From an article by David Harsanyi:
The president, who has often said he will work around Congress, also justifies his executive bender by telling us that Americans are clamoring for more limits on gun ownership. So what? These rights -- in what Piers Morgan might call that "little book" -- were written down to protect the citizenry from not only executive overreach but also vagaries of public opinion. Didn't Alexander Hamilton and James Madison warn us against the dangerous "passions" of the mob? It is amazing how many times this president uses majoritarian arguments to rationalize executive overreach.
That is a very important point. We are a republic. Not everything is up for democratic grabs.
And really, speaking of ginning up fear: "If there's even one life that can be saved, then we've got an obligation to try," the president said, deploying perhaps the biggest platitude in the history of nannyism. Not a single one of the items Obama intends to implement -- legislative or executive -- would have stopped Adam Lanza's killing spree or, most likely, any of the others. Using fear and a tragedy to further ideological goals was by no means invented by Obama, but few people have used it with such skill.
A platitude? Not the right word. What Obama is quoted as saying is an absurdity and illustrates once again what a bullshitter he is. Many lives would be saved by banning mororcycles, skydiving, mountaineering, and so on. But a thoughtful person does not consider merely the positive upshot of banning X but the negative consequences as well such as the infringement of liberty. A rational person considers costs along with benefits.
Recent Comments