More information on the story can be found at http://www.domenicjohansson.com. Christer was recently arrested because he took Dominic off on an unsupervised visit. It wasn’t a wise move, but I cannot begin to imagine the frustration of dealing with a year and a half legalized kidnapping. Now the very people who kidnapped his son have charged him with kidnapping his son. What would you do? I don’t know. I would sorely be tempted to take my child and flee somewhere for sanctuary. I’d be tempted to hire a fishing boat to go to Poland and seek asylum. It would be a tough call, and risky. Failure would mean pretty massive jail time and long term separation from your child. Unfortunately, now that he is in jail it is too late for Christer to make those kinds of decisions.

Christer and Annie are like most people. They believed that the Swedish government was initially acting in good faith and that with some negotiation and a little time this could be resolved. Unfortunately, the Swedish authorities have dragged their heels and thrown up roadblock after roadblock for the Johannsons. Swedish authorites have turned a deaf ear to pleas for this family to be reunited.

This is an example of why government power is not to be trusted. Can anyone really explain to me what is right about this? Of course social services advocates may argue that the Johannsons must have been doing something. There must have been some sort of abuse. Nope — all they wanted to do was homeschool and forgo some vaccinations.

So here we deal with the statist question — who do the children belong to? Totalitarian regimes claim that children are the property of the state and that the state has a right to do what it will. Most people would not think of Sweden in such terms. We think of Sweden as some kind of mildly socialist democratic nation that upholds human rights. Unfortunately, the truth is somewhat grimmer.

A component of the liberal/socialist continuum is conformity — conformity to a thought process and to certain ideas. Free speech is touted but only to a certain point. That’s why in this country we see liberals pushing for hate speech laws. Hate speech morphs from being actual threats against people to be anything that makes anyone vaguely uncomfortable. Of course, Christians and conservatives are usually excepted targets. Government schooling is critical in places like Sweden to turn out good little citizens. Germany has much the same mindset. The purpose is to turn out good little statists who worship at the altar of the government. Government will take care of you from the cradle to the grave.

Liberty is not easy to get or easy to hold. The Founding Fathers knew this. That’s why they gave us the Constitution as THE compact of our way of life. That’s why they set up checks and balances in our government. As we watch the erosion of Constitutional authority our liberty is indeed threatened. The Constitution is a document that ultimately protects each of us as individuals. Individual protection from the excess reach of the state was a cherished ideal.

In the Johannson case we see why that matters. Some local twerp from Gotland’s social services made a decision to go after the Johannsons. Some bureaucrat, indoctrinated in the necessity of conformity and the altruism of the state, made a decision that will irrevocably change and scar this family for life. Sweden stayed neutral during World War II. They avoided Nazi occupation, primarily, because they would have been more trouble than they were worth. They might have avoided Nazi occupation but that didn’t keep them from becoming like the Nazis.

Efforts have been made to get the European Court of Human Rights to take a look at the case but have so far been fruitless. If you click on the How You Can Help link at the Friends of Domenic Johannson website they have created a list of things you can do. This is truly an egregious abuse of government power.

More to come.

The question is why? I can think of a couple of reasons.

1) Comedy Central wants to tightly control media content for marketing reasons. If that’s the case do this on private property.

2) Comedy Central wants to control the messaging. With all the claims made by the left about Tea Party rallies they are probably terrified of independent video being shot. You get a crowd of progressives together and you will surely have a nice collection of crackpots and goofballs to video.

I wonder if they will leave things as clean as the Tea Party folks?

On a national level we have allowed ourselves to be redefined by revisionist history that is fed to us by public schools, the mainstream media, unions, and colleges and universities. Without these heavily entrenched allies the Democratic would be hard-pressed to win anything in most parts of the country. Our national ignorance has led to the election of a president and Congress who have an agenda to radically transform this country.

Make no mistake. Some people say that elections don’t matter. They say that both parties are the same. While the GOP has had major issues (principally being that they keep wanting to gravitate left as the Democrats move to the far left) this election does offer some real choice. Even at worse it is an opportunity to stop the slide into the abyss that our nation is facing.

The United States of America did not become the greatest nation in history by accident. It was because of the vision of the Founding Fathers and the core values that mobilized this country. That was the foundation for where we are today, but we have too many people in power that despise that foundation. Yes. it wasn’t perfect. Sigh. It seems like you always have to say that. It wasn’t perfect, but those principles guided this nation through its historical ups and downs. We lay them aside at our peril.

Get out and vote. There’s a good chance that there will be voter fraud. Some has already reared its ugly head. There will be efforts to suppress the vote. There are efforts to push third party candidates to siphon off votes. The mainstream media will skew reports to encourage you to stay home. There is no telling what kind of dirty tricks we’ll see between now and next week. Go vote anyway. It is time for some real hope and change.

Fines and training? How very Marxist. Conservatives are frequently dismissed about the claims we make about the direction of this country. I think this story is a perfect illustration of where we are going. Nancy Haynes would make an excellent commissar.

Somebody at her church saw this on the bulletin board and reported her? I can’t even begin to imagine what kind of person does that.

Here is the Alliance Defense Fund’s response.

We were a nation founded on the express rights of the individual that were combined with a sense of cultural responsibility. Now we are a nation pushing toward a collective mentality combined with a cultural selfishness. Saying we, I do actually mean they. They being the purveyors of the asinine liberal/progressive agenda.

One of the key beliefs of this movement is that nobody should ever be offended — with the possible exception of Christians and white males. Juan Williams told Bill O’Reilly, “Look, Bill, I’m not a bigot. You know the kind of books I’ve written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.” Now, I actually don’t share those feelings, but I wonder why someone would actually have those kind of feelings about Muslims?

Maybe this has something to do with it:

But that’s not really the point. The point is that we have been so indoctrinated to the concept of offense that we go to ridiculous means to keep from hurting someone’s feelings. The lady in Michigan wanted a Christian roommate and some knucklehead gets offended and reports her? Should a Jewish person have to rent to a card carrying member of the Aryan Brotherhood? How about an atheist and Christian? Would it be discrimination if a pretty young girl did not want to rent to some creepy, middle-aged guy? Maybe I shouldn’t have put pretty in there? That might hurt someone’s feelings. Juan Williams simply expressed his feelings and was canned. I thought we all loved “feelings.”

What get’s lost in all this is the chilling effect that all this has on free speech. CAIR has made a living running around looking for offense. We are already seeing the outcome of “hate speech” laws in Western Europe and Canada. We have become a bunch of wimps because we have let the wimps control the debate. Free speech means that people will say things that will annoy you or make you angry or (shudder) hurt your feelings.

Historically those who are most afraid of certain worldviews feel that way because that worldview is an actual threat. Christianity has been outlawed in Muslim and Communist countries for a reason. It is a threat to the status quo. Communists, Muslims and totalitarians of all stripes hold people in line through violence, threat and coercion. Christianity prospers in the realm of ideas. Maybe that’s why liberals and progressives do their best to make sure we keep our beliefs quiet. The founding principles of the United States are powerful, but they are contrary to the progressive’s idolatry of government.

We used to believe the mantra, “I may not agree with what you say, but I’ll defend your right to say it.” Unfortunately, the left (with some exceptions) does not prescribe to this belief anymore. A whole lot of conservatives have also been silenced due to this kind of attitude. You can’t have real dialogue unless you are willing to take a hard and fair look at all sides of the issues.