1 am this morning – Glad I can sleep in a bit this morning – at least no show to get early for this morning. Love doing the show, but need some beauty rest…
Brrring! Brrrring!
5:30 am "….hello…?"
"Skip, you up brother?"
"…am now, Jeff!"
Yup – wasn’t scheduled, but will help out a friend anytime – just hand me a can of Mountain Dew….dang, open eyes Skip, you just dropped it on your toes…. Here’s the links that we used during the show:
- Town employees now allowed to have guns at work
- Follow up from yesterday: School backs down on "no Pledge zone" (but not in classrooms)
- Radar gift from Iran to Syria – uh-oh
- US Justice Dept still stonewalling on why voter intimidation suit against New Black Panther group was dropped.
- Carol Shea-Porter continues stonewalling on where / from whom she got high schooler home addresses.
We only had time to address #1, #2, and #5. I have to admit, when I first started to read #1, I almost had a "snorting out nose Mtn Dew" experience:
NOTTINGHAM – The board of selectman approved a new policy last week allowing town employees to carry guns to work.
Selectman Mary Bonser, whose family runs the Cedar Waters Village Nudist Park, asked during the board of selectman’s June 21 meeting to amend the employee handbook to allow employees to bring guns on town property. The change was approved unanimously.
My first reaction back to Jeff (before the caffeine kicked in) was:
Man, that first one is full of irony – nudist camp owner in favor of concealed carry?
No, don’t go there, reader! But the rest of it really brings to the fore a very serious problem (in my eyes):
Why don’t those that govern, trust those that have consented to be governed?
In this case, the right decision was made. But why do those on the Left (who seem to be the most prone to restrict behavior in all sorts of ways) do not trust their neighbors and their friends to behave nicely?
Gail Mills, who co-founded a group that opposed now-bankrupt water bottler USA Springs, said she was outraged after learning employees can now bring guns to work.
"I think this is absolutely horrible," she said. "If you go into a public building, you don’t need to have guns there. Mary seems to think we’re going to be attacked." Mills said she was concerned about children who may be have summer programs at town hall and the increased liability that may come with the policy change.
I disagree with Ms. Mills – while not wishing to now sound like a reverse hypocrite myself, merely being in a public building is not going to keep you safe. No, I don’t believe that I would be attacked merely for turning the next corner or climbing the next set of stairs. But I do not fear from law abiding people who merely wish to exercise their 2nd Amendment Rights. And I do resent the constant use of children as a political shield in pretty much every argument they bring up – a strawman argument (oh, look at the defenseless children!! Er, not if the person in charge is packing to protect them now, right?).
"I’m not against people having the right to bear arms, but I think there’s a place for that," she said. "I think people should feel comfortable going into town hall and I don’t." Still, no one seems to be rushing to bring their gun to work, at least not yet.
Ah yes, the "BUT Monkey" as Laura Ingraham is won’t to say; you can have your Freedom, BUT only under THESE conditions that I allow you to. Freedoms – but with MY strings attached!
Note to Ms. Mills – being comfortable is not a Right, nor is it my concern (nor should it be the concern of most others – and certainly should not be the driving force behind public policy). Being or feeling comfortable is not a function of Government, nor of that of being a citizen, or even just being in the state of being alive. Your feeling (not a Right) that you should not feel or be offended should never proclude someone from exercising their First Amendment Right, either.
And that seems to be a major theme – the Left’s notion that the rest of us do not and cannot pick or choose to behave well according to their "sensible" nostrums. Their mind set is that of superiority – we know what is right – for all of you. Their answers are almost always and seemingly about control because of their poor skills of persuasion with the general public. Knowing that, since we can’t persuade you all, we’ll just persuade the some – politicians.
And at almost every turn, their nostrums always seem to restrict choice – either to make themselves feel good, feel comfortable, or feel superior by once again, deciding what is best for others in how their lives should be led.
And in each and every case, no matter how slight, our choices leak away. Slowly and incrementally. Think I’m wrong? Think about it as you pass your day (can’t eat that, have to seatbelt this, can’t say those words, now can’t freely associate with others at college groups, expression of religion subsumed by sexual mores, before I do this action I have MORE forms to fill out and MORE approvals to get, the Zoning Board just made my private property worthless to me because I’m not allowed to do THIS to it, can’t fish off the beach without a permit…those are just the very trivial ones – the list goes on and on..).
Do I know all the answers? Of course not (not even for me) – but if someone wants to eat something that "may" not be good for them, who am *I* to take that choice away? If they want to participate in a risky behavior (but a legal one right now), why should I make that burdensome for them to do so JUST because I think it to be an icky idea? While as a conservative, I do believe in an ordered society with a role for limited government and social mores that were built upon a Judeo-Christian philosophy, that laws and regulations exist for a purpose, we have strayed far past the tipping point in a lot of areas.
But PLEASE, don’t force me to pay for other peoples’ bad decisions – stop socializing the risks!
And thus, the Left Just keeps putting us into a cardboard box – how else would we know how to best behave?
