February 14th, 2008
With the Wisconsin primary coming up fast — it’s on Tuesday, Feb. 19 — Reggie Star has been tracking candidates for president who’ve been badgering the Badger State of late.
Wednesday, Reggie went to Janesville, where Barack Obama toured the GM assembly plant and gave the details of his extensive economic plan to plant workers.Friday, which just started five minutes ago, Reggie is heading to Oshkosh, b’ gosh, to catch a glimpse of the Straight Talk Express when Republican John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, speaks at a “town hall meeting” at the Experimental Aircraft Association hangar at Wittman Field. He’s also supposed to do a press conference. Reggie hopes to ask the former POW, who was tortured by the North Vietnamese, why he voted against the anti-water-boarding bill in the Senate.
February 14th, 2008
Another week, another mass shooting.
Last week it was the girl in Louisiana who shot up her college classroom. Before that it was the hold up man in Lane Bryant who shot five people dead in the Chicago burbs. He’s still on the loose. Remember the mass mayhem at the Omaha mall? Or the Virginia Tech mass murderer? Or that cop in Wisconsin last year who blasted former friends because he was upset over his girlfriend breaking up with him?
This week it’s a guy who took a shotgun and a couple of handguns to shoot up an NIU lecture hall, killing 5 (as I write this) and himself. More than a dozen are still in hospital in varying conditions of injury.
We used to be shocked by this stuff. I remember how all of us on the Editorial Board wrote sad, poignant commentaries after the Columbine High Sc hool shootings. Now, the shootings have become just another part of the banality of modern Americana.
My only comment now is one of disgust, for this is what the last days of a dying culture in a declining nation look like. This is the modern version of the Roman Empire’s demise. But in this case the barbarians are not at the gate, they are walking freely among us. They are your neighbor, your classmate, your workmate, your buddy on the bowling team.
Self government requires self control. As these random acts of mass murder continue, we will inevitably beg our leaders to create a police state to keep us safe. We won’t call it that, but the republic will be lost, just the same.
