Quote of the Day.

From time to time I hear people who think that the EU will eventually lead to more liberal gun laws here in the UK. They reason that because many of our neighbours have less strict gun control that EU law will eventually standardise to the French or German model. They are of course quite wrong. The EU is not in the business of providing freedom, it is in the business of control. – Lurch at Gun Culture

(RTWT) Thus it is with all governments, which is why government is best kept small and watched closely.

But starry-eyed idealists always seem to believe that human nature is not what it is, thus Supreme Court Justice Louis Bradeis’s warning:

Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.

Or as P.J. O’Rourke put it:

Neither conservatives nor humorists believe man is good. But left-wingers do.