Tread on me

[Quantum Windbag]

This is what happens when you let fear rule your life. I can't even count all the mistakes that Micheal Grunwald makes in his rant against both sides of the political spectrum, or the ways he falsely credits the government with things it had nothing to do with it.

We’re often told that our liberties are under assault. The right warns that our Big Government nanny state is plotting to seize our guns and our Big Gulps, while strangling our economic freedom with taxes and regulations. The left rails against our Big Government security state — the drone warfare, indefinite detention and electronic surveillance that make the war on terrorism sound like an Orwellian nightmare. The National Rifle Association had just finished bellowing about background checks violating our Second Amendment rights when the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) started shrieking about the FBI violating the Boston bombing suspect’s Miranda rights.
America was born from resistance to tyranny, and our skepticism of authority is a healthy tradition. But we’re pretty free. And the “don’t tread on me” slippery-slopers on both ends of the political spectrum tend to forget that Big Government helps protect other important rights. Like the right of a child to watch a marathon or attend first grade without getting killed — or, for that matter, the right to live near a fertilizer factory without it blowing up your house.
Our government needs to balance these rights, which is tough sometimes. But not always. Requiring gun owners to pass background checks and restricting access to high-capacity magazines would be a minuscule price to pay to help avoid future Newtowns and Auroras. If the FBI waits a few days to read Dzhokhar Tsarnaev the Miranda boilerplate he’s already heard a million times on Law and Order, the Republic will survive, and the authorities might learn something that will help prevent another tragedy. (In fact, if America’s ubiquitous surveillance network hadn’t captured Tsarnaev on video, he might still be at large.) Even in a free-enterprise system — especially in a free-enterprise system — a factory owner’s right to run his business without government interference is trumped by the public-safety rights of the local community.

Tread on Me: The Case for Freedom From Terrorist Bombings, School Shootings and Exploding Factories | TIME.com