Conservatives defend polygamy cult
(Note: Be sure to see KPA’s further
comment below where she straightens out a confusion at the core of this controversy. The surrounding community was alarmed by the fundamentalist Mormon polygamy cult in its midst because it violated the Christian standards of the community. But in order to get the liberal authorities to act, the community needed to make an appeal to a PC liberal issue, such as child abuse.)
KPA writes from Canada:
I don’t know if you’ve been following the Texas story of the fundamental Mormons who had their ranch raided and their children removed based on a phone call of child abuse.
I’ve gleaned through some “conservative” commentary from WND [1,2], Townhall, NRO (yes, I know they no longer fit the bill, but that’s my point), The American Spectator, and many others, who as you’ve continually written, go from their right-liberal stance which slides easily into a left-liberal world view.
Their arguments range from:
- These polygamous cultures are uncorrupted, which the hypocritical main stream society, with its MTVs and teenage sex and violence has no right to criticize
- The state has no right to barge in on private property and take children from their parents, who are the best qualified to bring up their own children
They’re all conflating aberrations in the mainstream society with a clan of people who live deliberately and abnormally outside of society.
In fact, this Yearning for Zion polygamist community has built its ranch in the shape of the fort—just look at the “temple” that they’ve erected.
Of course, they may be harmless (as in the wild west gun fights type). But, they are instilling in people a dangerous comparison:
Should we work to cure the aberrations and sins of our societies, or should we let pious-looking, completely alien communities shape under our very own eyes?
The arguments we’re hearing from mainstream conservatives are probably the same type of argument these pundits and opinion makers will make when down to the final crunch about Muslims. Yes, let them build their seemingly innocuous temples, let them bring up their own children as they wish, and polygamy is fine too. We can’t say anything—look at our culture! And who is the state to intervene? And of course, let’s not forget freedom of religion.
Actually, the polygamist cult, in my view, got quite emboldened with this attitude, marching into Texas in 2003 to build their commune, in broad daylight, so to speak.
Muslims are also going in the same direction, taking advantage of the beliefs of their unsuspecting allies.
- end of initial entry -
LA replies:
That conservative opinion writers are taking the side of polygamy is very significant and alarming. In the 19th century America unabashedly outlawed and excluded the polygamous cult of Mormonism, saying that polygamy was contrary to our civilization. But today’s conservatives no longer believe in our civilization. They believe in a set of abstractions, which include:
- “Family values.” It doesn’t matter to the conservatives what the family values are, what culture and religion and practices they are a part of. If something promotes “family values,” it is good.
- “Freedom of religion.” It doesn’t matter what the freedom is used for, even if it’s used to advance religions destructive of our culture. Freedom of religion in itself is good.
Further, because the “conservatives” believe in abstractions such as freedom and family values, rather than in our concrete civilization, they further condemn our own society for its insufficient conformity with those abstractions. The only good is some unspecified state of perfection in the future. Our actual society has no value in itself. Therefore the society has no legitimacy to defend itself, and the state lacks the right to prohibit polygamy.
KPA writes:
Here’s Paul Gottfried’s take on this at Taki’s.
I always find that Gottfried is quick to comment on the positions of the pundits, religions, or individuals he disagrees with, rather than offer solutions and insights of his own. This in my view makes him another accomplice. He has failed to discuss the overall effect of this particular, strange cult, and prefers to dwell on: neocons, Protestants, Victorian Christians, left democracy, feminism, etc.
But, what about the good of society at large? All this intellectual posing is perhaps what led him to his ideological standstill that he has admitted to.
Brandon F. writes:
I understand the assertion that Mormonism is opposed to American culture and values. The only problem is there is no such thing (the traditional culture and civilization that first outlawed polygamy in America), outside of intellectual posing.
The raiding and kidnapping of those kids is a crime and it was not done from some culture preserving act. It was a foolish move by a liberalized establishment that has no problem with kids getting abortions.
They would never have dared raid this compound if it was a Muslim one.
LA writes:
I just read the George Neumayr article at American Spectator that KPA linked. His argument is similar to Brandon F.’s arguement: The left liberates every form of sexual behavior and alternative family, but then supports the government’s crackdown on a polygamous group. The government would never have raided a Muslim polygamous group, or a homosexual group. They went after this group because it stuck traditionalist chords.
Brandon says the reason government was suppressing this group was not because it’s anti the standards of our culture, but because it’s anti the standards of left-liberalism.
Does that mean we should support this group and oppose the raid?
Taking 400 children from their parents is certainly an extreme act.
If we were consistently opposing the inroads into this society of alien customs such as Muslim polygamy, then the raid could be seen as based on a principled defense of our culture. But clearly that is not the case.
KPA writes:
I understand Brandon’s point. I think it is actually the point of all the articles that I have linked to. Their point being that there was no real principled cultural opposition to the polygamy and under-age girls being married off, but that a report of “abuse” was what counted.
But I disagree with Brandon’s and George Neumayr’s conclusion that this incident was motivated by left-liberal tendencies of crying “abuse.”
Firstly, there is more information out that the Texas law enforcement was waiting for a while to raid this compound, and the abuse phone call—now found to be a hoax, but which the law enforcement believed at the time—was just the final pretext.
For example, Texas lawmakers, had pushed the marriage age from 14 to 16 years in direct reaction to the cult’s presence. Also, here’s more from the NYT article:
The Texas lawmaker who represents Eldorado, Representative Harvey Hilderbran, a Republican, said the authorities had been looking for a tool, if not a spark, to combat the particular form of polygamy that arrived here in 2003, when the group’s members came from Utah and Arizona.
Secondly, this part of Texas appears to be a dense Southern Baptist region, as commentator Jerry Lyn Ward (a lawyer/radio host) at Gottfried’s article attests:
I grew up (part of the time) near San Angelo and El Dorado. The Southern Baptists and Church of Christers dominate everything.
And these Christians would judge their neighbors accordingly.
Finally, given the liberal nature of the media, these Southern Baptist communities would be very careful how they made their raids, hence an “abuse” pretext—which they certainly believed to be true at the time. And “abuse” seems to be a reasonable, if not urgent, cause for intervention for liberals.
In conclusion, I think that there was an instinctive repulsion toward this community by its Christian neighbors. Rumors and concerns were going strong from day one. Therefore, because of liberal pundits, politicians and media, and also their essentially anti-Christian stance, communities cannot act out against real and perceived dangers, and therefore have to attach a liberal excuse for their actions.
Thus, in this situation, Brandon’s and Neumayr’s is negated, since these Texan communities actually do not believe in nor, I would dare to assume, practice these left-liberal behaviors of abortion, teen-age sex, violence and drugs, but are forced to find a left-liberal pretext in order to sustain their communities.
Perhaps we would be surprised at how numerous such communities are, which left-liberal pundits and right-liberal “conservatives” seem to have written off as extinct.
As for not raiding a community of Muslims, well, it took them a left-liberal excuse to raid the polygamous one, so I would presume that when things get really tough, they would find a left-liberal excuse to raid a Muslim one, of course based on “unprincipled exceptions.”
LA replies:
This is an excellent analysis that helps make sense of the issue.
KPA continues:
I would also add that these small-town communities are very American from what I’ve read. Christianity, opposition to polygamy and American culture was sealed when the Mormons had to give up that practice in order to become a state.
It was polygamy in the Texas cult that was the annoying factor from the beginning, according to the media report I’ve cited. The “abuse” pretext came as the final crunch, to abate the liberal media, as I’ve described.
Also, I think that the number of Muslim mosques and homosexual “families” living in small town USA or Canada is relatively small. It seems they are predominant in bigger cities, at least here in Canada. Their sheer alien nature prevents these groups from settling in smaller communities. Again, I think it is the fear of aggressive liberal media, which would intrude into protesting towns trying to maintain their cultures and identities (if they ever did so) that would subjugate them into finding alternative ways to get rid of their problems. Declaring it was the abstract values (violence, unemployment) that caused their reaction, rather than preserving their white, Christian towns. It sounds better to say “we don’t like the high murder rates”, although that also wouldn’t win them a lot of points either.
But, perhaps that really is one way towards complicity.
LA wrote to Brandon F.:
I have not been following this issue before today. What is your take on the way the issue has broken down?
Brandon replies:
I haven’t been watching the details that closely since it is too early for dependable information to get published. I did however think of the Waco incident.
As whacky as these people are they don’t deserve this.
At least their kids aren’t watching pseudo-porn disguised as movies or playing “kill-em-all” video games. You have to give them credit for refusing to live by our current cultural standards even if that does include some sort of “spiritual” polygamy. I’ll go so far to say that the allegedly impregnated 16 year old girls are better off being impregnated by their older “husbands” than being impregnated by a culture that promotes promiscuity, licentiousness, abortion, and general depravity.
Carl Simpson writes:
While Brandon’s (and others’) point that the Texas state apparatus would never have raided a homosexual or Muslim group in this manner is certainly a valid one, I think he misses the most alarming aspect of this case.
A military-style assault (automatic weapons and APCs) was threatened to seize children on the basis of anonymous tip, which turned out to be a fraudulent one from an Obama delegate in Colorado. If Texas (or any other state) can storm in and seize children at whim on anonymous tips charging “abuse,” the people who ought to be worried the most are Christian homeschoolers. Children are already being seized from German Christian homeschoolers—on charges of “abuse.” Americans like to think that such things “can’t happen here,” but what we’re seeing in Texas stands as proof that the stage is being set for it to happen here just as it already is in the evil EU.
All that is needed is to simply redefine the term “abuse.” Since leftists, who are already largely in control of the judiciary and of child welfare bureaucracies throughout the U.S., define the teaching of traditional Christianity as “abuse” (among other things), it should be fairly obvious that the case in Texas serves as a useful precedent for yet another expansion of state power. What has taken place here is really state kidnapping under the color of law. Utopian statists, whether they call themselves “conservatives” (McCain) or “progressives” (Clinton and Obama) ultimately view all children as property of the state—in need of proper indoctrination in the government school gulag. As in the EU, these disgusting traitors will be using their vastly expanded power to go after the ultimate object of their hatred: white Christians.
Ilana Mercer pointed out in yesterday’s column that the Texas Foster Care system (the place where all 400-plus children are being held against their will and against the will of their parents) managed to allow the murder of only four of their charges last year. I guess we should all be thankful it’s not the system of some state like Illinois or Florida, where (real) abuse of foster children is even more rampant. Being a state agency, the assorted bureaucrats, Marxist ideologues and plain criminals operating within are naturally completely unaccountable.
While I understand that Warren Jeff’s crackpot Mormon sect is well outside the norms of traditional Western culture (and shouldn’t be defended as such), the state is nevertheless obligated to operate under the constraints of law and due process—especially when something as serious as seizing children is involved. The gross abuse of state power in this case on the basis of anonymous tips—and the cavalier attitude towards it—are a far greater threat to what’s left of traditional America than Warren Jeff’s cult could ever hope to be. It’s also telling that the usual crowd of self-appointed “civil-liberties advocates” (ACLU, Dershowitz, et al) appear to be largely silent on this issue. They’d be on the air braying 24 x 7 if a Madrassah had been raided in such a manner.
Brandon writes:
Carl Simpson is essentially right about the peripheral ramifications and indications of such action. He is wrong that I am missing the point. I just didn’t cover that point. This is a broad issue the core of which should be illustrated by this faux byline:
Liberal Bureaucrats Invade Separatist Compound and Kidnap Children of Religious Sect Under the Guise of Abuse.
If this action was induced by the Christian community in that area based on their principles, as KPA suggests, then they could possibly be enabling a precedent that may come back to haunt them in the form of the kind of action Carl describes regarding home schoolers, etc. Using the liberal establishment to bring some kind of non-liberal justice, albeit under the radar, is a dangerous idea. This is not a sword these people should want to yield, or die by.
I may be wrong about the impossibility of such action against a Muslim compound. Right-liberal philosophy was used to invade a Muslim country. Why not a Muslim separatist compound?
Charles G. writes:
There have been additional developments in the cast of the polygamist cult that are of more than passing relevance for your website. It has turned out now that the call which led to the raid, supposedly made by a girl within the FLDS ranch, was actually made by a 33-year-old black woman from Colorado by the name of Rozita Swinton, who happens to be a Barack Obama delegate. Texas law enforcement was apparently aware that the call originated from an out-of-state area code, and were apprised by others that it smelled like a hoax, but did not investigate any further before conducting the raid, which had been in the works for four years. Interestingly, the group had been on the SPLC’s list of “hate groups” for several years, due to beliefs within the group that blacks are inferior.
I think the issue of polygamy is only peripheral in this story. In all other respects they appear to be a profoundly traditionalist society, much like the Amish or the Hutterites, and the state did not cite polygamy as a reason for taking custody of all of the children, only their own allegations of abuse, the evidence of which was a handful of teenage girls who appeared to be pregnant. There is considerably more to this story than meets the eye.
LA replies:
I agree that this is a very complex story, with all kinds of factual and ideological cross currents, which makes it especially hard to get a take on it.
Mark Jaws writes:
I can understand why some traditionalist conservatives, upon seeing those hordes of apparently wholesome children emerging from that polygamous compound, perhaps thought good things about that lifestyle. Even I, Mark Jaws, traditionalist stalwart, was lured into thinking that polygamy may be just the thing to increase our abysmally low birth rates in the western world. But I quickly caught myself from falling.
I will just say that while polygamy may produce more children than traditional monogamous societies, we should ask ourselves just what type of children would emerge from a relationship with one man and several wives. Could you imagine the jealousies and the stretching thin of the man who must see to the needs of five to fifteen children from different wives? The thought of the petty rivalries among the wives and their offspring is just too much to bear. We traditionalists should concern ourselves with producing BOTH quality than quantity.
Mark P. writes:
Some points regarding what various commentators stated:
1) If KPA is right about the Texas authorities wanting to raid this compound for a while, especially because of the concerns of the Christian community around it, then why did the hoax call alleging abuse come from an Obama delegate in Colordao? If you look at the demographic profiles of Eldorado and San Angelo, there does not appear to be a sizeable enough black population to prompt such an Obama superdelegate to concern herself about this situation.
2) The old argument that one should not use the power of the state to solve problems because it could set a precedent against you (like the possibility of homeschooled kids being taken away from their parents) is really a false argument and it should be abandoned. If government can expand by simply redefining terms like “abuse,” then avoiding “precedents” is a largely useless exercise because the government is already in position to violate your rights and expand itself at will. What, then, is the point in not using state power for some immediate benefit? Furthermore, this concern over precedents clearly does not bother the left. The left never seems to worry that their expansion of state power won’t blow back on them. Maybe they know something we don’t.
3) The best scenario seems to be to allow polygamists and the state to destroy each other. Let the state ruin its credibility by believing in hoaxes and fairy tales, while the polygamists are bled dry trying to sue the state for the recovery of their “rights.” Either way, two devils are fighting. Who cares?
Terry Morris writes:
Carl Simpson wrote:
A military-style assault (automatic weapons and APCs) was threatened to seize children on the basis of anonymous tip, which turned out to be a fraudulent one from an Obama delegate in Colorado. If Texas (or any other state) can storm in and seize children at whim on anonymous tips charging “abuse,” the people who ought to be worried the most are Christian homeschoolers. Children are already being seized from German Christian homeschoolers—on charges of “abuse.” Americans like to think that such things “can’t happen here,” but what we’re seeing in Texas stands as proof that the stage is being set for it to happen here just as it already is in the evil EU.
I think Carl is dead-on accurate in his assessment. Indeed, I’m not sure “conservative Christian” white America understands the extent of the problem, or their own liberalism. In today’s “Christian” America, a child who prefers to play in the yard making mud pies as opposed to playing “kill “em all” video games, is automatically assumed to be neglected and/or abused by his liberal indoctrinated “Christian” neighbors—no normal well adjusted child makes mud pies anymore. And if the same children are also homeschooled, well, that’s just the icing on the cake and evidence enough to make that anonymous phone call. I know this from actual first hand experience; this is not conjecture on my part. What Carl is really saying is that Christian America is not really Christian at all, at least not in any traditional sense. Our church pews are literally filled to the brim with liberals. And as Kristor once pointed out, this is not Christianity at all.
This idea that traditionalist Christians are simply using the only means available to them in a liberal dominated world to rectify a bad situation is quite disturbing indeed! If so-called “principled” people find it acceptable (i.e., they experience no assault on their consciences) to use unprincipled means to their ends, then what does that say about their principles?
Andy K. writes:
Brandon wrote the following faux byline:
Liberal Bureaucrats Invade Separatist Compound and Kidnap Children of Religious Sect Under the Guise of Abuse.
I would suggest the following not so faux byline:
Obama delegate tells Texas Social Services & Law Enforcement to jump, they reply: how high?
It’s very disturbing to me that an Obama delegate would do this under false pretenses, in order to try to destroy a non-liberal group.
With this in mind, one can only imagine what abuses of power could occur under an Obama presidency, when these delegates will be in control of the Executive branch of our government.
LA replies:
Several commenters have focused on the single out of state call that supposedly was sufficient to make the police perform the raid. Has this really been established?
Ken Hechtman, the Canadian leftist who has previously told of his
support for polygamy in Canada, writes:
Here’s a discussion thread on the subject from the Toronto Globe and Mail.
The original story is this: The Texas Jack-Mormons who just got raided have a Canadian branch in British Columbia. (I mentioned them briefly here.) Dawn Black, one of our New Democratic Party MPs, is now demanding a similar raid here. The BC government doesn’t want to do it because they don’t think they can win in court. The discussion weighs the merits of enforcing polygamy laws (generally against) compared to laws against child sexual abuse (generally for).
And this is a mainstream respectable daily paper, not Loving More Magazine.
Even three years ago, you would not have heard the readers of the Globe and Mail calling for full legalization of polygamy. When we legislated gay marriage in 2005, public opinion on polygamy was 92 percent against. Today, on this specific BC case, by far the worst of its kind in Canada, the split is 75-25 against. If you asked the general question you’d probably get 60-40 against, which is where gay marriage was three years ago. And if we can put these Jack-Mormons out of business and out of the debate, the opposition will drop even further.
Charles G. writes:
“Several commenters have focused on the single out of state call that supposedly was sufficient to make the police perform the raid. Has this really been established?”
From what I have read, the call was only the trigger Texas law enforcement had been waiting for, since the plans for a massive raid had been in the works for several years. Not only that, but the woman who took the call from Swinton, and who reported it to police, was a notorious anti-polygamy activist and former FLDS member by the name of Flora Jessop who has dedicated her life to bringing down the sect. She has not been forthcoming as to how she, given her past, could have been fooled by a black woman in her 30s claiming to be an abused 16-year-old from within the FLDS. Not only that, but Jessop had apparently been in close contact with Texas law enforcement since 2004, feeding them stories of abuse within the sect. It is still not clear to me how Swinton managed to get in contact with Jessop in the first place.
In the meantime, local legislators pushed for and obtained a change in the law raising the age of consent from 14 to 16 in 2005, with the specific and admitted goal of targeting the FLDS (just read story at the link—it is quite extraordinary). That is, Texas has openly admitted that a law was passed with the goal of criminalizing the behavior of a particular religious group. Now, the alleged violation of that law has been used as grounds for the charge of abuse that resulted in the removal of all 400+ children. So this was not reaction to illegal activity, it was an attempt to create it, not on any rational basis, but because of fears of what the group might do or become in the future.
KPA writes:
I had mentioned since the very beginning that the abuse call was identified to be a hoax, which the Texas authorities didn’t discover until after the raid, out-of-state area codes notwithstanding.
The fact that the Texan community, as well as the authorities, were trying to combat the polygamous nature of this group from the beginning is evident here and here.
- Rep Hilderbran filed a bill in 2005 to: make bigamy a felony; raise marriage age from 14 to 16; make it illegal for stepparents to marry stepchildren; prevent the sect from taking control of hospital boards and funds; and have harder residency requirements to run for office.
The marriage bills were with respect to the harmful effects of polygamy which could produce child brides/abuse and incest-like relationships, not simply as precautions against child abuse, etc., from other causes.
- The concerned community has been doing helicopter surveillance watching the temple and residences being built, identifying the commune as Mormon. Their suspicions resulted with the bills to limit residency and board and funds control to avoid “take-over” from this group.
As to my suggestions that principled traditionalists are succumbing to unprincipled liberal methods to get their way, I did sadly comment: “But, perhaps that really is one way towards complicity.”
The best scenario would have been to prevent this group in the first place as an unAmerican deviant group, rather than find ways just to weaken it. But perhaps there is an underlying element of liberalism in all aspects of American and Canadian life. Or a combination of fear, caution, latent liberalism and self-preservation might have been at work.
Can we blame the politicians, leaders, reporters, pundits—both conservative and liberal—who end up intimidating small-town and ordinary conservatives with little time, money or energy, into behaving contrary to their nature?
Here is a quote from 1 Corinthians 15:33-34:
Be not deceived, evil communications corrupt good manners. Awake to righteousness and sin not; for some have not the knowledge of God: I speak this to your shame.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 26, 2008 12:03 PM | Send
