Bravo to these parents who won't stand for their children being kidnapped

As I've written before, justice does not require law. Justice and the need to uphold it existed before men made laws, and upholding justice does not require that something be codified, inked on parchment or cut into a stone wall. For example, when God gave the Ten Commandments to Moses, did that mean it was ok if people had broken them before?

Bastiat said, "The nature of law is to maintain justice." And the only thing required to maintain justice is that people have the will to do what is necessary to defeat evil. ("The training is nothing! Will is everything!")

My friend Charlie sent me the link to this story about parents who found that their kids were suddenly over at the next-door home of two men. After retrieving their children, the parents didn't call the police. No, they instead got some friends together:

Moments later, several adults from the children's house, including their father, broke into Bell's home from several points, breaking through the locked door and some windows, Kraft said.

Bell and Fair were beaten, with Fair getting the worst of it. At one point, the attackers smashed a TV set onto Fair's head. He suffered a broken eye socket and his forehead was split open badly enough that doctors had to use staples to put it back together.

Bell ran out of the house to escape but was caught in a neighbor's yard and beaten. He suffered two black eyes, and the side of his head and an ear were heavily injured after his head was repeatedly pounded into the pavement and his neck was cut with shards of glass.

After police came, Bell was arrested and later charged in 3rd District Court with two counts of child kidnapping.

Absolutely fantastic. Maybe now these two will learn that they should not expect to get away with kidnapping children.

Here is Bell's mug shot. He got too little of what he really deserved. For what he did, he shouldn't have been able to stand on his own.

If you read only this story and selected comments, you might think that the parents and neighbors "overreacted" and were the ones in the wrong. A Google search turns up much more on the Deseret News site and elsewhere, showing that the children were abducted -- nonviolently, but that's still abduction.

Why didn't the parents just call the police? Well, why didn't Bell and Fair call the police right away, to tell them about two very young children who had, oh, "wandered away from home"? Why didn't they just bring them back next door, instead of taking them into their house?

The parents did not call the police because the police often do not defend us to the extent that is necessary, especially when it's easier to subjugate and harass the innocent. And when good cops do come, it's all too often too late to do anything useful. For all the parents knew, there might be insufficient proof the children were ever in that house, in which case it's their word against the accused. The two men are already playing the victim card, claiming they were targetted for their homosexuality in ultra-conservative Utah.

More importantly, if government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed, then the government cannot do anything legitimate that the people themselves cannot do legitimately. That means the police cannot enforce justice with any greater authority than the people -- so the people have every bit of authority to act as needed so they themselves can uphold justice, even if it means they assume the roles of judge, jury and, yes, even executioner. When I hear of some thief getting shot while fleeing from a store owner, or a mugger who gets beaten within an inch of his life, I call it justice. If the guilt is clear, why weep for the criminal?

And I call this justice too. Idiot commenter "Moral of the story" said, "If you see a wandering child, run away as fast as you can," but the whole story (not revealed in this single article, but others) is that the children were kidnapped from their own home! The two kidnappers have now provided three distinctly different stories. They found the children unsupervised on the street. The children wandered to their house. The parents asked them to watch the children during the all-night party. The mother, on the other hand, has never changed her story on how the children wound up next door, so how can any thinking person not give her the most credibility?

Equally idiotic commenter Sad said, "The real tragedy here was the violence. To have true world peace we must live it." Really. And what about those who don't want to live peacefully and won't leave us alone?

One anonymous fool said, "Looks like they are a bunch of salvages that know no law or order in society." So to have "law or order" in society, we should do nothing ourselves, and instead beg the police to come rescue our children? That's what this goddamn fool is saying!

"I agree" said, "No one has the right to take the law into their own hands..No One! Regardless of the emotions involved there are laws and procedures in place for a reason. It may not be the best system but it beats anything else. Vigilante just is criminals going after criminals. Charge these adults with assault and battery as well as breaking and entering. The law needs to be upheld by all, regardless of the situation." Here you have bleeding-heart liberalism combining with authority-worshipping conservatism to form the biggest degree of state-worshipping. It's a deference to whatever is "the law," no matter whether the law is right, and a belief that doing anything outside of "the law" is being a "vigilante." This person does not understand that the authority of any legitimate law comes from the people, not the other way around.

This person "embarrassing" should be embarrassed to be a human being. "I cannot believe the parents behaved in this fashion. If they noticed their children missing, they should have contacted the Police. They have no right, regardless of if the neighbor had or had not kidnapped the children to round up an angry mob to attack the neighbor and his sleeping housemate. I am terribly embarrassed the children have such out of countrol parents. I am embarrassed by the behavior of the parents. Ridiculous!" Again, this is someone else who worships "law" and fails to understand that the authority of legitimate government comes from people. Now, were I a child who was kidnapped and whose whereabouts were known, I would grow up to be embarrassed if my parents were so spineless that they did no more than rely on the police, instead of coming to take me home by force. I would be ashamed that my parents were such cowards.

As far as the allegations of "hate crime," these "Utah Pride" morons can go to hell. Bell and Fair had their asses kicked because they kidnapped what they figured was easy prey. And what is this horseshit about "The children were not harmed"? Kidnapping someone is most certainly causing harm, even if the victim is too young to realize it.