Who has the upper hand in the cable news coverage? Well, it’s not CNN.

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The news coverage of the Elizabeth Smart case been completely overshadowed by the war. Nevertheless, the question of why she didn’t attempt to escape (and even seemed to resist rescue) is an interesting one from a psychological perspective. The best explanation I’ve run across was posted on the Nathaniel Branden Forum by Mike Lee. He was kind enough to let me repost it.

I don’t have specific knowledge of the case, but I was raised Mormon, lived in Salt Lake City for several years, and I’ve known several of these Mormon fundamentalist/polygamist crazies–they’re thick on the ground there. They frequently seek young teenage girls as wives, carrying on a tradition practiced from the time of Joseph Smith, who founded the Mormon church in 1830. Smith used to get revelations commanding church members to hand over their teenage daughters to him for plural marriage. Elizabeth Smart isn’t the first girl in Utah (even this year) to be told that God wants her to marry some old guy, and she’s not the first to meekly (or eventually) accept her fate. This case is different because her family wasn’t in on it, and complained loudly.

The Smart family appear to be mainstream Mormons, who repudiate polygamy and consider the fundamentalists an extreme embarrassment to the faith. But Mormon girls are raised to be obedient to patriarchal authority, and I don’t find it at all strange that Elizabeth would be easily subverted and subjugated, since she had already been conditioned to this very kind of obedience, and her kidnaper was using the same cues as those used on her in her normal environment (i.e., invocation of priesthood authority, scripture, etc.) The Smart family would be horrified and offended by my analysis, considering it anti-Mormon extremism. Yes, it’s anti-Mormon, but I don’t think it’s extreme.

The Smarts appear to be nice people, who admirably kept the pressure on to get their daughter back, held up well under extreme stress, and deserve applause. Their invocations of their faith and their religion as the reason they got her back are ironic, at best, since people familiar with Utah know that their daughter’s abduction was religiously-motivated (or at least religiously-justified).

The Mormon church, and the Smarts, as sensible Mormons, will try their best to keep a lid on the actual process whereby Elizabeth was pacified and did not try to escape. You’ll hear a lot about the Stockholm Syndrome, and they’ll try to keep details private. But, sure as hell, whatever brainwashing was done was steeped in Mormonism and a theology and authority that had her 90% brainwashed before she was taken.

Very interesting! (Robert Cialdini’s amazing book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion has a chapter on the influence exerted by genuine and fake authorities.)

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A while back, I posted a question on whether the payment of the families of suicide bombers is a form of murder for hire. Former Arizona prosecutor and current judge Bill Perry was kind enough to send me a detailed reply. In response to his comments, I further asked whether “the family members of the suicide bombers who accept the cash payment for the murder (and who perhaps even encouraged the suicide bomber to commit murder) accomplices in any legal sense.” Bill was once again kind enough to reply thusly:

I know of no such prosecutions of family members for accepting cash, but I do know of statutes which could apply in Arizona, Federal courts, and perhaps some others. It involves a bit of nose holding for Objectivists and libertarians. This would be a violation of the money laundering statutes.

Money laundering includes “…receiving… racketeering proceeds knowing or having reason to know they are the proceeds of an offense.” Terrorism is defined as a racketeering offense. The money laundering in the first degree statute (which would be directed at the person directing the act and making the payment) specifically mentions terrorism in a subsection of the statutes. ARS Section 13-2317.

Payment for doing drug deals has been included as a racketeering offense, and RICO civil forfeitures have been applied as well as criminal prosecutions. I see no reason this couldn’t be applied in the terrorism context.

The federal laws are similar to the Arizona laws (they were first). They could be applied to your example.

There are a number of crimes that most Objectivists and libertarians would consider to be crimes that are included in racketeering–for example homicide, robbery kidnapping, forgery, theft and terrorism. Most of them are victimless crimes that we do not think should be crimes. ARS Section 13-2301 (4).

In a better world the statutes could be modified to cover only those things that should be crimes.

Indeed.

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… a Marine at war with a sense of humor:

Umm Qasr is essentially a void now in the daily briefings of the Iraqi disinformation minister. His last mention of Umm Qasr was a vow that it would never fall into the hands of the “pirates” (arrrrrrrgh) and “gangsters” (mama mia!) of the coalition. This is essentially true, in that the coalition is devoid of either. American and British troops did take the city, though, and are in the process of… doing nefarious things like public works projects.

There has to be as many aid workers and civil engineers running around the coalition-occupied territory of Southern Iraq as there are fighting troops now. And the last I checked, the pirates of the Caribbean were not especially concerned with the welfare of those they invaded.

And I’m short a parrot, damn it.

Or how about this tidbit?

Can we stop the postmortems already? Peter Arnett is already declaring this thing a failure on Iraqi television. And that’s a damn shame, because I live my life in constant need of approval from Peter Arnett.

Look, I can understand Pete’s need to switch over to a network with more viewership than MSNBC, but come on, I thought the journalist’s credo was “objective,” not “aid and comfort.”

The firing of Peter Arnett from multiple jobs was sweet justice indeed. Given his history, I doubt he’ll ever work as a TV journalist ever again.

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A few days ago, Steve Simpson of the Institute for Justice sent me a copy of his and Dana Berliner’s op-ed on the Lawrence vs. Texas sodomy case. It’s excellent, as expected. They write:

Conservatives, especially, ought to be wary of casting their lot with the states on this issue. If the states can ban purely private conduct between consenting adults, what is to keep them from banning home schooling, for instance, or instituting mandatory preschool, or requiring parents to follow certain nutritional guidelines for their children? Conservatives who condone a process that leads us down this path need to start asking themselves what exactly it is they are trying to conserve.

Unfortunately, the left’s approach is no better. Where conservatives extol the virtue of state government power when it comes to certain moral or lifestyle issues, the left extols the virtues of government power when it comes to regulations of property and economic affairs. Both sides love government power when it suits their immediate agenda, but both ought to realize that this approach is only as good as one’s ability to control a particular legislature. The left ought to recognize that it cannot pick and choose which aspects of individual liberty are beyond government power. Privacy is worth very little if one has no property on which to practice it.

The cool part is that Steve described NoodleFood as “one of [his] morning staples.” For all I know, he’s just buttering me up for the sake of the onslaught of publicity that a mention on NoodleFood inevitably brings. But who cares!?! My blog adores flattery!

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