Savannah Guthrie Issues New Public Plea in Mother's Kidnapping Case
Kidnapping Is Not Crime Alone but War Against the Person
Savannah Guthrie’s public plea to her mother’s kidnappers exposes not only private agony but the return of naked, lawless power that every just government is bound to suppress or be shamed by.
I read that a daughter, Savannah Guthrie, has turned to a curious public stage – a moving image broadcast through something called Instagram – to beg those who kidnapped her 84‑year‑old mother: “Tell us where to look for her.” Nearly six months after the disappearance from a home in Arizona, she speaks of an “unending nightmare,” of a family “in agony,” and promises they “will never stop looking for her.” Some speak of a “new line of communication,” perhaps ransom letters, perhaps something else; the facts are not yet clear. But this much is clear beyond dispute: whoever stole this woman from her house claimed over her a power that no man can rightfully have over another.
When I began my Second Treatise of Government, I started from this point: all men are naturally in “a state of perfect freedom” to order their persons and possessions within the bounds of reason, without asking leave of any other. To seize a person from her dwelling, to carry her no one knows where, and then to toy with her family’s hope by half‑seen messages, is not a mere trespass; it is the thorough overthrow of that natural freedom. It is, in plain terms, to reduce a person to slavery for as long as the captor pleases, and perhaps to death. This stands not as a misfortune within civil society, but as an eruption of the state of war in the midst of it.
For the law of nature – which is but reason, rightly consulted – teaches every one, that being all equal and independent, “no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.” Kidnapping offends all these at once. It threatens life, it preys upon health by terror and confinement, it annihilates liberty outright, and it assails the dearest possession a person has, which is her own person. No promise of gain, no grievance, no passion of the moment can make it otherwise; men may give fine names to their violence, but when one man puts another under his absolute power, with no standing rule but his will, that is arbitrary power, and arbitrary power is the very thing civil society is framed to exclude.
This point concerns not the private villain only but the public order. Political power, as I argued then and maintain now, is a right to make laws for the preservation of lives, liberties, and estates – nothing more. It is held on trust from the people, who might rationally consent to such power for their protection. No man, in his wits and acting freely, could ever consent to a government that claimed a right to steal his aged mother from her bed, hold her without trial, and torment her children with silence. If any magistrate did this under color of law, he would step out of the role of governor and into that of enemy; the people would be discharged from obedience toward him. How much less can a band of private men, without any show of public authority, pretend to such a power.
In this matter, therefore, the daughter’s stubborn search, her family’s offer of a reward, and her public pleas to the kidnappers are not acts of desperation only; they are exercises of a right that belongs to every person when force has broken through the fence of law. When one is assaulted by those who acknowledge no common rule, one is remitted, as I once wrote, to “the common refuge which God hath provided for all men, against force and violence.” Part of that refuge is the liberty to appeal widely to one’s fellow‑subjects, to stir their compassion, to enlist their aid, and to invite even the wrongdoer to step back from the state of war by some token of repentance, such as “Tell us where to look for her.”
Some will ask whether such public pleas, spread on this vast, unseen network, may embolden the criminal or obstruct the magistrate’s work. It is a fair concern, for even just means can be unwisely used. Here, a distinction is necessary. First, the family must not promise or do anything that would endanger others or license further crimes; no man may buy his own safety at the price of another’s ruin. Secondly, they ought, so far as they can, to act in concert with those officers whose business it is to seek out offenders and restore the injured. Within those bounds, however, to cry aloud for help, and even to speak directly to those who have wronged you, is not disorder but a natural response to wrong.
I cannot tell, from afar and upon the few reports before me, what the outcome of this sad case will be, nor whether talk of ransom letters and “new communication” rests on firm ground. But I can see, as any man may, the shape of the wrong that started it. When an old woman vanishes from her home and her children must beg unseen captors for a word, society is reminded that under every roof lies a claim older and higher than any human law: that each person is the workmanship of one Maker, sent into the world about His business, and not to be disposed of at another’s pleasure. To forget that is to let the state of war creep back under the door, one stolen life at a time.
From the works cited
- Second Treatise of Government — The law of nature binds everyone, rulers included: no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions; political power is legitimate only with consent and for protection of these rights.