FLDS and Texas Play Nice, Averting New Ruby Ridge, Waco
In a show of admirable self-restraint, the polygamist Mormon sect and Texas law officers defuse potential gunplay. by Random Outlier
(libertarian)
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
The Texas cops played nice. So did the armed polygamists and alleged child abusers at the remote 1,700-acre dust patch on the Texas plains.
(The AP says it used to be an exotic game ranch. Seems to me it still is.)
Much of a nation is understandably irate at some of what goes on inside those compounds of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints -- the FLDS.
And just as much of America is or should be one big collective smiley face as the weekend faceoff winds down with cold barrels. Plenty of bureaucrats now litter the legal landscape, but no blood.
It could have been different but for apparent good sense under tough circumstances by everyone in and around the compound. Once upon a recent time such things were.
Memories remain fresh even 15 years after young mother Vicki Weaver fell dead of an officially approved federal bullet (which somehow missed the baby she was holding) at Ruby Ridge. Not to mention our recall of the bloody military assault on the offbeat religiosos at Waco.
The Eldorado fracas had the same potential, a recipe for cooking up another serving of domestic terrorists like Timothy McCeigh and giving us anti-authoritarians a dandy little talking point, which we don't need.
There's enough government stupidity to keep a million libertarian writers pounding on their keyboards for a hundred years just to expose the stuff, much less trying to work out rational alternatives. We don't need our target environment seeded with a few more corpses.
It also useful to compare the relative evil in two of the cases, the FLDS at Eldorado and Randy Weaver at Ruby Ridge, and if you're prone to enjoy making moral distinctions, here's some grist:
--Weaver's crime was removing an extra one inch of steel from the barrel of an old shotgun, creating what was close to a trivial technical violation of the National Firearms Act of 1934. A spy for the Washington gun cops talked him into it, and if you want to see that as unconstitutional entrapment, it's okay by me. For that and subsequent offenses, none of them initiating violence, he lost his wife and his son and more.
--The allegations against the FLDS are, not to put too fine a point on it, that they are turning their young daughters into sex slaves for wizened old men.
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So why is the solution in Texas as sane and calm as anything under the circumstance could be, while Ruby Ridge still marshalls the deepest outrage at what government is capable of doing to its people?
Let me venture a humble guess. A local and state force handled a local and state problem without the slightest reported seasoning of Federal police in the complicated stew. Or advice.
It leads a man to observe that perhaps the legal process is best served when administered and enforced by folks who live just down the road from the people they are policing. It is worst served by Washington-bossed cops in the latest SWAT gear, looking to display some really cool moves, get on the teevee news, and probably nab an attaboy for their personnel files back on the Potomac.
And someone ought to say a word of thanks to the woman who supervised the early stages, a county prosecutor whose government career might be limited by an apparent sense of proportion, decency, and intelligence underlying her determination to enforce service of the search warrant.
Well done, Ma'am. Well done, Texas.
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And oddly, I haven't even identified any gross outrages from the media. This morning it is even quoting FLDS lawyers speaking in a (certainly warped) libertarian vein. Gentlemen of the bar, trying to protect little girls from forced coitus with their grandfathers' peers is not to be compared to Hitler ordering a roundup of Jews.
But it is correct of the media to let even abusers' apologists state their case, so my criticism of the the national reportage is a relatively minor one for this stage of the controversy.
A large wire service is headlining the phrase "polygamist compound." It's evocative and euphonious, but it directs the reader's attention to the least of the legitimate concerns.
Polygamy may or may not be sufficiently threatening to the national order to require a fresh batch of statutes.
I doubt it, but I leave final resolution of the matter for a Fox News debate between Warren Jeffs and Chuck Haggard. Pat Robertson can moderate, and if an orchestra is deemed necessary Jimmy Swaggert may be available for one-handed conductance.
Whatever else, polygamy should be a self-limiting phenomenon. It is simply a silly cohabitive state which fails most reasonable tests of of taste, economics, endurance, and the liklihood of domestic tranquillity.
My personal experience in simultaneous mate accumulation lies strictly in the range of zero through one at a time. Unless you're a richer man than I, and a better one, that's plenty.
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Thanks for the article. Polygamy should be legal religious or not. Protestant Christians read thier little Bibles about all kinds of polygamists all while at the same time protesting the practice as immoral. Leave it to these charlatins to tell you that homosexuality is a sin, that if allowed would cause the "moral decline" of America.
If polygamy is a sin, then Yahweh (God) is guilty of being an accessory to this crime. In 2 Sam 12 you read how Yahweh told David through the prophet Nathan how He had given David his WIVES - plural. So Yahweh would had to have sinned. People have been conditioned since the time the Holy Roman Church banned the practice, to believe that polygamy is sinful. It is a circular argument. Why did the Pope ban polygamy? Because it is sinful. Why is polygamy sinful? Because the Pope said so.
The government always seems to attack those who are different from others. Will they come after you next? Are you one of those people who believe in the Constitution, as Ron Paul does, rather than bowing at the feet of the New World Order? Do you believe in home schooling rather than putting your children in government indoctrination camps? Do you think that homosexuality is a sin, rather than "celebrating diversity?" ARE YOU NEXT?
Taking children from their parents is a horrible punishment and one that is inflicted on both the parents and the children. And all of this was done based on false info used to obtain a search warrant.
If in fact children or women were being abused then this legal action is justified in those cases. But taking 400 kids from their parents without knowing that there was abuse is pretty awful.
Certainly it is good that there was no Waco-like outcome but if the parents knew that their kids were going to be taken from them I'm guessing they would have had their guns blazing.
How far would you go to keep your children if you knew the CPS was coming to take them away from you?
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