Wednesday, January 16, 2013

So much for progress...


Hey, if God hadn't wanted me to blog, He wouldn't have created the Internet.

2 comments:

Jeff said...

Speaking of "so much for progress...", have a look at this: Thom Hartmann did some some digging and discovered that the 2nd Amendment may have been created to preserve slavery.

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/01/16/founding-fathers-words-reveal-2nd-amendment-was-to-preserve-slavery/

Read that and then imagine the right-wing screaming about “The 2nd Amendment was about freedom!” “The 2nd Amendment was to ensure that men could stand against 'the guv-mint.'"

You can practically smell the projection coming from the right.

Bill Garthright said...

That's very interesting, Jeff, but what I find equally interesting is that those quotes are all about state militias - the national guard, as we'd call it today.

It wasn't about individuals owning guns, but about a "well regulated militia," as the Second Amendment calls it.

Patrick Henry: "If they neglect or refuse to discipline or arm our militia, they will be useless..."

George Mason: "Under various pretences, Congress may neglect to provide for arming and disciplining the militia; and the state governments cannot do it, for Congress has an exclusive right to arm them."

I'm sure there were different interpretations even back then, but it seems clear this was all about state militias, not random lunatics with guns. Indeed, there were rebellions back then (not just slave rebellions, either) which were put down by organized militias led by the government.

Our Founding Fathers were property owners. Sometimes that property included slaves, but even when it didn't, they were concerned about defending their wealth from the rabble. And they did that with militias, not by thinking they could fight off a mob on their own.

I might post this separately, if I can find the time. Thanks for the link!