The Texas Polygamist Raid Was A Legal Lynch Mob.

The Texas Court of Appeals has finally restored order to one tiny corner of the universe. It has ordered the return of the Texas Polygamist Children to their parents holding that there was an almost complete failure of proof to justify such an action. You can read the opinion here.

The removal of the children at th Texas Polygamist Compound is the latest example of knee jerk panic leading to mass violations of human and constitutional rights.

I am braced for all the outrage comments but The Texas Court Of Appeal did the right thing in returning the Texas Polygamist Children to their parents. What happened here was nothing more than a an attempt to use court system to kidnap children because we panicked. This was a “legal lynch mob”. Not legal in the sense that what was done was legitimate, legal in the sense that it was a judicial lynching.

I am not saying there are children who were not in legitimate danger. What I am saying is this is not Communist China or North Korea. Those parents had and have rights. Panic and fear are not legal grounds to circumvent the law. Yes those children also have rights. How have the knee jerk panic decisions that ultimately wasted time and money with no real benefit to the children protected those rights? The children are going back. (an appeal if any will fail) and if anything was going on the parents and their lawyers are ready and loaded for bear.

Is the greater tragedy that the children must be returned or that it will now be more difficult then ever to help them even doing it the right way because the state tipped its hand with the panic move.

I have said it before and I will say it again. The greatest threat to mankind is knee jerk panic and knee jerk stupidity. The public sees something that so disgusts and shakes them to the very core of everything that we deem decent and the next thing you know all hell breaks lose.

It is like throwing a rock into the lake and the ripple effect. At the center where the rocks hits is the incident that disgusts us. What we don’t think about at the time is that those ripples moving outward begin to consume everything in their path that at the closest point may be similar but at the the furthest point from ground zero, we are burning books, arresting every kid who draws a disturbing picture in his notebook and calling the cops on our neighbor because he drives and ice cream truck and therefore must be abusing children.

At the time we are all consumed with our panic and making irrational decisions we completely forget about the fact that for every decision of flawed logic we make at the center of the ripples, cause and effect pushes outward with often tragic consequences that we have neither thought about nor care about in our all consuming fear and hate. Knee Jerk panic at its’ best.

For all us constructionists I am aware the Constitution of the United States certainly does not prohibit legal lynchings by specific words but I don’t have to go back and read it to know that the words “blessings of liberty” are in there. In order to lose the rights instilled by that blessing, we have something called Due Process. I don’t have to read the Constitution to know those words are in there as well. I did look for the words “legal lynch mob” but could not find them anywhere. If anyone reads the Constution and finds them please let me know.

You can read the Constitution Of The United States right here.

I say legal lynch mob… What do you think?

Original here