Amber Alert: (n) an emergency response system that disseminates information about a missing person (usually a child) by media broadcasting or electronic roadway signs.

All right. Get ready to buy me the T-shirt.

I guess it should read, “I am an unfeeling, anti-American, cynical unbeliever.”

Maybe it’s because I’ve done some follow-up on the concept of Amber Alerts. Even though there are many television shows that make hay off of children being abducted by strangers who torture and murder them, most of the kidnapping of little ones in our country is done by either the mother or the father, who no longer love each other and have decided to turn the child into the hunk of meat which they steal from the barn and hustle away through the woods.

If it weren’t so sad and pathetic, it would nearly be comical. We have actually created a system of marriage in this country which at least half of the time ends up in divorce, while contending that when it comes to the realm of the children, the couple is still together–even though they’ve moved on to other relationships, and now, because of human nature, are trying to prove to the children that this person is now their enemy and how much better off they would be if they didn’t have that rotten sperm donor or womb carrier.

Did you follow that?

In other words, like we always do in this country, we think we can establish a family, destroy it, pretend that it still exists, and then act alarmed when one of the parents steals the child, which sends out an Amber Alert and makes everyone concerned about their own offspring, when it really is just a Hatfield and McCoy feud.

There are exceptions, and for that reason, the Amber Alert should not be removed from our everyday lives.

But keep in mind–most of these are people who are fighting with each other, who once made love and produced a child, who has become at times little more than a bargaining chip.

Here’s the real Amber Alert, and may it sound out over the airwaves and be flashed on the freeways:

If you’re going to have children, try to keep your marriage together, and if you don’t stay together, please remember–and Solomon was wise enough to know this:

You can’t cut a kid in two.