re: #99 Desert Dog

Your cake and eat it too then? Can you have one and then other? The world is full of mean and nasty people which mean to do us harm. Undermining, degrading and wounding the very agency that should be protecting us is also a risky proposition. I do not want us to sell our souls and become the monsters are are fighting. On the other hand, I do not want us so encumbered with restrictions it exposes us to harm. We have to walk a fine line when it comes to these matters. There are grey areas that have to be dealt with, yes?

I’m reminded of the scene from A Man For All Seasons in which Thomas More is arguing with the particularly vicious witch-hunting prosecutor. A servant of the king and a hungry and ambitious man.

And More says to this man, “You’d break the law to punish the devil, wouldn’t you?”

And the prosecutor, the witch-hunter, says, “Break it?” he said, “I’d cut down, I’d cut down every law in England if I could do that, if I could capture him!”

“Yes you would, wouldn’t you? And then when you would have cornered the devil and the devil would turn around to meet you, where would you run for protection? All the laws of England having been cut down and flattened? Who would protect you then?”

Wise words.