After The Boston Massacre

The terrible and tragic events in and around Boston this past week portend change for the United States and the world.  Some changes will be obvious, others subtle, some immediate, and, still others, gradual.  Before the Boston Massacre, the U.S. had achieved a level of comfort in public places remarkable in light of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.  This silence before the storm may come to be viewed as akin to the military shadow boxing the Allies and Axis powers engaged in prior to World War Two, an eerie period of calm that Winston Churchill termed the Twilight War.  As has long been true throughout less fortunate parts of the world, public places in the U.S. have now proven vulnerable.  Civil rights, immigration policy, weapons ownership, and foreign relations will all be affected by this realization.  The cowardly terrorists who carried out the Boston Massacre and its ensuing atrocities have achieved nothing more than infamy, ignominy, and loathing.  Meanwhile, as the Romans observed two millenia ago, "Mutantur omnia nos et mutamur in illis."