Rich Lowry may in fact be extrapolating from the Supreme Court’s decision in Reynolds v. United States (1878), which does make a connection between polygamy and forms of governance:

“In fact, according as monogamous or polygamous marriages are allowed, do we find the principles on which the government of [98 U.S. 145, 166] the people, to a greater or less extent, rests. Professor, Lieber says, polygamy leads to the patriarchal principle, and which, when applied to large communities, fetters the people in stationary despotism, while that principle cannot long exist in connection with monogamy. Chancellor Kent observes that this remark is equally striking and profound. 2 Kent, Com. 81, note (e). An exceptional colony of polygamists under an exceptional leadership may sometimes exist for a time without appearing to disturb the social condition of the people who surround it; but there cannot be a doubt that, unless restricted by some form of constitution, it is within the legitimate scope of the power of every civil government to determine whether polygamy or monogamy shall be the law of social life under its dominion.”

The liberal intellectuals I know and those whom I have recently read on the subject hate polygamy as much as Lowry does, for being incompatible with their feminist views.

Although this would be accompanied with vehement denials, the neo-cons and much of the ‘conservative’ establishment are feminists as well.  The only difference between much of the ‘conservative’ establishment and liberals is that one is more sympathatic to misandry.

Monogamy, Lowry asserts, is necessary to nurture “democratic equality,” seeing that polygamy creates a hierarchy in which “older higher status men take as many women as possible.”

At least he confesses that the extended family or tribe is one institution that can impede State hegemony.  Some would consider that a feature rather than a defect.

Nicholas is correct that American courts in the nineteenth century identified polygamy
with despotism, and in my work The Search for Historical Meaning, I show how important
Hegel’s references to Oriental forms of control were in shaping this perception
that the Protestant, constitutionally based Western world was different from the East
and its immemorial, oppressive customs. But this view was certainly not the same as
the one put forth by Lowry, which presents “liberal democracy” as the unchanging essence
of the American regime and American society.It is also important to recognize the
heavy component of Protestant Christianity that permeated the attack on polygamy arising
among nineteenth-century Republicans. Back then the Republicans were still literally
the Methodist Church in the voting booth.

It seems odd that the fundamentalist Christians, especially the Zionist variety, that hold the government should be Christianized and everything in the Bible is literal have dropped the ball on polygamy. They demand marriage be protected from gays and yet all the prospective candidates save Romney were beyond if not well beyond their starter wives.

Serial polygamy is the norm for both parties. Arguing about polygamy or gay marriage seems to be a smoke screen for ignoring Jesus’ admonition that what God has joined together net no man put asunder. A later fornication rider was added which was the central plot device in The Gay Divorcee which was a rather nice Astaire Rogers film but in those days the Bible was paid heed a bit more. Nothing in the New Testament disallows polygamy and Jesus said he came to fulfill the law, not to abolish it.

He also said “But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you,” and this is ignored pretty much as well.

“The neocons are famous for justifying calamitous events by appealing to the democratic spirit, e.g., the forced internment of Japanese Americans during World War Two...”

Speaking of history lessons, we need to be aware of several facts. (1) All Japanese American citizens and Japanese-origin non-citizens were neither interned nor relocated during World War Two.  There were two processes going on.

(2) One process was relocation which was uniformly required of all Germans, Italians, and Japanese who were not citizens of the USA and who lived within certain areas near the Pacific Ocean. Most people in this catgegory voluntarily complied. For example, Joe Dimaggio’s parents were Italian Americans who were not citizens and were not allowed to visit him or his restaurant in San Francisco. Many Italian-origin fisher fleets were abandoned to rot on the Pacific Coast beach. This was the famous order of exclusion issued by FDR and usually misrepresented as applying to all persons of Japanese descent in the USA, and no one else. In fact, persons of Japanese descent, citizen or otherwise, who lived in Hawaii or a few miles away from the Pacific Ocean on the West Coast were not subject to this executive order. If Italian, German, and Japanese non-USA citizens ordered to relocate did not do so, they were forcibly relocated but were always free to keep on going east. Japanese American children were granted full scholarships, texts, and living expenses at US universities farther east when they were graduated from high schools which were outside the camps where they and their parents had been relocated. For insight into this, read the obituaries of elderly Japanese Americans in the newspapers these days.

(3) The second process was internment, and this was reserved for persons found anywhere in the USA by a legal process to be enemy aliens, and these camps were work camps and many internees were kept incarcerated for up to two years after the end of WWII. But the spoiler statistic for the myth of Japanese-origin persecution during WWII is that the Italian-origin and German-origin internees far outnumbered the Japanese internees and, then, of course, excluded from any of the apologies and reparations granted to Japanese Americans.

What is interesting about this myth is that it is so widely believed. For example, Professor Revilo Oliver, an early proto-paleocon, believed almost the exact words printed in this blog.

It is my understanding that feminists are not necessarily opposed to polygamy (I have read feminist defenses of the institution). Polygamy means there are lots of surrogate mommies around to care for children while the biological mommy is out pursuing a career. If career mommy does not care to meet her husband’s sexual demands, there is someone around who will. I know this doesn’t sound like the traditional polygamous arrangement and perhaps the real motivation for such arguments is sheer hatred for traditional Christian monogamy rather than enthusiasm for polygamy per se.

Following Steve Sailer, I think that the Left hates polygamy as long as they associate it with white Mormons, but that the non-judgment Lowry imagines here will eventually kick in when polygamy in the West becomes a Muslim question.

“The American Protestant establishment opposed them for spurning the New Testament’s commandment about marriage and for reviving what was then considered an archaic Old Testament institution.”

Then history is truly repeating itself.  I grew up (part of the time) near San Angelo and El Dorado.  The Southern Baptists and Church of Christers dominate everything. The Sheriff of Schleicher County has pretty much admitted in press accounts that plans for a raid on the ranch had been set up long before now, so I have no doubt that the impetus for this raid came from quarters other than CPS.

I went back into the archives of the El Dorado Success and found accounts of when the FLDS first moved there.  The El Doradans had meetings wherein it was expressed that the Sheriff shouldn’t allow them to be “living in sin” like they were.  They were also afraid that the FLDS would register to vote and bloc vote.

Then, their St. Rep got the law changed from 14 to 16 as the age to which parents can consent to marriage.  He was at the courthouse last week bragging about that and possibly giving the attorneys ammo for a bill of attainder argument should any of those folks be prosecuted.

The El Dorado Success kept up a steady diet of sensationalist stories about the travails of the FLDS in Arizona and Utah and the convictions therof. The community of El Dorado, I’m sure, spent many excitement-filled hour gossiping about their strange neighbors. The barber and beauty shops probably featured such talk as the main entertainment on Saturday mornings.

The FLDS folks never had a chance against the Southern Baptists of West Texas.  Had they asked me, I would’ve told them to move to the Big Bend near Study Butte or Terlingua, where people mind their own darn business.

What bothers me is that of the 400 plus kids, what compelling reason does the state have in taking even one from their parents absent strong evidence of abuse? But over 400? The state has applied an unconstitutional alleged “group” guilt to individual cases. When will they do the same to the children of Paleos? After all, we must be indoctrinating our children in cult-like doctrines. This cannot stand as precedent or we are in the clutches of tyranny. For once in many years, I see that lawyers have volunteered to defend the children and parents. For the moment, I take back many lawyer jokes.

In contrast to William’s remarks above, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American_internment

Saint Augustine saw a conflict with Old Testament polygamy. He writes in The Good of Marriage (chapter 15) that, although it “was lawful among the ancient fathers: whether it be lawful now also, I would not hastily pronounce. For there is not now necessity of begetting children, as there then was, when, even when wives bear children, it was allowed, in order to a more numerous posterity, to marry other wives in addition, which now is certainly not lawful.” He refrained from judging the patriarchs, but did not deduce from their practice the ongoing acceptability of polygamy. In chapter 7, he wrote, “Now indeed in our time, and in keeping with Roman custom, it is no longer allowed to take another wife, so as to have more than one wife living.”

I dont know what kind of conservatism this site is about, it seems to be one of hypocrisy and finger pointing as everything is the fault of someone else. Yet I find in the scriptures arguments for polygamy and against it.
And its the non-believers fault this what happened in a LDS compound in Texas? Isnt Texas a ‘Red State’? Baptists are liberals? 

When you point a finger at someone, in your palm three point back at you.

GOD, please help us, we cannot see the mote in our eye because we are focused on motes in others eyes.

Indeed, Jet, and Mr. Gottfried is an especially avid finger-pointer, delighting in pointing out the devious destructive nature of the “neocons”, with whom he certainly has nothing in common.

William’s attempt to associate Professor Gottfried with Professor Revilo Oliver is out of bounds. Surely they both believe that Tuesday follows Monday which explains nothing. Late in a long life Oliver, before his suicide, became quite mad, spouting all sorts of detestable nonsense. It is this insanity that is being attributed to Gottfried. Such arcane mudslinging is ill-mannered and inaccurate, worthy only of a neocon.

“When you point a finger at someone, in your palm three point back at you.”

I was tempted to flag this as abusive, but the editors wouldn’t understand why. This sort of sanctimonious brow-beating does not belong in grown-up conversation. Moral judgments are necessary for competent human existence—and to refuse them is immature and suicidal.

“Polygamy means there are lots of surrogate mommies around to care for children while the biological mommy is out pursuing a career.”

It also means that most men are unable to marry and have children, because the elite get all the women. Besides, polygamist wives don’t take careers.

was tempted to flag this as abusive, but the editors wouldn’t understand why. -Peter Ramus

You can read the editors mind? Its not abusive at all.

This sort of sanctimonious brow-beating does not belong in grown-up conversation. Moral judgments are necessary for competent human existence—and to refuse them is immature and suicidal. -PR

I realise, Peter, when I point a finger at another, I point at myself. I am man enough to admit my faults. I am big enough to admit past wrongs. I am large enough to admit that we are, as beings, on a wrong course, religion or not. And pointing fingers is not a cure but a furtherance of the problem, namely finger pointing.

Moral judgments are necessary for competent human existence—and to refuse them is immature and suicidal

YOU are NOT my judge Peter Ramus. Do not even go there, the bible tells you not to judge.

Judge me if you wish, but do not blame me when you are judged.

Its not like these Mormon Fundamentalists were obtaing marriage licenses for multiple wives, hence I do not understand how this is the business of the state.  If I want to get married to a woman, and then have two or three other women move in with my lawful wife and I, and call them my other “wives,” that’s my business.  Its not much different from what many high-status men in Manhattan and Los Angeles do now, other than that its all out in the non-hypocritical open, and under a single roof.

I’d like to add that the rationale behind this wave of West Texas, government-sponsored child abductions seems to be that many of the young ladies within the community in question were getting pregnant at a statistically young age.  So, when are the police doing to descend en masse upon the Black ghettoes of Houston and the Mexican immigrant neighborhoods of San Antonio?  To the elites in this country, many things are only a crime if White people do it, or so it seems.

All Brown Shirts have to start somewhere! At the end of WWI the French had to encourage the marriages of young French women to older French men inorder to recover the horrible losses of so many French men in a certain age group. As for child abuse, I’ve seen no evidence, and are most greatful that Leviathan chose not to burn them all to death!

It is truly not surprising that Paul Gottfried is more interested in using the polygamist problem
in rural Taxas for ideological purposes than he is in being concerned with the welfare of abused
children.  That is a Stalinist position—from a man who pretends to oppose Stalinism.