"Buffalos Died in the Frozen Fields, You Know..."

...well, not really...only a song lyric...but it was 12 degrees below zero when I got up this AM...I can't say that the Wonder Beagle was thrilled about going out...when she came back in she immediately jumped on the bed and burrowed under the covers. I don't blame her.

(From the great Rotten eCards, of course)

And speaking of gangstas, from the Boston Globe, a report on the MA "study panel" on gun laws, recommending changes in MA's already draconian laws:

The panel members said they also learned that current law gives too much discretion to police chiefs to deny gun licenses to “unsuitable persons,” so they recommended that the Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association help develop a tighter definition for that term. 

For the most part, police chiefs invoke the “unsuitable persons’’ language to deny licenses for handguns. The panel recommended that police chiefs be allowed to apply that standard to buyers of rifles and shotguns, who are exempt. 

That change would allow police chiefs to prohibit people who have been arrested, but not convicted, of a crime from buying a rifle.

Lemme get this straight...let's give law enforcement the power to strip a person of one of their Constitutionally protected rights...just because? Scratch a progressive's skin and beneath you always find the armorplate of a fascist. I know it has become unfashionable to say such things, but it is the truth our enemies believe that we will all be safer, more secure, if we empower our overlords to simply take matters into their own hands, irrespective of laws or those pesky Constitutional protections.

I have had (mainstream) conservatives explain to me why NYC's "stop and frisk" laws were such a good thing because they reduced crime. Ends, meet Means. My response was strictly Constitutional, what part of, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated..." don't you understand? What part don't you agree with? When I first went to England one of the things I truly wants to see was a copy of the Magna Carta...buried within that landmark document from the 13th Century was the concept of due process, the seeds of America and the freedom we've enjoyed.

But the liberal/progressive elite are uncomfortable with due process, because it implies that all people, even them, are equal under the law. And how can people who are so much smarter, so much better educated, so much more understanding of the country and its needs, be equal to some redneck peckerwood gun clinger or a black kid struggling to get by the in wrong neighborhood in New York? So much better if if those oh-so-smart people in power protect those less fortunate in income, parentage, job choice, neighborhood, skin color, religion choice. The authorities are there to protect and serve, after all. What could possibly be wrong with that?

There's a quote from G. K. Chesterton that applies here, I think:

“The wisest thing in the world is to cry out before you are hurt. It is no good to cry out after you are hurt; especially after you are mortally hurt. People talk about the impatience of the populace; but sound historians know that most tyrannies have been possible because men moved too late. It is often essential to resist a tyranny before it exists.”

I once interviewed a young Muslim woman who had been caught up in the Balkan "ethnic cleansing"...she survived and ultimately thrived, but her story was a horrific one of physical torture, multiple rape, disappearance or death or friends and family members, the usual genocidal package. What struck me in that interview was even after the years had passed, she remained puzzled at the genesis of her experience. It seemed so strange to her that the men who connected the battery cables to her genitals after repeatedly raping her were the same men for whom's families she had babysat, at whom's table she had dined numerous times, men who's children she played with and whom she considered her friends. Her life seemed perfectly normal...until it didn't.

How slippery is the slope? While we all may laugh at college students signing a petition to put gun owners in concentration camps, it's an uncomfortable laugh, with maybe a glance over the shoulder.