only someone with real resources can afford to give them without it hurting. It’s like the handicap principle in biology: a peacock’s tail is costly to grow, so it signals good genes. For men throughout history, offering a rare stone or metal to a potential spouse wasn’t just romantic; it was practical proof of upper mobility. “Look, I can secure a home, protect a family, outcompete the other suitors.” In ancient Rome, betrothal rings existed, often iron or gold bands symbolizing unbreakable bonds, but diamonds entered the picture with royalty. The first well-documented diamond engagement ring was given in 1477 by Archduke Maximilian of Austria to Mary of Burgundy—a political and romantic statement wrapped in rarity, since diamonds at the time came almost exclusively from India and were extremely scarce. Fast-forward centuries, and it was still mostly for the elite until the 20th century. That’s when De Beers, the diamond cartel controlling much of the world’s supply, launched its brilliant marketing campaign in the 1930s and ’40s. Facing a post-Depression sales slump, they hired an ad agency and came up with “A Diamond Is Forever” in 1947—a slogan that tied diamonds to eternal love and marriage. Before that, only about 10 percent of American brides received diamond engagement rings. By the 1990s, it was up to 80 percent. They even pushed the idea of spending two months’ salary on the ring (later adjusted to one month). It worked so well that diamond sales in the U.S. retail market skyrocketed from $23 million in 1939 to over $2 billion by 1979. But here’s the thing: diamonds aren’t actually that rare, geologically speaking; De Beers controlled supply to keep prices high. It was brilliant psychology, turning a commodity into a cultural necessity for proving love. 

Standing there at the Smithsonian with my wife of 39 years, watching the crowd buzz around the Hope Diamond, I couldn’t help but connect it all back to something far more personal. We had talked about it before, but that day it hit different. I bought her engagement ring when she was 18, back when we were young and broke and full of dreams but not much else. It was a small diamond on a thin gold band—cost me about $250 at the time, nothing fancy. By today’s standards, especially compared to the Hope Diamond’s hundreds of millions or even average modern engagement rings running $4,000 or more, it was modest. Yet as we stood there, she looked at that massive blue stone on its pedestal and said something that has stayed with me ever since: she would never trade her little ring for that one, not for any amount of money. Not because she doesn’t appreciate beauty or value—she does—but because her ring carries the weight of everything we’ve built together. The hardships, the moves, raising kids, the late nights wondering if we’d make it, the triumphs, big and small. That $250 piece of jewelry went through it all with us, and it still holds up. It’s not about impressing outsiders at dinner parties or signaling to rivals that “she’s out of their league because I gave her a big rock.” It’s about what it meant to us, inward, in the household where real life happens. I gave it to her as a young man trying to show I could provide, tapping into that ancient instinct—here’s proof I can acquire something precious, something stable. But over the decades, that superficial layer peeled away, and what remained was the partnership. Society judges by the size of the rock, the car in the driveway, the house on the hill. Outsiders might envy the big ring, the attractive spouse, the visible success. They might even plot your demise out of jealousy. But a long marriage isn’t built on projecting strength to the world; it’s forged in the quiet commitments that transcend dollars and social status.

This idea of value—how we measure it, how institutions and societies sometimes get it wrong—struck me as we left the exhibit. The Smithsonian does an incredible job with its collection of precious metals and gems, displaying not just the Hope but other wonders that provoke the same kinds of reflections. Yet the politics creeps in everywhere these days, even in how museums frame human development, climate, or origins. Just like the crystal skull debate, where belief in a certain timeline overrides the realities of discovery, exhibits can validate narratives that support investments—cultural, financial, ideological—rather than pure truth. I’m not saying the Hope Diamond display is political; it’s straightforward, awe-inspiring. But the way people react to it reveals a lot about human behavior. We fantasize about stealing it or owning it because we tie extreme value to security, status, and legacy. Women dream of that big ring as proof their partner sees them as worth the investment. Men feel the pressure to provide it to win the competition for a “great catch,” especially if she’s attractive and has options. It’s evolutionary: males compete, females select for resources and commitment. Studies bear this out in colorful ways. One analysis from Emory University found that men who spend $2,000 to $4,000 on an engagement ring are 1.3 times more likely to get divorced than those who spend less, and women whose rings cost over $20,000 face a 3.5 times higher risk of divorce. Why? Maybe because big spending signals insecurity or sets unrealistic expectations rather than building real foundations. Expensive weddings show the same pattern—more debt, more show, less substance. 

I’ve seen friends and neighbors pour fortunes into rings and ceremonies to impress the crowd, only to watch the marriage fray under real pressure. My wife and I never did that. We started with little, adapted our system to what truly matters, and the small ring became a symbol not of what we had then, but of what we endured and created together. That’s the essence of successful pairing: the man on offense finding a woman worth defending, the woman evaluating for long-term security, not just financial but emotional. In the animal kingdom and human history, resources signal fitness. Precious metals and stones were the currency before banks. But when you’ve been married for 39 years, raised a family, traveled the world, and faced everything life throws at you, the value shifts inward. My wife’s comment wasn’t solicited; it just came out naturally as we stood there perplexed by the hoopla. “I would never trade my diamond for that one,” she said, and it wasn’t about the rock itself but the experiences—the dedication, the wrist (as in the wear and tear it’s been through), the shared life that no $300 million stone could match. Three hundred million dollars sounds like a fortune for a rock, but in the scheme of things, it’s not much when you consider what real wealth is: a partnership that lasts, kids who thrive, memories that no thief can steal. People around that display were probably already imagining posting photos to go viral, showing off superiority, letting the world know their spouse is valued at that level. But they miss the point. The diamond ring tradition, amplified by modern marketing, taps into ancient ideas of power and provision, but it’s easy to let it become performative rather than profound.

Diving deeper into the history makes it even clearer why this fascinates us. Diamonds have been symbols of power and eternity for millennia. In India, where the Hope originated, they were believed to hold divine energy. European royalty used them to seal alliances. The Cullinan’s story—gifted to King Edward VII after its discovery in South Africa—shows how these stones become national treasures, embedded in crowns and scepters as emblems of empire. The Koh-i-Noor, meaning “Mountain of Light,” passed through Persian, Indian, and British hands amid wars and conquests, its owners claiming it brought victory but also carrying legends of misfortune for male wearers (which is why Queen Victoria wore it as a brooch). These gems aren’t just pretty; they’re history carved in carbon, compressed over billions of years under the earth’s crust, then shaped by human hands into something eternal. Yet their modern role in engagement rings is largely a 20th-century invention. Before De Beers’ campaign, engagement gifts varied—livestock, clothing, plain bands. The diamond became the standard through relentless advertising that made it a “psychological necessity.” Statistics paint a vivid picture: global demand for diamond jewelry is driven largely by love and commitment, with engagement rings accounting for a large share of the market. In the U.S., China, and Japan, partner gifting accounts for nearly half of the value of women’s diamond jewelry. Yet lab-grown diamonds are rising in popularity, challenging the narrative of natural scarcity, and younger generations are questioning the two-month-salary rule. Still, the symbolism persists because it works on a primal level. 

As I reflect on that Smithsonian visit, it all circles back to how we measure value—not just in gems or museums, but in life itself. Climate change debates, human development theories, political narratives in exhibits—they often rest on assumptions that don’t survive real-world scrutiny, much like the crystal skull. People get it wrong because they start with the wrong premises. The Hope Diamond provokes discussion precisely because it forces you to confront what humans truly value: power, beauty, security, and legacy. But my wife’s quiet wisdom cut through it all. Her little ring, bought under conditions of youth and struggle, has more inherent worth than any museum piece because it represents dedication that money can’t buy. It’s been through 39 years of marriage, global adventures, family-raising, and it’s still there. That’s the kind of value that transcends social judgments. Outsiders might envy the flash, but they don’t provide the fulfillment. If you want a long, real marriage, commit to what matters inside the home, not the projection outward. Rivals might envy your big ring or your success for a moment, but true strength is quiet and enduring.

Everyone’s circumstances differ. My story isn’t my neighbor’s or the person shopping at Walmart down the road. Value is personal, shaped by experience. Some need the big rock to feel secure; others find it in the shared journey. The Smithsonian’s exhibit, with its array of precious metals and gems alongside the Hope, does what great museums do: it displays the tangible, then provokes the intangible discussions about why we chase these things. I enjoyed every minute of that visit, even if I don’t buy into every political undercurrent in how history is framed. Museums aren’t perfect, but they’re starting points for debate, for observing human behavior as it really is—flawed, aspirational, endlessly fascinating. My wife’s insight that day reminded me that the best investments aren’t always the flashiest. They’re the ones that endure because they were built on something deeper than the price tag.

Footnotes

1.  Smithsonian Institution, “History of the Hope Diamond,” si.edu/spotlight/hope-diamond/history.

2.  Wikipedia, “Hope Diamond,” en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hope_Diamond (citing carat weight, color, and phosphorescence).

3.  A Diamond Is Forever, “The Many Lives of the Hope Diamond,” adiamondisforever.com (value estimates).

4.  Britannica, “Hope Diamond,” britannica.com/topic/Hope-Diamond.

5.  British Museum conservation reports and Walsh et al. studies on crystal skulls (1930s–2010s analyses showing modern tool marks and Brazilian/Madagascan quartz).

6.  National Geographic, “The History of Diamond Engagement Rings,” nationalgeographic.com/premium/article/diamond-engagement-rings-history-marketing.

7.  De Beers historical campaigns are documented in Epstein’s The Rise and Fall of Diamonds and industry reports.

8.  Emory University study on ring/wedding costs and divorce risk (2010s analysis).

9.  Bain & Company Global Diamond Industry Reports (engagement market statistics).

10.  Crown Jewels descriptions of Cullinan I and Koh-i-Noor from official Tower of London records.

11.  Gemological Institute of America data on blue diamond rarity (type IIb).

12.  Additional sources on costly signaling: Zahavi’s handicap principle applied to human courtship in evolutionary psychology literature.

13.  De Beers “A Diamond Is Forever” campaign impact: pre-1940s vs. post-1990s U.S. bride statistics.

14–20. Cross-referenced from Smithsonian GeoGallery overviews, auction records for Pink Star/Golden Jubilee, and anthropological texts on betrothal gifts (e.g., Rings for the Finger historical accounts).

Bibliography

•  Smithsonian Institution. “Hope Diamond History and Data.” naturalhistory.si.edu.

•  “The Hope Diamond.” Wikipedia (peer-reviewed citations).

•  National Geographic Society. Articles on diamond engagement ring marketing history.

•  Epstein, Edward Jay. The Rise and Fall of Diamonds.

•  Bain & Company. Global Diamond Industry Report (various years).

•  British Museum. Conservation reports on crystal skulls.

•  Zahavi, Amotz. The Handicap Principle (evolutionary biology).

•  Tower of London / Royal Collection Trust. Crown Jewels catalog entries.

•  Gemological Institute of America. Diamond classification and rarity studies.

•  Various auction house records (Sotheby’s, Christie’s) for comparable gems.

Rich Hoffman

More about me

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

About the Author: Rich Hoffman

Rich Hoffman is an aerospace executive, political strategist, systems thinker, and independent researcher of ancient history, the paranormal, and the Dead Sea Scrolls tradition. His life in high‑stakes manufacturing, high‑level politics, and cross‑functional crisis management gives him a field‑tested understanding of power — both human and unseen.

He has advised candidates, executives, and public leaders, while conducting deep, hands‑on exploration of archaeological and supernatural hotspots across the world.

Hoffman writes with the credibility of a problem-solver, the curiosity of an archaeologist, and the courage of a frontline witness who has gone to very scary places and reported what lurked there. Hoffman has authored books including The Symposium of Justice, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, and Tail of the Dragon, often exploring themes of freedom, individual will, and societal structures through a lens influenced by philosophy (e.g., Nietzschean overman concepts) and current events.

Making People Great Again: What would you do if you were Lot

It’s an unfortunate Civil War, and this whole issue of the H-1B visas is a problem, but everyone is missing the real point on the matter.  I don’t think the issue of looking for skilled immigrant labor over domestic skilled labor because they are cheaper is the issue.  That might be the fear of the labor unions and this is the danger of bringing people into the Republican Party who aren’t really conservative.  And we know Elon Musk was a Democrat for most of his life and was converted because of Trump.  And the people demanding only using domestic labor have more of a labor union view of the world on this issue.  The real issue isn’t financial; the quality of people available is the real problem.  You might want to hire domestic people for some enterprise, but there is a reason foreign labor is so attractive, and it’s not money.  Nor is it regional.  It’s value-based.  At least, that’s my experience.  And to cover the point, I think we need to reframe the premise a bit, which is an issue that has come up for me more and more: a personal story about my son-in-law that gets on my nerves often these days.  I have terrific kids, but that’s not by accident.  There was a lot of hard work that went into raising them, and there isn’t much in society that rewards good parenting the way it should.  All you get is seeing your kids grow up and becoming something good.  But social recognition is almost entirely nonexistent.  And worse, and this is the case every New Year, people who were very critical of how I raised my kids go way out of their way to surround themselves with them because they are such good people.  Not to get too personal about it, but it is such an unusual story these days; many of those same critics from over a decade ago are now the people who want to be the best friends of my oldest daughter and her husband, who married young, have stayed married for over 15 years, and have only ever dated each other.  As a result, they are raising a very nice family that everyone wants to emulate.  And the efforts lately have gotten in my way of having a schedule to enjoy my family, which gets on my nerves.  But is a story worth telling. 

I also got married at a very young age because I found the right woman.  But she was a very pretty young woman, and for men who get into those kinds of relationships, you understand what I mean by every male in the world who looks at a woman like that, wants to take her from you.  And when you are young, you don’t have much in life yet to fend them off but violence and tenacity.  Needless to say, I often saw the ugly side of human beings in ways that explain why that recent social media woman on TikTok slept with over 100 men in a day and that it was a story of fascination focused on the morality of the young woman.  But my issue would be with the men; how are there that many men not already committed to a relationship and would have sex with her right after some other dude had done the deed?  Yuk.  And to go at such a pace to do 100 men in a single day, there are only 24 hours in a day, so the math portrays a pretty cheap and loser woman and a bunch of disgusting men as a statistical sample addicted to a pornographic and destructive lifestyle.  So when you have a pretty wife who, of course, is going to produce pretty kids, you have a dramatic portion of society that is plotting and scheming continuously to stick stuff in them for their personal pleasure.  And when it comes to my family, this is a question that came up to me recently as I was talking about Lot from the Bible offering up his daughters to the mob to rape, to save his home guests, a couple of angels……I’m not Lot.  What would I do if I were Lot?  Well, I’ve been there, and many people know exactly what I’d do, I’d fight them.  And I’d fight them all to win, no matter how many of them there were. 

That left me with an unusual problem once my daughters started coming into their teens and wanted to date boys.  I’m sure there are nice young men on a farm in Iowa milking cows at 5 AM every morning and going to church on Sunday for their entire lives who might have been decent people for my daughters to date.  I hear success stories here and there where good men marry into a family and live happily ever after.  But the truth of the matter, which most women will tell you, is that the quality of men just isn’t very good.  They have bad parents and immoral lifestyles, and they certainly aren’t going to grow up with good leadership skills to make good husbands and fathers to my future grandchildren.  So, I was a hard no on the dating experience.  I instead advocated foreign relationships with online boys my kids found in England because they were polite kids from a polite culture.  And in one case, my future son-in-law had a very nice, traditional family with great values.  The other kid’s broken family eventually fell apart and didn’t work out, despite the best intentions.  But in one case, it worked great and continues to work wonderfully.

During this process, I received many criticisms that still exist today.  People didn’t get why I wouldn’t let my kids date some boy down the road.  Why did I think my stuff didn’t stink, and why did I think my daughters were so lofty that some average boy shouldn’t or couldn’t have access to her?  I feel so strongly about all this that I even wrote a book dealing with this issue called The Symposium of Justice, which is a very defined commitment for me.  So when some of those same critics want to think it was by some accident that my oldest daughter and her husband are such good and intact people, it makes me pretty furious.  It wasn’t an accident.  It was a good policy from me, and I turned out to be right about everything, as I usually am.  The rest of the world was wrong.  Dreadfully wrong.  I was never going to be Lot kicking my daughters out into the street to the mob that just wanted to rape them for personal pleasure.  And you don’t want to think of people having such low lives.  But when it comes to sex, they often are.  The quality of people is revealed very quickly, and because of my experience raising daughters, I can say that the quality of people out there is very low.  So now that I often said as they were growing up, I didn’t think any boys in America could date my daughters these days.  Maybe during the World War II generation.  But certainly not now. 

So, it was very controversial for me to only allow my kids to date boys from other countries.  And it wasn’t from some third-world nation like India or China because of cheap labor.  It’s because they had at least found one with whom they could date and build a family.  To further clarify, I don’t go to bachelor parties when other people get married.  My family invited my wife to a bachelorette party once, which caused a rift in our family that persists to this day and probably always will.  I’m rigid hardcore on this morality issue; I’m probably more conservative than Amish people are on this matter.  If you approach a marriage with such scandal in your mind from the beginning, you can’t expect it to last over the generations, and family building is impossible.  So people laughed and giggled about my approach, but they aren’t laughing so much these days.  As I said, I turned out to be right about everything.  I’d rather destroy the mob than turn my daughters over to their disgusting lust.  And I feel the same way about the workforce.  I think everyone has a chance to show that they are high-quality people.  But they don’t grow on trees, and America has been the target of attack by those wanting to destroy it person by person through the education system for decades now, and that has left our workforce a long way from the Right Stuff.  Being a good person and husband or wife takes a good thought process.  Or to raise good kids.  You can’t cheat it.  You can’t create a policy that makes it that way within a human resource department.  You either have good people, or you don’t.  And using the Bible reference, you are either the people in the mob trying to rape Lot and his home guests, or you are trying to defend something precious from the angry mob.  And knowing all that, you have to Make America Great Again somehow.  But it will take more than cheap talk about marriage. All the while, people see strippers at a bachelor party and giggle like a bunch of idiots under the desecration of value in front of an entire family.  Those aren’t the foundations of a good marriage.  And they certainly don’t make good workers, not to the way I think of things.  And when you are looking for workers who get married, stay married, show up on time, and can put their skills to good use, not just to have them, but to work hard enough to use them, often you find that the people you need for those positions are not produced by the culture you are recruiting from.  It might break your heart to be so discriminatory.  However, discretion often leads to much better decisions and more successful enterprises.  And to have a good society, you have to have good people in it.  And to make good people, you need good families.  And we just don’t have enough of those these days for all kinds of reasons. 

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

The Tragedy of Deadbeat Parents: Opinions from my expereince on a grand jury regarding child support collections

There was so much that I was able to learn from my experience as a foreman on a grand jury session for the summer of 2024 because it was a step onto the other side that you don’t get unless you are a professional prosecutor or attorney.  It was very good for me to see how the other side lives, and when it comes to a grand jury, you get to spend a lot of time there, as opposed to a regular jury that might hear one case for a few days and then be done with the experience.  And to see that many instances over some time, statistics emerge that are worth talking about.  Of course, there are a lot of cases that I was exposed to where the names and places can’t be talked about as they are pending, as well as the business of the people involved.  However, the root cause of the behavior that caused them to be in court, to begin with, is something worth talking about because it takes thoughts about things and carries them to an understanding due to the experience.  Something astonishing for me was to see how many cases of deadbeat parents there are in the world and to think what damage that does to the next generation.  I believe there is no such thing as divorce.  Once you bring a child into the world, you are committed to a family hell or high water.  There is no such thing as divorce.  From my perspective, I doubt many people have experienced hardships greater than me and lived to tell about it, let alone still be married.  Life is hard, which people over 40 realize, even under the best of circumstances.  And most people fight through it and live life.  Living happily ever after means living to the next day and still wanting to do it over and over again even when things seem bleak and hopeless.  But like most crimes, some people just never can get there, and in the wake is a mess that starts with the production of a child and ends in busted-up relationships that the courts have to sort through for some hope of a peaceful resolution that protects children from deadbeat parents.  

I have known a lot of people who ended up divorced, and I have heard of severe child support cases where people had to pay a lot of money to a spouse in the wake of a marriage.  And I never get too far involved because, to me, it’s always a sad story.  Two people, a man and a woman, got together and put a baby in the woman; she gave birth, and a wonderful baby came into the world that requires a lifelong commitment.  And the parents must dedicate themselves for life to that little character, hell or high water.  But when the marriage breaks up, there are all kinds of reasons why two people decide they can’t live together and raise that family, and usually, it comes from the fact that the two people never grew up into the responsibilities of adulthood.  The temptations of flesh to perpetually recreate the mating process, the fun part, never evolves into the hard stuff, the paying the bills, the cutting the grass, the buying of homes and cars, and the worrying about doing everything right that turns people from attractive young people into beat up demolition derby cars that look like by the time they are 50 into damaged assets headed for the junkyard.  People want pleasure without any of the pain, and in that pursuit, they end up destroying everyone associated with them along the way. 

I was astonished to listen to the many cases of a prosecutor trying to recover money from a deadbeat parent; it’s not always men.  Before I was on a grand jury, I heard the details of these cases and saw their commonalities; I had strong opinions.  But seeing the pattern emerge provided a much-needed perspective I am grateful to get.  To hear the testimony from professionals assigned by the courts to maintain the rulings of divorce was an absolutely stunning reality, and it left me thinking just how seriously we all must retake the building of family structure after years and years of failed progressive policies that essentially torpedoed the proper building of a family.  How some of these people could be $75K in debt to their child support was bewildering to me because, ultimately, bringing a child into the world is the responsibility of the parents, and not paying for those kids in either physical commitment or financial viability is reprehensible.  But what’s in common with all these cases is a disconnect from the reality of their role in the process.  The acceptance that the state is responsible for whatever kids are produced from a union and the state becomes the object of rebellion.  Most of the deadbeat parents, and in this case, primarily men, will pay one or two dollars every so many years when they owe tens of thousands of dollars because they think they are cheating the system that enforces the divorce conditions.  They don’t see what their actions are doing or what they will do to the future of civilization through the children they choose to bring into the world.  That disconnect to me was astonishing to witness in such mass quantities.  But the tragedy was in the acceptance that the state was really in charge of their lives, and they had no responsibility for the results of their life decisions. 

When a civilization no longer accepts responsibility for their very life, then there isn’t much anybody can do to help those people.  And they just become parasites to humanity.  Then, unfortunately, because of the way that children learn, the actions of the deadbeat parents are copied by the children only to do the whole thing over again.  And I saw how this entire process wore on the people working for the court.  I don’t want to say his name, but I was coming in from the parking garage one day where we were dealing with a whole list of flawed characters who weren’t paying their child support, and I saw the prosecutor smoking on the sidewalk outside of court, and he looked stressed out.  I’ve seen that look before, which is the kind of life where it’s hard to get up and go to work.  Because what you get when you get there is irretrievable pain and suffering.  But you punch through it like most people do.  It would be hard to look at these cases every day and collect evidence to present to a grand jury to get the indictments that might help somebody in these cases.  Maybe whoever has custody of the children will benefit from the money gained through the courts.  But likely not.  Most of what everyone was doing was only going to stave off the inevitable destruction of the children, which was the point of the policies, to begin with.  Those who have advanced the idea that families can be raised by the state and not by parents who sacrifice their very lives to give kids a decent shot in the world got it all wrong in their hatred for American culture.  They stuck their noses into the family building in our culture, and once those ideas sunk in, the government could raise our children while we ran around perpetually doing the fun stuff without the burden of the hard stuff made misery for everyone, including that poor prosecutor I witnessed smoking.  I came to know him as a great guy, and during my time in the court, I felt very sorry for him and all the people involved in child support collection.  They were trying to make something positive from literally nothing.  However, nothing could change the children’s reality when the parents failed to see the big picture and step into the role of mentorship.  Cheating the courts out of paying child support wasn’t sticking it to “the man.”   It was the perpetuation of the destruction of the American family, which was to attack the heart of America itself.  And in many cases, those enemies of our republic have succeeded and are very happy with the destruction they have left in the wake of their work.  And, of course, in the end, it’s the children who suffer.

Rich Hoffman

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