Hubris

My thoughts today are about hubris. Hubris is apparently a Greek word relating to extreme insolence or excessive arrogance. In my mind it has come to apply to a person who has lost his or her grasp on judiciousness, self-restraint and adherence to correct principles. I impute hubris to those people who take up a cause which they know is an attack on others, yet they feel that to execute the attack is more important than the direct and collateral fallout which may be inflicted on their target. I knew a man once who hated me so much that he could hardly sleep at nights. His ex-wife later told me that he tossed and turned at bedtime as he struggled to develop new ways to persecute me. I believe he was/is possessed. When an influence is "stronger than you are", it must be coming from an external source - a spirit which is striving to possess and control you.

I knew an anti-polygamist once who said, "I can never be at peace until those polygamists stop." It seems there are a good number of people who feel the same way. I promise them no peace. I am reminded of that movie, FALLEN, with Denzel Washington and John Goodman. A central theme of the movie is that there is an evil spirit which moves from one human to another, completely possessing each one. In the movie, only one person at a time is possessed. I fear that in real life the demonic possession is infectious and replicating. Look at the dozens of people in Utah, Arizona and Texas (and perhaps now Canada) who cannot rest until they have brought harm upon one or more polygamists. If they could congregate all 38,000 polygamists in a detention camp, would they shoot or gas them? Or would they just confiscate all the children and put the adults to work in a slave labor camp?

A few months back, a blogger named TX BluesMan took me to task for insisting that Warren Jeffs' rape-as-an-accomplice charge was bogus and unconstitutional. I deferred to his/her superior legal expertise, but I remained perplexed at his/her unflinching attack on people's freedom to arrange their families as they see fit (see Roe v. Wade 1973). It seems now that TX BluesMan and Rattily Balonis have both had to bite some serious bullet. See the post from Modern Pharisee on this subject. You'd think people would watch enough movies to learn that, when the bad, angry, hubristic folk get too carried away in their spite and arrogance, they eventually crash and burn and have to slink off in shame and humiliation.

I happen to think that abortion is never acceptable. I bet we kill two million innocent babies every year in the great Corporate United States. I do not feel driven, however, to spend my life and energies harassing and hounding their murdering mothers or the medical personnel who mutilate the fetuses. Do you think that is because I can't campaign for office on such a platform - or I can't get rich authoring a tell-all book on my painful experiences with abortionists? God has not called me on such a mission, and I don't believe He has called Barbarous Warthog or John Crackhounder on a mission to destroy the FLDS, either.

The FLDS are not perfect. Lord knows - the Amish are not perfect, either. Is that any reason for us to storm in and eradicate their societies? Is cultural genocide one of the important roles of government? To illustrate again the bizarre extent to which some arrogant public officials will go, I point your attention once again to the upcoming trial of an FLDS member - NO, not Wendell's, I mean Merril's.

Merril Jessop's trial is coming in a few weeks. He was merely indicted for performing an "illegal ceremony". That would be kind of akin to writing an "unlawful poem" or wearing a criminal logo on your T-shirt. Truth is - in countries like Latvia and Lithuania, the hammer and sickle emblem is prohibited. This is not Latvia or Lithuania; this is the Corporation of the United States, which nation still uses some parts of the original Constitution. Merril is being prosecuted for saying certain words in a certain room with certain other people present. Unless he was leaking classified national secrets to the Red Chinese, can someone tell me how what he did can possibly be construed to be a crime? (BluesMan feel free to chime in here.) Is the charge important enough to jeopardize his health and well-being and the association of his large, loving family?

I love my daughters and I pray they won't marry until their brains start working better. A hundred years ago, young marriages were normal. Nowadays we think differently, but what exactly did Merril do that was criminal?  Merril was never authorized by the state of Texas to solemnize legal weddings, so he cannot have even attempted to do so. What he did can only be considered free speech, free association and protected private expressions in the privacy of someone's residence. Maybe CPS (with its wildly lower standards) can intervene and complain that the conduct constituted some form of child abuse, but it has ostensibly dropped any such charges.

Like I said before, I am sure that a marriage between a cat and a dog is not legal and is void ab initio. If I wed my cat to my dog in my living room, can the SturmTruppen come and arrest me for solemnizing an illegal wedding ceremony? If this is what our nation has come to, I should move to Switzerland. At least there, there is less likelihood that my guns will be confiscated.

So much about our deeply socialistic government is about mothering us. We have created a nanny state. Problem is, Nanny is vicious and greedy and has fangs. Why is Obama calling (yesterday) for free education through college age? Does he want to indoctrinate a whole new generation of Balonises, Wisans, Lintbags, Walthers, Harferbrains, Hooligans, Mengels, Browbeaters, Hunshakers, Filschers, Snotleffs, Herberts and Perrys?

Polygamy is a sexy topic to campaign on. That doesn't mean it is right to exploit a harmless minority for political or financial gain.

Hubris comes before the fall. Let my people go!