It’s easy to feel sorry for at least nine of the ten missionaries from Idaho who are currently detained in Port-au-Prince on child abduction charges. They may have left the details of their actions to their leader, Laura Silsby and this fact may have led to their incarceration. But, assuming the allegations against the group are true, Silsby deserves no sympathy.
The ten Americans were arrested at Haiti’s border while the group was attempting to take a busload 33 children out of the country and place them in an orphanage in the Dominican Republic. While the government of the Dominican Republic authorized the group to bring the children in, the missionaries had no legal permission to take these Haitian minors out of the country.
The missionaries and their supporters are now whining that they didn’t do anything wrong; they did what they did in order to help the poor children. In that respect the ten of them can serve as poster children for liberals and everything that is wrong with liberalism.
A key liberal belief, found in the teachings of Saul Alinsky, is that the end justifies the means. And this is exactly what happened here; they knew what was best for these kids, not their families nor the government of Haiti that, although in turmoil is still functioning. Getting these children out of Haiti made the missionaries feel good about themselves. And feelings are much more important than facts or reality. More important than even the rights of children.
One fact that was ignored, either through ignorance or indifference, is what constitutes an orphan in Haiti. Unlike first world countries Haitian orphans are not necessarily children whose parents are both dead. Many Haitians drop their children off at orphanages either permanently or temporarily because they are no longer able to support them. When the older children on the bus were questioned by the Haitian authorities, many said that they had at least one living parent. The fact that these kids may have extended families in Haiti that could possibly look after them was also ignored. There was no justifiable reason to move these children away from their country of birth and take them to a different culture with a different language. It was nothing more than pure selfishness although these missionaries will never be able to look at it this way. They did it for the children.
There is nothing to suggest that Haitians, including children who have survived the earthquake are in any imminent danger. Although there were problems getting food and water to people when aid workers and soldiers first arrived there are no credible reports of massive deaths of people who remained unscathed after the quake hit. If the missionaries did find starving children or children who were in need of immediate medical attention, the solution was to get help for them from the various aid agencies that are now in Haiti; not spirit them out of the country of their birth. The major problem that these orphans face is the risk of being preyed upon child traffickers. But according to Silsby, these children should be allowed to be taken out of Haiti without permission of either their guardians or the government. If the group thinks that they can take these children out of the country without permission, why can’t human traffickers be able to do the same?
The ten from Idaho played perfectly into the stereotype that much of the world has of Americans; there are really only two countries; the United States of America and the rest of the world. The group showed absolutely no respect for Haiti’s government or the country’s sovereignty. It was all about what the missionaries wanted and how it made them feel. Nothing else mattered.
Like all others on the left such as Senator Harry Reid (Obama doesn’t speak with a Negro dialect) and Chris Matthews (for an hour I forgot he was black) these missionaries would never consider themselves to be racist. But if an earthquake happened in a predominately white country such as Italy, would they have been so quick to pile children on the bus and remove them from the country? It’s hard to imagine.
Much like the TV sitcom, Everybody Loves Raymond, it isn't really about the kids. It’s all about them.
