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 the 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. I frankly agree that they may have been. What I am saying is this is not Communist China or North Korea. Those parents had and have rights. You can not mass bypass the rights of all these parents by doing it tecnically right for a few and using “panicked supposition” for the rest.

Panic and fear are not legal grounds to circumvent the law. How have these 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.

A “rubber stamped” removal of the children based on no proof at all chills me to the bone. 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. Due process includes having to meet your burden before punishment is inflicted.

While I certainly understand the argument that because there was compliance with the Texas Family Code there was no due process violation, using statisitics and self serving reports and conclusions to remove children en-mass by-passing your burden of proof for each indiviudal parent-child relationship sounds smells bad to me…..

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?

BLOG UPDATE 5/24/08 The State of Texas has filed an emergency appeal to the Texas Supreme Court. You can read the emergency motion here.

BLOG UPDATE 5/29/08 The Texas Supreme Court Upholds Court Of Appeals Ruling and Orders the Texas Polygamist Children Returned To Their Parents. Read about it here.  Read the Supreme Court Opinion here.

What comes to your mind when you hear the word cult? Jim Jones Kool Aid? David Koresh? Charles Manson? The Texas Polygamist Compound? Maybe even Scientology. Do the words Alcoholic’s Anonymous come to mind? I certainly have never thought of Alcoholics Anonymous as a cult and I am a member. As many people know from my recent blog post, I have been in AA for over a year.

I received many emails and comments in response to that post. Many of those commenting believed that Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is a cult. I frankly take those comments with a grain of salt. All of them were from former AA members. When you are at a low point in your life and counting on something to help you turn that life around but that something does not work, what do you do? You don’t look to yourself because you know you cannot change by yourself. You blame everyone else. You blame the program. You dismiss, you denigrate, you destroy. You do anything except take personal responsibility for your failure. I know this because I have been at that low point. Turning to AA for assistance in moving past that point does not make AA a cult; it makes you human.

Let us start with the premise that AA as an overall organization cannot possibly qualify as a cult because it has no central authority structure. No one is handing down edicts from the top saying you must do this or that to stay in the group. This is because there is no top. To be a cult, an organization, as a whole, must have a “top” in terms of its authority structure.

This leaves us with the question of whether the AA philosophy encourages “cult- like behavior” in its thousands of chapters. Perhaps the personality makeup of the specific chapter can cause the group to function like a cult. I believe, however, that it is the very rare exception rather than the rule.

The other day someone who read my blog, sent me an article about an AA chapter in Washington D.C that was accused of being a cult. The members of this chapter of AA basically encouraged younger female members to have sex with older male members and encouraged members in general to discontinue all ties with anyone who was not a member of this AA chapter. Does that ring the “cult bell” in your head? It certainly does in mine. You can read that article here.

Yes, I agree that this particular chapter probably qualified as a cult, but to say that the actions of an isolated group within a larger organization classifies that larger group as a cult is ludicrous. When these allegations were made public, this group was, in fact, disbanded as an AA sanctioned group.

What else would classify AA as a cult? The biggest book on this subject is AA: Cult or Cure by Charles Bufe who delineates a litany of conditions that qualify AA as a cult. I am not going to debate his criteria. Why? Words are like statistics—you form your opinion, then you make them fit the point you want to make… I frankly could take Bufe’s points and make a good argument that the Boy Scouts of America is a cult .

Any time you have people coming together in a group of any kind, you are going to have formal and informal criteria for membership even at the lowest level. You are going to have a common purpose. You are going to have strong personalities and weak personalities. You are going to have strong personalties that overwhelm and dominate weaker personalities. You are going to have weaker personalities who have to adopt the essence of the stronger ones to excel in the group. Does that happen in AA? Of course it does. Does that happen in the Boy Scouts? Of course it does. Did that happen in my law school study group? You bet. That happened in my weekly poker game. Those attributes do not transform each of the aforementioned organizations into a cult. They are simply the attributes of group dynamics.

These personality issues can be much more pronounced in self-help groups like AA. No one is walking into an AA meeting because they are at a high point in their life. They are defeated, they are weak, they have lost their sense of self, their self-respect, their family, their independent life, etc. They are open to almost every and any suggestion that will put them on a new track of self-respect and sobriety. This certainly lends itself to the danger of domination by strong personalities with amoral motives in the group without checks and balances. AA groups have checks and balances. These checks and balances are the members themselves who are different, diverse, and compassionate, looking out for each other and not trying to reform each other.

So, is AA a cult? I don’t think so, but since each person has to make it work for them as an individual, I can see how some people who fail at it would take solace in viewing it that way. Of course, those who think it is a cult would argue that I am a “cult member” and cult members never think they are in a cult. I have not read Catch-22 in many years, but it sounds as if I am certainly not going out to fly that next mission so I can get out of the army.

I can also see how people with personalities that are just not compatible with a core philosophy would not succeed in AA and view it as a cult. Is there any group out there that does not have a core philosophy? These people, however, probably have issues in any group setting in which conformity to certain standards is an element of reaching a common goal. Is there any group out there where some level of conformity is not needed to reach a common goal?

AA does offer a program of conformity, but AA is not about conformity. AA is not about submission to others in the group. I will not dispute that AA is about submitting to the fact that you have a problem and want help. Seeking help from people who have experienced similar circumstances, but remaining free to choose and make your own decisions indicates the individual is exercising free will. Cults do not allow the existence of free will because some manner of mind-control is practiced to create the cult I sought help from an organized group when I studied for the Texas Bar Exam. Is the legal profession a cult? I know some who would say yes, but the truth is we seek comfort and strength in groups of people who have similar experiences, problems, or goals.

AA is not about shunning those who do not conform or submit. AA is about people with a desire to stop drinking and helping other people with a desire to stop drinking.

If that is a cult, pass me the Kool Aid…….

Below are two diametrically opposed videos on AA One is by Bill W., one of the founders of AA and the other is an interview with author James Stanton Peele who argues that AA is a cult. A fascinating comparison in viewpoints.

Copyright 2009

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Bill W.
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Dr. Stanton Peele