You Have To Trust The State
This story serves as an example of how the state has a monopoly on coercion. The state can force you to do its will. This is why you must trust the state while you can choose to trust a corporation.
A tactical law enforcement team broke into Tom Shiflett’s home and took his 11-year-old son to hospital for court-ordered medical treatment for a minor head injury.
Garfield County’s All Hazards Response Team raided the home Friday night, a day after Jon Shiflett fell after grabbing the handle of a moving car. The child was returned to the family at about 2:30 a.m. Saturday, hours after the raid.
“Inappropriate is not nearly strong enough a word. It was gross irresponsibility and stupidity,” said Ross Talbott, owner of the Apple Tree Mobile Home Park south of New Castle who rents to the Shifletts and who witnessed the raid. “Is this Russia? I don’t know what we’re coming to when they think your kid needs medical help and they send a SWAT team.”
In the end, the injury wasn’t as severe as caseworkers from the Garfield County Department of Social Services thought when they went before a judge seeking a search warrant and order for medical treatment.
The doctor recommended fluids, Tylenol and ice to treat the bruises, according to a copy of Jon’s patient aftercare instructions.
When was the last time you heard about a corporation busting down someone’s door and taking their child?
Via Instapundit.
Instapundit updated this article with a readers comments which I think make an extremly excellent point.
Consider the irony. The Marines and Army have now progressed in their counterinsurgency campaign and the understanding of the population to the point that they can cordon and knock. They are respectful, cautious, and unwilling to impose anything foreign or hostile to the culture or the honor of the head of household. Yet in America we have men donning tactical gear to forcibly enter the homes of people and remove them for … forced medical service for non-life threatening injuries. It is a sad picture.
January 15th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
For starters, this is exactly why I’m always against allowing the governemnt to infringe on our civil liberties, which you, strangely, always seem to be in favor of.
Anyway, if this is your argument for why you trust corporations, I think you’re using the word ‘trust’ in a very strange way. What you actually seem to be saying is that you DON”T trust corporations, but that’s not a problem because they have less influence over you than the government, which you also don’t trust. You’re using this as an argument for taking away power form the government and giving it to corporations, which seems counter-intuitive, since it just turns gives the corporations more coercive power over you, but without the benefit of letting you vote on anything.