Just us

[Valin]

Power Line:

Scott Johnson

4/9/13

 

In one of his routines on the justice system dating back to the early 1970′s, comedian Richard Pryor commented sarcastically (in language rated XXX): “You go down there looking for justice, that’s what you find: Just us.”

 

Pryor was referring to the racial composition of the players involved in the administration of justice. Times have changed substantially in that respect, but reading Ben Shapiro’s account of President Obama’s gun control speech in Colorado last week, I was reminded of Pryor’s routine:

 

In his big pitch in Colorado on Wednesday for further gun control, President Obama made an astonishing statement about gun rights advocates’ fears of governmental gun seizures. He said that such worries would just feed “into fears about government. You hear some of these folks: ‘I need a gun to protect myself from the government. We can’t do background checks because the government’s going to come take my guns away.’ The government’s us. These officials are elected by you…I am constrained as they are constrained by the system that our founders put in place.”

 

Obama’s point about constraints does not exactly square up with his assertion that there’s nothing to worry about, “the government’s us.” There is an unacknowledged tension between these points.

 

http://youtu.be/Md3AWf-cP_A

 

(Snip)

 

 

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I love my country, but I don't trust my government.

'Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force. Like fire it is a dangerous servant and a fearsome master."

G. Washington (dead white guy.)