No Law, No Crime

Many of the criminals in the Old West wanted to eliminate the law.  Their attitude was if there’s no law there’s no crime.  The frontier was a little too wild for my taste in the mid-1860s to late 1890s.  The rights of the outlaw should never supersede the rights of good, decent, hardworking people.  As far as I’m concerned, the rights of the criminal begin and end the moment the criminal is caught in the act; or it’s revealed they’ve lied and sent an innocent man to jail.  Everyone is such a victim now and cops have to be so politically correct that it’s hard to tell the good guys from the bad.  Sometimes I yearn for the simpler days, when cops and judges didn’t have to be so politically correct and touchy-feely and compassionate.  Like Judge Isaac Parker, on the bench from 1875 to 1896.  He was just a strict, zero tolerance policy son of a gun who didn’t give a care about making the criminals, or the families of the criminals feel good.  Like when this couple from the Midwest whose daughter moved to the rowdy, Old West town of Griffith, Texas and she becomes a prostitute and gets murdered, and the parents are before Judge Parker and one of his best deputy marshals (probably Sam Sixkiller) sobbing and the tough Judge pounds his gavel and says:  “Yeah, yeah, yeah, she was Mom’s  apple pie, the Fourth of July…she was a PROSTITUTE!”  Judge Parker, we hardly knew ye.  Now we’ve gone to the other end of the spectrum, where the police have to drive alongside the armed fugitive, placing themselves and innocent civilians in harm’s way until PCP boy runs out of psycho gas.  They aren’t allowed to challenge the accusations of a young woman claiming she’s been violated.  Anyone remember the Duke University case where a stripper falsely accused several young men of raping her.   Those type of allegations are hurled about all the time.  It’s the perfect crime.  I think cops can be brutal sometimes, because it’s a brutal world we live in and make them work in.  There has to be some system in place to deal with outlaws – even if the system needs retooling now and again.  By the way, just like the bad guys of old who thought Bill Tilghman, Heck Thomas, or Sam Sixkiller wouldn’t come for them, there will be a day of reckoning for modern day criminals as well – especially those who lie about being abused as a child.  There’s a quote from one of my favorite song that goes:  “Throw your soul through every open door,  Count your blessings to find what you look for.  Turn the sorrow you caused into treasured gold,  You’ll pay back in kind and reap just what you’ve sown.”  I’ll write more when I return from Montana.  Until then….  Cue that Garryowen tune.