Class-action child removal

It is no secret that black children are born into familial situations that render them statistically far more likely to suffer crime, deprivation and sexual abuse than non-black children. Sixty-eight percent of black children are born illegitimate. Blacks are murdered 3.8 times more than their percentage of the American population would statistically indicate. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, an estimated 32 percent of male blacks will be imprisoned at some point in their lives. Black teens have a pregnancy rate of 134 per thousand. Given such a poisonous culture, how can the government authorities permit black parents to be allowed to raise black children?

To be born Jewish is to be born with a centuries-old target on one's chest and a life of toyless, joyless Christmases. Wouldn't it likewise be in the best interests of the Jewish child to be taken out of that dangerous, holiday-deprived culture and brought up to live safely as a non-Jew? And is not the Scandinavian-American child doomed to a lifetime of suffering through Sven and Ole jokes, eating ludefisk, and a Nordic inhibition against expressing his emotions? How could one possibly argue against the wisdom of removing a child from such a horrific fate?

The Texas kidnapping authorities are so poorly informed that they aren't even certain precisely how many children they stole from their parents. What they first reported as 416 children seized by the state rose to first to 437, and now to 462. So, while they can't even manage a simple head count, they nevertheless expect Americans to simply trust their assertion that every single parent of those 462 children constituted a "continuing and immediate danger to their safety" despite the fact that the children are far healthier than the norm, not a single parent has actually been arrested and charged with any form of child abuse and the CPS has publicly conceded that there is no evidence that any of the 130 or more children under five have been abused!

The state's incredible position appears to be precisely as one FLDS spokesman has described it: "If you're a member of this religious group, then you're not allowed to have children."

Almost as incredible is the way that an amazing number of so-called "conservatives" – no doubt the same sort of see-no-evil conservative Republicans who twice voted for the big-spending, government-expanding, sovereignty-selling George W. Bush – have expressed support for this massive violation of due process and the rule of law. Even though this action is a classic example of the "for the children" excuse that liberals have used to justify a thousand social evils, it is primarily conservatives who are to blame for the ruinous state of law that made this mass kidnapping possible.

Beginning with the ineffective and liberty-destroying Republican War on Drugs, the decades-old exclusionary rule has been continually weakened to the point that not even the apparent fact that the warrant for entering the Yearning For Zion property was based nothing more than a fraudulent phone call may be enough to halt the Texas agency's criminal actions. This weakening, combined with the increased latitude taken by quasi-judicial agencies that claim judicial powers without being restricted by the constitutional limitations binding judicial institutions, makes a complete mockery of both American liberties and the law. There is nothing conservative about giving government the power to destroy families on the basis of an anonymous false witness.

Fortunately, even the mainstream media is beginning to wake up about the pernicious nature of the Texas kidnappings. The influential Instapundit notes "this is looking more and more like a screw-up of the first order," while eminent legal blogger and UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh has stated that without an imminent risk of actual harm, the American legal system simply does not permit the Texas authorities to do what they have done. If a crime has been committed by one or more adults in the FLDS community, then they should be given a fair trial under due process of law and treated accordingly.

Americans should find the punishment of hundreds of children and adults on the mere suspicion that one man may have committed a crime to be utterly abhorrent, even if that crime was committed against a child. For if this "legal" principle used to justify destroying the FLDS families is permitted to stand, there will be nothing to prevent it from being used against any family in America.

In totally unrelated news, the readers of Vox Popoli and I are beginning a group study of Thucydides's "History of the Peloponnesian War" next week. If this happens to be of interest to you, download an e-text or pick up a copy of "The Landmark Thucydides" and join in the historicity.