We Should Live - Ben Bateman

As the Democrats tear each other apart over their primary, fate has delivered to those of us on the Right another unexpected present.

You’ve probably heard about the fundamentalist Mormon cult that was raided by Texas Rangers. The whole story stank from the beginning, and the authorities wildly overreacted. The raid was apparently based on little more than an anonymous phone call, and it resulted in over 400 children being forcibly taken from their parents and put in state custody. If you’ve ever wondered why conservatives aren’t impressed with impassioned rhetoric from the left about human rights and constitutional protections, this story might help. All those rights invented out of thin air granted us by liberal philosopher-king judges always mysteriously evaporate when the iron fist of the state comes down on people that the Left doesn’t like. If police had even thought about raiding a far-left cult, then the mainstream press would have screamed about it for days. But not when the victims of capricious state brutality are on the extreme Right.

It could have gone worse, though. At least Janet Reno didn’t take charge and burn the children alive while trying to save them. These FLDS children were merely kidnapped at gunpoint on the flimsiest of evidence while their parents were apparently granted no opportunity to be heard—and certainly no presumption of innocence. Where conservative kooks are involved, the rule seems to be kidnap the children first, then let the parents try to establish their innocence.

I’m quite aware of how bizarre and controlling life probably was inside the FLDS compound. Probably more so than most. But that icky feeling is completely irrelevant to the deep legal point. Even creepy fundamentalist Mormons are entitled to a presumption of innocence and a right to be heard—before their children are stolen from them.

It’s also quite bizarre that so much of this government overreach is premised on alleged polygamy and teenagers getting pregnant. Since when did anyone get upset about teenaged girls becoming pregnant? If a justification for a baby-snatching raid by the Texas Rangers, then they’ve got quite a lot of work ahead of them. I’m sure that they can find entire inner-city zip codes packed full of pregnant teenagers—and most of them won’t know or care who the fathers of their children are. Isn’t that worse than whatever happened in the FLDS compound? I mean, at least the FLDS girls were married to the fathers of their children! Let’s get a little perspective here.

And how did polygamy suddenly become a crime so serious that its mere allegation dispels all due process rights that the accused would normally enjoy? If the judges in the more liberal states continue to trample democracy on the subject of marriage, then in a few decades they’ll be finding a constitutional right to marry barnyard animals. Yes, polygamy is still illegal, and yes, I would prefer that it stay that way. But where are our priorities here?

Recently the story got even better. The pretext for the raid was an anonymous plea for help from a girl trapped inside the compound. But it was a hoax by Rozita Swinton, a black Colorado woman with a history of doing this sort of thing. And the buzz around the conservative blogosphere—still not fully confirmed—is that she is a pledged delegate for Barack Obama.

This summer in Denver, the Democrat Party is going to burn, baby, burn.

UPDATE: After cooling off for a few minutes, let me state the obvious: I’m not an expert on this case, and the authorities probably know some stuff that they aren’t disclosing that could change our understanding of the situation.

But still, I see no justification for abducting the children at gunpoint, except as a strongarm tactic force the adults to incriminate themselves and each other.  Let’s assume for argument that everything said against the FLDS compound is true:  Teenage girls were regularly forced to marry creepy older men and were then effectively raped.  By what twisted logic would that justify taking the little children from their mothers?  If we are to believe that the mothers are the victims, then why harm them further by stealing their children?  Abduct the mothers!  That might at least make a little sense.  But it seems like wild abuse of power to steal the children when no one has alleged that the children are being mistreated in any way.

So sad:

An Italian woman artist who was hitch-hiking to the Middle East dressed as a bride to promote world peace has been found murdered in Turkey.

The naked body of Giuseppina Pasqualino di Marineo, 33, known as Pippa Bacca, was found in bushes near the northern city of Gebze on Friday.

She had said she wanted to show that she could put her trust in the kindness of local people.

I guess that secular utopian religions have their martyrs, too.  This story reminds me of the Children’s Crusades.  This new victim even followed a similar route.

After decades of openly hating all things masculine, American universities are shocked to discover that young men have become less enthusiastic about higher education. Actually, the academicians haven’t yet figured out that enthusiasm might be the problem. In their view, it’s just that young men are slacker sexist pigs who are inferior to young women in every way—and that’s not the fault of the universities. Time.com reports:

[A] gender gap has reopened: if girls were once excluded because they somehow weren’t good enough, they now are rejected because they’re too good. Or at least they are so good, compared with boys, that admissions committees at some private colleges have problems managing a balanced freshman class. Roughly 58% of undergraduates nationally are female, and the girl-boy ratio will probably tip past 60-40 in a few years. The divide is even worse for black males, who are outnumbered on campus by black females 2 to 1.

While educators debate whether there is a “boy crisis” that warrants a wholesale change in how to teach, colleges are quietly stripping the pastels from brochures and launching Xbox tournaments to try to close the gap in the quality and quantity of boys applying. “It’s a gross generalization that slacker boys get in over high-performing girls,” says Jennifer Delahunty, dean of admissions at Kenyon College, “but developmentally, girls bring more to the table than boys, and the disparity has gotten greater in recent years.”

Ms. Delahunty has special experience with this issue. After working on admissions committees that favored boys over girls for the sake of class balance, she experienced a moment of moral clarity after her own daughter was wait-listed. So she wrote an article about it for the New York Times in which she apologized for this unfair treatment of girls. The article generated many responses from a wide range of viewpoints. She heard from misogynists and, uh, what’s the opposite of a misogynist?

“It pissed off the feminists and the misogynists–I got both sides of the spectrum,” she told me. “The misogynists said women already have too many advantages. And the feminists said, How dare you not treat women like men.” But what most amazed her was the reaction of young women: by and large, they assumed this is just how things work. “Why aren’t they marching in the streets? That’s the part that slays me,” Delahunty says. “It isn’t fair, and young women should be saying something about it not being fair.”

And this is apparently the attitude of many college administrators: Sex discrimination against girls is a profound tragedy. Everybody knows that sex discrimination should only disadvantage boys.

Maybe they can find some solace in the thought that they aren’t really trying to help out boys. God, no! They’re really just trying to indirectly help the girls. As an admissions director for the College of William and Mary told US News & World Report: “even women who enroll … expect to see men on campus. It’s not the College of Mary and Mary; it’s the College of William and Mary.”

Memo to higher education: The boys know that you hate them. You haven’t exactly kept it a secret, even before the Duke rape case. And since you hate them so much, they have done both you and themselves a favor by not attending your schools.

(For readers who are not familiar with the problems that I’m describing with an admittedly broad brush, Glenn Sacks has a recent article that describes them more specifically.)

The Far East is apparently the world’s epicenter of anti-obesity mania. Last fall we saw a story about an immigrant to New Zealand whose wife was refused entry into the country because she failed a Body Mass Index test. Now Japan has raised the stakes in the contest to be the country most hateful towards the overweight. The Junk Food Science blog reports:

Today, the Japanese government institutes its compulsory “flab checks” for all workers over the age of 40.

To stem Japan’s “soaring obesity,” the health ministry has mandated that all waistlines among its 56 million workers over age 40 be below “regulation size” of 33.5 inches (for men). Any company failing to bring its employees’ weight under control — as well as the weights of their family members — will be fined up to 10% of its earnings by the government.

The Guardian elaborates:

Health authorities hope the measures will arrest the rise in obesity among middle-aged men and slow soaring medical costs. All employees over 40 - about 56 million people - will be required to take the test to determine whether they are at risk of metabolic syndrome - symptoms associated with being overweight that, if left unchecked, increase the risk of strokes, heart disease and diabetes. Men with girths of more than 85cm (33.5in) will be given exercise and diet plans and, in urgent cases, told to see a doctor.

A 33 inch waist for men over 40? I think I might have had a 33 inch waist back when I was 13 or so. The stories don’t mention if sumo wrestlers get an exemption. Maybe this will fizzle when the Japanese realize that this law will effectively shut them out of the heavyweight classes of Judo and other wrestling-type sports in the Olympics and elsewhere.

Barking Moonbat Early Warning System comments:

Expect this attitude to spread worldwide within a short time. Fat people and smokers are the two groups people are actually encouraged to be prejudiced against. And white guys, but that doesn’t count.