08:09 – Barbara is much more cheerful now that the doctor has approved her returning to work. Colin and I will miss having her home all day.
We’ll probably never know what actually happened in that shooting in Chapel Hill Tuesday, but my guess is that the three muslims who were killed ganged up on Mr. Hicks and he was forced to shoot them to defend himself. If he was in fear of his life, he was certainly entitled to use deadly force in self defense.
09:17 – I finally finished the first book in Matt Bracken’s Enemies Trilogy last night. All I can say is that he completely misses the point. His bogeyman is “left-wing” elements of the federal government. The real enemy is the federal government, period. It has simply grown far too powerful. Even well-intentioned politicians and bureaucrats, of whom there are many, take well-intentioned actions that inevitably have evil consequences. Their goal is not to chip away at the freedoms of US citizens; that is merely the result of those actions. I am reminded of Lord Acton’s famous letter to Mary Gladstone.
I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favorable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption it is the other way against holders of power, increasing as the power increases. Historic responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility. Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.