{"id":35968,"date":"2013-04-24T12:00:22","date_gmt":"2013-04-24T17:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=35968"},"modified":"2013-04-24T07:22:33","modified_gmt":"2013-04-24T12:22:33","slug":"the-road-to-hell-is-paved-with-good-intentions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=35968","title":{"rendered":"The Road To Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Public opinion is driven by mass caprice. \u00a0When the subject is “American Idol”, that’s fairly harmless (and where the hell\u00a0is<\/em>\u00a0Ruben Studdard?).<\/p>\n

When the subject is our civil liberties – especially the ones that are less popular with the coastal media “elites” that would set the popular tone? Less so.<\/p>\n

P.J. O’Rourke, many of you know, is a conservative humorist and, as such, one of the great public intellectuals of the past forty years. \u00a0In his classic A Parliament of Whores\u00a0<\/em> – which is rapidly pushing 25 years old and in a just world would be required reading in every high school civics class – O’Rourke summed up the capriciousness of democracy, defending the contrarian idea that our democracy is, in fact, protected by the most counterintuitively autocratic institution of them all, the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

The SCOTUS – and the Constitution that the SCOTUS is supposed to protect – is that way because it’s intended to be immune from the vagaries of public opinion.<\/p>\n

Here’s the money quote from Parliament\u00a0<\/em>(with emphasis added):<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the final D-day invasion results, Normandy was a decisive winner, with 54% of the votes, while 43% of American soldiers thought we should re-invade North Africa and only 4% favored a massive land, sea and air attack on the folks back home.\u201d There wouldn\u2019t even be any democracy to defend if our every national whim were put into law. We\u2019d sacrifice the whole Constitution for those lost kids on milk cartons one week, and the next week we\u2019d toss the Rights of Man out the window to help victims of date rape<\/strong>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

After every crisis large and small – drug abuse, naughty words in music lyrics, gay marriage, food poisoning, people opposing gay marriage, mass murder – there are, inevitably, calls to reconsider whether freedom is really all that much more important than public safety.<\/p>\n

And always, always, there’s someone out there willing to profit politically from those calls.<\/p>\n

Especially when there are children involved. \u00a0Propose cutting welfare? \u00a0“Children will starve!”. \u00a0Propose paring back teachers union benefits or pensions? “Kids will turn stupid. \u00a0Invade Iraz? \u00a0The anti-war movement ten years ago made a grab for “absolute moral authority” by parading Cindy Sheehan in front of the cameras, after she lost her child (an adult who’d volunteered for the Army) in Iraq. \u00a0And it worked – until Sheehan went batspittle crazy and started making Mike Malloy look pretty well-balanced.<\/p>\n

Anyway – this impulse is never as powerful as after an ugly mass shooting – and Sandy Hook, in which a deranged “adult” targeted children because they were children, was the ugliest since the Stockton Massacre in 1988.<\/p>\n

There’s no question about it; losing a child is the most awful thing a parent can experience. \u00a0 \u00a0 It strikes a chord in just about every parent, one way or the other. \u00a0It’s impossible for a parent not\u00a0<\/em>to feel something way beyond sympathy. \u00a0Some respond “I have to protect my children”.<\/p>\n

Others respond “someone’s gotta protect my children”.<\/p>\n

A group of the Newtown\/Sandy Hook parents were flown to Washington last week, their every motion from leaving their homes to getting on Air Force One to arriving at the White House to listening to President Obama’s angry rant over the failure of his bill recorded in minute detail. \u00a0(It’s worth noting that it was only the right\u00a0<\/em>Sandy Hook parents were invited<\/a>\u00a0– and that for some reason no parents of black kids murdered in Chicago showed up)<\/p>\n

They believed, I’m sure, very sincerely that the Senate’s bill – which would not have impeded their kids’ murderer in the least – was the right response to their childrens’ deaths.<\/p>\n

But the prominence they got in the media – from a President who was desperate to pass his bill in the Senate, to get his vote in the House to try to use guns as leverage in swing districts in 2014, and to draw attention away from debt, deficit, spending, taxes, an ongoing war and the gathering disaster that is Obamacare? \u00a0That was pure, distilled cynicism.<\/p>\n

Twin Cities talk show host Bob Davis – morning guy at AM1130, which is a cheap copy of AM1280, and a guy who gave me my first shot at trying talk radio again, ten years ago last January when I filled in for him for an evening on his old KSTP-AM night-side show – has taken a ton of flak for his remarks<\/a> about the exploitation of the Sandy Hook parents and their grief (and especially other parents’ fear):<\/p>\n

I have something I want to say to the victims of Newtown or any other shooting, I don\u2019t care if it\u2019s here in Minneapolis or anyplace else: Just because a bad thing happened to you doesn\u2019t mean that you get to put a king in charge of my life. I\u2019m sorry that you suffered a tragedy, but you know what? Deal with it, and don\u2019t force me to lose my liberty, which is a greater tragedy than your loss.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sick and tired of seeing these victims trotted out, given rides on Air Force One, hauled into the Senate well, and everyone is \u2026 terrified of these victims. I would stand in front of them and tell them, \u2018Go to hell.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The comment has gotten the usual manufactured outrage by the national leftymedia<\/a>, and the inevitable chest-thumping “come here and say that!<\/a>“.<\/p>\n

The responses – on both sides, really – miss two key points:<\/p>\n