The abuse of power through bureaucratic decree

Joe Farah sees the danger in the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services making bureaucratic decisions to take kids away from their mothers.

It is not just happening in Texas either. Today in the news we also hear a story of thousands of parents listed as child abusers in Illinois that cannot get off the list but they never did any wrong.

The question is asked in this article can the Child Protective Agencies come in and take away the kids of millions of parents who are not bringing up their kids according to government standards? The answers is yes, if the want to. The burden of proof they need to take your kids away is very low and just one accusation by anyone can see your kids taken away.

It is ironic that in a nation where you are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty by a court of law that low level government employees can make snap decisions and act as if you are guilty until you can prove you are innocent at great expense to yourself, and often it is not even possible to prove that you are innocent.

This abuse is not only going on just in the area of child protective services. It is a plague and it is about to get worse. Soon people will be charged under subjective hate speech laws.

If this trend toward bureaucratic decree continues in the United States what will be the point of even having a Constitution and Bill of Rights? We will be living under the tyranny of minimally trained control freaks like at the airports.

But just remember when they come for you that they are obtaining these unconstitutional powers because you are letting your elected representatives pass laws that allow them to have this power over you.

Abuse of power in Texas

The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, a misnamed bureaucracy if ever there was one, has demanded the children seized by the state and placed in foster care be immunized immediately against the wishes of their mothers, who fear negative effects.

Ahh, but those mothers are no longer mothers, explains Patrick Crimmins, spokesman for the department.

“We’re the legal parents of the children and we would like for them to be immunized,” he said.

Now, I’m the first to recognize the mothers in this case have made some objectively poor decisions about their lives. However, does anyone really believe Crimmins and his state bureaucrats really care more for these children than do their mothers? How have these mothers abrogated their parental rights? What crime have they committed? With what are they being charged? Why are they losing custody of their children? Have these children been abused or neglected? All of them? How?

All the public has heard since the raid on the compound is that the children seem to be in good health. Questions were raised by early pregnancies among some of the girls. I have news for you: Teenage girls are getting pregnant and having sex with older men throughout American society today. If these mothers are going to lose custody of their children as a result of that kind of sexual activity, what about the high percentages of teen pregnancies in our inner cities? Can we expect Texas and the other states soon to begin seizing millions of kids – both girls and boys in those families?

This situation in Texas is looking more and more like a heavy-handed abuse of power by government.

Is the state trying to make an example of these parents? Are all the parents being punished collectively for the crimes of a few? Is that the new American way?

When I hear a government bureaucrat claim to be the parents of children he has never met, it sets me off.

It is an explosive statement.

It is the kind of offensive and officious statement that will only serve to create more fear and distrust of government – frankly, the very conditions that lead to the creation of compounds like the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.