Let's Have An Actual Second Amendment

The Second Amendment to the Constitution of The United States of America:

“A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

Strict constructionists and their Second Amendment advocates contend that subsequent generations must not tamper with the text or (in their minds) the intent of this (in their minds and hearts) sacred text.  So be it.

If we assert strict adherence to this text, then we must embrace the whole of the statement. Thus, to earn the right to keep and bear arms the citizens must participate in the formation and execution of well regulated militias to defend communities and municipalities. For citizens to earn this right, in a strict adherence to the Amendment’s text, they must voluntarily be members of and participate in militia readiness.

This requires that if you own a firearm, you own membership in and regularly scheduled mustering of a well regulated state militia.  “Well regulated” assumes state proprietorship and financial support of the militia, including especially the proportioning and distribution of the relevant ammunition.  That is, if you want to own any kind of firearm in your state you must participate in that state’s militia and can avail yourself of ammunition for said firearm(s) only under the militia’s auspices.

In addition, firearms manufacturers and distributors must be licensed by each state to provide their products to citizens of that state.  The records of such sales will be stored in state databases and can be accessed only through state judicially executed warrants. 

Such strict and logical adherence to the full text of the Second Amendment would ensure multiple benefits.  It would free firearm owners from the fear that they alone could never have sufficient firearms to defend against the encroachment by the federal government on their rights and property as well as against foreign invaders—they would have their state brothers- and sisters-in-arms as support.  In addition, this strict adherence would comport with the wishes of the states rights faction among the citizenry, ensuring them that each state would control the application of the Second Amendment.  And finally, hopefully, our nation would gradually see a decline in the helter-skelter proliferation of firearms and their consequent use in the slaughtering of our fellow citizens.

Isn’t this what the original constructionists sought—a more assured and cohesive citizenry for our exceptional experiment?  Right?  A more perfect Union?  Yeah, right.

Believing or Thinking

(Another one from the Fuel For Thought files...and very much germane)

Do You Believe, or Do You Think?                                                   (June 15, 20004)

It’s time to listen to our American language.  We can’t really call it English any more.  We can’t even use George Bernard Shaw’s “separated by common language” phrase any more.  Our usage uniquely defines us as American speakers/writers.  Let’s call it Americanese.  I’m mostly interested in the embedded subtleties of our language that define us as a culture.  For example, we say, “Watch what you’re doing.” but the Brits say, “Mind what you’re doing.”  We say, "Watch the gap," they say, "Mind the gap."  American usage is language driven by perception; British usage is language driven by conception, one external, and the other internal.  Our perception is our "reality."

We have other cultural markers.  How about “move on”?  This expresses a categorically American attitude regarding the primary value of the future as opposed to the present or the past (Americans devalue the past, but we’ll save that for later).  Notice the value structure in the following:  “Can’t we just settle this and move on?”  And no one raises the obvious question: Move on to what?  Or should we just settle it because we want to move on?  Is what we settle less important than moving on?  The reason we value the future so highly is that we place a premium on progress; for us, progress (anything that is more and therefore better in the future than it was in the past) is inherently good.  Also, the belief that perfection is perfectible is embedded, even constitutionalized in America.  Sound silly?  How about:  “We, the people, in order to form a more perfect union…”?  Americans disparage absolute superlatives.

We also have silly usages.  My favorite one in the last 10 or 20 years is the adjectival usage of “fun”.  Such contortions as “It was so fun.” and  “It was real fun.” (to be distinguished from unreal fun?).  My favorite construction is the bowdlerization “It was much funner than I thought it would be”.  This phenomenon is not new; language speakers (in all living languages) continually contort and distort language to satisfy the need for brevity and contemporaneity.  Our “none”, for example, used to be “not one”, which is why some of us old timers still insist that proper usage says, “None of them is important”.  We have several examples of these contractions without apostrophes.

Which brings me to why I’m thinking about “believe” or “think”. This political-ese annoys me.  My focus is not on the obvious tricks; rather, this is usage we’re overlooking.  I’ve noticed that politicians rarely say they “think” something; it’s always “I believe…” Now if you commit verbally to “thinking” something, you imply that whatever it is will follow a thought process, like logic or common sense.  But if you commit verbally to “believing” something, you imply that whatever you say is based in your faith; you cannot be proven wrong or right, and you are not obliged to produce evidence.  Our faith-based political culture utters almost nothing that doesn’t begin with “I believe.”  Or as his spokesperson at the State Department, Adam Ereli, said in a press conference (6.3.04), “Let’s be clear, it is our belief…”  Belief here is being used to suggest clarity.  Am I the only one who sees the flimflam and absurdity in this?

Media studies specialists analyze this sort of thing all the time.  Have you ever noticed how on camera reporters speak in gerund fragments; e.g., “The White house was busy today.  The President speaking with his cabinet and other administration personnel.  Condoleeza Rice trying to put a good face on the recent turmoil in Iraq.  Mrs. Bush smiling a lot.”  Does media-ese need to be a dumbing down of language?  Do our mediated lives immure us from meaning, simultaneously walling us in and walling us out from understandable communication?  Are Americans less involved with information because we don’t trust the language that delivers the information?  Do we wonder what to think when someone utters, “The fact of the matter is…” then proceeds to voice an opinion?  These common occurrences must be having an effect, and I suspect the effect compels us to stop listening.

Our Ideas?

(Another item from the Fuel For Thought files)

Our Ideas                                                                                           (May 13, 2004)

“We must maintain the credibility of our ideas”. – Thomas Friedman, NY Times, 5.6.04

What are “our ideas”?  I’ve spent most of my adult life chasing the answer to that.  I wonder about some of our shibboleths: like ‘success’ and ‘opportunity’.  We wink at ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ these days; we use them to leverage desperate people.  How do we demonstrate our attitude regarding the significance of human life?  What do we mean by ‘the value’ of human life?  I’ve been wondering about that, too.  Is there a difference between the significance of human life and the ‘value’ of a human life?  Is a human life relevant to the bottom line?

People always speak about their ‘hard earned money’.  Is all money ‘hard earned’?  Is a stock sale or dividend as ‘hard earned’ as a day’s pay for a stonemason?  Do we work to live or do we live to work?  How important is stuff and glitter, the bling-bling that weighs us down, compared to, oh say, our relationships with our children?  Is winning having the most toys when you die, or is it having people who love you beside you when you die?  Late one sultry evening back in 1969, I was asked by my Soviet interpreter, “Why would you want to buy something you didn’t have the money for?”  We were drinking very sweet local ‘champagne’ after a day of vodka toasts.  I had been trying to explain buying on credit, the lifeblood of the U.S. economy.  I tried but couldn’t answer her question, and it haunts me to this day.  And why would you spend your life running like you are a hamster in a cage so you can buy what you don’t have the money for?

We don’t have ideas so much as we have plans…we are always planning to do things and then doing things, but we almost never think about things.  Not in our common lives. 

What do the American people care about?  What do we spend time paying attention to?  Golf scores?  Waiting in line?  Our next cars?  Botox treatments?  Makeovers?  The differences between Cialis, Viagra or Levitra?  Who will be the next paragon of Survivor?  The winner of Nascar?  The American Idol?  Will the friends on “Friends” still be friends after the final episode of “Friends”?  And why do we ‘pay’ attention to something instead of being mindful of it?  Are we in debt to our attention?  Yes, most likely.

So language reveals a lot about us.  I don’t think any of my lists include what Mr. Friedman had on his mind.  I’m not sure most of us have ideas.  Most of us believe, but do most of us think?  So I come to that question for all of us:  Do we know what our ideas are and where they came from?  And do we care?  We are so engorged, not only by most of the food we neither need nor care enough to enjoy, but also by our externals: our clothes, our furniture, our homes, our cars…our stuff.  Hummers rapidly became our national icon, while the national flag is fashioned into underwear and bikinis.  ‘Patriotism’ is flags waving from the roofs of cars and yellow ribbons on trees, the more elaborate the better.  So take a poll, Mr. Friedman; your question is simple:  What are our ideas the credibility of which is in danger?  My poll says that most of us are concerned about how much money we can get.

The more things change...

I published the following post on my first blog, "Fuel For Thought," back in 2004, another election year.  I think the only difference might be that those days offered less stylized burlesque.  

A Tectonic Shift: The Metro/Retro Chasm                                                (August 9, 2004)

I stirred some minor concern among my faithful readers in my August 12^th posting when I suggested that perhaps the Democratic Party needed to morph into something more realistic and palatable to its confirmed base, and purge its DNC and DLC thinking.  Now along comes John Sperling’s The Great Divide, which, more or less, suggests the same thing.  Beginning with a $2 million pre-publication promotion in leading national newspapers, Sperling (founder of University of Phoenix, one of the country’s wealthiest people and a “lifelong” Democrat) simplifies matters for the Foxified electorate:  If you think and ‘believe’ like a red-stater, you’re a Retro (like Mel Gibson and Newt Gingrich).  If you think and ‘believe’ like a blue-stater, you’re a Metro (like Michael Moore and Mario Cuomo).

A Retro lives in the South, the Great Plains and Appalachia, and is dominated by Republicans and religion.  You pony up only 29% of the US federal tax dollars and represent only 35% of the US population.  A Metro lives on either coast and around the Great Lakes, and consider yourself progressive and mostly secular.  You coughs up 71% of the US federal tax dollars and comprise 65% of the US population.

At the end of the first chapter of The Great Divide, Sperling presents his vision:

“We hope the realities of the Great Divide will lead Democrats to abandon what one commentator called ‘the idiocy of the Democrats’ rural strategy’ and recognize that they are a Metro Party.  The Party must stop watering down its policies and programs to appeal to a national constituency that no longer exists.  In fact, there is no single national-base constituency.  There are two base constituencies: one metropolitan, committed to a rapidly changing, dynamic, and modern economy with a multi-ethnic society; the other, small city, town, and rural, committed to maintaining traditional industries, fundamentalist-based social values, and a White-dominated society.  The needs, interests, aspirations, and views of these two constituencies are more often antithetical than congruent.”

The rationale for this shift in political strategy is pretty simple.  The Metros outnumber the Retros in potential votes and out pay them in federal taxes.  So in one sentence you have a strategy and its justification (there’s a lot more, but that suffices).  Why try to convince, persuade and cajole voters who are steadfastly retrospective and retrograde?  Instead, satisfy and motivate your base, and you win the election.  As I have said here recently, this election is about getting the non-voters who share your views into the voting booth.  Visualize the concerns they carry in their heads each day, avoid discussing things Retro and continually refer to a 21^st Century that looks and acts like a 21^st Century, not like the 1950s. 

By the way, the 1950s were not “Happy Days” and “Grease”.   They were more like “Ozzie and Harriet” without the laugh track.

Vigilance (a re-write from an old, different blogpost)

I'm not worried about the…troglodytes, the hate and fear fountains of empty promises and collective rage.  I'm worried about those lonely loser denizens, fearful of change, of the loss of their "dream," of  "that one" and those ones and, finally, of difference.  I can feel in my bones the day that time stopped for an entire weekend when JFK was assassinated.  I felt the same thing only more in shame than fear when MLK was assassinated. Then Bobby Kennedy was taken down.  And that final blow I think created my loss of hope and optimism for a very long time.  As history tells us, we have been numb for more than 50 years.  This is not the legacy we want.  

We can't talk hope alive, and we can't shout fear down.   It takes vigilance, identifying with cultural purpose and—more than anything—the certainty that people all together are more important than any burbling bottom line or cotton candy slogan.