“I will not allow violence against this house,” stated Dustin Hoffman’s character in the original Straw Dogs (1971), a graphic film that is still worth watching, but only by adults. Most will watch Sam Peckinpah’s psychological thriller with some Western themes only once. For many, some quick editing via the remote will be required. The central point of the movie is still valid.
Civilized men once had a universal understanding that a man’s home was his castle. Why? The idea that a man’s, or now in many cases a woman’s, house and property should be within their own control is on life support. It once was a cultural norm. The goal in America was for the regular guy, in colonial days, the former European peasant, to have the same rights and controls over his own property as did the King of England over his. Within his home, each homeowner was to be king.
The Fourth Amendment, requiring a warrant to be issued only on probable cause and other constitutional provisions such as prohibiting the forced housing of troops in private residences during peacetime, are examples of the weight the founders placed on the common man’s right to control his private property. The Second Amendment, of course, partly exists to help the regular guy protect those and other rights. Although the universal recognition of women’s and minorities’ rights to secure property came later, the recognition of their rights was clearly consistent with the intent of the founders’ original language.
We call it the American Revolution, but in reality it was counter-revolution. The rights that are acknowledged (not granted) in our constitution were rights that had at various times been asserted in England. The king and his lackeys, in colonial days, overstepped their bounds in the Americas. Traditional rights were reasserted by our founding fathers by bullet and sword.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Glenn Contrarian
In other words, Osama bin Laden won. Not only did he (thanks to Dubya) get us to engage in an unwinnable war, but also got us to bankrupt ourselves as a nation; in fact, he had publicly stated back in the 1990's that these were his goals. He made us as a nation so paranoid that the Fourth Amendment is no longer of any effect, and so hateful that the First Amendment is held in contempt.
In the long view of history, I would think that OBL was probably the single most influential individual since FDR. In purely military terms, what OBL did was sheer genius - indeed, I cannot think of a single military act, not even Midway nor Agincourt nor Trafalgar, with the possible exception of Thermopylae, where so few accomplished so much at so little cost...and it was America's great misfortune indeed that at the time we had one of the most inept presidents in our national history.
America is not the America we once knew. Perhaps the promise our nation once held will return, but I don't see it yet on the horizon.
2 - Glenn Contrarian
But it must be said that bin Laden could not have been successful without George W. Bush who was so easy to manipulate.
3 - RapidRobert
The so called "Patriot Act" built on a foundation already laid by an equally winable? "War on (some) Drugs".
The only one of the first ten amendments to our Constitution that is not routinely ignored is the third.
4 - Paul D. Perry
We too often substitute intrusive government for private action. In doing so we turn our people into slaves.
5 - Cannonshop
#1 Glenn...simplistic. People have been surrendering their freedom a LOT longer than GW Bush was in office.
One could possibly point out that OBL's crash teams wouldn't have been able to hijack those planes with BOX KNIVES if not for thirty years of conditioning Americans to give in and wait for the police when threatened.
PATRIOT might not have passed, if not for Progressives and their fellow travellers in Media and the Dept. of Education teaching generations of kids that "Government can fix everything".
Don't Deify Bush by giving him credit for the accomplishments of others.
6 - Paul D. Perry
"One could possibly point out that OBL's crash teams wouldn't have been able to hijack those planes with BOX KNIVES if not for thirty years of conditioning Americans to give in and wait for the police when threatened."
Right on target, and this type of brain washing has had wider consequences.
7 - Glenn Contrarian
"It's all the progressives' fault that the Patriot Act was passed"!
Blame the victim, don't blame the criminal, huh?
That's just like "It's her fault that she was raped because she was wearing sexy clothing that made the man think that she wanted him to rape her".
Which, by the way, is something that Rush Limbaugh has been heard saying before. "Blame the victim, don't blame the criminal" - also known as "Deregulate the finance industry, because it's not our fault if someone signs the rip-off contracts we show them (never mind that even college graduates are not able to spot all the little traps in those contracts).
Blame the victim, don't blame the criminal.
Real good, Cannonshop. But that's the conservative way, huh?
8 - Cannonshop
#7 so the representatives of Criminals are 'victims' now? The people who tell the law-abiding to surrender and hand it over to a policeman who might be there in time to draw the chalk outline are..'victims' now? The representative philosophy OF victimhood is NOT to blame-
Come to think of it, everything that has gone wrong in the last four years, you blame on someone else, dontcha, Glenn?
Just based on your defense of the Obama Administration in so many threads (most common refrain-"it's BUSH'S fault!!") really underscores it-you're a bunch of Victims, you're totally incapable of doing anything, right?? Or is it just "anything WRONG"??
When people self-victimize the way you "progressives" do, yeah, guess what?
It's your fault.
9 - roger nowosielski
You're giving "progressives" a bad name, Cannon.
But then again, since Glenn is so fond of invoking the term to describe his own political convictions, I'd better dissociate myself and quickly.
Call me an anarchist (and a revolutionary to boot) henceforth.
10 - Jordan Richardson
Can't we just call you Roger?
11 - roger nowosielski
Sure, Jordan, so long as it stands for nique nique.
12 - zingzing
the patriot act is america's fault, cannonshop. then it was the conservatives fault. and then it was again. and now, it's the dems' fault for continuing some parts of it. but it was yours to dismantle first, and you didn't. that it hasn't been gotten rid of since then sucks, but i don't know how you can blame it on "progressives" when your belief system is as much and more responsible.
13 - Glenn Contrarian
Cannonshop -
You've already demonstrated on another thread that you don't know what progressives believe or support, or why.
Not only that, but where in the world did you get the idea that we "represent" the criminals now? Tell me, Cannonshop - can you point to even ONE crime by the Left (the farther the better) that compares with ANY of the following?
1 - Iran-Contra
2 - the Iraq War (which IS a war crime on a grand scale)
3 - the exposure of Valerie Plame (public exposure of a CIA agent in time of war)
4 - torture of POW's as presidentially-approved policy, in violation of international AND American law AND long-standing American military regulation
Who truly 'represents' the criminals, Cannonshop? You'd have to go back all the way to Vietnam to find any crime committed by the Left that compares to any of these...and I'm sure there's several more I can dig up if I take the time to think about it.
We on the Left aren't perfect by a long shot, Cannonshop - but you CANNOT honestly compare the conduct of the Left to the much worse conduct of the Right. If the Left had done ANY of the four above, there would have been an outright armed rebellion by those on the Right and I think you know that. But since it was YOUR guys who did those things, well, gee whiz, Homer, that's all in the past so we should just get around to getting rid of those eeeeeeevil Leftist Socialist Nazi Homo Dem-o-crats!
There have been a few conservatives who have come forward to decry what the modern conservative has become - like John Dean (who worked with Nixon) and Barry Goldwater (who STARTED the modern conservative movement) - but they've been in large measure disowned by 'modern' conservatives for not being far enough to the Right. In fact, it's a political death sentence to ANY Republican to stand up and say, hey, maybe we're getting just a bit too dogmatic here.... You know this, too.
Your guys have gone so far beyond the pale that even Reagan and Bush Sr. would have been expelled from the Republican party as socialists. The real tragedy is that so many of you don't realize this, and you don't see the danger signs of runaway dogma-uber-alles that is rampant among the conservatives of today. Your guys reject as unthinkable such words as 'pragmatism' and 'compromise'. Even in this last debt-ceiling debacle John Boehner pointed out that he got 98% of what he wanted...and your guys still castigated him for giving one inch to the Democrats! Ninety-eight percent wasn't enough!
Do you not see the danger, Cannonshop? Do you not see what's wrong when your own elder statesmen among the Republican party cannot stand up and tell you what you're doing wrong without being left out in the political cold for life? The Founding Fathers of this nation designed our government to function with pragmatism and compromise - but no Republican politician dares utter such words today!
Dogma-uber-alles always, always, ALWAYS leads somewhere that no one wants to go. Anyone with even a modest understanding of history knows this!
14 - Cannonshop
Roger, I don't call you anything BUT Roger-you've got your own ideas. Some I agree with, some I consider pure mulch. You're not a lockstepper like "Contrarian", you've actually got ideas of your own that didn't come from the DNC's speechwriters.
Okay, now...Glenn, let's party, I've got a cracked vertebra and a Vicodin prescription to keep me awake and cranky.
1: Iran-Contra, We lived with this for almost as long as we endured Whitewater, with roughly the same non-results, mostly because in spite of claims to the contrary, it wasn't illegal, and very little was even provable.
2. Iraq War: So, holding an entire nation under seige for ten years while its dictator gassed thousands and the population starved was NOT? You're going to tell me that Bhoutros-Bhoutros and his sons profiteering off oil-for-food with the knowing wink of the U.S. State Department and the eager collusion of the United Nations was somehow a REPUBLICAN (or Conservative) operation?
Lemme add another one: Bill Clinton having dinner with Aidid, giving him a Marine welcome after what his men dragged an army pilot through the streets of Mogadishu after blowing the capture op and refusing the necessary support for the mission? I think that measures up pretty well with outing an inactive CIA op who was abusing her contacts in the agency while living the life of a D.C. Socialite on the arm of her Congressman husband...
4. Damn skippy. These aren't LEGAL combatants. Under the Geneva Accords ratified by the United States Congress, these guys have about the same rights as Mercenaries and Bandits. I don't have a problem with that. I don't have a problem with it not being in step with the version the Soviets tried to push through to protect their operations in Central America in the seventies, either. They didn't and don't abide the GC, so why should we treat them as if they did?
We weren't, after all, kidnapping people and sawing their heads off for broadcast.
Now...let's see...
"Progressives" like to make sure that Felons, including incarcerated felons, vote. I understand this, Felons tend to vote Democrat. I get it. I also get that the U.S. Attorney General was jumping over and through obstacles and reinterpreting law to allow states to avoid penalties for getting ballots owed soldiers deployed overseas to said soldiers in time for said soldiers to vote. That's on record, by the way, Mr. Holder's Justice department believes in the vote for child molesters, murderers, armed robbers and embezzlers, but not for soldiers, sailors, airmen, or marines.
Then again, if he thinks as you do, he percieves said soldiers, airmen, Sailors, and Marines as war criminals anyway, and litter that will explode unpredictably when it finally drifts back home, and the Felons in lockup as victims of an unfair system.
There's your four, here's a few of mine...
We'll start with half-assing Vietnam (LBJ of Great Society fame). You either go to war, or you stay home. "Kinetic Actions" create "Kinetic REactions". IIRC recently (in the last few months) NATO planes took out refugee convoys in Libya-awesome job there, what in hell were we doing involved with another French fight? this time, we INSTALLED Radical Islam. I rather expect there will be an entertaining train of human rights violations just as soon as it's no longer convenient to ignore it.
If Iraq WAS a 'War Crime' as you allege, then continuing it-even for a day, is ALSO a war crime. then again, aiding the Ba'ath party and Saddam to rise to power there might be considered a crime against humanity. Guess what-Leaving him there ALSO qualifies, there's no good answer when you start tracing back the chain of responsibility, but removal of a guy whose hobbies included rape and mass murder probably is a more morally and ethically defensible act, than leaving him in place after your predecessors worked so hard to install him, and keep him there-call it the "Noriega Precedent", when you install a thug, you have a duty to remove him when he is no longer useful, or when his corruption is so great even YOU can't ignore it.
AS for Karl Rove being an "elder statesman?"
I hate to break it to ya, Glenn, but neither party's produced a true Statesman in better than half a century-Rove's an Ad man, like James Carrville, an image consultant, specializing in public relations and selling his client.
Speaking of Jim Carrville, it seems that (with Taxpayer dollars) he and his colleagues have been doing 'pro bono' work in Israel running PR against Israel.
Neat, huh? Not only are we pressuring the only Western style state in the region to cave to the guys who like to cut up gay people and stone women for being raped (and blow up their kids as guided munitions), but we're also trying to influence their elections.
I just find this really special, makes me want to pay my taxes...
Then, let's get closer to home...
Enron.
Solyndra.
BP.
What do these three have in common? Big-time Democrat donors every one of them, with Big time Democrat finance people on their boards of directors. Two of them are out of business spectacularly (and with much damage to the domestic economy) while the third was shorting Safety regs and skintzing on equipment to the catastrophic damage on the Gulf Coast-a cleanup running well into the billions of Dollars.
Solyndra, of course, is really tasty-it's recent. Half a billion dollars in loan guarantees and it's bankrupt, laid off all the 'green jobs' workers, and a lot of the money can't be found.
But wait, there's MORE!!
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac-Big dollar guarantors of bad loan products sold to people who couldn't afford them at rates held artificially low. This stimulus in action was championed primarily by the same Congresscritters who brought us loose regulations on banking-spearhead being our now-Vice President, Mr. Joe Biden, but accompanied by a list of fellow travellers that reads like a who's who of the top levels of the Democratic Party, DNC, and their big donors in the financial sector, including those neat credit-card outfits that went and located in Rhode Island (Joe's home state) so that they can charge usurious rates on credit cards issued to people who wouldn't qualify for a Payday loan.
An armed robber might kill a gas station attendant, he's going to do twenty to life for that, white-collar criminals destroy the lives of THOUSANDS of innocent people, and sometimes their actions kill thousands too-they get country-club prison. Madoff was a Democrat, Glenn, and he typifies how Dems do their dirty work.
15 - Igor
#14 Cannonshop: a vain attempt to mount a ¨You too!¨ rebuttal.
One only need read the first item which attempts to compare a two-bit bank swindle with Iran-Contra which even Reagan recognized was clearly illegal and which violated US foreign policy on TWO fronts, plus giving aid and comfort to a great enemy.
Anyway, the ¨you too!!¨ rebuttal is invalid, consisting (like Iran Contra) of two offenses: ad hominem AND a red herring.
16 - Glenn Contrarian
Cannonshop -
Read Igor's comment - what he pointed out in just a few short words blew away your entire diatribe.
And think about that - you're actually trying to compare Iran-Contra, wherein we WERE selling arms to IRAN to finance what we were doing in Nicaragua, to Whitewater, which turned out to be nothing more than a wild goose chase.
Do you realize, Cannonshop, that the Republicans spent more money investigating Whitewater than they did 9/11? And what did they find? Squat...except for some false intelligence that Bush used as an excuse to get us into Iraq. The Republicans twice as much money investigating the Monica Lewinsky scandal as they did investigating 9/11! Millions to investigate a blowjob, but not one cent to prove that we didn't belong in Iraq!
But on Iran-Contra, it is WITHOUT QUESTION that we did sell arms to Iran...and the Reagan administration (if not Reagan himself) did a brilliant job of all saying, "I know nuthink! It must have been somebody else!" And so no one was jailed for, as Igor said, giving aid and comfort to an enemy.
And you compare that to Whitewater, wherein NO crime of national significance was ever proven to have occurred at all.
Iran-Contra. Whitewater. One's a mountain, the other's a relative molehill. But they're both the same to you.
Iran-Contra happened back when I was a Republican - at the time, I thought it was all a Democrat boondoggle too. It's only within the past ten years or so that I've come to realize how wrong and illegal it was.
I do so wish that you'd check your prejudice and hatred for all things not Fox-News-approved at the door, and pay attention to the facts instead.
17 - Cannonshop
Okay, Igor-how about sabotaging the NICS system to enable straw-purchases of bulk firearms by Mexican drug gangs-and, apparently, they ran a similar operation right here in the USA in Indiana.
Does that count as a crime? Arming Drug Cartels that have turned our southern border into a war-zone? With no way to actually TRACK the weapons, seems to me more or less using deaths and criminal violence to influence laws and lawmakers and create public fear-which is, by definition, Terrorism-only this terrorism is being perpetrated with tax dollars by Uncle Sam, and it's directed at AMERICANS.
18 - Cannonshop
While we're at it, we can add some more fun...
"There will be more Wacos"-Janet Reno, after a botched 'warrant service' killed all the witnesses and destroyed most of the evidence in a TAX CASE.
Ruby Ridge. Guy didn't want to involve himself with the other racists down the road, so they killed his wife and his kid for it after staging a textbook case of entrapment on a minor firearms charge.
The Dept. of Education has a SWAT team-which thankfully didn't kill anyone when they stormed the home of an ex-husband looking for the wife that defaulted on an education loan.
Iran-Contra was a foreign operation-Progressives kill Americans right here at home.
19 - Bill Redding
Paul,
Thanks for the link. I enjoyed your article and found the comments interesting.
20 - henry4440
Let's not forget Fast and Furious where some "good intentioned" socialists got guns in the hand of Mexican drug cartels just so they could claim our Second Amendment is the source of all evil in the hemisphere. I get pretty sick and tired of you socialists blaming George Bush for your stupidity. Your hero Obama has wrecked the economy with your socialist economic theories and now you still want to blame Bush. Get a grip.
Paul, you are exactly right on.
21 - Glenn Contrarian
Cannonshop -
Okay, so which of those involved giving aid and comfort to the enemy (which, last I recall, is treason)? Which of those involved exposing a US spy in time of warfare (which is ALSO treason)? Which of those resulted in the deaths of over five thousand American military personnel...and over a hundred thousand (mostly innocent) deaths, and over a million refugees who still can't go home (which IS a war crime)? And which of those involved something that was so abhorrent that it was explicitly forbidden by George Washington himself?
AGAIN, Cannonshop - the mountains you're looking at...are simply molehills in the grand sweep of American history. The instances I pointed out to you, on the other hand, really ARE mountains. It would be nice if you'd have the courage to be able to tell the difference.
Mountains. Molehills. I guess they look like one and the same when one wears Republican-red-tinted glasses.
22 - Glenn Contrarian
"Henry4440" -
When you get your facts straight, when you're ready with numbers from reliable sources, come back and I'll provide you an education - not that I think you'll pay the least bit of attention, but I'll still go to the trouble of doing so.
23 - Paul D. Perry
Funny thing I agree with much but not to the extent, of what Glen Contrarian said in is first post. Then he went downhill, but the overreaction of our government and overarching fear of our population are a horrible combination. Bluntly, nearly our entire government has gone nuts. Conservatives, yes, however the current President chose to engage in Libya and has also expanded wire tap provisions and expanded TSA intrusion on his watch.
24 - Cannonshop
#27 yes, because arming foreign and domestic TERRORISM right here at home is so much less a problem, than smuggling guns to Nicaragua, right? Because abusing a badge and killing U.S. Citizens is less of a crime, in your eyes, than exposing a non-active 'agent' who hasn't participated in a single covert operation since she was 'made'?
I really don't think you understand, or maybe you just don't value the lives of your countrymen as much as you do their enemies.
You're going to excuse selling guns to cartels on our border, cartels that are waging a war against the U.S. AND an ally, whose ROE includes shooting civilians.
Dude, go back to cuba.
25 - Clavos
Are there comments missing here?