COMMENT
Sorry, but it is simply not true that the Second Amendment
is about opposing tyranny.
I believe that you cannot read the Second Amendment clearly and
come to that conclusion.
However, technically true or not, such claims are ridiculous
because they ignore the concrete realities of power today.
Consider the forces at the disposal of a modern American
government wanting to enforce its will.
A massive armed forces, equipped with every weapon you can
imagine.
America's Reserves and National Guards equipped with many
heavy-duty weapons.
America's huge and militarized police forces.
City Police.
State Police.
County Police.
America's huge and militarized TSA.
The FBI.
The ATF.
The DEA.
The Secret Service.
The Federal Air Marshals.
The CIA and other security agencies.
Just where does anyone see the remotest possibility of
citizens with rifles - or even machine guns, if you will - standing up against
laws they do not like when the laws are enforced by this horrendous collection
of force?
American officials are the most over-armed on earth, and I
think it's time to stop Jeffersonian fantasies about returning to 1790 or
thereabouts. Jefferson’s views were not realistic even in his own day – for
example, he had a very poor grasp of economics and some pretty flaky ideas of
sturdy yeomen and didn’t like industry - and today, in a complex and
globe-straddling empire, they are just bad jokes. If you embrace bad jokes as
wisdom, you only assist powerful modern authorities to impose bad rules.
America can never be what "patriot" or “militia” or
even silly “tea party” types want to think that it can. It just literally cannot
happen. There is a definite kind of blurry religious thinking which fogs these
matters in America, the religious thinking of what has been called the American
Civic Religion with its Scriptures: the Constitution and Declaration of
Independence; its Twelve Apostles: the Founding Fathers; and its secular Saints:
Jefferson being the central figure almost like St. Peter. And we all know that
states guided by religion are dangerous and undesirable.
By the way, even in Jefferson's day, these backwoods wet
dreams of how government should be were impossible. The Great Sage himself had
no patience for those who opposed his policies as President, policies such his
embargo of Britain which was quite nasty and hurtful to many, and he didn’t
hesitate to be ruthless with the use of force against opponents.
People who see him as a benevolent figure, walking with feet
barely touching the ground and spouting gems of wisdom about government, almost
like lines of poetry, simply do not know the man. He was sneaky and ruthless in
grasping for power and going after his enemies, but he also served as his own
public relations or propaganda official with his writing providing a pleasant
gloss for history.
It's time to wake up and think about what you can do to make
America a better place. That is a gigantic task, and I am not sure that it is
even possible given the country’s ethics of imperialism and militarism, but
private guns have no role to play in any case.
