Imagine last summer you were having a summer BBQ with your friends and family members on the 4th of July, and your gun-loving neighbor (he has a collection of hundreds of guns and ammunition to last through the next three armegeddons and civil wars) decides to invade your BBQ with his beer-drinking buddies and they walk across the yard in a “minor incursion” and start shooting your family and friends while you were out getting another bag of ice at the store. Several of your kids and grandkids are caught in the fire and lay dying on the grass, while the rest of your friends and family have scattered. Many of your nieces and grandkids were fortunately able to get away to several of your other neighbors’ houses. The invading neighbor and his friends start eating your food, while moving into better positions to fire on those trying to get to the cars to drive away, with some here and there also getting shot and killed. Nevertheless some of your friends were able to get guns they had in their cars and began returning fire, and some of your kids knew where your own guns and ammo were in the basement, and have grabbed those and started firing back, so that now your neighbors buddies are going down. In fact, they’re going down pretty fast because most of them were drunk before they started and they’re not thinking as clearly as they should. But they have automatic weapons and can fire 100 bullets for every 5 your family can shoot. There is so much blood….

Hearing conservative leftists such as Foxnews Laura Ingraham say “conservatives” are like the 60s hippies leads my mind to drift back to the Vietnam chant of “all we are saying, is give peace a chance.” If that really were your house, and those really were your kids and grandkids attacked in your yard, how would you feel about a peace deal that would allow your neighbor to go get a construction company and build a wall through your back yard, carving off your pool and grill area into his yard. After all, he’s coveted your pool for what seems like centuries and has often claimed he had the right to swim in your pool anytime he liked since, you are neighbors and are all one big family. If you don’t like that peace, a few loudly bellowing bystanders say, you don’t love your surviving kids or your other neighbors, and you’re the obstacle to peace. In fact, some of your neighbors, who are aghast at all of the killing and shooting they’ve now seen, are looking out from their well-fortified houses that have no damage or dead people from stray bullets, and are telling you that you don’t care nearly as much about your kids and grandkids as they do, because your are refusing a temporary cease fire. All while your dead kids lay on the ground and your neighbors goons are finishing the steaks you had on the grill and he’s in the pool. The richest neighbor (who lives the furthest away) that is arguing for peace just came back from a wedding and is still in his suit, and you’re talking to him in your summer outfit that is now bloodied and stained from low crawling with your gun through the grass. You hear some of your other neighbors suggest you should have cleaned up before asking your neighbor for some help to achieve a secure peace. Don’t you have a suit too?

Saying you are just a realist doesn’t stop the wrong of what has been done and what is being proposed to do. But of course it gets worse. That richest neighbor, with the biggest house that is safely away from stray gunfire, who has by far the biggest gun collection, has now started friendly negotiations with your invading neighbor and suggests you are the bad guy, a “dictator,” while your invading neighbor (who has invaded not only your house and property before, but many houses over the years) is a good guy who really wants peace. But your invading neighbor is very much interested in peace. That will allow him to go back to his basement and get other parts of his arsenal ready and call up a few more friends to get ready for the next opportunity for a bigger bite of your house. But you are an ungrateful wretch for not liking the peace offering the rich neighbor imagines is possible, even while you still see your dead grandkids lying in the grass. How insulting you are to your rich neighbor to insist that any peace deal provide security protections for your surviving kids and grandkids. And why again should we give him the pool and grill? Just because he has guns and wants them?

Peace is easy. Appeasement is easy. Justice is hard.

What kind of nation do we want to be? There is a time for choosing. What do you choose?