Outside the Compound

The film, Sons of Perdition, documents the lives of a group of teens who've fled the fundamentalist Mormon polygamist community of Colorado City/Short Creek, or as the kids call it "The Crik." They're lost kids: uneducated, shunned by their families, and banished from the only community they've ever known and left to fend in a culture they don't understand.

It's a great documentary, one that will appeal to both libislamunistofascists and patriots. The former will come away muttering about how authoritarian patriarchy poisons a society, while the latter will note how children lose their way after losing touch with traditional values.

While watching these rebellious teens struggling to adapt to life among the "gentiles," I was saddened by the thought that they fled the kind of world true patriots are trying to build. Absent the polygamy, The Crik, practices the tradition values we cherish so dearly.

Education is religion-based. The children are not exposed to godless science, new math, phonics, or any of the other faith-killing philosophies of secular education. Perhaps even more important, their minds aren't corrupted by union-card-carrying teachers. The curriculum consists solely of a series of cassette tapes recorded by their prophet.

Imagine our children going to a school to spend their day listening to Dr. Dobson on tape.

FLDS kids aren't forced to suffer through the higher grades, learning ciphering and reading tricks they'll never use. There is no schooling beyond 8th grade. One of the boys in the film began working with his father on construction projects when he was eight. The lucky kid could operate every kind of heavy machinery by the time he was 16 (scroll down to construction clip).

Another young man looked quizzical when asked about comic books. He'd never heard of such a thing, and it didn't matter, he said, because he couldn't reach much anyway. That's kind of a built in advantage the religion-based Crik education offers.

Unlike our permissive, worldly culture, fornication isn't a problem at the Crik. Boys are banned if they look at one of the elders potential wives. Young girls, many as young as 12 and 14 (scroll to "being a girl...), are married off before thoughts of fornication seize their young minds.

Respect for patriarchal authority is perhaps the most important value the kids leave behind. Without a prophet or a Old Testament style father, these kids are required to make their own decisions based on research they must conduct themselves. Thankfully, it's too much for some in the film to handle. One young girl returns to her father three times (and her mother, once) after he issues his command.

For now, such respect for traditional values is practiced only at a few compounds across the nation, but God willing, today's patriots will continue building a big enough compound to house us all.

Sons of Perdition is in theaters now.