On Friday April 18, the judge involved in the mass hearings on what to do with the children from the FLDS compound has ruled that the over 400 children are going to remain in custody of the state. Furthermore, DNA testing is ordered on all the children and mothers to determine who is related to whom. Up until this point, mothers with children under the age of 4 have been allowed to remain with their children, but the judge ordered the separation of all the children from their parents, including the youngest age group. The children are now scheduled to be put into foster homes for the current duration.
Unless some appeal or emergency hearing is held, there will not be many new developments in the news until the next hearing on July 4th. In my last post, I mentioned a few of the legal, ethical, and logistical problems that the state of Texas was perpetrating. This wasn't to say that the religious compound didn't have faults or wasn't guilty of the accusations being cast at them, but partly to point out that the state didn't have the legal authority to perform the raid, separate the children from their mothers ... basically what was in my previous post.
This time, I'm going to delve slightly into my philosophy on the role of government. It is really quite simple: my idea of government is that it is whatever the people make the government. I like to think that in the United States, we chose to make government an entity of laws to protect individuals and their rights, applied by individuals who can give the government the human quality of mercy, when the laws are applied in a situation they were never intended to apply to; because no matter how well intentioned law-makers are, people can not see every effect of laws.
All of my information comes from news reports and the occasional live news report, and they aren't the most reliable sources but they seem to be the best available since the judge in this case has sealed most of the records relating to this case ( which the judge has the right to do in a child protective services case in order to prevent harm to the child. ) It appears that Texas has clearly stepped outside the lines of the law in pursuing it's goal of protection. A brief introduction into the possible laws that are broken can be found in an article I found on the site News Blaze.
When you read the article and the rights the might have been violated, keep in mind that no charges have been brought and no arrests made regarding abuse. By what right can our government use to order people to a particular action when those people have broken no laws? As far as I can tell, Texas has as much right of telling the mothers to get DNA testing as it does of telling them to move their compound two feet to the left. If now laws are being broken, government has no right to intrude.
But laws are not perfect and they don't cover every situation, so our forefathers implemented a mechanism by which new laws can be passed. But in that slice of time, if something is so egregiously harmful, it is, and has always been, up to individuals to take up the slack in an imperfect society. If an individual (you) think it is the necessary right for government to set aside the laws in the pursuit of protecting children, that individual is also accepting that it is the necessary right for an individual to set aside the laws in the pursuit of protecting children, because at the base of every government decision are PEOPLE choosing to set aside those laws. To separate the government from the moral link of individuals is a recipe for distress.
As a statement of personal belief, I believe that it is my responsibility to follow those laws of the society and government I live in, until it becomes morally impossible to do so, at which point I must be willing to accept the consequences for failure to follow government's laws. For the fathers, mothers, and children at the FLDS compound, that means losing spouses and children if they are found guilty of breaking laws. For government employees, it means.... nothing. Government breaking the law has very little feedback on government. As far as I can tell, the only government official that could be held responsible is the judge, and judges are very hard to discipline.
Our forefathers hoped that elections of limited period would force some responsibility upon government, but that mechanism is only useful if you make your voice heard when you have the chance. For too many people, politics and economics is too much work to follow and understand. Well duh! It is a lot of work. Did you think the society we have could be kept by an ignorant and lazy generation of people? We reap what we and our parents have sown. Plant good seeds for the future, today.
1 comment:
Well written article.
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