Barbara O’Brien makes the smartest comment I’ve read about the recent Supreme Court decision to strike down Massachusetts’ buffer zone law that protects patients (boldface mine):
Let’s try a thought experiment: Let’s say a number of people decide that banks are evil. This group then targets banks to picket. But they don’t stop with picketing. They chain themselves to doors. They try to stop bank customers from entering. They yell at people to keep their money at home and not let it mingle with the infernal financial system. They set up websites displaying photos and names of bank employees and where they live, hinting that maybe somebody could just eliminate these people. Banks are vandalized and even bombed. Some bank managers are assassinated.
Now, how many nanoseconds would pass before law enforcement and the FBI call this movement domestic terrorism and shut it down? No one outside the anti-bank cult would stand for this. But when the context involves women, sex, and religion instead of money and business, somehow, it’s different.
I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating: at some point, there will be angry people on the left who will use the right’s playbook–the whole thing.
It’s also worth noting the utter foolishness of some on the left who believe that the law will be applied equally. Itwasn’t at the Bundy Ranch.
This will not end well.
mikethemadbiologist
I couldn’t agree more. I’m not proud to say this, but I live in a city where people who helped escort women into clinics that provide abortion were gunned down. So the victims were not even providing abortion themselves and still they were killed just for their involvement. This happened years ago, but now it’s not hard to foresee its happening again. And again. I just don’t know what to do about it.
And the great split rears its ugly head once again. About this time last year the vicious little squabbles over Snowden made it plain that the Left consisted of two incompatible factions: those who think the government is the enemy, and those who think that the government is a bear to control but remains our best hope in the fundamental battle against the powerful and wealthy. Idiots like you in your liberal enclaves can safely sneer at government imperfections and fine line of compromises that we have to walk to keep all the monsters at bay, but here in the world you are nothing but a gang of counterproductive nimrods. So either help, or get out of the way.
Thanks Horace. I’ve always wondered what Palinesque word salad would read like if it were composed of grammatically correct sentences. 🙂