by Lady Liberty
07/20/2003

I am embarrassed to say that I lived for some years in an abusive relationship. I'm embarrassed not because the abuse was my fault, but because I didn't seriously attempt to escape it. In fact, I'm even more embarrassed that I really didn't recognize the abusive behavior for what it was. After all, the man never laid a hand on me in anger, and that's the kind of abuse I'd been educated to see as fitting the definition of the word.

Other people could see the abuse, though. Close friends had broached the subject with me in years past (hearing one story, a good friend burst out without thinking, "That's emotional cruelty! That's abuse!", and his reaction was one of several similar ones to several different scenarios). But I always had a reason that things weren't really that bad. "He's sick," was not only a convenient rationale for the behavior of the man involved, it also had the added legitimacy of being true. "He hasn't been too bad for awhile," was another, as if I could imagine his problems would get better permanently simply because they had gotten better temporarily. When friends urged me to leave him, I countered with my wedding vows: "In sickness and in health," I'd say, and I suppose that sense of honor buoyed me above some of the cruelty even while it made me stick around for more of the same.

The relationship finally unraveled, and it was the man who insisted it was over. In the end, I'm thankful that he did so because I was still working up to a point where I could have finished it myself. I spoke just last week with an acquaintance who happens to run the local battered women's shelter, and she was horrified by a few of the stories I told her. Where my friends had tried while I denied, this woman at long last succeeded in opening my eyes to the reality of what I lived through and to the fact that, though I bear no bruises, I was, indeed, a battered woman. She wasn't a friend trying to be supportive, nor did she have a grudge against the man involved. She was merely a trained professional who made an educated diagnosis of a problem. I could assign her no ulterior motives, and so had to finally fully face the truth myself.

I'm neither uneducated or stupid, so how was it that I largely missed identifying my situation as one of abuse? In part, I think it's because there was no physical battery involved. But another reason for my inability to see the whole picture of my relationship was that I was simply too close to it. Hold a newspaper two inches in front of your eyes and try to read something. At best, you'll cross your eyes and give yourself a headache trying to decipher what the words say. Now slowly move the paper away. At a comfortable distance, the fuzzy blobs will resolve into letters of the alphabet, and you'll have no problem reading and understanding what you see.

In much the same way I spent time in denial before I could even see the circumstances of my life let alone diagnose them as unhealthy, many Americans are in denial as to their own lives. They don't see the threat of the loss of liberty as imminent because it's been creeping up on them gradually for years, and they're not afraid because they've not been directly or physically threatened. But if I was abused in my own small relationship, then by the same definitions, American citizens are being abused in their relationship with the government.

In a marriage, it's abuse to repeatedly threaten someone with loss simply to get your way ("I'm going to leave you if you don't fill-in-the-blank-here!"). Yet the goverment's threats of loss to citizens are swallowed whole and with very little distaste. A couple of weeks ago, WorldNetDaily  printed the story  of a Massachusetts woman whose homeschooled children were taken from her because she wouldn't allow the state to administer the standard state educational tests to her kids. The threat was clear: follow the dictates of an education system with which you obviously disagree, or lose your kids. (This threat is far from isolated. In attempting to locate this story once again, I queried a search engine using the appropriate search terms of "homeschool", "tests", "arrest", and "state trooper". There were 65 hits, which is how I learned of a similar incident  in Vermont where a woman was not only threatened with the loss of her children but with the loss of her freedom as well.)

We can certainly agree that it's abusive behavior to take something belonging to another, without their agreement or reasonable compensation, to deprive them of its use, or to destroy it before their eyes. And yet this is just what's happening (http://www.cppr.net/) in a small community in Ohio as landowners fight for the right to keep their own property out of the hands of the local park system. The park insists that a railroad company gave them an option on some land; the facts are showing otherwise. Yet despite the evidence, the landowners have been threatened with a variety of actions and have been forced to respond with legal action of their own. The fight there continues, though not without significant cost to all of those involved.

In any relationship, telling lies - particularly those crafted with the intent to wound or to generate some result that would otherwise be in doubt - can be defined as abusive. I have learned in recent months, for example, that the man with whom I was involved stopped by the home of a very good friend of mine and told her that I was very angry with her and that I never wanted to see her again. In turn, he told me that she'd dropped some of my belongings she'd borrowed back at our house, and that she said when she did that she never wanted to see me again. It was a chance meeting and the ability to overcome a good deal of trepidation on both our parts that led us to find out what really happened. In the interim, we lost years of what would doubtless have continued to be a very close and fulfilling friendship. Now we're learning that certain claims made by the government concerning Iraq were exaggerations  at best, perhaps even fabrications. It remains to be seen what, besides still more trust for politicians, we've lost as the result of these lies, but it's fair to say credibility with much of the rest of the world is among the likely losses.

Does anyone doubt that it's cruel and abusive to behave randomly under circumstances that should be considered predictable? When a partner says he dislikes something, you make accommodation for that dislike. But when he suddenly claims the opposite, it's downright cruelty to be angry with you for behaving according to the originally stated dislike. Yet that's just what happened to me in several instances that occurred over the years. It's also exactly what happened  to a man in California who, acting not only in accordance with local law but by request from local officials, was arrested and prosecuted under federal law. Fortunately, the jury was horrified when it learned the true facts of the case, and the judge was sufficiently sympathetic to make what could have been a multiple year sentence into a one-day jail term which he then promptly suspended. But finally coming to some sort of new understanding didn't fully repair the strain on my marriage or the damage to my psyche. And being set free in the end doesn't pay Ed Rosenthal back for the time, the money, or the reputation he's lost in dealing with contradictory laws (one of which is, to add insult to injury, needlessly invasive and heartless to boot).

If you're still waiting for someone to hit you or do you other physical harm before you admit that you, too, are a victim, then you've not been paying much attention to the news. Remember Waco? First, the residents of the Branch Davidian compound were threatened with search warrants (which, according to noted Second Amendment David Kopel and a writing partner, were issued without adequate cause (http://i2i.org/SuptDocs/Waco/warrant.htm) and in contradiction to the Fourth Amendment). Then those threats were followed through with some of the most horrific physical abuses of power (http://www.constitution.org/waco/mtcarmel.htm) ever seen in the modern U.S. And don't tell the Weaver family they're not victims of abuse. They lost their mother to FBI sniper shots during a stand-off on Ruby Ridge (http://www.boogieonline.com/revolution/firearms/enforce/rubyridge/) in Idaho. And who among us could forget the sad case of little Elian Gonzalez? (http://www.lp.org/press/archive.php?function=view&record=26)

The lies, the threats, the cruelty were all there in my life. I suppose I was personally waiting for some physical threat to manifest itself before I could admit that the danger was present, and that I needed to remove myself from the abusive situation. Sure, he was sick. But that put me at no less risk! It's patently obvious that the lies, the threats, and the cruelty are also hallmarks of many in government authority today. And yes, the government is systemically sick, making the risk to liberty more immediate and significant than ever. Just as the best thing that I could have done for my personal safety was to leave, the best thing that we can do for the health of our country is to see to it that those responsible for usurping our freedoms are, one by one, forced to leave their positions of authority.

Our escape from the abusive relationship with the government will happen only through activism and the ballot box (those of you who think such things can never work on the large scale haven't been reading much about the recall of California Governor Gray Davis or to the proposal set forth by the Free State Project. It will happen only through education and exposure to the many manifestations of abuse that we see happening to others around the country under unconstitutional laws and mandates.

At this point in history, consider me your good friend who, hearing of yet another incidence of emotional cruelty or psychological battery, is telling you, "Baby, you need to get out!" And then take action. Open your own eyes, and see the reality of our circumstances. Be gentle, but persistent in showing others the danger they're living with. They may not know it. Or they may not fully grasp the reality of it. But that doesn't make them any less victims of abuse. I, for one, am through being a victim. How about you?

Lady Liberty