Love does no harm to a neighbor

A small bit of truth from the media confusion regarding the FLDS:
Rep. Harvey Hilderbran, R-Kerrville[, TX], ... began looking for ways to rein in his FLDS neighbors.

Representative Hilderbran from Kerrville is a tyrant, a busybody, a crook, and the moral equivalent of a Mafia thug.

The FLDS are NOT Hilderbran's neighbors. According to Google maps, Kerrville is nearly two hours from Eldorado. Why should a man in Kerrville have the authority to tell people in Eldorado how to live? This is a moral question we really should answer, with monstrous implications for the whole foundation of most people's thinking.

There's a line drawn across the middle of the Rio Grande river. We call it the border between Texas and Mexico. People living north of the line don't have the authority to tell people living south of the line how to live, and people living south of the line don't have the authority to tell people living north of the line how to live. If people cross the line with guns and try to force their will on others, we recognize they are criminals. The only way for people on opposite sides of the line to influence each other is by voluntary agreement. This can happen on a massive scale, in the form of treaties, and it can happen on an individual scale, in the form of small purchases, and it can happen on every scale in between.

Representative Hilderbran has no more authority to force his approval or disapproval of marriages on the FLDS than I do to go next door and tell my neighbor who his daughter can or can't marry. Marriages at age 14 and up with parental consent were deemed perfectly moral and acceptable by the gang of thugs in Austin calling itself the State of Texas prior to October 2005. They did not suddenly become immoral. Apparently the Austin Gang thinks these marriages were just fine as long as nice Baptist and Methodist people were letting their children get married at 15; it's only a problem when scroungy FLDS people move in and do it. Baptists and Methodists don't constitute near as much of a threat to the established order as do the radical FLDS.

There is no moral reason why there should be a line across the Rio Grande between Texas and Mexico, but no line drawn between Eldorado and Kerrville. People have the right to self-determination. If Texas and Mexico each have the right to self-determination and it must be mutually respected, then so does each component territory within the U.S. and within Mexico, so does each county within each U.S. State, so does each city, in fact, so does each household. Why should there be a line between Texas and Mexico? Surely it's not because the people to the south have dark skin and speak a different language, is it? Is that why it's okay to draw a line to keep those people out, but not okay for FLDS near Eldorado to draw a line to keep whites out? I don't think that's the motivation ... but what other consistent response can be offered?

We've invented the fiction that voting equals self-determination. Here the truth is exposed: voting in this case eliminates self-determination by giving a fake legitimacy to the crime of a man from Kerrville oppressing the FLDS. Self-determination is robbed from the FLDS. Their fate will now be determined by "neighborly" thugs like Hilderbran, offering us all "protection" if we will pay and acknowledge his authority, as he makes us an offer we literally can't refuse.

The cult here is not the FLDS. It's the religious belief that the gang in Austin is legitimate in exercising its authority and is beneficial as it does so. And that belief permeates almost all of society, within and without Texas. This is why Austin is so scared of groups like the FLDS: they offer something else to believe in and venerate, an alternative culture to the one mandated by our gang. They are competition, and the gang is trying to wipe them out.