Texas to FLDS: “Your children are ours!”

How is that some modern Americans, like those responsible for separating FLDS mothers and children in El Dorado, Texas, can be so devoid of human kindness that they can tear crying children from the arms of their weeping mothers at the point of a gun as did Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and Fidel Castro?

What has turned so many people in our supposedly “liberal” democracy into such antisocial brutes? The picture below portrays the Texas-style response to an unverified call by what was reportedly a single 16-year-old (whom no one can find) complaining of abuse by a single man who has now been cleared by the Texas Rangers as having nothing to do with the alleged accusations. In Texas, law enforcement like to dress up and play soldiers. Waco wasn’t enough, it appears.

How is it that America, as a nation, does not rise up en masse to condemn Texas for its mistreatment of the FLDS? I have a theory. But first an annotated update, courtesy of the AP and Iperceive.

When Texas authorities first invaded the YFZ compound, they carried away 416 children (leaving some mothers behind) but allowed 139 mothers to go with the kids. Tender mercies. Monday, Texas took a nasty turn, deceiving many of the women — except those with children under five years old — into abandoning their kids so that authorities could cart them off in a different direction to interrogate them out of hearing of the parents.

Parents whose children are safely at home tonight, take note: the behavior of the Texas Child Protective Services (”CPS”) in this case — except for the huge number of children and parents involved — is typical of similar government organizations throughout the United States. Once parents are targeted, “child protective” agents dress up like ninjas, don body armor and then play dirty, provoking parents into reacting against authorities (thereby “justifying” the parents’ arrest on other grounds) or deceiving parents — as in this case — into voluntarily separating themselves from their kids. Excerpts from the AP story:

On Monday night, about three dozen women, many of them mothers, sobbed and held onto each other outside a log cabin on the sect’s ranch, recounting the way police officers encircled them in a room and told them that they could not stay. One woman, Marie, said the women weren’t allowed to say goodbye to their crying children.

“They said, ‘your children are ours,”‘ said the sobbing 32-year-old whose three sons are aged 9, 7 and 5 and who would not give her last name. “We could not even ask a question.”

. . .

The women believe the abuse complaint that led to the raid came from a bitter person outside their community.

The state is accusing the sect of physically and sexually abusing the youngsters and wants to strip their parents of custody and place the children in foster care or put them up for adoption. The sheer size of the case was an obstacle.

“Quite frankly, I’m not sure what we’re going to do,” Texas District Judge Barbara Walther said after a conference that included three to four dozen attorneys either representing or hoping to represent youngsters.

Here’s an idea: Send the mothers and their children home and come back when you have something more than “reported” allegations by a whispering female who says she’s sixteen when she isn’t.

The mothers were taken away Monday after they and the children were taken by bus under heavy security out of historic Fort Concho, where they had been staying, to the San Angelo Coliseum, which holds nearly 5,000 people and is used for hockey games, rodeos and concerts. The polygamist retreat is about 45 miles (72 kilometers) south of San Angelo.

Some of the youngsters’ mothers complained to Gov. Rick Perry that the children were getting sick in the crowded fort. About 20 children had a mild case of chickenpox, said Dr. Sandra Guerra-Cantu with the state Health Department.

Perry spokesman Robert Black said the governor did not believe the children were being housed in poor conditions at the West Texas fort. “Let’s be honest here, this is not the Ritz,” Black said, but he called the accommodations “clean and neat.”

“Let’s be honest”? Geez. What about starting the honesty thing about two weeks ago? Let’s be honest that the allegations — as Arizona law enforcement found — were insufficient to issue a warrant. Let’s be honest that Texas doesn’t know what the hell it’s doing in this case. Let’s be honest that the non-FLDS citizens of El Dorado have been very vocal about their suspicion and resentment toward the FLDS (non-protestant) interlopers who, among other things, were drilling water wells that might deprive old-timers of some water. This is a far more complicated case than a simple hoax phone call to a shelter.

Monday’s courtroom conference was held to work out the ground rules for a court hearing beginning Thursday on the fate of the children. The judge made no immediate decisions on how the hearing will be carried out. Among the questions left unanswered: Would a courtroom big enough to hold everyone be available at the Tom Green County Courthouse, or would some kind of video link be employed?

Good question, your honor! Maybe you shoulda asked that before issuing the warrant in the first place.

Texas bar officials said more than 350 lawyers from across the state have volunteered to represent the children free of charge. Moreover, the 139 mothers who voluntarily left the sect to be with their children will need lawyers, too, to help them fight for custody.

The sheer numbers left the judge perplexed as she considered suggestions from the lawyers for how to handle Thursday’s hearing.

“Perplexed”? Embarrassed might be more appropriate. How can anyone justify this kind of emotional carnage on such flimsy grounds?

“It would seem inefficient to have a witness testify 416 times,” the judge offered. “If I gave everybody five minutes, that would be 70 hours.”

Inefficient!!?? Shades of Nazi Germany here. What, pray tell, is the 14th Amendment if not a mechanism to force “inefficiency” into a brutal, too-efficient government system? That’s why we require valid search warrants! We want to make it as difficult as humanly possible for the government to invade the homes of private citizens without real, profound justification.

In an unintended illustration of the problem, Walther gave the lawyers 30 minutes to break into groups and report back to her with ideas. It took almost two hours for everyone to reassemble.

Duh. Maybe these Texas eggheads should have thought about that before rounding up 419 kids and their 140 mothers. Or maybe the Texans figured they’d just put all those “undesirables” in a coliseum and gas ‘em. That would be efficient.

The raid followed a call to a domestic violence hot line from a 16-year-old girl who said she was beaten and raped by her 50-year-old husband.

Excuse me. This is how rumors get started. A call was reportedly received from a female called who reportedly claimed to be a 16-year-old girl who reportedly alleged she had been abused. Note that the authorities themselves were not called, but only the shelter. Yesterday’s sequestration of kids from mothers was a last, desperate grab by Texas authorities to justify their overkill in this case. If they can’t get some juicy allegations by being nice, they’ll psychologically and emotionally torture it out of those kids. “Protective Services” indeed.

In addition to becoming a monumental legal morass, the case is proving to be a public-relations headache for the state.

And rightly so. We can only wish on Texas a Texas-sized red face for their moral “morass”.

Over the weekend, some of the mothers went on the offensive, complaining the children are falling ill and are frightened and traumatized from living in cramped conditions at the fort, with cots, cribs and playpens lined up side by side.

How such a complaint, in the context of such injustice, could be called “going on the offensive” is anyone’s guess.

The secretive nature of the sect — and the indoctrination children receive from birth to mistrust outsiders — have added to the confusion.

But the State of Texas seems to favor secrecy, now having confiscated all FLDS cell phones as well as their videos and photos of the officially-sanctioned home invasion.

A church lawyer, Rod Parker, said the 60 or so men remaining on the 1,700-acre (688-hectare) ranch have offered to leave the compound if the state would allow the women and children to return to the place with child welfare monitors. But the state Children’s Protective Services agency said it had not yet seen the offer and had no comment on it.

Why the State didn’t take this approach to begin with is a mystery. They had perfectly good facilities at the YFZ Ranch. Why would you barge in with an armored personnel carrier and flak jackets to uproot all of those children over one whispered allegation of abuse by an invisible 16-year-old?

Why does this nation, “created under God,” tolerate this kind of brutality? I think we suffer from a national attachment disorder induced by addictions to pornography, commercial child “care”, and violence in movies and music. We are past feeling.

I am mystified by supposedly religious, outwardly loving parents in my community who have the heart to dump their most precious possessions (though apparently they don’t think of them in those terms) for 8-10 hours a day, five or six days a week, in cramped, reeking, noisy, disease-ridden child care centers so that the parents can live in a bigger house, drive a nicer car, or go on fancy vacations. People who so devalue their own children think nothing of it when an official-looking police force gangs up on somebody else — especially someone so apparently different from themselves — and runs off with their children.

This national attachment disorder leads to a spokesbabe for Texas CPS who stoicly watches hundreds of crying children torn from the arms of their weeping mothers (none of whom are alleged to have done anything wrong) and then, smiling for the TV camera, quips that this is “typical” behavior on the part of the Protective Services and adds, “It is not the normal practice to allow parents to accompany the child when an abuse allegation is made.” Not normal? Maybe it should be. Just maybe, lady, it should be.  Sadistic bastards.

Oh, the banality of evil. Somewhere, Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot are smiling with delight that such atrocities continue to occur in the United States of America, a century-and-half after the Civil War. In such a society, no family is safe.