The mainstream media is hyperventilating over the former Kentucky governor's arrest, but his courageous refusal to pay child support is a principled stand against the administrative state.
The mainstream media is currently having a field day with the news that former Republican Governor of Kentucky Matt Bevin has been arrested. The charges? A supposed contempt of court stemming from a failure to file financial disclosure documents in an ongoing child support dispute. To hear the chattering classes on the Sunday shows tell it, this is a simple story about a wealthy politician refusing to take care of his family. But if we strip away the emotional manipulation of the radical left, a very different picture emerges. What we are actually witnessing is a brave, lone-wolf stand against the creeping overreach of the administrative state.
Say what you will, but Matt Bevin understands something fundamental about the American experiment that his liberal critics willfully ignore: personal property rights do not simply evaporate the moment you sire dependents. The concept of court-ordered child support is, at its core, a Marxist framework. It operates on the dangerous assumption that the state knows better than the individual how to allocate private capital, arbitrarily redirecting funds away from job-creating investment portfolios and into heavily subsidized, non-growth sectors like pediatric dentistry and youth soccer leagues.
When a family court judge demands to see a former governor's tax returns and bank statements, they are not merely asking for paperwork. They are demanding that a patriot bend the knee to a vast, unaccountable bureaucracy. Bevin’s heroic refusal to surrender his financial disclosures is a testament to the Fourth Amendment. Why should a magistrate in Kentucky be permitted to rifle through his offshore holdings just to dictate a monthly stipend for people who currently contribute zero dollars to the gross domestic product?
The optics of this arrest are, frankly, a disaster for the judicial system. It sends a chilling message to K Street and Capitol Hill: no one's capital is safe from the sticky fingers of family court. If we allow judges to treat a man's biological offspring as an entitled special interest group, we are fundamentally altering the social contract.
If we concede that a rogue judge can force a man to liquidate his stock options simply because his progeny require basic shelter, we have already surrendered the republic to communism.
Carlisle is exactly right. The base sees right through this charade. They know that mandatory child support is merely a gateway drug to universal basic income. Today it is paying for a teenager's winter coat out of pocket; tomorrow it is full-blown single-payer healthcare.
I had the privilege of sharing an eighteen-year-old single malt with the governor during a closed-door meeting at the Cato Institute back in 2018, and his commitment to fiscal discipline was absolute. He spoke passionately about cutting wasteful entitlement programs and forcing able-bodied citizens to earn their keep. It is only logical that he would apply these same rigorous free-market principles to his own household. By withholding financial support, Bevin is teaching his children the ultimate conservative lesson: nothing in this world is free, and relying on government intervention to secure your next meal is the first step on the road to serfdom.
The true victims here are not Bevin's children, who will undoubtedly emerge from this character-building exercise with a much stronger work ethic and a healthy skepticism of federal authority. The true victims are the high-net-worth individuals who must now look over their shoulders, wondering if local law enforcement will suddenly deploy armed deputies to enforce the tyrannical whims of a divorce attorney.
We must ask ourselves what kind of country we want to leave to the next generation. Do we want a nation where the heavy hand of government reaches into our wallets to subsidize the lifestyles of minors who refuse to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps? Or do we want the kind of rugged, uncompromising freedom that Matt Bevin is currently modeling from inside a county holding cell? I, for one, know exactly where I stand, and I only hope my own ex-wife isn't reading this.