Despite Murder and Brutality, They Still March in Iran

I’ve been watching what has been happening to the people of Iran this weekend and it hurts my heart. I get that that tyranny won’t unclench its fist unless it’s forced to do so and that doing so has a dear cost. Freedom certainly is not free; in fact, it is very expensive to attain.

Still, it is not easy to watch what the Mullahs in Iran are doing. But it’s worth watching, if for no other reason than as a reminder that our own freedom was dearly-bought as well and that liberties surrendered are never cheaply redeemed.

A few other thoughts:

• Andy Levy had a great thought, expressed in tweet form.
  

  Iran: a perfect example of why governments love gun control. Gun control is people control.

  I tend to think that the Second Amendment is as important as the First. How about you?

• Ice cream, huh? That’s the appropriate thing to be doing while folks in Iran are being beaten to death and shot down like dogs in the street? Patterico has a post full of startling contrasts. Yes, kudos to the President for finally issuing a statement criticizing the Iranian government for it’s brutality, but only minor kudos since it’s something he should have done days ago. The ice cream thing, well, it boggles the mind.

  Image matters, folks. Isn’t that what the left said for the past eight years?

• It seems, at this point, that the President is dancing his feet off right now to keep alive the possibility of negotiating with the Mullahs when this is all done. Ed Morrissey says that’s just plain stupid. I don’t know that it’s stupid but it is a hopelessly hidebound foreign policy that refuses to relinquish the old and immoral realpolitik rules of diplomacy. As Ed Driscoll reminded us, the President keeps score on his domestic friends and enemies, but once we cross the water’s edge, the scorebook goes out the window.

  On the other hand, he is getting cover from the other side and a little bit from CNN, so perhaps he’ll be able to step over the broken Iranian bodies without any real consequence. We’ll see.

• “They warned you if you voted for John McCain, innocent Iranians would be slaughtered by neocons . . . and they were right!”

Tags: Diplomacy, Foreign Policy, Iran, Islamism, No More Tyrants, President Barack Obama