[ExI] flds raid, was general repudiation...

[Lee Corbin]

John Grigg writes

> [Lee wrote]
> > "Oh, but they're only *children*!", the cry will then go out.
> > "They don't know what is best for them, their parents don't
> > know what is best for them, and their friends and neighbors
> > don't know what is best for them!
> > 
> > "But *WE* know what is best for them, and we have the
> > men, badges, dogs, and guns to prove it!"
> 
> Sorry.  I will not compare two *adult* gay men living together to...

Well, you *are* comparing them, only you are finding intrinsic
differences that aren't apparent to me. Nor is this about whether
or not you are "stunned", as you wrote. It is about advancing
reasonable arguments for or against certain propositions.

> 14 and 15 year-old teenage girls who were brainwashed by
> their parent's religious cult/commune...

On what principle do you say that some people are "brainwashed"
and not others?  More particularly, I accuse you and many others
for using such concepts merely to attack things that seem wrong
to you. 

Freedom is a very powerful and still very alien concept. It amounts
to allowing for the possibility of others to act in ways we find very
strange and non-intuitive. In economics, we have the principle of
"watch their feet". That is, don't judge what is best for someone
without considering what that individual chooses to do, e.g., which
jobs to take, which countries to move to, which cultures to adopt.

I will only join you in condemning innocent behavior in others---
i.e., innocent in the sense of no one is objecting and no force is
being applied---only in those cases that a credible likelihood
exists that our entire group (tribe, nation, etc.) will be undermined
or endangered by said activity. And *that* is not an easy case to
make.

> to enter into sexual relationships & have babies with with men
> generally a number of *decades* older than they are,

You will know that in many cultures throughout the world, despite
the partially successful unification attempts as to what "human nature"
is made during the 90s, all manner of traditions that you would find
repellent are considered normal. The above example is relatively
mild, as has characterized most different kinds of human groups 
throughout history and prehistory. It is our Christian heritage that
causes many of us in particular to feel revolted, nothing more.

> I realize this was "how things were" for millennia among humans,
> but we have matured/become more enlightened over the last
> century or so.

It's often right to talk of human moral advancement, especially
when we embrace the powerful new idea of *freedom*. That
allows us to condemn, for example, slavery, which escaped
the finest and most penetrating minds of antiquity, e.g. Aristotle
and Cicero. Without the concept that people should be free
all the way up to where their acts harm others in ways that the
others object to---without actual brainwashing, torturing, 
sensory deprivation, and drugs administered without knowledge
of the recipient---we would still probably see nothing whatsoever
wrong with slavery.

True libertarians ask others to embrace to the greatest degree
they can the concepts of freedom and liberty, and to be willing
to extend to others *all* the freedoms that they claim they should
have.[1]

Lee

[1] Up to the point where (a) others are harmed (and say so)
    (b) the existence of the entire society is somehow imperiled.