Should the government have removed these people from the church? In my opinion, if the people wanted to leave the church, they would have willingly left. They did not leave, therefore they did not want to leave. Then government came in with its “We know best” attitude and forcefully removed them. I do not wish to defend any of their actions, but if the members did not like what was happening i.e they were not happy, then they would have left, but they didnt, so that infers that they must have been happy or enjoyed what was going on more than leaving. Shouldnt these people have been allowed to practice their religion? I understand that there were rape allegations involved, but that is not what was being investigated. There were not 60 adult rapists. The rape allegations should have been dealt with seperately, and not interfered with anything but the suspects. BTW, curious to hear your thoughts on the issue.
It seems that the women were being restrained from leaving and very young girls were being forced into marriage with way older men. Most of these women literally had no concept at all of the world outside the cult’s compound. Most of them were heavily brainwashed zombies. It will take years to deprogram these poor women and girls.
I think in this case the government’s action was justified. The fact that coersion was being used by the cult has already been plainly proved.
This stuff can get very confusing, even from a libertarian angle. Once you give government authority over families and say that the state can intervene under extreme conditions, you have a tough time arguing against this sort of thing, even if we all suspect it is trumped up or unjust. And yet it strikes me that libertarian theory has difficulties in this area. It just goes to show that it is dangerous to concede anything to the state. I hope someone is following this closely. There seems to be something just dangerous going on here with a government that can kidnap 400 kids or whatever it is.
Very true. The way I see it, the governement should have investigated without completley tearing apart the culture (however strange it maybe) they had created there. I know that were cases of 15 and 16 year old girls being forced to marry older men, but the over sixty of the people taken away were adults. In my opinion the government went overboard, and the socialist media is definelty going to put some pro-government “Help the Kids” spin on it. How would this situation be handled in a stateless society?
The question of how a stateless society handles abuse within a family is, to me, not obvious. The government system has failed miserably but what precisely should replace it is rather unclear to me – and there does seem to be a certain hole in the literature here (not that I am in a position to say with certainty). This is a very important area because most people would never question the right of the state to intervene into family life in cases of abuse and yet, if you think about it, this is clearly a 20th century development. Nothing like the Department of Heath and Human Resources and its social workers backed by police existed in the 19th and 18th century or any other time in human history. We all just take it for granted that the police have every right to break down the door and take the kids, and it is up to the parents to prove their innocence. This is all very peculiar. And yet we have a hard time arguing against it since–speaking for myself–I don’t really have a quick answer here to the problem of family failure. It is not self-correcting like the market, and private courts depend on adults in dispute with each other seeking some kind of resolution. What if the conflict concerns kids, who have no means of complaint?
To me, this issue is critical because any leeway that is granted to the state is invariably abused. In this case, the state took 400 kids into state custody. That’s just amazing. By the way, can you imagine the scene that would have been created had the community resisted arrest? Can anyone doubt that we would be looking at another Branch Davidian situation?
I am not for the state in this incident, that is for sure. Due to community pressures the kids/wives might not been able to escape if that was what they chose to do but the precedent the state set in this action is outrageous.
This is one reason why the state should be completely out of the marriage business. Hugh Hefner has a “compound” and I assume he practices a secular polygamy (I generally try not to read about old men who have more success with women than I do) and I assume there would be outrage if the Playboy “compound” was raided for various alcohol or hot tub violations with the justification of “saving” the bunnies.
I am not in favor of frog marching Hefner in non-fuzzy handcuffs in his expensive bathrobe of course and I sure cannot support the arrest of people dressed as pioneer re-enactors either, but they both have done the same thing with an age difference of only a few years and Postum instead Mojitos.
Good point. They had every right to too. The state came in and completly broke down everything they had built up culturally, and kidnapped over 400 people, without even knowing the names of the people they were taking. Basically they got an anomouyous tip and stormed in and started taking people away. It is truly disguting. Many of the people taken away probably had nothing to do with what the “lead” was. This just shows us again, the state will never miss an opprotunity to expand its power. Then they tell the media a half true story, and the socialists in the newsrooms gobble it up and dress it up as heart-wrenching and emotional as they can, and then they spit it out for the public to take in, and most take the side of the state.
Most likely as long as the polygamist community wasn’t using or threatening to use force against anyone living outside the community they would probably be left alone. However they would probably at some point be forced to import some goods or services from people outside of the community. After which the private insurance companies or defense agencies might ban trading or associating with people in the community unless they consented to an inspection to make sure nobody was being held against their will and if they were the people would be allowed to leave with them.
The private defense agency(s) might even if there was enough popular support for it lead a military expedition into the polygamist community to liberate the residents alleged to being held against their will. Although as private agencies are by nature defensive (as opposed to the state which is by nature offensive) I’m not sure how likely that would be.
In the abesnese of the state the use of merceneries and bounty huners would be a more common than is today. A private chairty group might pay people whos job it would be to sneak into the community, find people who wanted to leave, and liberate them. Once they were outside the polygamist community if the residents of the polygamist community tried to bring charges of kidnapping against them in front of a neutral arbitrator the liberated person would just have to state that he (most likely a she) was being held against his will and was not kidnapped. If the arbitrator decided in favor of the liberated person and against that of the polygamist community this might put pressure on the private defense agencies because of public outrage to do something about the problem of people being held against their will.
New news about this story came out today. The state is now going to conduct D.N.A tests on all the kids they kidnapped without parental consent. They also are not asking the kids if they want the test. They are just doing it. This story keeps getting better and better.
What about the bogus call that started this entire tragegy? A girl from Colorado Springs, CO made the call that gave authorities the “evidence” to obtain a court order to barge in as they did. She has been charged for doing this thing locally.
Did the judge not even ask for evidence of where the call came from?
Case of government failure.
You even have to wonder if part of her plea bargain was to make this call to give the cops a “reason” to invade this peaceful community and take their children from them.
She wouldn’t have been a former member of the community because of her race – early Mormon teaching withheld salvation to black individuals because they had the “Curse of Cain” upon them and were a cursed race. The FLDS group adheres to these early teachings of the Mormon church.
Someone likely told her to make this call, and informed her of enough details to make it sound legitimate. But, she (and possibly others) did not think of caller ID.
Unfortunately, this whole affair stinks on both sides.
The government’s actions certainly were inexcusable and the manner in which this whole thing went down is a disgrace.
Yet at the same time, this cult was a putrid cancer festering on the face of the Earth. This was not a society or a culture as some comments have alluded. This was a cult. A cult in every formal definition of the word cult. These “men” were nothing more than misogynistic pedophiles wielding absolute power over helpless young girls, repeatedly breeding them as soon as they hit puberty so they would be trapped under their thumb. Driving off young males who would otherwise be a threat to the older males. This whole cult was literally an animalistic reversion to a structure similar to a pride of lions. These old men were scum and their actions warrant death.
Again, at the same time this was handled brutishly and incompetently by the State. However, that fact does not detract from the evil that was this cult. In this case, I think we should condemn the actions of the State, but make it clear that we are in no way defending this cult.
I would never defend the actions of this cult. I believe that there was obviously some lunatics in this group, but it is not the state’s job to come in and (supposedly) save the day. A private investigation should have taken place in which each case was dealt with individually. Instead, all the kids were dealt with as if they had all been raped, beaten, and tortured. The state is now conducting coercive DNA test on everybody who was in the sect. It is insane that people would want to live like this, however on the other hand, it is even more insane that anyone would defend the states action.
Whatever you want to call them, they are a peaceful group that think girls 14 and older are allowed to marry. I would never want my daughter to marry at that age – but it is better than a 14 y/o girl having sex out of wedlock, being ditched by the boy because he is not yet ready for a commitment and the young lady having to raise the child as a single mother. This community does not abandon the young ladies.
You may not like that this community practices pre-arranged marriages, allows adolescents to marry (which happened in our country as late as 50 years ago) an 18 y/o or 40y/o “old man”, and allows more than one woman to marry a single man. Not my “cup of tea” either. But at least they are peaceful (at least to their neighbors), stay to themselves and don’t try to pull the rest of us in it. As long as they stay within their private property borders, the State has no right interfering with them.
There are many practices that disgust me that happen in the Middle East, but they are a different society and I am not going to impose my Western “morality” (some of which was developed by the Puritans) upon them.
BTW, the only case I have heard of (in this TX community) where an adolescent married a 50y/o man is the fraudulent call that initiated this raid (with the State stealing their children). Who is to say that the young lady from Colorado Springs, CO who made this call wasn’t given a plea bargain by the government to make this call? (She was charged for a different “false reporting” call in Feb. '08) Someone had to educate her enough about this community in TX so she sounded legitimate. Sounds strange to me.
Excellent point. The government should not be in the business of imposing its ethics on any group no matter how strange they may seem. What about arranged marriages? That is essentially what this situation represents. Arranged marriages have been around forever and still exist today in many cultures, but they are not being attacked now.
I was listening to Free Talk Live and aparently the only way the people in that community are able to sustain their way of life is by applying for welfare. So if it wasn’t for the forced income redistribution this group which nobody myself included seems to agree with their practices would not be able to operate.