Second Amendment

The truth about Christianity and gun laws

/ Christopher Cudworth / Leave a comment

FlagWaiver

One of the most vexing aspects of America’s gun laws is the apparent belief by many Christians that guns are compatible with their religion. That’s an interesting contention because guns were originally invented for one purpose: that is killing. Yet one of the most famous of the 10 Commandments is “Thou shalt not kill.” 

Jesus was keen on the idea that our thoughts and even casual intentions can lead to evil actions. In Matthew 5: 27-29 Jesus addresses these issues:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ 28 But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 29 If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.”

So Christians face a real dilemma when it comes to owning or carrying a gun. Even the “self-defense” argument often made on behalf of gun ownership denies the principle of placing one’s trust in God for protection. Either you trust God to protect you, or you don’t. God only knows your true heart. 

Who lays claim to the flag in America?

Given the difficulty of parsing out the religious conundrums wrought by owning guns, a great many Americans take refuge behind laws supporting gun ownership. The claim to be a “law-abiding gun owner” appears rock solid when defending the right to own and bear arms. Yet even laws are no guarantee of a reasonable conscience.

The example of Jesus

We should recall that when Jesus embarked on his ministry by preaching in the country on the heels of John the Baptist, a real revolutionary by nature, the goal was to bring the grace of God to all. Yet Jesus and his disciples soon made a practice of breaking the laws set out by religious authorities bent on imposing tradition on the populace. Jesus spoke out against this brand of authority and the hypocrisy it inevitably produced. He even called the lawmakers defending their tradition a “brood of vipers” for their habit of lashing out at anyone who opposed their version of authority.

Jesus challenged even the nature of the laws laid out by religious authority. When a band of accusers threatened to stone a woman to death in the streets for the crime of adultery, Jesus turned to them and said, “Let he that is without sin cast the first stone.”

Questions of judgment

That was an indictment of those issuing personal judgment of others. But it also resonated all the way up the legalistic food chain to the religious authorities who implemented those laws in the first place. Jesus was challenging a system that had been corrupted by selfish aims and misguidedly self-righteous intentions. It was the literal and legalistic interpretation of scripture that had led to traditions concerned more with obeying the laws of religion than keeping with the true heart of God. Jesus considered this an abomination, especially as it led to the commodification of the temple itself, which had become a hall of commerce, not a house of prayer.

So Jesus fought the religious authorities and turned over the tables of commerce at the temple. Yet we all know how the story turned out. Rather than consider what Jesus had to say about the corrupt nature of tradition, the religious authorities reacted with anger toward him for questioning their practices. Ultimately they conspired to have him killed  and even got someone else to do the dirty work of crucifixion. Thus they protected their reputation as the “good guys” who were defending the wholesome halls and hallmarks of tradition.

Christianity today

This is much the same position in which legalistic Christians find themselves today. They have sided with the gun lobby and conservative politicians who calculatedly ignore the first part of the Second Amendment, “A well-regulated militia, being necessary for the protection of a free state…”  while emphasizing the more selfish part of the law in the “right to bear arms.”

This is better known as “cherry-picking,” the practice of taking the parts of scripture or the Constitution that support your personal aims while discarding or ignoring those that do not apply or actually contradict your selfish aims. This is the grand habit of legalistic Christians who conveniently ignore anachronistic laws in the Bible even while claiming its inerrancy and infallibility. This is the principle lie of Christian apologetics in this day and age. It also happens to be the principle lie of constitutional originalists as well. Thus it is no coincidence that we often find political and religious conservatives in allegiance to their parallel beliefs even to the point of claiming these worldviews trump all other forms of truth.

The gun lobby

FIREARM

The gun lobby in America certainly welcomes Christian support of its commercial and political aims. So does the NRA, which frequently presents itself as the chief authority on gun laws and rights in America.

But that leaves the rest of us to wonder about people who deny the truth of both their religion and the United States Constitution that clearly states guns must be well-regulated as part of a well-regulated militia.

The purposeful denial of this patently important introduction is executed in order to make the selfish claim that gun rights are by nature sacrosanct to American tradition and protect the very freedoms upon which America depends as a republic.

Yet how do we tell that to thousands of people that are mowed down by guns every year? Many of the guns used to conduct shootings are designed not just for killing, but for mass killing, sometimes taking multiple lives within 30 seconds of opening fire. And how do we tell that to the families to whom “thoughts and prayers” are so frequently directed…yet never really console them because their loved ones are the bloodied and dead victims of an extremely selfish interpretation of the Second Amendment that allows such events to happen.

Christians of conscience who actually know and understand the history of their religion should know better. But as we learned from the religious authorities who conspired against Jesus because he broke their laws and resisted their traditions, those in charge may claim to be on the right side of the law, but they are also frequently on the wrong side of history, and of God.

 

Simple proof that America is at war with itself

/ Christopher Cudworth / Leave a comment

The Chicago Tribune news coverage following the Las Vegas mass shooting included a story quoting off-duty police officers trapped in the mayhem where 59 people were murdered and hundreds more were injured when the calculating gunman perched himself in a tall hotel to take aim with scopes and guns reconfigured as automatic weapons.

Some of the off-duty police officers had also served in the military. Those that had seen combat were still shocked by the scene of women shot through the head and people bleeding out as they lay on the ground wounded or dying from the effects of a man with plenty of ammo and deadly aim.

Combat statement.jpg“I have been in combat, but I have never seen this type of mass casualty,” said police Sgt. Michael Gonzalez.

The Las Vegas shooting may have been massive in scope, but it was just a bump in the pulse of bloody shootings taking place every day in America. There is no more denying the fact. The nation itself has become a combat zone. The United States of America is literally at war with itself.

The statistics of all the deaths caused by gun violence back this up. More Americans have now died from gun violence on home soil than all the soldiers ever killed in combat in foreign wars.

This is the direct product of the murderously blind activism of the conservative Supreme Court that wields its judgements like a weapon of the vigilante ideology favored by both the NRA and the politicians it has bought and sold. The inexcusable complaint that gun control measures are an infringement of the “right to bear arms” is disrespectful to the Constitution as a whole. When people own the right to steal the life of another human being in the blink of a trigger pull, there are no equal rights to that. There is no freedom in America.

Concealed Carry poison

The right to kill has bled into Concealed Carry laws that have poisoned the nature of freedom across the country. Think about it. The person standing next to you could well be packing the cold-hearted tool of your own demise. Say something wrong to them, or conduct some unintended slight that they judge to be a threat to their person, and they can claim the right to shoot you. Right in the head if they feel like it.

It is inconceivable that the Founding Fathers ever intended this to be the presiding scenario in America. In essence, we’ve been drawn back into an era when dueling was used to settle difference, or when gunman lined up in the street (supposedly) to draw weapons and fire. That’s what the NRA has promoted as the safest brand of citizenship in America.

Ignorant claims of so-called “responsible gun owners”

Don’t you see the ignorance of these claims? When laid bare, they have no constitutional foundation at all. They do have money behind them, and people selfish and angry enough at their plight in life to abide such foolishness. Meanwhile supposed “responsible” gun owners cower behind the controversy hoping the band of idiots at the forefront of the “more guns” debate will cover their fearful asses.

Because that’s what rampant gun ownership is all about. Fear. The United States is rife with chickenshits who feel like they can’t walk down the street or mingle with other human beings without carrying a gun on their person. This is the opposite of courageous. It is the parallel of insanity.

The bleeding and dying

That police officer who carried bleeding, dying people off the concert grounds knows now that America is a literal war zone. He saw it with his own eyes. He compared it to what he saw in actual combat, in real wars, and this was far worse.

The Second Amendment needs to be clarified. Re-balanced. We need a hard, strong definition of what a “well-regulated militia” looks like, and how it functions. We should no longer leave that to the addle-brained conservatives on the Supreme Court to decide. They have originalism blindness. They couldn’t muster their way out of a cardboard box if the writing on the inside mentioned guns in any way.

But our gutless Congress and Senate when run by Republicans is even worse. Their long term claim that government is the enemy of the people is the knife to the gut of common sense. If that’s the case, they should commit hari-kiri and get out of office. If you don’t believe in the merit of government, you have no right or ability to serve.

Cognitive dissonance

We live in a combat zone of cognitive dissonance. And innocent people are dying every day as a result. Screw the gun lobby. We don’t need any more evidence to re-write the Second Amendment, or repeal it altogether. The frightening reality is that we’ve seen  Presidents succumb to gun violence several times already. Even that conservative pet Ronald Reagan got blasted by a freeloading gunman back in the day. Gerald Ford was a target too. We lost JFK. His brother Bobby. We lost Martin Luther King, Jr. And we even lost John Lennon.

Imagine that. If Happiness is a Warm Gun, America has burn marks on its holster side.

What will it take for an admission of the combat zone that America has become? Does another President need to become a martyr for the nation to wise up? That might wake up the close-minded. The backwoods and front-office gun nuts, selfish and obsessed with weapons as a sub-culture.

It’s a sickness. An addiction. But like that soldier who comes home to find life at home too quiet, it seems the gun nuts of America fear the quietude they might face if they can’t wave a weapon in yours. That’s the worst angst they can imagine.

 

Fighting for guns and hockey

/ Christopher Cudworth / Leave a comment

goonsbox20 years ago I took my impressionable son to a Junior-A hockey game at the newly built Fox Valley Ice Arena. As an associate creative director at a local marketing agency, I’d designed the logo for the team, which was painted 50 feet wide under the ice.

To be sure, I understood little about the actual game of hockey. My experience playing it as a kid was limited to whacking around a farm field ice rink with a bunch of friends. I didn’t really know the rules to the game. Heck, I didn’t even know there were three periods in the contest. After two periods I’d gotten up to leave, figuring the game was over. A friend turned to me and said, “Where you going? There’s a whole ‘nuther period.” So we sat back down in the slightly cold arena and waited for the affair to continue.

There had been scuffles between the players thus far in the match. At one point one of the local team’s players fell over the boards into the box of the opposing team. All the players on that side began jabbing the other player with their sticks. It looked like the attack of a band of crazed goons. And indeed, hockey has long celebrated goonery as a tradition in the sport.

The fight game

Five minutes into the third period, a real fight broke out. Two players squared off just below our seats. Their punches flew and one began to win the tussle. Sweaters were stretched. Fists landed. Then one player began to bleed. Profusely.

A bright red puddle of blood flowed out over the ice. Their skates kicked it up in the air as they continued fighting. Finally the referee entered the fight zone and began to break it up. But the damage was done. My son turned to me and asked, “Dad, do they always have fights in hockey?”

At that period of time, the game of hockey seemed all about fighting. When I mentioned the incident we’d witnessed to so-called “real” hockey fans they all laughed and said. “That’s why we go! Isn’t it awesome?”

Now, it wasn’t awesome. At best it seemed unfortunate. We’d been getting into the game and learned a little about hockey. Perhaps we’d have become fans. But not so.

Change has come

I’m not some naive pacifist. I had my share of fights early in life and had done my share of damage to others on the athletic field by that point. But I still wondered why hockey felt the need to let fighting remain such a large part of the action.

Fast forward 20 years. My daughter’s interest in hockey took off the same year the Chicago Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup. Our family enjoyed many games that year, and grew to appreciate the fast, relatively clean brand of hockey played by the Hawks and some other NHL teams. It seemed the game was changing for the better.

Yes, there were still a few fights that broke out. But in the last few years the fighting in NHL hockey has been reduced and nearly eliminated. Hockey has actually become more exciting and watchable as a result. The league even seems to want to protect its players from the effects of concussion. In other words, it is still a sport of strength and speed, but it has eliminated some of the unnecessary brutality.

Brain changes

The paradigm of reduced fighting in hockey may be unpopular with diehard fans longing to see two players beat the hell out of each other. But as in football, the recognized effects of concussions and CTE on pro players is becoming a sensitive issue. Why put athletes of additional risk of life endangerment and brain debilitating if you can prevent it?

Hockey is taking simple measures to make the game safer for all. Either by proxy or intent, the game of hockey as a sport is actually more interesting without the fighting. Throwing down the gloves and tugging on each other’s sweaters always was a childish, immature way to settle actual differences. Playing just as hard and scoring more goals as a result makes the net game more exciting. The game is using its brain to make important changes that protect the players and in some ways, protect the sport as well.

Well, shoot

Guns_1000So let’s imagine the same scenario, yet with a different “sport.” That would be guns. Millions of Americans own guns, and most of them never shoot anyone. Yet 30,000 people a year die from gun violence by suicide or murder, and many thousands more are wounded.

Yet many gun owners seem to think they don’t have any responsibility for these statistics. Using their brand of logic, it would mean that all the hockey players who play the game and do not get into fights have no responsibility for the fights that do break out. Yet we also know that the game of hockey, especially at the pro level, condoned the hiring of “goon” players whose main job was to act as an enforcer for the rest of the team. If one of the star players got hit too hard, the goon would head out on the ice to inflict punishment on the opposing team.

The same principle used to hold true in baseball, where pitchers would purposely throw at the head of a batter if it was judged that some transgression had taken place by the opposing pitcher. It was called getting plunked.

So these quid pro quo acts of violence were supposedly part of the gamesmanship of each respective sport. Fans selfishly cheered such violence, just as they cheer hard hits in football. The players enforced these regimens of accepted violence by refusing to protect themselves. Some played through game day concussions or multiple series of concussions. Football is now having to deal with the consequences and public image of these savage habits.

Paying the price

Because society ultimately does pay a price for escalations of violence. The ravaged brains of former football players and the death of children in America have a parallel relationship. Either we take the most steps possible to prevent such damage or we do not.

We’ve seen for years the debate over gun violence take oppositional forms. Gun advocates say it’s not their fault that criminals get guns and use them to murder. Gun control advocates simply want gun laws that do the most possible to keep guns out of the hands of unstable people.

But the “goons” in this case take a heavyhanded approach to gun advocacy. The NRA is the lead goon, hired by millions of gun owners to promote an interpretation of the Second Amendment that condones business as usual. This is the parallel to pro hockey. The goons know that to keep their job, they have to keep fighting. Those who benefit from the protection of the goons care not to question either the methods or the outcomes so long as their personal rights are protected.

Collateral damage
Spilled bloodThe collateral damage to all this goonery is the lives of innocent people. Many have been slaughtered in elementary schools, movie theaters and college campuses. There have even been shootings on military bases. Of course, the irony there is that military personnel are not typically allowed to wander a military base bearing arms.

As reported on The Blaze.com in a 2013 story, “The question of why military members aren’t armed on base garnered attention back in November 2009 when Army Maj. Nidal Hasan opened fire at Ft. Hood and killed 13 people. He was sentenced to death on August 28. Now, nearly four years later, many are asking the same question.

So what’s the answer? It appears this “gun-free zone” type policy can actually be traced back to Department of Defense (DoD) Directive 5210.56, signed into effect in February 1992 by Donald J. Atwood, deputy secretary of defense under President George H.W. Bush.”

So let’s be clear: the policy to allow carriage of concealed weapons in modern society actually runs against the nation’s own Department of Defense dictums issued by a Republican President. And since that time, and to make matters worse, arguments for the proliferation of guns in public places has been expanded by Supreme Court rulings emphasizing the right to bear arms over the supposedly balanced call in the Second Amendment for a well-regulated militia.

The goons are winning

In other words, the goons are winning. The goons rule the game of gun laws and aren’t going to relinquish their roles easily. There is too much money to be made by promoting rampant gun ownership, because that’s how goons keep their jobs.

Do you get what’s going on? Our own military, an institution that nby profession trains and licenses personnel to handle guns, sees the common sense of limiting that right on its own grounds. As also reported in the story about DoD policy on TheBlaze.com: “The controversial directive  states that “it is DoD Policy” to “limit and control the carrying of firearms by DoD military and civilian personnel. The authorization to carry firearms shall be issued only to qualified personnel when there is a reasonable expectation that life or DoD assets will be jeopardized if firearms are not carried,” it says.

Ahead of the game

The military is, in other words, “way ahead of the game” when it comes to proper regulation and use of guns. By contrast, civilian America is being forced to live as if there is reasonable expectation of “war on the streets.” This is a self-fulfilling prophecy if there ever was one. We’re left with the sad claim that guns actually make America “safer.”

By that brand of logic we might arrive at the conclusion that the fights in hockey actually make the game safer. But that’s exactly the logic being used by America’s “gun goons” to make the case that guns are necessary for freedom.

Even language of the debate over guns rights is concussively rife with violence. As reported in a story on on CNN.Com, “Wayne LaPierre, the nation’s most visible gun-rights advocate, rallied supporters on Saturday for a renewed fight against gun control, saying membership is up since the Newtown massacre, and calling the effort to stop new limits a “long war” and a “fight for everything we care about.”

Confessions

In other words, Wayne LaPierre outright confesses that his job is waging a war on everyday Americans. And to that point, more Americans have died on American soil from gun violence than all the soldiers that have ever died in wars on foreign soil.

In other words, the goons aren’t just winning the war. They are committing genocide on the American people by proliferating guns. There are almost as many guns in America, 300,000,000, as there are people. And they’re proud of that fact.

And they won’t give up easily: “The National Rifle Association’s executive vice president vowed in remarks at the group’s national convention that “we will never surrender our guns.” He implored members to step up their outreach to members of Congress as part of a fight against “elites” and others who “use tragedy to try to blame us, to shame us” into compromise and who “want to change America, our culture and our values.”

Yes, it’s the fear of change that drives so much violence in this world. And please don’t stop the genocide, because it’s fear that motivates gun owners to purchase weapons in the first place. It’s a perfect circle of illogical justification and cognitive dissonance.

Statistics lead nowhere

Gun proponents have been pointing to statistics that show gun violence is going down over the last 30 years. That does notchange the fact that there are still 30,000 people dying in the streets every year, and that is far more than any civilized nation on earth.

And, despite the claims of the gun goons, there is absolutely no proof that the presence of more guns has led to less shootings. CNN notes: “Researchers have studied the decline in firearm crime and violent crime for many years, and though there are theories to explain the decline, there is no consensus among those who study the issue as to why it happened,” the researchers say in a summary.

Packs of goons

We do know one thing for sure. America is faced with veritable packs of goons running around claiming the government is out to get them and coming to take away their guns. Every time there is a new mass shooting, gun sales shoot up across the nation over fears that the new rash of violence will lead to more restrictive gun laws. That has never happened, but it doesn’t stop groups like the NRA from leveraging such fears into fundraising campaigns. It also serves the purpose of gun manufacturers, whose profits depend, if you follow the straight line logic of gun sales in response to mass shootings, on loss of American lives.

The most fearful gun goon squads actually call themselves militias. They are not “well-regulated” according to any interpretation of the Second Amenment. A pack of these goons is currently occupying a wildlife refuge in the state of Oregon. If the government intervenes, they will have accomplished their self-fulfilling prophecy. In hockey terms, that’s like a goon punching the referee in the face.

Armed insanity

That’s how insane the game of gun control has gotten in this country. We’re being governed and manipulated by collaborative bunches of goons that insist personal gun rights supersede all other efforts to establish law and order in the country. Even when children die, and mass shootings continue, and America continues to lose more lives to gun violence than any other civilized nation on earth, the gun goons keep shouting that their own personal liberty is at risk. It is both a lie, and it is insane.

So the question remains. Do you want to be governed by NRA goons and their political henchmen? Or do you want to take responsibility as hockey has done, and has football is about to do, and begin the process of making “the game” safer for all to play? Should you really have to carry a sidearm everywhere you go in America to “feel safe?” Or is that notion the product of goons who are terminally insane over the notion that guns equal freedom?

Spilling blood

Truly, there is no excuse for the blood being spilled on the ice of our everyday existence. Old School thinkers want to codify their vigilate version of reality and let the goons do the work of protecting their Wild West fantasies that more guns will keep the peace. Even the violent games of hockey and football are being forced to change to protect their respective sports and the players who engage in them.

And likewise, the United States Military changed its policies for “gun ownership” on its bases long ago. There is no such thing as “concealed carry” for military personnel.

Yet America with its insane interpretations of the Second Amendment refuses to acknowledge that violence as a way of life is harmful to all.

 

The New Civil War

/ Christopher Cudworth / Leave a comment

FIREARMOn December, 3, 2005, the Opie Radio Show on Sirius XM was discussing the latest in a series of mass shootings. Debate ensued over what actually constituted a mass shooting. “It’s four or more people wounded or killed,” one of the hosts intoned.

This is how the story lead on mass shootings in America appeared in the New York Times under the headline, “How often do mass shootings occur?”

The story lead when like this: “More than one a day. That is how often, on average, shootings that left four or more people wounded or dead occurred in the United States this year, according to compilations of episodes derived from news reports.”

The radio hosts addressed that statistic with a expression of depressed shock and awe. Then they admitted that nothing seems to change the ongoing carnage. “We’ve already forgotten the one from last week. The media just goes out and covers these stories the same way. Then we move on.”

That’s what people do in war time. Unable to deal with the concussive effects of the murderous onslaught every day, Americans have taken to the methods of the World War II call of Britain to Keep Calm and Carry On.

And how ironic it is that all 50 states have enacted Open Carry laws allowing people to tote guns on their persons, and the mass shootings keep on happening. So-called law-abiding gun owners claim it is only madmen and criminals taking to the streets with weapons. But does that account for the angry anti-government militias and racist organizations itching to pick a bloody fight with all those they love to hate.

It does not. So by proxy, law-abiding gun owners have chosen sides in the New Civil War just as residents of slave states had no choice when leaders of the Confederacy lobbied and won the right to expand slavery into Missouri and other newly-won American lands.

That’s how evil works in this world. The innocent get swept up with the evil-doers. They become collateral damage in the fight for control over the ruling narrative. As a result, more Americans have died from gun violence or suicide with the borders of the United States than all the soldiers ever killed in wars on foreign soils.

Which means, we are literally at war with ourselves over gun rights.

Cynically, a pro-gun site called Reason.com, which advocates “Free Minds and Free Markets,” posted this justification for proliferation of guns under the headline, “How Guns Helped Secure Civil Rights and Expand Liberty,” and the subheading, “Firearms played a key role in the Civil Rights Movement.”

The story continued with this bit of misappropriated information:

“For example, guns played a key role in the Civil Rights Movement and its long campaign to achieve racial equality. To illustrate that point, here are three stories from the Reason archives that discuss the ways in which privately owned guns helped to expand freedom and secure civil rights for countless numbers of black Americans.

Why Civil Rights and Gun Rights Are Inseparable:

[A] vast number of nonviolent civil rights activists either carried arms themselves or were surrounded by others who did, including Rosa Parks, who described her dinner table “covered with guns” at a typical strategy session in her home, and Daisy Bates, “the first lady of Little Rock,” who played a pivotal role in the famous battle to integrate her city’s Central High School. Thurgood Marshall, who stayed with Bates in 1957 while litigating the Central High case, called her residence “an armed camp.” Bates herself packed a .45 automatic pistol.

Indeed, from the time of Frederick Douglass, who called a “good revolver” the “true remedy for the Fugitive Slave Bill,” to that of civil rights icon Fannie Lou Hamer, who braved the worst of 20th century Jim Crow and declared, “I keep a shotgun in every corner of my bedroom,” armed self-defense has always gone hand in hand with the fight for racial equality in America.

Use of this information to contend that guns played a role in civil rights is to ignore the fact that what Rosa Parks did to protest racism was peacefully sit on a bus in defiance of Jim Crow laws. It also ignores the fact that guns may have been a necessity, not a choice, in black homes to targeted by white racists determined and able to murder all who lived within.

And the second story? It also cites self-defense as a reason to own a gun. But again, it was not guns that led to equal rights for black people in America. It was peaceful demonstrations and white collaboration with black leaders to pass laws protecting black Americans from the patent discrimination and cruelty exacted upon them. One of the primary, peaceful leaders of the Civil Rights movement in America was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and advocate of peaceful activism even in the face of police brutality and aggressive response. Of course, Dr. King was shot dead by a gun, proving that guns are not in any way the cause or protector of Civil Rights.

Yet it is this cynical attitude that guns are the principal force of justice in America that has dominated lawmaking the last 30 years. As a result, gun controls are insufficient to protect everyday citizens, and all the gun proponents can think to do in the event of mass shootings every day is to propose that every last citizen armed themselves or literally face the risk of dying on the streets, in theaters, colleges or even homes for the disabled.

That is not civil justice on any level. That is the New Civil War. And welcome to it.

So what is to be done? First, it must be declared that this is a Civil War in progress. The dominating interpretation of the Second Amendment segregates the call for “a well-regulated militia” from the phrase that says, “the right to bear arms shall not be infringed.”

That ignores both the context and original unification of those phrases, depending on anachronism on one hand to claim that militias don’t exist in the same form today, thus the right to bear arms must be kept free of the influence of the introductory phrase.

Yet the entire populace of gun owners does constitute a militia. That’s one of the frequent justification for the freedom to own guns. Resisting either a foreign invasion or fighting our own government in the event of martial law are both reasons given for arming the citizenry.

So it is a lie to say that the standing militia should not be well-regulated. At this point that collective militia is clearly out of control and causing a war from within on American soil. We can analyze whether it is angry black inner city residents or angry white disenfranchised Americans that are the greater problem, but that would be moot.

The real problem is that we’ve got a New Civil War on our hands, and everyone is involved whether they like it or not. That’s how wars work. When two sides square off on an issue like mass murders, you know the cause that defies logic has to lose or evil gets to reign.

That’s what happened with the fight over slavery years ago. Right now we’re all slaves to the irresponsible interpretation of the Second Amendment. It is brutalizing and killing every day. On average, it’s about 30,000 people a year. Since 1980 when Ronald Reagan took office and ushered in the neo-liberalism that caused the New Civil War, far more than a million people have died or been injured by gun violence on American soil. That’s a war on Americans, by Americans. The New Civil War has lasted far longer than the original one. That’s a sad fact of history.

To rectify this problem, the interpretation of the Second Amendment must be collectively reviewed and examined in light of ongoing deaths and murder at the hands of a collectively unregulated American militia. That debate needs to start today. 

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From peaceful Muslims to murder of liberal heroes, Progressives have a right to be pissed

/ Christopher Cudworth / Leave a comment

muhammad_ali_02aBack in the 1960s when Muhammad Ali converted to Islam, America hardly knew how to handle the religious convictions of a boxing hero gone faithful. Here was a famous pugilist choosing a religion that was not in line with America’s generally Christian leanings. And how could a fighter not want to fight for his country?

Then Ali (ne: Cassius Clay) did the unthinkable. He asked for conscientious objector status during the war in Vietnam. The United States initially indicted Ali on grounds that his beliefs were racially and politically motivated, not religious. Ultimately the case was overturned and Ali was granted freedom and the right to pursue his profession. Which ironically, was boxing.

Such is the complexity of liberal values, which do not always fall into black and white categories. But the lesson America has long neglected to recognize from Ali’s case is his defense of the Nation of Islam as a religion of peace. Ali stood as a religious Progressive, alone in many respects, trying to defend his right to religious freedom. He was willing to fight, of course. But not to kill.

Of course Ali earned little sympathy from the political right at the time. He was called a traitor against his country. Racial implications were rife as well, with a threatening undertone that implied that this black man should get back in line and do what his country (ne: master) wanted him to do.

John_F_KennedyAli was perhaps lucky not to be assassinated for expressing his political views. Other liberal and Progressive leaders of that era did not survive their public challenges to the status quo. John F. Kennedy was assassinated, as was his brother Robert. Hatred of the two men by operatives in the CIA, the mob and political conservatives was well-known. Some even speculate the Lyndon Baines Johnson was politically jealous of the two men and conspired to have JFK assassinated. Recently released information from the Kennedy family intimates their own concerns about that potential.

Martin-Luther-King-Jr-1280x800-3It wasn’t long after the Kennedy assassinations that Martin Luther King, Jr. was also shot dead. The 1960s were a great period of social revolution but a deadly, punitive time to be a Progressive leader. Reasoned voices were silenced. The nation’s direction and policies were waylaid.

That is not to say that liberals were stopped from helping minorities work toward civil rights. Liberals and Progressives fought on, hewing closely to the liberal foundations of the very Constitution upon which America was founded. That’s right, the Constitution is a liberal document in that it progressively outlines the equal rights of all its citizens regardless of race, gender or even sexual orientation.

But that liberal foundation has required considerable effort to defend and protect. The fight has been compounded by an aggressive attempt by religious conservatives to essentially undermine the liberal values that guarantee freedom from religion as well as freedom of religion. Conservatives have attempted massive revisionism by claiming that America’s founders were Christians, and that Christian “values” drive the republic.

jesus-blackCertainly there are reflections of the Judeo-Christian tradition in America’s commitment to equality. But Christianity as a conservative religious movement has a long tradition of ignoring its equally liberal foundations. Jesus Christ was anything but a conservative. He fought the conservatives of his day in the form of Pharisees and other religious leaders determined to wield power through faith, and to manipulate others through economic and social pressures. Those conservatives in power at the time were the very forces that turned Jesus over to Roman authorities to have him crucified. So the battle between conservatives eager for power and control with the liberal agenda is a long and ancient conflict. It continues to this day.

It was not about the “jews” murdering Jesus. It was about conservatives without conscience, to quote one John Dean, who wrote a book of the same title. That book ought to be required reading for every American citizen.  It documents the power-mongering conservative movement that threatens to engulf and swallow the personal and individual rights of every person in America. All for the profit of the very few.

Conservatives have worked hard the past thirty years to blur the lines between corporate and individual rights. Indeed, the Citizens United case was specifically driven to the Supreme Court to allow more corporate money into the political process. During the 2012 presidential election, candidate Mitt Romney blurted the conservative political belief that, “Corporations are people…”

John-Lennon-john-lennon-34078983-1024-768But he’s wrong. And he’ll always be wrong about that. That very statement brings to mind the cogent statement of one John Lennon, former Beatle and outspoken critic of insane conservative political and religious motives. Lennon said: “Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we’re being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I’m liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That’s what’s insane about it.”

And what was the result for John Lennon in this world? An insane man shot him in the head on the streets of New York City.

Which brings to mind another insane statement relative to weapons like the one used to shoot John Lennon. Gun advocates love to say that “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.” And so goes the insanity, and guns of military grade continue to proliferate in America, where children are shot to death in elementary schools, and gunman invade college campuses or stand up in movie theaters and open fire.

The rational, sane thing to do would be to pay attention to the real first phrase of the Second Amendment, which says “A well-regulated militia… being necessary for the security of a free state….”

And yes, the Second Amendment goes on to say that the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. So protect that right, but also protect against guns getting into the hands of insane people. Set up standards that are hard to achieve because that is what is meant by the phrase “a well-regulated militia.” Because that is what is required for the security of a free state.

It works both ways you see. We need to question why people feel they need military grade weapons to walk safely on the streets. The police in communities across the nation are now militarizing their force in order to protect against the ramping up of military grade weapons owned by private citizens! That’s because we don’t have a well-regulated militia.

Liberals and Progressives have suffered far more losses and more political heroes to gun violence than conservatives. We need to ask 1) why that is and 2) how would conservative react if it had been their heroes shot down in cold blood?

Brady1We could take the example of James Brady, the White House Press Secretary who was shot while defending Ronald Reagan. Brady served a notably conservative President, yet when faced with the debilitating consequences of his compromised condition due to gun violence, Brady became one of the leading gun control advocates of his time.

But the apparently violent motives underlying conservatism is not limited to just guns, shooting and wars. There is a violent strain that runs through so much of the rhetoric of conservatism. Another liberal victim of gun violence was Gabrielle Giffords. Time Magazine carried this observation about her shooting. “Last March, at the height of the health care Gabrielle Giffordsreform battle, Giffords’ office was vandalized. She mentioned in an MSNBC interview that a Sarah Palin graphic had depicted her district in the crosshair of a gun sight. “They’ve got to realize there are consequences to that,” she said. “The rhetoric is incredibly heated.” The corner next to her office had also become, she said, a popular spot for Tea Party protests.”

So who really has the right to be pissed in America? Is it the conservatives and Tea Party that so aggressively state their convictions and are pissed about taxes, social welfare and progressive reforms on equal rights?

Or is it the Progressives whose heroes have been randomly, pointedly and successively shot down in cold blood for standing up for the equal rights guaranteed all citizens by the United States Constitution?

There is so much opportunity for progress in America, but only if people can peacefully come to terms with the real and true history of the United States. That is, our liberal heritage is at continual risk from a violent, intolerant, often racist sector whose worldview claims to be on the right side of politics and religion, but whose words and actions stand in direct conflict with those who believe in equal rights on the political front and equal souls on the religious front.

It’s actually Open Carry they’re really after

/ Christopher Cudworth / 10 Comments

By Christopher Cudworth

National approval for Open Carry is next on the agenda of the American gun lobby. Wait and see.

National approval for Open Carry is next on the agenda of the American gun lobby. Wait and see.

I saw another sign banning Concealed Carry the other day. It was posted on some street barriers in anticipation of Cruise Night at a nearby town. You know the sign: A picture of a handgun with a red circle and a slash through it. 

Right now it is legal for some organizations to post one of those signs. If you run a church or conduct a community event where weapons might not be welcome, you can request or demand the right to ban weapons on the site. 

This must rankle all those people who think Concealed Carry is the answer to all our social problems. After all, the laws passed in all 50 states are supposed to guarantee the legal right to pack heat, right? What’s the real point of banning guns anywhere? If you can’t take your handgun into church and someone decides to shoot the place up, how are you going to defend yourself? 

False Premises

That’s the premise of Concealed Carry. The idea that other people might be legally carrying weapons is supposed to be a deterrent to criminals who might otherwise choose to pull guns and open fire. 

Only deterrence is just an imagined protection. There’s no real proof that the idea of other people carrying guns is any real deterrent to people angry enough or bored enough or frustrated enough to pull out guns and start shooting at people in public places.

False Logic

The supposed logic of so-called Concealed Carry doesn’t bear out at any level. Let’s face it: the only real deterrent to anyone about to shoot up society is another person with a weapon openly displayed and aimed at their head. 

thSo thinking it all through, it’s actually Open Carry the gun lobby is really after. Concealed Carry was just a stepping stone Open Carry becoming the norm in society. We’ve already seen gun-obsessed people strolling through towns and cities with rifles over their shoulders, daring anyone to protest their presence. 

Fantasies and Delusions

Open Carry is what they really want. It’s time to force the gun lobby to admit it. Concealed Carry is no real deterrent to illegal use of weapons. Only Open Carry can do that. Otherwise the shooter figures they can outdraw anyone in a gunfight. That’s what the Hollywood movies and all those hardass gun instructors like to teach. Shoot first and best and you survive.  

It’s all based on fantasies and delusions. Everyone figures they’re a faster gun and better aim than everyone else. It’s like the opposite of winning the lottery. With Concealed Carry, the odds of being shot are growing bigger every day. It’s a fascinating phenomenon, and the fact that more civilian Americans have died from gun violence than all the American soldiers that have died in foreign wars is no deterrent to the gun lobby. They just want more, more, more. 

Stand Your Ground Foolishness

Along with Concealed Carry, the worst news for people who appreciate freedom from violence has been the invention of the Stand Your Ground laws. Such laws were supposedly created to give people protection with the right to “defend” themselves in situations where they feel threatened. But guess what? Stand Your Ground laws are proving to be a bad, bad idea. Studies by the American Bar Association have shown that Stand Your Ground laws actually result in an increase in homicides rather than a decrease in gun violence. The American Bar Association report recommends the laws be revised or in some case repealed as a result. 

An article about the report in the Lansing (MI) News states the following: “The task force also suggests that the laws (SYG) only apply if the aggressor shows a weapon before deadly force is used, and recommends that judges give juries more detailed instructions on when a “stand your ground” claim can be used.”

Now a normal person would read that paragraph and say “Good, they’re going to roll back the Stand Your Ground laws because it promotes gunfights.” 

But a gun advocate will likely look at that statement and determine that the better solution is to remove all need to conceal weapons. Let Open Carry be the rule of the day and criminals will really be deterred from attacking. 

Except continuing escalation in the militarization of society is turning the process of enforcing the law from a police action to a military strike against those trying to outgun them. 

The comments on the Lansing News website led off with this insightful screed (sic): 

Taxburdened20111 hour ago

 
“Obviously an article written by a progressive.  The right to own weapons is guarenteed by the 2nd Amendment, quit trying to change our right to own weapons and to change the constitution to your ideolical views, just for once, will you?????  Doubt it, but I still comment on it!  Only the criminal will subvert this right by not owning a weapon legally.  Most, if not all non-criminals will own a weapon legally and registered.  We have nothing to hide, all we want is something to protect ourselves from idiots like yourself who happen to to want to take our right away Mr. Brian Smith! Is that your purpose in this article Mr. Smith???
 
All told, the process of the militarization of society is a self-fulfilling prophecy for people so afraid of government and society in general that they believe the government is trying to take away their guns and their rights. But when even the police feel like they have to act like an army to keep society under control, the idea of a “well-regulated militia” as proposed in the Second Amendment has been outstripped by the selfish interpretation that gun rights are absolute, literal and untouchable.
 
Open Carry is next
 
Watch and wait. It will probably be just a matter of weeks before Open Carry legislation is introduced at a national level. The timing is just about right, with November elections coming around the corner. Probably Congress will throw a bill like that into the hopper, forcing Democrats who vote against it to go on record. There’s precedent for Open Carry at the state level. Organizations such as Opencarrytexas.org are already on the case. 
 
It’s a sad case, mostly, with people dying every day from gun violence, and gun advocates insisting that the only way to stop gun violence is to hand out more guns and brandish them like cowboys in the streets.
 
It’s been said that the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Only it’s much worse than that when it comes to guns in America. The escalation of gun weaponry and accessibility of military-grade guns in the United States is not just insane, it is politically criminal and the absolute result of misinterpreting the Second Amendment to mean that “well-regulated” means no regulations at all.
 
If we had followed the same logic with environmental protection rivers in American would be on fire these days as they were in the 1970s. But we developed some common sense and the EPA has protected us from far worse consequences. 
 
So you can see the comparative paradigm at work here. We’re at a critical point in the gun debate where more powerful weapons is having a toxic effect on society and yet the gun lobby cries wolf in trying to tell us it’s not that bad, and that more guns is the price of progress in a civilized society. 
 
Except it’s really uncivilized, what they keep proposing. The insane logic never ends with these people. It never, ever, ends. 
 
 

CPAC, Republicans and aggressive stupidity in politics and religion

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FlagWaiver

Aggressive stupidity is wearing us all out.

Another round of CPAC madness is nearly through in America. A parade of Republican zealots highlights the speaker list, with Grover Nordquist standing proudly at the front of the line proclaiming that any Republican who agrees to tax increases of any sort “are rat heads in a Coke bottle. They damage the brand for everyone.”

How is it that Nordquist fails to see himself as the rat in the bottleneck of Republican common sense?

And how interesting that another CPAC attendee, Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana–himself a possible presidential candidate in 2016–once said of Republicans, “We’ve got to stop being the stupid party.”

Jindal has been castigated for that remark, of course. It is not in the nature of conservatives to admit they might be wrong or stupid about anything.

What wrong looks like

Even when proven desperately wrong by enaction of their own nation-devastating (America and Iraq, to name a couple) policies during the horrid debacle of the George W. Bush/Dick Cheney years, Republicans would not find any ground for confession that their whole ideology might just be aggressively stupid. Even when conservatives ruled all three wings of government, things didn’t go right. Bush racked up a trillion dollar bill for his wars of choice that America can’t pay off. We’re still borrowing to pay $2B a month to mess around in Afghanistan. So what do Republicans do? They point fingers at social insurance policies such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid as the problem as if saving older people from destitution and medical disaster costs a nation more than war. 

Bad habits

Aggressive stupidity is a bad habit that can be fixed. But it’s hard, like shaking alcoholism or more accurately, a gambling addiction. Aggressive stupidity is a gambling addiction, to be precise. You are gambling that your brand of stubborn ideology, if backed by sufficient bets on the table, will win the day. Of course that’s been America’s global defense policy for decades. We now spend more on defense than the next 17 nations combined, and in many ways are less secure than ever. Yet here was Mitt Romney standing before the CPAC and insisting that Republicans put a powerful US military at the top of their agenda. “Do whatever you can to keep America strong, to keep America prosperous and free and the most powerful nation on earth.” Rah rah Mitt. That’s what got you where you are, buddy. A loser claiming you had all the right ideas. 

For perspective, that statement by Romney pretty much fulfills everything President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned Americans about when he cited the evils of the military/industrial complex as our worst enemy. The idea that we cannot be free without killing everything in sight is ludicrous, expensive and costly to the American spirit.

Killing ourselves in the name of the Constitution

It was recently learned that more Americans have been killed in their own country by gun violence than in all the wars ever fought by the nation. Yet we are locked in a battle over Second Amendment rights that Republicans use as a blunderbuss to cow a bunch of ignorant, one-issue voters into thinking Democrats are going to take away their guns. And when reasonable gun control laws are proposed, such as required background checks, Republicans run for cover behind the blazing guns policies of the NRA, who could think of nothing better to do in the wake of the Newtown, Connecticut shootings than to stick a bunch of armed guards in every school in America, and force teachers to get gun training. And to arm the teachers.

That is aggressive stupidity. One feels no shame in calling out stupidity in such circumstances. There is no risk of insult when the stupidity is so glaring in so many cases. Republicans are not stupid people, although even the wealthiest were targets of the incisive wit of one Mark Twain, who warned us, “All is takes is ignorance and confidence, and success is sure.” The humorist knew that aggressive stupidity really can win the day.

Elections versus selections

And when Republicans lose as they did in the 2016 selection (it wasn’t an election, but a selection of Obama against aggressive Republican stupidity) the party can think of nothing other to do than find a way to cheat the system. So Republican governors are gerrymandering ways to stifle Democratic voters any way they can.

The conservative party is shrinking like a set of testicles in a cold wind. Their policies appeal mostly to rich white voters, who are aging, as well as the ignorantly disenfranchised brand of gun-toters and a huge block of fearfully religious bigots who can’t seem to understand that their own Bible contradicts everything their party stands for.

Coming out to common sense

God Bless Republican Senator Rob Portman, who came out in favor of same-sex marriage once he learned that his own son is gay. “I’ve come to the conclusion that for me, personally, I think this is something that we should allow people to do, to get married, and to have the joy and stability of marriage that I’ve had for over 26 years,” he told CNN. “That I want all of my children to have, including our son, who is gay.”

The Bible is wrong about homosexuality, just as it is wrong about slavery and hundreds of other former laws of religion that no one ever follows. Yet biblical literalists foment their brand of aggressive stupidity toward gay people with tired old contentions that homosexuality is a sin against God, and that being gay is a choice, a lifestyle, and to one all should be opposed. The Republican Party has embraced this brand of aggressive stupidity for years because it wins them votes, gains them power and makes them feel all righteous and true.

Until one of their own finds out they have a gay child. Even the Heart of Darkness Dick Cheney admitted that he loves his daughter and can’t persecute gays any longer as a result.

Not so cool

As for Portman’s position, Republicans were aggressively cool to his very personal admission that his life has changed for the better in accepting his son for who he really is. Politics trumps all other notions of sanity, you see. As quoted in a New York Times story, “A spokesman for Speaker John A. Boehner, who is also from Ohio, said Friday that while Mr. Boehner “respects” Mr. Portman’s position, “the speaker continues to believe that marriage is between a man and a woman.”

That’s a form of aggressive stupidity, Mr. Boehner. Because if we took a certain pronunciation of your name quite literally, we would be forced to believe that you are actually a turgidly erect member of Congress that has no conscience. Well what do you know. It turns out that some forms of aggressive stupidity do prove true in practice. Two can play the game Republicans like to play.

Pope Francis the contradictor

We’re even forced to consider the aggressive stupidity of the new Catholic Pope Francis I, who embraces the poor but opposes birth control. That so-called “position” makes no sense if you spend a moment considering how overpopulation vexes the entire world.

But what do you expect from a religious brand that demands its priests to be celibate, then denies their policies have any consequence when a scourge of child sex abuse infests the church. Birth control dictates are ignored by more than 90% of its members, some polls report, yet the church and its patriarchal brand of aggressive stupidity keeps on rolling with a pope that stands by the position that spending sperm in a condom is a bad thing.

Some history…

Well, has the Catholic Church ever been wrong before? They almost killed Galileo for sticking up for the scientific perspective on matters universal. Then there were the Crusades, and the Inquisition, and for a while there, an insistence that the theory of evolution is wrong.

Aggressive stupidity runs through the most powerful organizations on earth. It is the hallmark of psychopathy, the aggressive will to dominate and coerce and kill in order to have your way, and have it now.

I’ve got mine and I hate yours

It’s the “I’ve got mine and I hate yours” brand of politics that is gutting America. Yet here is the CPAC closing comment. “The popular media narrative is that this country has shifted away fro conservative ideals, as evidenced by the last two elections,” said Texas Governor Rick Perry, who when asked couldn’t seem to remember what programs he’d like to cut if he were president, “That might be true if Republicans had actually nominated conservative candidates in 2008 and 2012.”

The all-time king of aggressive stupidity, however is Rick Santorum. The man combines both dunderheaded conservative politics and a conservative catholicism that forces him to spew hate while pointing fingers at Americans who don’t think his way. He had this to say about why Republicans are failing so miserably at convincing Americans their way is the right way, “Face it, the left can always promise more stuff, and make is sound like they care more, because they make it easier for Americans by providing stuff for them, through government programs, paid by by somebody else’s money.”

Jesus loves you Rick. But he would tell you that you’re an insane hypocrite. Just like the rest of the aggressively stupid people who run your party and elections by running lies and manipulations up the flagpoles of country and God.

Why America is still a primitive nation

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America will remain a primitive nation until it moves beyond literalism in its creation myths and national identity

America will remain a primitive nation until it moves beyond literalism in its creation myths and national identity

All cultures in the world, whatever their current sophistication, developed around a creation myth of one kind or another. To put it bluntly, the United States of America has not one, but two creation myths around which the cultural debate revolves.

America’s dual(ing) creation myths
The initial creation myth upon which at least half of America depends for its cultural identity is the Christian bible with its creation myth drawn on the book of Genesis, a literal Adam and Eve and the tribal history that followed and has extended into the present.
The second creation myth is the story of the Founding Fathers, upon whose originality America was invented and prospered.
Infallibility and inerrancy
These creation myths are considered by many to contain the salt of inerrancy and infallibility. People who take the Bible literally are loathe to consider that anything in its pages has been contradicted by outside knowledge and history. Similarly, those who abide by a view of inerrancy toward the Founding Fathers also take a dim view of interpreting anything in the Constitution anew. Many would seem happy to eradicate even those Amendments; against slavery, against a woman’s right to vote, against equal rights for all races, with the intent of “restoring” the Constitution to its original and supposedly holy premise: That the Founding Fathers were wiser than us.
A constrained lens
It is no coincidence that a significant part of American culture views both the Bible and the Constitution through this lens of inerrancy. That type of personality that resists change and is more secure with what appears to be clear authority than to sail on the surface of liberality. That is, they don’t want to have to make choices. They prefer a worldview where the hard choices are already made, where God tells them what to do, and where the nation is founded upon a rock of wisdom that cannot be cracked or moved.
Some call these propensities “conservative,” with some pride perhaps, in seeking to protect the founding myths of tradition and cultural orientation. The word “conservative” is defined as follows: conservative; disposed to preserve existing conditions, institutions, etc., or to restore traditional ones, and to limit change.
Definitive dangers
The danger of a conservative viewpoint is revealed in its very definition, of course. For the last few words in the definition outline its true character, and that is to limit change. Many conservatives appear bound to protect that last aspect of the tradition at nearly any cost.
To be so aggressively rooted in the past produces, of course, an ultimate fear of anything changing in the present, or likely to produce change in the future. Such fearful thoughts are indicative of a truly primitive mind, one so characterized by fear in fact, that  fear sees evil even where it is not, yet likewise forms additional gods where there are none.
Conflicted at the primitive roots
So let us examine, for a moment, the nature of the primitive or conservative mind, and how it drives what America has become. We shall also learn how and why American is conflicted at the roots and unable to move forward into a future where our creation myths can be reconciled to our progressive natures.
We can begin by examining the definition of the word primitive:
Primitive:
1. being the first or earliest of the kind or in existence, especially in an early age of the world: primitive forms of life.
2. early in the history of the world or of humankind.
3. characteristic of early ages or of an early state of human development: primitive toolmaking.
4. unaffected or little affected by civilizing influences; uncivilized; savage: primitive passions.
A primitive grip
These definitions converge on one thought: that primitivism refuses to be changed from the inside or from without. Significantly, the effort to protect the primitive viewpoint of the world, in America’s case the idea that both the Bible and the Constitution are infallible and inerrant, produces a form of tribalism wound around the core myths like a yarn. Its threads are visible, and can be cut, but the whole remains tightly wound because of its collective grip on the deep inner consciousness of the rod within.
Tribalism
Primitive tribalism is always a defensive posture. The entire history of the world is written around cultures that have built up to grand scales around their creation myths only to be invaded by more powerful cultures less concerned with culture than imperial aims. The Romans wisely made a practice of allowing these creation myths to persist, to some degree, within their empire, so long as tribute was paid and the ultimate loyally was declared to the Emperor.
Yet even the Roman culture ultimately failed, driven perhaps by terror of its own power and pulled apart by external forces that did not respect the core idea that Rome was a superior power, and therefore rightful owners to permanent empire.
Some speculate America as the new Rome, but the analogies only go so far. America’s biggest problem is not its imperialism, which is expressed in another patent belief in its infallibility, American Exceptionalism, which is nothing more than a primitive attempt to justify its own existence in the face of its often egregious acts of tribalism and fear.
America needs a critical review
Yes, this is a criticism of America, and of the Bible, of the Founding Fathers. But it is especially a criticism of the primitive mindset and tribalism that has resulted from a dependence on a literal form of worldview that is holding the nation back. And that has consequences. Deadly consequences.
In the last decade America has seen an increasing number of gun massacres. People armed with powerful murder weapons capable of shooting multiple rounds of ammunition within seconds have stalked into schools and malls fired at anyone who moves. The results are dozens dead from these massacres, and 30,000 people dying each year from gunfire.
Shooting from the Constitutional hip
Yet despite these horrific figures, Constitutional literalists insist that the Second Amendment is sacrosanct. It is not to be interpreted in any other fashion than to be taken literally, that is, no limits on the right to keep and bear arms. Yet there are differences of opinion within the judicial ranks as to what the Second Amendment really means. Justince Antonin Scalia interprets the term “militia” to mean “everyone.” Everyone who handles a gun becomes part of a militia by literal decree. He states
Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority in Heller, stated: As we will describe below, the “militia” in colonial America consisted of a subset of “the people”— those who were male, able bodied, and within a certain age range. Reading the Second Amendment as protecting only the right to “keep and bear Arms” in an organized militia therefore fits poorly with the operative clause’s description of the holder of that right as “the people”.[126]

Meanwhile Justice John Paul Stevens countered in his dissent by arguing that the truth is more subtle, and not literal when defining a militia as anyone who owns and handles a gun: When each word in the text is given full effect, the Amendment is most naturally read to secure to the people a right to use and possess arms in conjunction with service in a well-regulated militia. So far as appears, no more than that was contemplated.

Civilized versus tribal

When it comes to choosing a nation that is able to confine and regulate its internal arsenal, in other words, a civilized nation versus a tribal and lawless nation operating under vigilante justice, Justice John Paul Stevens arrived at the conclusion that the Second Amendment was not meant to be interpreted literally to mean that everyone who wants to own a gun, and use it, is covered by the term “well-regulated militia.”

Justice Antonin Scalia, by contrast, takes the literal, more primitive and more tribal approach of creating opportunity for everyone to own a gun of any type, almost without restriction. In so doing, Scalia and his populist henchmen in organizations such as the National Rifle Association have fostered a tribal culture in which gun ownership literally is the law of the land.

Cowboy myths

This primitive interpretation of the Second Amendment of course fits with America’s treasured Cowboy myths of an unbridled freedom in the Wild West. That was supposedly an America in which everyone carried a gun and settled their differences out in the street, like honest men and women do.

Yet the facts are somewhat different, and cowboy myths are just that, conflated images of relatively rare incidents of either heroic or tragic behavior. Then cannot be taken literally. In fact, our national narrative cannot agree on even the most basic of cherished traditions, including the life and death of men life Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King, Jr. The lives of these particularly great men were fairly well chronicled, and yet their deaths by gun assassinations have had little if no effect on the primitive fact that they were shot dead by guns.

A deadly and ignored narrative

Instead, America has embraced a primitive narrative that says, in effect, that the deaths of great presidents and leaders, as well as innocent, is the supposed price of freedom to own and use guns any way “the people,” as Justice Scalia so cynically defines it, shall be unabridged.

This is a fatal sort of primitivism, deadly both to the people killed by guns and to the conscience of the nation as a whole. We live in an America where people scream against the right to have an abortion yet tolerates the use of deadly weapons to take life on a daily basis. That is primitive thinking, at best. Irresponsible and irrational, at worst.

Red herrings and mental health

The current direction of the gun debate appears to be steering towards and effort to take guns out of the hands of the mentally ill whenever possible. Yet that approach plays into the hands of the primitivist gun lobby because it defers raising the question on the rights of gun ownership as a whole, and why that interpretation of the Second Amendment by men like Justice Scalia is so wrongheaded and avoids the subject.

All of America has a mental illness so long as we depend on a literal interpretation of our creation myths. The fact that 50% of America believes in a literal interpretation of the book of Genesis is responsible for a deep chasm between progressive education in the sciences, medicine, geology and philosophy ranging all the way to civil rights, including equal rights for minorities, gays and all people. That is the path to civility and maturity as a nation, yet it is being blocked by a primitive religious culture that is prejudicial, aggressive and tribal.

Correcting the mistakes of the Founding Fathers

Likewise on the Constitutional front. America’s creation myth of the Founding Fathers as somehow perfect beings has been contradicted over and over again with amendments to the Constitution delivering equal rights to blacks (which took another 100 years to commence in full) women and now people of all orientations. This progressive tradition is making America a better place for all to live. Indeed, it fulfills the equality so strongly desired by the Founding Fathers in drafting a Constitution that guaranteed equal rights for all people. Yet that equality has been repeatedly and aggressively denied by constitutional primitivists who use the so-called letter of the law to interpret it to meet their tribal desires for power and control.

Free will and choosing grace

America needs to overcome this fearful tradition of literalism and primitivism at its core. Only then will the nation fulfill its true definitions of freedom, and by ironic consequence, also fulfill the meaning of true freedom espoused in the Christian Bible and nearly all faith traditions. The freedom to choose grace, rather than impose will upon others shall not be abridged.

Jesus was particularly unfond of those whose power turned upon a phrase in order to manipulate “the people.” Here in Matthew 15 we find a description of how Jesus handled such challenges.

Matthew 15 Then some Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and asked, 2 “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don’t wash their hands before they eat!”

3 Jesus replied, “And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? 4 For God said, ‘Honor your father and mother’[a] and ‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.’[b] 5 But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is ‘devoted to God,’ 6 they are not to ‘honor their father or mother’ with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition. 7 You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you:

8 “‘These people honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
9 They worship me in vain;
their teachings are merely human rules.’[c]”

Think about the application of this scripture to current day issues in America, in which Second Amendment Constitutional rights are being construed and dispensed in ways  that literally lead to murder and death. We need not ask what Jesus would do in these circumstances.

Instead, we can look in a multitude of places in the Bible, and need not fall back on a literal interpretation to understand that it is our duty and our right to consider a better America, one that is not constrained by primitivism or tribalism the way it is today. We can use this bit of scripture as a starting point of inspiration, to do so:

Matthew 5:20
For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.

Let’s move beyond the primitivism and the tribalism.

America’s gun problem ultimately requires a peaceful solution

/ Christopher Cudworth / 6 Comments
Guns were designed for one thing

Guns were designed for one thing

Back in 2008, which seems like a couple decades ago in today’s 24-hour news cycle, I published an article titled America’s Gun Addiction on Yahoo!, then waited for the requisite hateful commentary of gun addicts calling me “naïve” and other such nonsense.  I never proposed to take away their handguns and assault weapons, but that’s all they could read from it.

Instead, I was simply asking people to consider whether they are addicted to the notion of owning and using guns. Reasonable question, given the proliferation of gun violence in America. And yet people do not seem to get the message that gun violence has a cause, a purpose and a political consequence. Let’s examine these three notions together, and do so a bit provocatively. This is to draw attention to the fact that we are traveling down the road of an escalation in gun violence that some contend will mitigate itself when we reach some stasis where the number of guns in society simply cancels out its own violence. But at what price, and how many lives along the way? And when that stasis of violence cancellation is reached, what will it truly say about our society when have created a culture where equality is defined by equal threats rather than equal rights?

The realities of gun fascism

To draw nearer the truth of where that journey is taking us, we must indeed go another step further, and add a new proposal.

What we have in America is a growing form of gun fascism wrought by the never-ending cycle of gun violence supported by cries for even more guns to solve the gun violence problem.

“Arm the citizenry!” has become the rallying cry of gun advocates and the NRA, and what a disturbing breakdown in logic that really us. But no real surprise. Yet we need to recognize that democracy has a hard time breathing when the air of logic is sucked out of the room by the irrationality of one cause or another.

Fascism depends on a circular logic designed to suck all the air out of discussion and dissent, you see. The strategy of fascists is simple: win the fight by claiming that the cause of our problems is actually the solution. Then repeat your argument often and loudly enough until people come to believe it.

Unless you don’t choose to.

Radical authoritarian nationalism

To call our gun culture “fascism” might seem un-American given our nation’s history of gun obsession, but the description fits. Fascism is defined as is a form of radical authoritarian nationalism. That describes our gun culture perfectly. Those of us who don’t really feel the need to own guns, and who don’t knuckle under to the hot desire to use them are being told, in so many words, that we are naïve, stupid and un-American for having such rational feelings. We’re told to “get with the program” or get shot. There is no in-between.

The not-so-well-regulated militia

We have now reached the point where gun culture has far surpassed the meaning of the Second Amendment with its call for a well-regulated militia. If our so-called “militia” is indeed a force of privately armed citizenry, then who is really doing something about the use of both legal and illegal weapons to shoot and kill dozens of innocent citizens? The gun advocates tell us the cops can’t stop it. They get there after the fact. So the gun fascists tell us the “only way” to stop gun violence is to give everyone a gun. Many would seem to be happy to make it a requirement of citizenship. “That’s taking real responsibility for your own life,” they tell us.

Instead of acknowledging the egregious state of affairs the Connecticut school shootings represent, the gun fascists such as pro-gun Senators just hide away for a few days and then emerging spouting the same gun propaganda they always spew at us. They go on telling us that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”

That is a fascist, propagandistic statement designed to control and manipulate the thoughts of a nation by confusing the ability of people to place responsibility where it really lies: on guns as a tool of death and destruction. Such propaganda is a radical controtion of fact that completely ignores original purpose and design of guns, which is to kill.

The fact that we use guns for “sport” is only a deferral of the original design. It does not defer the nature of their original intent. Guns are weapons designed to kill things, and forever shall they remain so. Trying to shift the blame away from that fact is just like saying that people didn’t design guns, the guns designed themselves. We know that is not true.

Literalistic intepretation of the Second Amendment

So how has America’s gun culture become a form of fascism? Our gun culture takes a literal interpretation of the first part of the Second Amendment and exaggerates it to the point of an absurd and often bitter selfishness by essentially ignoring the phrase “well-regulated militia.”

Rather than accepting that “well-regulated” means logical control of those weapons so that the citizenry at large is safe, they cry in fear at any restriction of the so-called freedoms, and then take forceful political action to impose their will on the nation as a collective. “Don’t take away our gun rights!” the gun culture screams. It is the hallmark of gun fascism to hide behind the protection of the Constitution. Yet gun fascisms literally takes away the rights of others every day, with more than 50,000 gun incidents annually in America, and no less than 9,000 deaths a year as the direct product of gun violence. Whose rights are really being violated here?

No less than three 9/11 tragedies per year

We lost over 3,000 people in the 9/11 tragedy. Then our nation’s president (who is known to have ignored warnings about the pending attacks) declared a War On Terror, then proceeded to launch two relatively aimless and unbudgeted wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, costing the nation trillions of dollars, many more American lives and the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq and Afghanistan. America has gone to great expense fighting its so-called War On Terror, yet three times as many people die in America from gun violence every year as died in the 9/11 attacks. What’s wrong with this picture.

The bully pulpit of American exceptionalism

The terrorists who committed the crimes in New York knew they were picking on the world’s biggest bully. America is a bully, yet a rather philanthropic one, if you take into account or practice of nation-building after we whack a few other bad guys. That makes us the “exception” you see.

But according to the rules of bullydom, no one is allowed to hit us first. We’re always the ones who get to hit first. If someone hits us we label it “infamy” or “terrorism” or “an act of war.” Well, duh. Sometimes America can be exceptionally stupid about its place in the world. So yes, we are exceptional in some ways.

That is not hating America, by the way, to criticize our nation’s propensity for stupidity at times. That is giving the nation tough love, and we need a dose of it on the issue that is killing our kids, which is guns.

Let us repeat for emphasis: within our own borders we lose three times as many people to gun violence each year as we lost when terrorists flew planes into buildings on 9/11,.

Meanwhile the gun proponents try to tell us it is all the price of freedom.

Nope. This is fascism and a brand of terrorism on our own soil. If we can’t seem to think of any other way to control it than giving out more guns to our citizenry so they can “defend themselves,” we have literally lost the fight for freedom. We certainly can’t shoot our way out, although some might like to try.

False myths and fascist wishes

How long do we really want to lie to ourselves about the open-ended terrorism of gun violence that rips through the fabric of American culture with a seemingly unrelenting pace? Gun fascists tell us to “wise up” to the fact that things will never change. There are 200 million guns in America now. We can’t get rid of them all.

More fascist mindset. It only wants its selfish aims to be fulfilled and uses the false myth that guns bespeak independence and authority.

A last measure of peace, and why America is not anything like a “Christian nation”

That mindset of current day gun fascists would greatly surprise the person known as Jesus Christ, whose instructions to “love your enemy” certainly did not mean to shoot them first and love them later. Yet that is the message of the gun culture we’ve created, a product of the fascist propaganda pumped out by the NRA to support its own commercial clients. America’s freedoms are being sold up the river so that gun and ammunitions companies can make money, and so that people who own guns, legally or not, can be exonerated from culpability for their misuse, at any level. It’s very sad. America is very sad right now because of it.

So we live with a form of terrorism and a fascist strain of a faux branch of government to boot.

The fact is, the way things are now, we could all be shot, any moment of our lives. The gun culture tells us this is inevitable unless we arm ourselves. Such is their interpretation of “freedom.” But it is certainly not in line with the notion of freedom espoused by Christianity, upon whose values some of our nation’s foundations were partly based. That brand of freedom shows personal discipline in resistance to violence. Martin Luther King, Jr. exhibited Christian resistance to violence. And what happened? It got him shot. But the solution was not to arm protestors. The solution was persistence in the face of prejudice and violence.

“Do not suffer the children to come to me”

If a nation dominated by guns is all we have to offer our children, that notion of a “city upon a hill” is all but lost.

Tell that myth to the little children shot in the latest tragedy, and to the millions of other children now asking their parents whether they will be shot at school next week. If we follow the logic of the gun fascists, our city on the hill must automatically become a fortress. The notion is simply medieval.

Jesus once warned his disciples, “do not suffer the children to come to me.” He wanted all to know the sanctity of true freedom, which is not borne on threat and self defense, but on love, charity, understanding and yes, education to the perils of evil in our world. We do need to watch out. But our first priority should be prevention, not vengeance in return for vengeance.

Echoes of vengeance

Today parents are at pains to explain to their children that the Connecticut shootings were just an isolated incident. That’s the advice being given by psychologists.

Tell your kids it’s okay. Tell them they’re not at risk. Assure them the bad guys will not reach their schools.

In other words, lie to them now, and hopefully you’ll never have to explain why that lie was so false. Some lies appear vital to the sanity of a nation at risk. It’s true in war. It’s true in supposed peace as well.

America was turned rotten from the inside out by people who have gone about preaching freedom while creating an iron curtain of weapons inside our own borders, an imprisonment of our imaginations. We’re all captives to limits placed on our imaginations when it comes to the true meaning of democracy and freedom. Yet nothing can kill the imagination quicker than the report of a gun. I’ve heard it in my own quiet neighborhood, the product of a domestic quarrel down the block. Yet I didn’t run out to Walmart and buy a gun. That’s illogical.

Yet that gun report did rattle the minds of those who live nearby. The sound of that guns has had a chilling effect on the notion that we are free to live in peace and harmony. Guns are everywhere, and there’s nothing we can do about it.

At least that’s what they tell us. It’s up to us whether we choose to listen or not.