I’ve pretty much held silence on this FLDS thing, but Ive started to notice a pattern in the labeling of the thing which I find disturbing. Witness this write-up from Mary Flood in the Houston Chronicle: [1]
Many lawyers for children and parents in a Texas polygamist sect are boiling mad about the growing number of legal errors they claim the state has made in seizing and holding more than 460 children.
From the way officials handled an April anonymous phone tip about a sexually abused girl allegedly at the sect’s ranch, the seizure of the children, the court hearings and the questioning of children and parents alike, many attorneys are crying foul.
Well of course those charged are crying foul. When does that NOT happen? I’m sure if we do a study on the reactions of those charged with ANY crime, or subject to ANY governmental action that they’re going to be angry about it, and think themselves the wronged party, despite their having been guilty as charged. Ask anyone currently serving time if they deserved what they got in terms of punishment. If you find one who says yes, he’s well along the road to rehabilitation, and likely has a firmer handle than most on reality. From the rest, you’ll get “But we’re people too”, while ignoring the fact that most criminals are people. [2]
We had news reports on this business last week, that included the phrase ‘Children being ripped away from their families’… Reports clearly designed to tug at the heartstrings of readers. What they didn’t mention i those reports was that such a statement is only true when applying the broadest imaginable standard to the term ‘family’… even broader and more all-encompassing than Chuckles Manson and his followers used. The parental relationships are in fact the largest part of the problem… we’re talking about kids who don’t know who their parents ARE, and whose DNA is the only clue to work with. Kids who are forced to become parents while they’re but kids themselves.
It interests me that the usually anti-religious left is loudest among the groups attacking the CPS just now. Usually, these are people who never met a religion they didn’t hate [3], save for the worship of Gaia. But because the religion invoked here runs afoul of the values of Mainstream America, these guys are all over it… and to hell with the rights of the children involved. That rather dramatic shift away from their traditional roles of attacking religion should be the first clue that not all is what it seems.
CPS may not be the best avenue to approach this situation. Governmental screwups are a given. Sorry, but that’s the fact. But if not government, what else, then? I am by no means saying the Texas CPS is without error… Of course not. But these kind of cases are notorious for making bad case law. This one is proving no exception to that rule. On that basis whatever higher court ruling happens on this stuff, it can only be damaging to American life, and the values that we hold dear as a society. But can we as a society sit back and watch the kind of child abuse reported in this case and do nothing? Not if we intend to remain a society, no.
Therein, I think lies the real issue. I’ve said repeatedly over the last 10 years that the purpose of government… any government that wants to survive long… is to nurture and reinforce the culture that gave it life, and operate in support of it’s values [3]. Arguably, that’s what Texas was doing here, albeit arguably hamhandedly. (What else but hamhandedness can one expect from government of any sort?)
In the end, though some will cast it in that fashion, this has nothing to do with infringement on anyone’s freedom. At what point is there a right, a freedom, to subject children to what these kids have gone through?
As I say, though, this stuff is always a source of bad case law, and represents the camels nose under the tent of polygamy, incest, etc. And from there, the path our society is doomed to is clear to see. There are, alas, no easy answers to the dilemma, but the problem is even more dangerous long term to our society than are most of the possible cures being floated.