Texas: Exes and Sexes
When Texas Child Protective Services (what a grisly name, by the way) seized the children of mothers belonging the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints, I wondered if the state of Texas was turning Yankee. By any legal or moral standard I could think of, the seizure was an abuse of power against the fundamental institution of all human societies, the family. Yesterday's ruling by the state's Third Circuit Court of Appeals, which condemned the action as illegal, restores my faith in the sanity of Texans.
Naturally, the feminist child-savers at the TCPS are appalled by the ruling, but what did they expect? Their case rested on the allegation that on the FCLDS ranch there was a pervasive atmosphere of abuse of children and minors, which entitled them to seize all the children without proving in any one case either that a particular child had been abused or was in imminent danger of abuse. This approach had failed in the past, and, we can only hope, it will fail in the future. The smoking gun in the case was a telephone call from a girl who claimed to have been abuse. When she turned out to have been, apparently, a middle-aged ex-member with a grudge, the case should have fallen apart, but like our Texas President, who kept on changing his excuse for invading Iraq, the prosecutors moved on to other allegations,
The Fundamentalist Mormons are, admittedly, a weird bunch, and I personally find their cult disgusting. Like other Mormon splinter groups, they seem to live off the welfare provided to the mothers of what are in law regarded as illegitimate children. Tom Green (out on parole after a conviction for having sex with his 13-year old "wife") used to make a good living this way, and, according to people in Utah (Mormon as well as gentile) with whom I have spoken, some monogamous Mormons are all too prone to make use of welfare money to support their large families.
I do not know why such a strange religion as Mormonism was ever tolerated outside of Utah, but I do not make the laws. Mormonism is legal and so is Fundamentalist Mormonism. However repulsive we may find polygamy or marriage with young teenage women, let us remember that the Fundamentalist Mormons are hardly much different from polygamous Mormons down to 1890, when under very serious pressure from the Federal Government, the LDS renounced--for the time being--polygamy. I have read remarks from so-called Christian conservatives, who compare polygamy with homosexuality? Where did such people go to school? King David, then, was on the moral plane with homosexuals? When, by the way, did Jews renounce polygamy? It was banned in Europe, under threat of persecution, in the 12 century, though the ban apparently expired in the 13th. Today, European Jews continue to practice monogamy, which is the law in Israel, but some Middle Eastern Jews, even in Israel, continue to be polygenous. I do not think polygamy, whether practiced by Mormons, Muslims, or Jews, is an especially wholesome custom, and I much prefer the Greco-Roman marriage custom adopted by Christianity from the beginning, but it is foolish to be shocked or disgusted by an institution that is so common.
In America today, I do not see that there is any basis for outlawing polygamy. It certainly cannot be Christian moral law: Christianity can scarcely be mentioned in a public school or government building, and there is hardly any aspect of Christian morality that is enforced by law, even if there are still statutes on the books that retain the impress of the Christians who passed the law. When is the last time that adultery or fornication were punished as such? Prostitution is illegal in most places--with what justification I cannnot imagine--but two consenting adults can do pretty much anything in the privacy of one of their homes. Military officers are occasionally punished for adultery, usually with someone under their command or at least in the same service,but that is a question of military discipline . A Michigan court has ruled that the penalty for adultery could be a life sentence, but I know of no one in Michigan serving time for seducing his neighbor's wife. After the decision in Lawrence v. Texas, upholding a right to privacy, adultery became a dead letter. Then, if adultery is not a crime, how can polygamy be punished? A bigamist who lies to his wives is one thing; he may well be regarded as having tricked his second wife into a contractual relationship. But a man who lives openly with two women has, in the eyes of American law today, committed no crime. With the support of a few more Muslim immigrants, the LDS itself might well end its temporary prohibition on polygamy.
Critics of the Fundamentalist Mormons also claim to be shocked by the marriage of underage girls with men in their 20's and 30's, but if they knew anything about the marriage customs of other ages, they would hardly be surprised. In colonial Virginia, parental consent was necessary for a minor to get married, but with consent a girl of twelve could become a bride. Even in America today, while marriage laws vary from state to state, it is simply not true to say that it is illegal for a girl of 16 to get married. In Pennsylvania, girls and boys under 18 need parental consent and have to pay a fee, while minors under the age of 16 need the consent both of the parents and of a Judge of the Orphans Court. In Utah, parental consent and permission from the Juvenile Court is required. In Texas, where the alleged abuse took place, parental consent on an official form or an order from the district court is sufficient. In other words, all this yelling and screaming about the marriage of 16-year old girls is a complete canard.
Here is what the real issue is. State governments routinely promote teenage promiscuous sex in the sex education programs in government schools and in government-funded counseling centers. In many states, condoms are routinely provided to children on the pretext of preventing the spread of STD's, when everyone knows or ought to know that the purpose, as much as the result, is to encourage teenage sex. And yet, here we have a state agency seizing a large group of children on the grounds that teenage girls are having sex with a man they regard as their husband and to whom they have promised fidelity.
If you want to talk about weird, what is weirder than the counselors, child-savers, and feminist prosecutors who want to rescue young women from polygamy only to turn them into unpaid strumpets. Today's Chicago Tribune features an article titled "To many girls, sex with adults just part of life," in which Mary Schmich interviews many young Chicago girls who openly talk about their sexual relations with older men. The young women she interviewed were mostly from the lower strata of society, but our entire culture, from top to bottom, is saturated with images of sexuality and promiscuity. From a little girl's first Barby to the social pressure to engage in sex games in Middle School to TV shows, like Desperate Housewives, designed to justify and promote adultery, American women are given a consistent message: Do it!
Let us cut the hypocrisy. America, as a society, is dedicated to the sexual exploitation of women. The only "crime " committed by the Fundamentalist Mormons is their commitment to marriage.
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The self proclaimed "feminist" Hugh Hefner and his girls, enter that as evidence as well.
Very sound, TJF.
May I add that we are in the throes of a moral panic about "child abuse" that has given rise to an industry that, once created, has taken on a life of its own.
True, there are horror stories about parental abuse that would curl your hair, and no doubt justify state intervention even in libertarian eyes. But we have created a system that requires tale-bearing to the authorities, endows them with arbitrary power, and is constantly abused.
It is always the horror stories that support Leviathan's power grabs, whether it's drugs, child abuse, money laundering, global warming or human rights violations. We Americans are suckers for "There oughta be a law . . . "
If people begin to think there oughta be, there will be, and by the time Leviathan is done, you won't like the results.
A great essay - Dr. Fleming nails it!
Great post, and thanks for saying what many have been thinking.
I too find it disturbing that some want to place polygamy and gay marriage on the same level. "Gay marriage" is a product of the modern Left set on destroying our ancestral institutions; polygamy has been around since the beginning of time. The Greeks and Romans, for example, acknowledged the institution of polygamy (as they witnessed it among the Macedonians, et al.), although they, rightly, generally chose not to follow it. But they never would have dreamed of acknowledging the legitimacy of a self-contradictory notion like "gay marriage," even though they were tolerant of certain homosexual practices.
"Let us cut the hypocrisy. America, as a society, is dedicated to the sexual exploitation of women. The only “crime ” committed by the Fundamentalist Mormons is their commitment to marriage." -CPR
That's what the attack is on covertly marriage, agreed. I suspect the Greco-Roman one man one woman marriage standard adopted or underscored by St. Paul is failing so miserably today with the astronomical divorce rates on account of unintelligent (at best half-baked) modernism that really only sees one side of the coin and expecting that 1/2 is the whole coin. Sort of what the educational system has become today in viewing boys in co-ed classrooms more as defective females, rather than who they are as males and what their needs are.
I doubt a female instructor's classroom demonstration of how to unfold a condom over a banana for all to see covers what the boys need educationally. In my opinion an authority figure like a teacher doing that in front of young teens or even older teenagers in a co-ed classroom is disgusting and demeaning and probably even traumatic and thus 'abusive.' (I hope they don't but I'm also wondering do they also demonstrate sponge insertion?)
And marriage is best when respected be the tradition monogamy or whether it is polygamy. People forget marriage is about the children and what is in their interest until their brains and nervous systems have fully formed and matured, which by the way doesn't happen in either gender until around 20. What that means is that experience is still writing in a child's not yet hardened cement (physiology) what will remain there once it has hardened. That can be a very sad (on account of trauma) or a happy fact (on account of peace in the formative years.)
I have read that most men in the middle east have two wives their first and thirty-odd years later their second and the marriage unit inclusive of both wives and the subsequent additional children remains happily intact. I think the issue is respecting marriage as the vehicle for the protection of children first and foremost and ought to be our conscious focus. There was no evidence that these LDS marriages did not do that even if the brides were still teenagers.
Once the female begins her menstrual cycle mother Nature seems to be saying as long as it is not traumatic you are now capable of bearing children. If she or we care about our children that means, we also care about marriage.
On the subject of polygamy:
In America today, I do not see that there is any basis for outlawing polygamy. It certainly cannot be Christian moral law: Christianity can scarcely be mentioned in a public school or government building, and there is hardly any aspect of Christian morality that is enforced by law, even if there are still statutes on the books that retain the impress of the Christians who passed the law. When is the last time that adultery or fornication were punished as such? Prostitution is illegal in most places--with what justification I cannot imagine--but two consenting adults can do pretty much anything in the privacy of one of their homes. Military officers are occasionally punished for adultery, usually with someone under their command or at least in the same service,but that is a question of military discipline . A Michigan court has ruled that the penalty for adultery could be a life sentence, but I know of no one in Michigan serving time for seducing his neighbor's wife. After the decision in Lawrence v. Texas, upholding a right to privacy, adultery became a dead letter. Then, if adultery is not a crime, how can polygamy be punished? A bigamist who lies to his wives is one thing; he may well be regarded as having tricked his second wife into a contractual relationship. But a man who lives openly with two women has, in the eyes of American law today, committed no crime. With the support of a few more Muslim immigrants, the LDS itself might well end its temporary prohibition on polygamy.
Dr. Fleming
I appreciate your acknowledgement that the greater issue here is the encroachment of the state. The comparison to homosexuality is ridiculous, but it is all too common especially with homosexual marriage being discussed so often.
A couple of small points. I don't know if there are many Mormons on welfare in Utah, but if they are it is contrary to the teachings of the church. The welfare system of the church is designed to promote self sufficiency--job training etc.--while keeping members off the government dole.
And while there are always exceptions in any large organization, I don't think you would find many Warren Jeffs types in leadership positons in the LDS church. He and some of the others strike me as individuals who got kicked around their whole lives and have created a situation where they can finally wield power over those who have a limited ability to resist. Brigham Young had no sympathy for these types. He was much more sympathetic to women who had limited means to change their circumstance, than to reprobate men who would not honor their priesthood and provide for their families.
Dr. Fleming
Some comments concerning your last post. Even if it were legal, I don't know if it would be reinstituted in the church. There are a couple of issues here. We believe that polygamy has to be commanded of the Lord to be licit. Otherwise the commandment is one wife. (This is similar to the prohibition of alcohol. We have been commanded to not drink alcohol, but do not maintain that this has been the Lord's standard at all times for all people.)
There is also a principle of restoration, that is we believe that all rites and ordinances that the Lord has commanded since Adam will be present for at least some period during this dispensation of the fulness of times. Whether the practice of polygamy in the 19th century was sufficient or whether it is to be reinstituted, we do not know. As an example, we believe that the economic principle of having all things in common practiced by the early church is of the Lord. Yet, we still live a lesser law--tithing--at the present time. Bottom line, we believe the Lord in His wisdom will command His church.
I fully agree with "A Mormon" that most Mormons are hard-working and self-reliant people and that these habits are encouraged by the LDS church. Not every Mormon, however, follows this teaching. One of my informants was an intelligent Mormon lady who played an important role in Utah education. She was horrified to learn, for example, how many comparatively affluent families, because of their size, were able to take advantage of free school lunch programs. This is more a matter, I think, of human nature and the depravity of modern times, than of any particular religious group, and I heartily endorse the statement that there are few Warren Jeffs in the LDS leadership.
Having defended polygamy as a natural and not depraved institution, I would not at all endorse it either from the Christian or the natural point of view. When I was doing a lot of comparative study of social institutions, I discovered that in Africa and the Middle East, polygynous households had many problems. In many African societies, the man is caught on the horns of a dilemma: If his wives do not get along, his life is made miserable by their quarreling, and if they do get along, they often conspire against their husband, and may administer non-lethal doses of poison if he beats one of them. Polygamy does not encourage the sort of loyalty and intimacy that many monogamous couples develop. Finally, the authority of Christ, St. Paul, and the practice of the early Church are against it. Having said all that, I do believe it is possible for polygamous families to be quite close and to lead decent lives, and I have no doubt that as kooky as they may seem, the women in 19th century Mormon families and even the wives of Warren Jeffs are far better off than the girls who grow up learning their moral lessons from Sex in the City. (A young woman on Long Island is now alleging that she was led into early promiscuity after watching the show.)
The comparison of polygamy with homosexuality is not only ridiculous but disgusting. It is like saying that, because eating too much meat may be as dangerous as eating excrement, meat-eating is on par with coprophilia. Most natural men, if left to their inclinations, would either take a second or third wife or, at least, take a mistress. According to the rule often known as the "Coolidge effect" (after a famous anecdote told of Silent Cal), men are more sexually active when they have a variety of partners. While it may be impractical or immoral to act on this impulse, it is perfectly natural. In nature, males seek power primarily to have more access to the food and females that enable them to pass on more of their genes to future generations. That insight is at the basis of sociobiology.
The only thing polygamy and 'gay marriage' have in common is that both are not traditional marriage in the Christian sense. What I don't understand is why liberals can exhibit more moral outrage than Jonathan Edwards towards polygamists while simultaneously clamoring for 'gay marriage.' I have never heard an argument for 'gay marriage' that does not also justify polygamy or even incest. People just can't seem to understand that if the language 'one man and one woman' is discriminatory then so is limiting the union to only two people. If the norm in this country is that everything is okay as long as the parties involved are consenting adults, which it seems to be, then I agree with TJF that there is certainly no modern justification for outlawing polygamy in America. People today, modern conservatives and libertarians included, will probably not invoke any Christian moral law because once you do, a plethora of other popular practices come into question. So the day I see a popular movement to outlaw divorce in this country, especially no-fault divorce, or maybe even cohabitation, fornication, and adultery if we're really trying to be serious, then I will be perfectly content with the condemnation of polygamy.
By the way, I wasn't endorsing polygamy - Christianity and 2,000 years of occidental tradition forbid it - but only agreeing with Dr. Fleming that it shouldn't be grouped with "gay marriage."
Yes, I understood that. My response was directed in fact to CPR whose remarks suggested enthusiasm for polygamy. And, I should add a hearty Amen to Edward.
Dr. Fleming
Believe it or not we are in almost perfect agreement. All the things you mentioned can be the result of polygamy. Most--I don't know about the poisoning--had examples in the 19th century church. This is why it appears that the practice is tied to the priesthood, and practiced only then by commandment of the Lord. It was never to be the Lord's law for all people at all times. But with the attributes that a humble servant of the Lord demonstrates, polygamy can somehow serve the Lord's purposes for man. Again I'm not saying that it was always practiced as such in the 19th century, but this was the object.
One of the myriad beauties of Christianity is how it returns the natural order back to God's original design. In the beginning, "a man shall cleave to his wife (singular) and the twain shall be one flesh." Jesus quoted this to the Pharisees, and Paul cites it again as depicting the mystical relationship between Christ and His Church.
The polygymous practice of many men including the Old Testament Patriarchs was not sinful per se, but was less than God's ideal and, as Scripture testified on more than one occasion, wrought with many attendant problems. Christ and His Apostles have restored order, so to speak, for those who will obey it.
That said, Dr. Fleming's point is accurate: anti-polygymy laws are baseless and, in this particular empire, plumb silly.
An excellent essay.
I have long suspected that many of the smarter advocates of gay marriage relish the fact that their opponents group gay marriage in with polygamy. Unlike the idea of gay marriage, polygamy has been around and institutionalized (albeit on a small scale) since the beginning of time, and, by associating gay marriage with it, gay marriage gains an implicit historical legitimacy it would not otherwise have.
Very good point, Mr. Roberts.
Interesting article but I have to voice a little protest here to some of the posters. The notion that Texas Child Protective Services is full of "radical feminists" is a hoot. Also, the notion that public school teachers in San Angelo, Texas are teaching kids to put condoms on bananas is so far fetched that it is ludicrous. I don't believe for one minute that pregnant 13 and 14 year old girls is something that we should disregard and it is a little shocking that supposed "conservatives" are A-OK with it. It's disgusting. Perhaps you are unaware that the Third Court of Appeals is based in Austin, Texas and is in fact well staffed with feminists and left wingers. So the people you believe are behind this great conspiracy are actually the ones that are sending the kids back to the ranch. Interesting strategy.
No, the real problem is this. Tex. CPS is a government agency. It has certain policies and procedures defined by law. It has a very inflexible government agency mentality. It is used to dealing with abuse and neglect in single family (more or less) homes and dealing with one set of kids and parents at a time. It has no rules, procedures, guidelines for dealing with allegations of abuse in group, communal, multiple family type situations. The cookie cutter one size fits all mentality has run up against a brick wall of multiple families, cult-style brainwashing and discipline, 400 plus kids, a lot of money and an army of highly paid lawyers, some of the best in Texas. This case was doomed from the beginning.
All you say, Mr. Devin, is right, but ultimately women get hurt far worse than men in these matters. Real hurt, not merely with legal stupidities, costly as they may become, but in their natures. Feminism is an attack on the feminine by using the vulnerability of women to make them try to act as if they were men; the thought of women functioning as bullies would not so long ago have sounded bizarre. I believe that was what Dr. Fleming was implying.
"Yes, I understood that. My response was directed in fact to CPR whose remarks suggested enthusiasm for polygamy." TJF @ # 12
My thanks for your reply. I have heard it said that in harmonious, principled and religious polygamy there is no bond stronger than between women who actually do marry and actually do love the same man. And that also the women have other female company and thus friends at hand in a communal setting. Thus she is not hungry for "him" to have to be or become another woman as in the monongamous marriage unless and until she needs him to be a man. That probably puts too much of a burden then on both parties, UNLESS Christ and the Holy Ghost have deemed it preferable and doable possibly for those very reasons? It can't very easily and naturally be done without the divine involved?
But I also agree with the Mormons (whom I respect) the commands and presencing of the divine albeit absolute in and of itself in relationship with the temporal and human in meeting us wherein we are in a given time tend to be kind and adjust in spirit via the Holy Ghost to what is correspondingly best. I think all of Christianity is terrific and wonderful but so far I tend toward the Catholicism in which I was raised with a number two preference for the Mormon.
I think they 'rock' when they're doing their thing under God or divine, at their best. They're good people. It's the one thing I actually liked about Romney. I figured he couldn't be 'all' bad. (humor)
Any female posters here?
Thomas Fleming's article should be in every American newspaper this Sunday, but you'll know they would remove his last, and most poignant sentence: "The only “crime ” committed by the Fundamentalist Mormons is their commitment to marriage."
This is a case about "juvenile" code, where the feminazi's (the term first shouted by Limblow, it launched him to mega rich talk show blabber) operate in full, without shame. Can any women as a public official be shamed? Not possible, but I digress.
The Appellate court case of Texas (3rd) illustrates the collusion of feminazism that is the hall mark of the entire Judicial branch. The case was brought on behalf of mothers. Cases involving more constitutional and relevent violations of law were not heard. This is by design. The ruling only dealt with 25% of the total children seized. Husbands-Fathers are the natural guardians of children. Mothers obtain the title of "natural guardian" only upon the death of the natural guardian, or, he has been stripped of his natural guardianship for having abandoned the family, abused or neglected his family. Even unmarried fathers are the "natural guardians", and they obtain that title by "upholding his child".
This is why all modern day landmark decisions, the Federal and State superior courts, by their desire to decieve the public, take on cases only when a mother's role in marriage is represented, and in particular, when the "natural guardian" is dead. The only reason this case was taken and announced to the media is because it has little to do with facts, but is has everything to do with protecting the State actions.
Troxelle v Granville was the last U.S. Supreme Court case dealing with "parental rights". The only reason the Washington Supreme Court declared their legislature's statute for "grandparents visitation rights" unconstitutional, and the only reason the Federal feminazi's guided this case to the U.S. Supreme Court and the federal system, was because the "natural guardian" (father) was dead. The case involved a mother, who was exercising her new found authority by defying the State of Washington's law to grant visitation to the children's paternal grandparents. Mother rules!
The appellate court decision in Texas is shaky on numerous grounds. It doesn't order Texas to do anything, really. The decision was clever, in that it contained 'no decision' in law that I could find. If any "vermin" (lawyers were given the title "vermin" by the original colony of Massachusets) wishes to refute my claim, then explain why it did not order the immediate return of the children. I know the answer, the vermin do as well. It had everything to do with Texas law and nothing to do with their Constitution.
If it were a family court case, this court would have ordered the father to "visit" the property of the State (children), would have redistributed his property, removed him at gun point from his home, seized his bank account to pay for the "mother's" lawyers and the court ordered "guardian ad litum", parenting expeditor and other court appointed child snatchers, garnished half of his post-taxed income, and would kill him if he approached the bench without counsel.
In every state in the "union", one only need locate the first instance when the phrase "in the best interests of children" in a divorce action was used to document when the judicial branch, in violation of the seperation of powers, made law abolishing the natural guardianship of fathers in direct conflict with their state's law.
I'm a believer in Christ Jesus and the whole Bible. Though I'm not a Catholic, I recognize that animous toward Catholic fathers by egaltarianists/socialists of the late 19th century was used to blame them for the poverty of children in America's first economic depression. The persecution of "Catholic" fathers in New York began in earnest in the 1880s. With the passage of the Social Security Act of 1935, AFDC, Tanf and the fraudulent Republican "welfare reform" by Newt "the heretic" Gingrich, police power's developed by the modern Empire enforces the new world order, where children are the property of the State. Texas painted U.S. Army vehicles to surround the compoud, snipers were posted, SWAT teams in place, armored vehicles circling the "compound" and helicopters circling above, the nations legal system was on display. The Texas attorney Genderal had one purpose and only one purpose. It was a message to fathers, most particularly "believers in christ", those Catholic men and protestant men who might claim a right of parenthood, if you please, as Gays are elevated in law above the natural guardian in law, social welfare policy and status.
The message to every American father was clear. If you even think that you have rule of law protecting your inaliable and fundamental liberty right to the care and custody of children, you will be annihilated. Janet Reno, America's most infamous feminazi totalitarian chose to use Federal troops to burn resisters, and their families alive. The polygamists were chosen so ALL american slaves could get the image "burned" in their minds.
I know of one resister, of many thousands, who appears before a magistrate feminazi on each and every occasion and crumples up the "court order" and tosses it at their feet. He has served more time in jail and prison than most if not all women found guilty of murdering children. He has served the equivelant of several years in "jail" on trumped up "civil constructive contempt" charges alone. He has been dragged to prison to serve a two year sentence on trumped up felony charges for failing to pay his court ordered "child support", where a pettyfogger under contract with the State IV-D scheme obtains his "intervenor" status by fraud, legal deception in violation of several Constitutional prohibitions obtaining his "authority". Upon claiming to find him guilty of "felony" non-support, and after having served his time in a state penetentary, the appellate court found him "not guilty", thanks to a non-lawyers who must go to great lengths, including tazor and gun toting provacatours, to educate the "legal profession" on the law. The Appellate court ruled in favor of us "non-lawyers", but only after he had served his time in prison. They reversed his conviction without reaching any of the merits of his appeal. This was done to "hide" their practice of child trafficking. This man, with several others, are prominantly displayed on the "brown shirt's" "most wanted" list in the county in which they live. Rapists, murderers and drug dealers are outnumbered by "obligors" on the S.S. website's most wanted page. The media paints the Court as child savers, the custodial parent designated by a robed pharisee is a "victim" and the natural guardian is painted as a vial human being, far worse than any polygamist who drags young girls to his "rape chambers" (Bill O'Reilly).
Vicious, cruel government of this kind must, I think, be under the judgement and providence of God. I now appreciate the gruesome scenes of Revelation awaiting Christ's justice and judgement. I used to believe that Revelation was more fiction, than fact. That childish belief has been stamped out of my soul.
I have no doubt where the grapes of wrath are stored.
The "organized" church is silent. Protestant and Catholic leadership.... DEAD (spiritually) silent. "babes and women" will rule over you.......
Domestic violence statutes are defined in my state code under "family law", because in order to throw men in prison or control their movement without a shred of criminal procedure to protect liberty and the innocent, you merely claim a "fear of child or family harm" in order to deny him "visitation" with State children. The right to face your accuser is "archaic law", to quote a prosecutor. The judge, a useful idiot, nods in approval. (He doesn't want to be on "record", of course).
Socio-fascism has it's roots in "public policy". It was Nazi Germany's public policy to "Preserve the German culture, and promote the Aryan Race", that gave legal authority for courts to assign yellow Stars on a select group of german citizenship. Designated persons could then be identified to request that they provide information about their children and property. The "final solution" was implemented under colour of law. At Nuremburg, the Judges on trial had only one defense: "Everthing we did was legal, and you (his American prosecutor) knew exactly what we were doing."
The only defense I have heard from an esteemed, Honorable District Court judge to explain their authority in these matters was lifted from the defense statements by their brethren at Nuremberg, "everything we did (do) is legal".
Christ will be the judge of that, my friends.
Mark my words, the State of Texas will solidify their authority and power to kill anyone who defies their definition of a "parent", no matter what the final outcome of this case will be. The demons who control the legal system are in complete, total control.
There are judges and a few lawyers who know what is going on. If you knew what they do to fathers in family court, you'll grasp the peril any ABA member who defies the "demon". They will place "child porn" in their desks and wisk them away. They have good reason to bow to their master, Satan. They will be treated far worse than a father asserting his Constitutional, God given rights. With no one in the community to back him up, the "christian", he is left without any protection. I don't blame them entirely. In chambers or in court, they reveal themselves by the language and tenor of their words. I had a criminal court judge in a civil constructive contempt hearing of a pro se litigant we coached go to great lengths to lecture (we in the audience) of his knowledge of "criminal law", and his concern about his knowledge of "welfare law". He had everyone removed from his court to be frisked after his opening lecture. They are not looking for weapons, my friends. They are looking for "recording devices". He did not find any, but his crime was recorded nonetheless.
When they see proper legal defense, without "state" designated representation, to county actions against innocents, the court room is filled with plain clothes policemen, FBI agents and retired officers armed to the teeth. The "believers" are armed with something far more dangerous, "the truth" and the law. The court record is altered, in nearly every case, by order of the Judge to their "clerks" (transcriptionists, tape recording directors).
If you desire to restore America, and devolve it's "empire" to within it's lawful borders, physical and constitutional, I suggest you pray that the "natural family" be restored. No area of constitutional malfeasance and non-feasance in "federalisms" misguided power can be diminished and reigned in until the family is recognized as an institution worth defending.
This will be my last post so this forum can return to the Chronicle's primary purpose. I'll enjoy reading it, a safe haven from internet news magazine garbage. I apologise for the diversion from it's purpose. The restoration of the natural family is the only beacon, dim as it is, that will establish a proper order of civil society to thwart and slow down the march toward global tyranny. We have very little time. In fact, I would argue it's over.... but that is a waste of time.
Mr. Fleming's words are a testimony to wisdom. The Appellate Court decision of Texas in Austin is judicial corruption. It did not contain much in the way of law or guidence that I could find.
the ABA will make sure all media information is filtered to reflect "opinion", but not law 9) the state police is well rehearsed for use in Denver and St. Paul for the summer political conventions 10) the "petition for habeous corpus" in another case of the poly's pending in court was either dismissed, ignored, I have not heard nor seen the disposition of that "petition", and the reason for the Appellate court to snuff it out, it was a writ that contained law that damned the State.. The feminist lawyers case was the ONLY one that was publicized or published. They silenced "legal appeals", or appeals that contained actual law with this hasty, pathetic decision....
This demonstration of tyranny by the State of Texas is a long way from being settled, and I'll bet any Senator's federal pension plan that 1), the right to the State to seize children will not be changed 2) some "perverted" interpretation of "due process of law" that Justice O'Conner developed will be used to dilute law and excuse the District Court Judge's actions if the seizure is argued on "procedural" grounds (but it won't get there) 3) the "guardianship" of children will be reserved for women only in all subsequent decisions, because any legal action by a father will be dismissed 4) all appeals by the fathers of these children will be dismissed in some form or another 5) Any Federal case that arises from this mess will not include the word "father" anywhere in their decision, and 6) the case will focus on what constitutes "imminent harm", terms of art only a feminist can dream and define. Terms of art are changable, as frequent and predictable as hot flashes and menstrual cycles of the womyn who rule 7) Any references to allegations of "criminal" activity by the State will be burned
I don't think there are female posters here. But here's one. I think that Mr. Fleming is right about this.
I have an anecdote. One of my great grandmothers was 16yrs when she married my great grandfather. He was 36yrs. They weren't mormons or polygamists. They were Epicopalians.
I think it actually would be much better if many or most women married and had children at a younger age than now. But I'm not in favor of cutting a young woman's youth short altogether, either.
First they came for the insane. Then they came for the Gypsies. Then they came for the Jews. Then they came for anyone!
Seizing children was called building the "Hitler Youth Corps". What does Bush call it?
I want even drive through Texas after Waco and this!
I'm mystified by Mr. Wilson's comment in #25. Are you being ironic? Is this an inside joke? Did somebody else take the name of Clyde Wilson?
When King David was dying, they tried to heat him with a young virgin.
In pagan Athens, 14 - 15 year old virgins marrying was common, 12 - 13 year old not common, but far from regarded as abnormal.
Puberty (in the physical sense, not to be confounded with adolescence crisis) IS a natural limit for marital age. 25 or something is a natural limit for running a farm on your own, but most married couples don't have to do that.
In Russian grammar, the word dyevoushka is used for unmarried virgins between 12 and 30 ... at the latter age limit a virgin becomes a stara dyeva, a spinster. 12 is a pretty avergae age for female puberty.
In Spain, one hundred years ago, the marital ages were 12 and 14. This seems to go back to Roman legislation, at least in so far that Roman law accepted 14 year old husbands.
I seem to recall that the future Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette were 16 and 14 when married. And that Hedvig/Iadviga of Poland(Pol. spelling Jadwiga) was 12 when marrying Lithuanian prince Iagiello.
As for raising large families on welfare money ... well, if everyone did it, wellfare might run out, but would it be a necessarily disastrous loss? As a matter of fact, everyone is not doing it, and why not people from the ethnic majority? After all, declaring the young wives illigitimate mothers and taxing people for welfare distribution might not have been their idea, and if they bear the burden, why not let them take the advantages too?
No 25 is obviously an impostor. My old and honoured friend Tom Fleming is not at all pompous.
No. 26. Don't blame Texas. Waco was done by the FBI and BATF.
Had the sheriff or Texas Rangers been left in charge, it would not have happened. I dare say that if the compound had been in New Jersey or Ohio the feds would never have attacked it, but they have always felt free to kill people in the South (with media approval). As far as the state "child protecftion" bureaucracy goes, all these things were created by and under the orders of the federal Congress, bureaucracy, and courts.
If Barack Obama is elected president, after he sets up his PC regime in DC (or rather, expands the already existing one) and begins his liberal quest to slay the dragons of inequality and social injustice, Waco, I'm afraid, will seem like the quaint good old days. (Not that McCain is any better; his dragons will just be overseas.)
"And yet, here we have a state agency seizing a large group of children on the grounds that teenage girls are having sex with a man they regard as their husband and to whom they have promised fidelity."
It is an open question as to whether these girls willingly regard these men as their respective husband/s. A young girl, who has been pressured and conditioned to believe a man thrice her age is the man to whom she is divinely betrothed, is not in a position to make a sound decision at the wee age of 13 years old.
To all but justify the continued existence of an environment that is coercive and prejudicial to the development of young girls into healthy and well-balanced women on the grounds that polygamy furthers the cause of marriage and the family, is well, astounding. If polygamy were a healthy union, perhaps, but history (ancient and recent) shows that polygamy gives rise to all sorts of headaches and problems for not only the individuals and children involved but the society in which it exists. Indeed, there is a reason why polygamy exists, even in the arab muslim world, on the fringes of society--it is normally practiced and maintained by controlling men and generations of brainwashed women, the sorts of people who can not get along with everyone else, for all their wife-stealing and such.
Remember that Mormon polygamy, the same sort practiced by this "sect" is only in line with the sort of sexual incontinence practiced and magically, "divinely" sanctioned by the bumpkin Joseph Smith. The historical record demonstrates that polygamy was his ruse to bed wives and daughters of other men. He was a sheister, a controlling and sexually consumed meglomaniac, not unlike that illiterate moon-god worshipping buffoon who raped and pillaged and wed something like 15 wives, all while founding the great scourge of humanity, Islam. Mohammad and Joseph Smith, and probably at least some of today's polygamist remnant, are all about control and sexual power over women; they are certainly not driven by some enlightened desire to see marriage and the family "win the victory".
Check the county records. None of the FLDS received welfare. They are completely self-supporting. They even home-school their children.
They paid over $100,000 in real estate taxes, receiving virtually no (other than the roads) benefit.
Think of what our taxes would be if the welfare queens in Dallas and Houston would be self-supporting.
One doesn't have to find the FLDS way of life endearing to question the righteousness of government thugs descending on a community and seizing all its children. If you empower the gummint to right every wrong, perceived or real, by force, expect the SWAT Team at your door sooner rather than later.
You have a point, JMB, but polygamy goes way back before the butcher and child molester Mohammed. It wasn't originally about sexual control or sexual power over women in the ancient middle east.
Certainly, there are real problems with it, but it was part of stable and civilised cultures for many centuries. That's not to say that it's desirable, but it's not necessarilt illegitimate.
Of course, when fifty or sixty year old men are in the habit of marrying young girls, and even the parents have little or no say in the matter, then there is a big problem, but that's more of an aspect of general domination of society by a repressive elite than anything else.
I think most respondents have firmly grasped the point: We are not justifying polygamy in general or the FLDS in particular but trying to put their weirdness in a context that includes American mores and the predatory behavior of government agencies. Child protection agencies have repeatedly attempted to take children away from families whose only "crimes" were being Christian and teaching the children at home.
PS, the idea that these marriages are invalid because teenage girls cannot consent to sex or marriage requires a good deal of justification or rather ignorance. Yes, a girl can be socially pressured into marrying at 15, but she can also be pressured into having sex with someone when she is 12. She can also be pressured, socially, into rejecting her family's religion and moral values. Most Americans, indeed, are pressured into thinking they have to vote for either Barack Obama or John McCain or think the latest Lucas/Spielberg garbage is great entertainment, or watch American Idol? American culture is an infinite regression to moronic vulgarity. Do these people actually choose their "lifestyles"? Better to be a good Muslim's third wife than a gangbanger's "Ho'"
Fleming: "... the predatory behavior of government agencies."
On a related note, I was looking at the sexual predators database recently in my area, and I was surprised to find many young men in it around the ages of 18 - 20 who had intercourse with girls around the ages of 15 - 16. Sure, these guys should have found something more productive to be doing with their time - in more civilized times, they would have had a father or uncle to beat some sense into them - but their futures now are completely ruined. They have been labeled with one of the most damning condemnations in American society: sexual predator. It's perfectly legal to walk down the street and murder one's unborn child, but if a 19 year old guy sleeps with a 16 year old girl, well, he's going to be stigmatized for the rest of his life. Crazy.
Dr. Fleming,
Your post number 33 summarizes this issue and much more. The last line of post 33 says more than an entire treatise on the subject.
I hate to say this - just delete - if off point. Remember when Clinton balanced the budget BECAUSE he was juxtapositioned with a Republican Congress. (I pointed that out when posting on the old SF site.) ... Then, especially if McWar chooses Romney as a running 'mate' - I may do the unthinkable and vote [period] & for the Republican in order to juxtaposition a Republican AGAINST the ensuing Democratic Congress. It may be the last meaningful since effective form of checks & balances. Right? If the politicians keep printing the money unchecked to get elected, you might as well just start wallpapering your walls with $100 paper bills for all they'll be worth - anyway. I hope Senator Rockefeller in hugging Barak is also whispering a bit of reality into his Ear? Pat's being a gold & silver bug may have come of age, even if some the married young girls haven't yet. At least they're married and not Ho's. Sorry if this was off the wall.
Again, TJF wisdom prevails when making the point about valid and invalid marriages. The State of Texas did not enforce their laws regarding marriage, where the states have taken it upon themselves to regulate who can marry. These laws are quite old in legislative history, where the states regulated who could marry for health reasons, and limiting the age of consent to marry by young people to protect the parent's children from male predators who lured their young daughters to the barn loft to consumate the relationship without parental consent or knowledge. It used to be that if a young "daughter" was lured away from a father by a 50 year old man, the father would impose his familial marshal law by escorting the man to the end of the property by shotgun, or simply blowing the man away if his pants were pulled down. It was not the best of times, but it was far better times than what society represents today. Fathers, particularly when dragged from their homes and children by tyrannical legal systems, are not present in the home to protect their children from anyone, or anything. Matriarchy is regressive, not progressive. Matriarchy creates barbaric societies. Even a dog knows this.
Arizona, a state that enforces it's laws, had a man from the Texas compound in their jurisdiction and under probation for violating their child sexual predator laws when he was found guilty for attempting to lure young girls into his marital den (I think that was the related charge). Texas CPS and police created a "false" police report, naming the man in residence and on court supervision in another state to give the court the impression he was in Texas violating someone or some thing, in order to stage their "endangerment" claim to seize the children. The man was "interviewed" by the police by phone from the perps probationary residence. They also had been in contact with his parole officer in Arizona. These actions do not give police, CPS or the Judge immunity, for they knowingly lied in order to justify their "takings". But you will never find law applied to the law. CPS, local cops, prosecutors and Judges operate near completely outside the law, because all of their actions are "secret".
I was arrested, beaten and detained for simply requesting to review my "child support record" to obtain some facts for an upcoming hearing in family court. How could this be, you ask? The police had been told that I had threatened the person behind the bullet proof glass. They came, and they operated, without asking a question. I was sitting alone, reading an NRA magazine found on the table of the Hennepin County child support system office. Courts claim that my "children's right to privacy" would be violated if their father, designated by a black robed devil as "joint legal guardian" in a no-fault dissolution order, would see his records for child support. Be it family law or juvenile law, the actions of CPS, police, county sherriff or court are "secret". The most prolific law being shoved through your state legislature today is records and privacy law. All of it is designed to protect public officials, to keep all records away from the public, so the Judicial branch and members of the executive branch who seize and control children can conceal their actions upon "their" children from being known to the public, and more importantly, they share only that information with the media and public so as to denigrate anyone who apposes them.
A group of friends and I requested from the Minn DOT a list of the names and addresses of all persons whose "driver's licenses" were suspended for failing to pay child support, or failed to comply with a judicial child support order. The Commissoner of DOT suddenly pulled the request claiming that revealing the names of persons who have had their licenses suspended administratively, without due process of law, or a simple right to be heard, would be a violation of "privacy". The suspension of driver's licenses is a violation of the State Constitution and our Supreme Court case law. Due process is only reserved for Saudi suspicious terrorists held in a compound nearer Havana, than Miami. The DOT commissioner was a high school classmate, a fellow boyscout in my troop as a child, a member of my child hood Lutheran church, republican and a pettyfogging lawyer.
As in the polygamy case, they released information to the public to justify their actions. They never attacked the women, and I'm not claiming they should have. They only denigrated the fathers. The women were always "victims" and the men were all child rapists. Listen to Michael Savage who exposed the media's role of character assasination on behalf of the State of Texas.
Every correspondence, letter, phone record, memo, email of every Judge, judicial officer, CPS lawyer, case worker, State attorney general, and governor should be seized by the FBI. You will not be able to house all the criminals operating in the State of Texas if you did. They should erect a "prison tent city" to hold all the public officials who colluded to break several hundred laws and most of the state's Constitution to carry out this very carefully planned charade. The purpose of the charade was to let Texan's know that you don't mess with Texas's children. The children are property of the State, and if you educate them in your home, if you defy the educational establishment or the secular humanist state religion doctrines of any kind, you will be rounded up, your children shall be redistributed to the "government-private" partnerships in the adotion/child trafficking trade. Good Catholic and Protestant adoption agencies are willing, waiting and taxpayor funded to assist the State Feminazi regime. Hitler did it, Texas, with it's billions in tax revenue and the banks that finance it SHALL demonstrate it.
Women, it has been declared in this recent ruling, were violated. The appellate court ruling was simply a statement to the their masters (citizenry) to not rush to judgement and hang all the public officials without a trial. This is very evident by the immediacy of the decision and it's absence of any legal substance. It was to protect the public authority from the mob. They are working overtime to keep the public at bay, and to retrench and return to child kidnapping and trafficking that they so richly wish to preserve.
They will not stop until a State rises up, it's citizen's come out of their sleepy, drug induced coma, and hold these agents and agencies responsible. The Judicial and executive branch persons in charge should be put on trial, something they would not recognize. They should be put on trial, their crimes revealed, and they should be prosecuted and jailed to the fullest extent of the law. I would consider charges of "sedition", with the death penalty as fit and proper. They are purposely undermining the Constitution, and colluding to circumvent law. These crimes against the Constituton and law are crimes against ALL texas persons, this outrage against the wackjob polygamists is done against fit parents is done thousands of times a day in this country. When it's done to one family at a time, it cannot be an outrage, and it's not reported or recorded anywhere for the public to see.
Stalin was not this brazen, in many ways. Read about Alex Solzeneitzen's (sp?) travails. Stalin's version was to wipe out a single village who resisted state seizure of "private" farm lands. This was all he needed to obtain "compliance" to collectivism in land and farm production.
CPS and the courts make a living in seizing children. Their operation is continual. It cannot be a "one-time" cleansing for all the locals to see. State governments, financed by the Fed's greenback printing machine, have corporatized the child seizing business, and they are fed by the number of children and families they destroy. Divorce, child custody and child abuse industries are the "food" that sustains the beast.
Until we put the beast away and send them to their meeting place in hell, this system will not diminish or disappear. It will grow. The Fed's corporatized child business is a living, breathing beast, and it only is satisfied, by it's nature, by consuming families, children and "inaliable rights".
If you study "family law", you'll see the legal foundation, long ago set in place in "international law" for the "new world order". If you owe child support, there are only a handful of countries in which you can escape jurisdiction. A cuban communist was the only father on the planet who used International law and American courts to obtain his child from the clutches of Florida CPS. Illian Gonzalas. So, if you wish to practice your religion and assert your "natural guardianship", it appears from this boy that being a slave to Fidel has it's advantages. At least parental rights are recognized in Cuba. They are commies. Fascism is American family law, and this is the "new world order". The first group to enter Russia after it's fall was the feministas of the ABA. They were there to instruct them on creating American fascism in "juvenile" and family law. (imposing "child support systems")
The NCCUSL started it, and now the new "internationalists" are spreading their evil gospel. All children are property of the state, it's in their best interest!
Better to be a good Muslim’s third wife than a gangbanger’s “Ho’”
Quote of the year, I think?
Actually, a relative of mine is a family lawyer in the Bronx. She regularly has clients (poor, uneducated, minority) whose children are removed illegally and for illegal reasons. They are kept from their parents and given to the disgraceful and horrible foster care system, which absolutely ruins children's lives. The parents are routinely maligned as unfit and, eventually, they have their rights terminated and never see their children again. I could write a book about the abuse. Most people are shocked wen they hear about a particular case. Then, when I tell them that it happens all the time, they cease to believe me.
""Better to be a good Muslim’s third wife than a gangbanger’s “Ho’”"
Quote of the year, I think?"
I got a good chuckle out of it.
Prediction: lawsuits over the abducted kids who were abused by 'child protective custody.' -?-
Are the 'legal' abductors learning from the masters - hide behind the humanitarian 'cover' story to do the dirtiest deeds? It could be the next script on the program Law & Order?
solution: marriage is about and For children... they're innocent. Go from there, always as our truth.
My humble opinion is IF it's not about kids - why on earth are you getting married? It's probably why I have not yet been married - besides being turned down. And I'm glad I was. I wasn't even thinking at that time about kids. Good.
Now that I am thinking about them, I'm still not getting married.
I'm more like a W.C. Fields. ... Everyone women and kids alike are lucky they don't have to deal with me. ... At least I'm honest.
Maybe?.........I'm not giving that much credit yet. They still gave us LBJ, Bush Sr, Bush Jr, The Waco Incident, and absolute rejection of the "Southern Manifesto"............I'm not convinced that they are not an extention of Conneticut!, and their actions are those of a Rockefeller Republican!....."OIL", their claim to fame has blinded them!
#33. Dr. Fleming's antepenultimate sentence shows us why he is one of the greatest voices of our day.
I'm certainly not justifying the state of texas' invasion of this compound. I'm also well aware that polygamy long predates Islam and certainly Mormonism. My point is that the type of polygamy practised by Mormons and by Muslims is by and large about control and/or sexual gratification and not about adhering to any sort of biblical or ancient practise of taking multiple wives for the purpose of promoting stability and virtue in a community. It is a mistake to let these orthodox Mormons off the hook because of the state's pretext for invading the compound was false. If there is anything that we should support as Christians it is the investigation of this polygamist compound, if not the seizure of these children and young "brides" from the men here who are not about forwarding family and virtue but about control.
This brings me to a final point: If we could somehow regulate polygamy to ensure the nutjobs do not use it as a guise to control and subjugate, then it ought to be allowed. But, how to regulate it? If you do not regulate it, but instead allow the same sorts to continue to practise it, then how moral or virtuous is that?
I cannot speak to polygamy through personal experience, but I can speak to young brides, the age of thirteen, to be exact.
My paternal grandmother was farmed out at the age of six. Her mother had died giving birth to a sibling. My great grandfather had remarried a widow who brought five children into the marriage, one being a girl just older than my grandmother. The yeoman farm of north Louisiana could not sustain everyone, and their was conflict between my grandmother on the one hand and her stepsister and stepmother on the other; so, as a solution, my great grandfather farmed my grandmother out to a farmer just over one day (by horse) away. There is lived for seven years until she was thirteen. She had a moss bed in the corner of the barn. During her seven years, she did all of the work that one might encounter on a farm: helped with cooking and cleaning, helped plow the fields, helped kill and process the hogs, and helped with the birthing of the children. My grandmother told me that as her father prepared to ride away after having initially brought her there, he told the farmer that anything untoward happened to his daughter that he would hold him responsible and kill him.
It is very obvious that my great grandfather knew that men might want to molest, sexually assault, rape or seduce a young girl. He was also quite fell and grim in his willingness to do his duty as a father to protect her. He had a reputation. My grandmother told me that he had ridden "with those tough Confederates in Missouri."
She got to go home twice a year: once at Christmas and once at Easter. Her father always picked her up by horse.
In the middle of her thirteenth year, at Easter, he picked her up, took her home, and presented her with a new print dress which he had bought in Campti, Louisiana, with money received from hog tallow. He told her to freshen up and put it on because she was marrying my great grandfather's friend, a man who would become my grandfather. He was twenty-six, twice her age. My grandmother had known of him and had seen him a few times. Their marriage lasted sixty years and brought eight children into the world, the last of which being my father.
My great grandfather was willing to kill a man who might have molested, assaulted, raped or seduced his daughter; but he was also willing to "marry her off" at thirteen to a man twice her age. Marriage was for him, among other things, a security arrangement: he had protected my grandmother, and now he was entrusting her protection to another man whom he trusted. He was meeting a need of his daughter and a need of his friend. He was bringing harmony to his family, in that he was no longer worrying about his daughter being farmed out. He fostering the founding of a new family to two people who had the skills to rear one.
Given the promiscuity of young girls today, fornicating and pregnant by age twelve (a choice), and the divorce rate today (a choice), I would say that girls would be better off to have a man like my great grandfather make their choices for them. Of course, finding a "man" like my great grandfather in the 21st century would be the problem.
I'm not sure if Mr. Peters (#49) intended to answer JMB (#48) but there is certainly an answer implied in the anecdote. If the problem is not polygamy per se, but subjugation and control, then clearly monogamous marriages must be subject to the same intense scrutiny and regulation which JMB advocates for polygamy. And this in fact is exactly what the feminists and Planned Parenthood and the government CPS bureaucracies want. Of course if marriage is not involved or if no control whatever is exercised by parents over their children, especially their daughters, this suits the ruling establishment just fine. What they really object to is any familial control which might interfere with their own.
Ditto Clyde in his # 47 about TJF. Here's my take on why TJF is refreshing and such a valuable voice. We all by studying the Greeks should thereby elevate their foundation of the West up to consciousness. Since we are moved around in our daily comportments in the context of this civilization by them anyway.
However their contribution was meant to be built upon and it has been and must continue to be. Because their notion of truth remained largely propositional and so their exploration of the essence (or totality) of truth largely sort of hovered around it in discussions of derivative essences of truth. It's as difficult a subject as touching a nerve. Remember Pilate allegedly washing his hands of it in exasperation: 'what is truth?'
So what we have as a result of the Greeks in effect (and this is wherein we all struggle culturally) is two kinds of truth. The established truth culturally which is propositional truth and thus is the one which can be judged subsequently for its 'correctness'. Is why one form of political correctness tends to replace another according to the times and the fashion. And the other truth even when not established culturally, that by its very nature can nonetheless never go away - truth itself.
And I've noticed for about 14 years since I discovered Chronicles TJF like Sam Francis did and others do, they tend to discerningly and appropriately speak the truth itself regardless of its adjudged (by anyone) correctness or not propositionally speaking. And I find that refreshing always. I attempt to do so myself but sometimes I get off the wall demonstrating my immaturity and just wanting to have fun and wanting to spoof, it is difficult not to write satire. But I am trying to be as responsible and discerning in speaking the truth as those whom I admire and who do it probably better. But regardless it's always going to touch someone's nerve, that's its very nature even when it is responsibly done. And is probably why the Greeks themselves felt hazed by their own efforts, so subsequently and probably instinctively kept it propositional where truth was concerned with only rare flashes of the thing itself.
We are a sign that is not read,
We feel no pain, we almost have
Lost our tongue in foreign lands. -Holderlin
I have noticed those over-enamoured of the propositional and often mistaking it for truth itself can tend to be very as it were judgemental.
"America, as a society, is dedicated to the sexual exploitation of women."
Sorry, Dr. Fleming, but you're grossly mistaken. Laughably so.
What we have is a society (law, government, education systems, mass media, marketing) dedicated to maximizing - in both number and intensity - the choices available to women while at the same time mitigating any and all negative consequences that would otherwise accrue to a woman pursuing one or more said choices.