Originally Posted by Joe Obenberger

I've been to Switzerland and through it a few times. A very nice and civilized country with a high level of prosperity, a tradition of toleration of ethnic differences, and a population almost exclusively of just one race. Same with say, Canada. (Yes, I do know about Quebec and the history of repression against French speaking Catholics there. Canada deals with the built-up pressure by conceding a separate, legitimate society.). Many of the European nations are ethnic states built on common blood and language, and with enough socialism so that the disparities of income and class are comparatively modest, better hidden than they are here, and the different strata don't come into as regular contact as they do in our urban centers, shopping centers, and along our urban freeways.

The United States is none of those things. If you are born here, even of parents present here illegally, even of tourists, you are an American. Because of a history of slavery and another history of coolie peonage, and another history of fairly unregulated borders with Mexico, we are a multiracial society with several cultures co-existing. One of the ever-present themes of our society is that anyone can go as far as their abilities will take them, and that wealth and prosperity are here for the taking. The reality is perhaps at least a tiny bit different from that. We are bombarded with messages of consumerism and expensive ways of spending our money wherever we go. Jealousies fester here. Especially in ethnic ghettos among children and teens raised in one-parent households where the buzz on the street and the affluence of the local drug dealers communicate more dramatically than anything a well-intentioned single mom might have to teach.

The result is much misunderstanding, hatred, violence, and often crime on a scale unimaginable in most of civilized Europe. There are large numbers of persons here who feel excluded from the good things of our society and undertake to take what they understand to be their share by stealing from one another, from people of other races, and raping women of different races, all to get what they think they are owed. The Bobbies in London were traditionally unarmed and in the context of that society it worked. The same in Detroit, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, or South Florida would be an absurd number of dead cops. The social terrain and the risks of violence are substantially different here. It is a smart idea to keep reality in mind. Those who aspire to change men into angels - from Marx and Lenin, to the religious Prohibitionists, to the anti-porn crusaders, to the leaders of the war on drugs to those who think that laws about guns will reduce senseless murder, are people who wish to change people and the world rather than to come to terms with certain realities about people and the realities of the culture that those people inhabit

Everyday life in the US is not unsafe for the large majority of people in most places. But the potential for very serious, lethal or life changing crime is present anywhere, and in many circumstances, it is absurd to travel in some places at some times without a backup plan against a car jacking, a mugging, a rape, or the like.

I therefore cheer the decision last week of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals that the Illinois law criminalizing armed self defense outside the home violates the constitutional rights of Illinois people to defend their lives.