Liberty or Security?

It's really difficult for me to read things like this, because I see the language used as effective for no purpose other than driving the United States into a second civil war, with "Liberals" on one side and "Conservatives" on the other. It's insulting, and I don't deal well with it. The substance of the proposal is something I originally missed because my eyes started glazing over. I'll try to put that aside and read it again. (These types of commentaries REALLY piss me off.)

"These people", referring in the first paragraph to liberals, means exactly who? Give me names or drop the reference. He's complaining about people who point fingers by pointing fingers. How stupid is that?

What the hell is this 'political correctness' crap? Who doesn't deserve to be treated with respect? Name them. It sounds like this guy is saying that Violent inclinations should be dealt with by putting people in jail, or denying them lives because we are terrified that someday they may do something. Is he suggesting that we should have sent this kid back to South Korea, and kicked his parents and sister out of the country because he was dealing with stress? I know you advocate closing the border, but that's not going to happen as long as the United States remains part of the earth.

Treating people with respect and continuing to give people a chance to reach their potential through education does not mean that we are all hostages. That could be taken as a call to reenact what the Soviet Union created in Eastern Europe, where the police ask to see our papers every time we get on a bus to go somewhere, and they have gulags where people who are "politically incorrect" labor without hope forever. Is that what we want?

Terror, terror, terror, be afraid, be afraid be afraid. I don't have the time. Am I willing to lose some towers in order to protect the constitution and the future of my chidren? Yes. Sorry, but yes. I believe in the right to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That means I'm willing to sacrifice to maintain my ideals. If people die, it's because we didn't do a good enough job in prevention. I don't believe that closing the borders or throwing out people who have weird thoughts running through their heads is a positive solution. I do believe that Seung-Hui Cho should have been put into counseling and watched. I don't believe he should have been able to walk across the street from the school and purchase the weapons. But I also don't believe that the solution is to point fingers at people who are different from myself and deny them any rights whatsoever.

We can bitch, moan and complain about what should have happened forever, and I'm sure people like this author will. I'd rather repair the damage, and then look to the future changes that we should actually do to prevent something like this from happening again. First, we need to view violent tendencies as a mental illness, and completely fund mental illness treatment through a national health care system. A system like this would have known what to do with Cho, and would have given him the help he needed to get out of his downward spiral. Second, we need to all understand that people with mental illness might be dangerous to society, and have the communications infrastructure and legal framework in place to prevent people like this from being able to purchase weapons. That means that when Cho produced his ID for the gun dealer, the dealer's computer would have instantly told him that it was not safe to let him purchase guns, and would have alerted Cho's councilors that he tried to purchase them. Or is that too much "Big Brother", because it would have to be applied to US Citizens as well as foreign nationals and their children. Or do you think people like Timothy McVey should be ignored by such a system while Seung-Hui Cho should be singled out?

The Virginia Tech massacre was a tragedy, just like 9/11 was a tragedy. And the reaction of our country to being hit was immediately to hit back, and then get distracted by someone else. Instead of blaming Osama Bin Laden and going after him until he was put on trail in an International Court, we got distracted by someone that we used to supply weapons for. And now 3,000+ soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are dead. The reaction of this author to Virginia Tech sees to be "Blame the Teachers!", "Blame Rosie O'Donnell!", "Blame the lberal politicians!", "Blame those people over there, and anyone who lets those people come over here!"

They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security - Ben Franklin

Give me liberty or give me death - Patrick Henry

To secure the blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity - Preamble to the US Constitution

What are you willing to do to our liberty in order to gain a little security? I'm not interested in pointing fingers, or putting mentally ill people in jail. I am interested in preventing something like this by prosecuting the gun dealer for not doing a complete background check, and fix the government systems so that such a background check would have come up with a "do not sell" flag. But I'm not interested in closing our borders, and I'm not interested in denying our kids or anyone's kid an education and the opportunity to reach their potential.

Now do you understand why I find this article to be pure crap?

Chad