POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL
The son of evangelist Billy Graham, Franklin, who has now
taken over the giant ministry, is well known for his gifts of good pistols to
people.
Franklin, charmer that he is, also is known once to have
shot down a tree with a machine gun.
I guess that's South Carolina values.
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"The US
Constitution is an alien document that is distorting American society severely.
It needs to be torn up, but I know this will never happen."
A few points.
The Constitution is indeed distorting American society, as
you say. After all it is an 18th century document, and its writers had not the
least idea of the troubles they were creating in many of its provisions.
They also, of course, had no anticipation of how the world
and technology would change, as, for example the very nature of weapons from
the muskets they knew.
The trouble is that many Americans look at it almost as they
would look at the Bible.
It is "perfect," just as the Bible is the
"perfect Word of God."
Lunatic Right Wingers actually carry copies of it folded in
their wallets or shirt pockets
to produce in arguments.
Yes, the Supreme Court may interpret it, but for most of
American history the Supreme Court has been an unbelievably conservative
institution. It much resembles at times Scholastic philosophers counting angels
on the head of a pin.
It is only a Court interpretation of the "well ordered
militia" amendment that turns it into a complete right to own unlimited
personal weapons.
It is almost a matter for bitter laughter when right-wingers
and survivalist-types and militia-types - the "gun nut" mob - believe
they are guarding the freedoms of Americans with their weapons.
Their weapons are powerful enough to create a lot of
personal havoc in American society but can only be regarded as puny and
ridiculous when you begin speaking of Jefferson's ideal of overturning a bad
government.
America's Frankenstein military and its internationally
notorious brutal police forces, all armed to the teeth with the most modern and
terrifying weapons, would sweep aside any Jeffersonian effort to overturn a
government deemed tyrannous in very short order.
Indeed, there can be no serious argument against the idea
that the American government today has many aspects of a police state.
There is a government within the government, and it consists
of the military and intelligence services working on behalf of immensely rich
and powerful special interests.
Who becomes president makes no notable difference anymore,
Romney and Obama being almost indistinguishable from each other. Right now,
Obama and Romney are out there talking up guns.
Anyway, any person becoming president who was foolish enough
to believe he or she could seriously change the direction of American policy
would likely find themselves repeating the experience of John Kennedy at
Dallas.
