Leaving it to
politically appointed judges, even on the Supreme Court, to ‘interpret’ it, has
failed miserably and we have had repeated mass murders in schools,
supermarkets, houses of worship, night clubs and other entertainment venues
that just don’t seem to end. All of this
can be blamed on the Second Amendment being responsible for the proliferation of
weapons among the irresponsible in our country.
But let’s start at the beginning.
Here is the
Second Amendment. Read it over
carefully. Note its punctuation.
“A well
regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right
of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
You’re smart (otherwise
you wouldn’t be reading this) so now tell me what you think it means. Speak it
aloud. Write it down.
But read it first. At least two
times. Note
its first thirteen words, followed by a comma.
Would you conclude that they
state the reason for the Amendment’s second fourteen words? I do, but the Supreme Court of the United
States, following the lead of the late Justice Antonin Scalia does not.
To me at least, it is clear that the people to whom were given the right to keep and bear arms were not
given that right as individuals but solely to make possible ‘a well regulated
militia.’ That’s what it says. Militias are formed by governments, not mobs or
individuals, and the Framers had State governments in mind. Who else did the Framers envision as responsible for 'well regulating' those militias? The words say ‘free State’ and they were what
those Framers had in mind, not individuals. Now think for
a minute: What was the ‘security’ of those thirteen free States (now there are
50) mentioned that these militias were
necessary to protect?
Foreign
invasion? Aliens from space? Nope.
American history indisputably tells us that slaveholding states would
not vote to confirm the Constitution back in 1788 unless they were given some
way of opposing slave rebellions, an unlikely occurrence, but more likely fear
of actions by Federal troops to end or limit the practice of slavery, the key
to their economies. They feared that might happen. That’s what these militias
were supposed to be for, to oppose the armed forces of the Federal government.
And although the militias no longer exist, their modern equivalent being the National Guard, that idea persists.
In those days,
when citizens were called up to serve in a militia, they were expected to bring
their own weapons. The slaveholding
States wouldn’t provide them (at least initially) and wanted to prevent the
Federal Government from legislating against citizens keeping and bearing arms,
which were necessary if these militias were to have any teeth in the form of weapons.
Without them, they would just be window dressing.
For political
reasons, during the past thirty years or so, Interpretation of the Second
Amendment has been stretched by courts to mean that the people’s right to keep
and bear those arms exists not for the reasons given above, which no longer
exist because slavery was ended by the 13th, 14th, and 15th
Amendments, but for personal protection and more quietly, in the background, to
aid in rising up against an oppressive government which itself might threaten
the security of a free State, or of the nation itself. Rebellion?
Revolution? Insurrection? Call it what you may. That is not what the
Amendment says. But that’s what the misguided Supreme Court’s rulings permit. That’s what those who attacked the Capitol on
January 6, 2021 believed. The chef
culprit in making this horrible misinterpretation of the Second Amendment this
was the aforementioned late Justice Antonin Scalia. His warped and tortuous logic persists in
today’s Supreme Court, ruled by a majority including three purely political
appointments.
As a result,
there are now many more guns, including military-type assault weapons in the
United States than there are people!
Deranged individuals or those who want to attack people with whom they
disagree or dislike have no trouble getting these weapons. They murder them
regularly thanks to the Second Amendment and Justices like Scalia.
Really, the
problem cannot be solved by repeal or rewriting of the Second Amendment because
the Constitution’s rigid requirements to do either make it next to impossible
that that will ever happen. The
majorities required in Congress and among the States are for all intents and
purposes monumentally unattainable. Such changes, when made, take many, many,
decades. The only remaining alternative, then, is to have a Supreme Court that
interprets the Second Amendment by sticking to its words, as they were
intended, as reproduced above, and not according to some political agenda fused
onto them, in effect ignoring its first thirteen words.
Doing this will
require a President to appoint Justices who will interpret the Second Amendment
by what it actually says and not politically, expanding the Supreme Court if
necessary to do that, not just waiting for vacancies to occur, and a
significant majority supporting that President in the Senate where confirmation
of Justices takes place.
Ending gun
violence turns out to be a problem which can only be solved by voters
supporting presidential and senatorial candidates committed to doing so. Until
then, blood will flow regularly in the streets of America.
JL
Republican Fun and Games
Here’s a column by Dana Milbank published last
Friday (Nov. 18) in the Washington Post (consider subscribing to it),
reporting the fun and games that the Republicans, who will now control the
House of Representatives, are planning.
I sense the beginnings of the G.O.P. starting to develop what the
Democrats have had for years, a circular firing squad.
‘As Republicans Take the
House, the ‘Crazies’ Take the Wheel’
"Wednesday evening, Republicans formally won control of the House.
Thursday morning, in the first public act of the new majority, senior
House Republicans revealed their most urgent priority: They would investigate
Hunter Biden.
The incoming chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, the
incoming chairman of the Oversight Committee, James Comer, R-Ky., and about 10
other members of the brand-new majority walked into the House TV studio first
thing Thursday to announce multiple probes into the president’s son.
“Hunter Biden was conducting business with suspected human traffickers,”
they asserted, and “Hunter Biden and Joe Biden were involved in a scheme to try
to get China to buy liquefied natural gas,” and “credit cards and bank accounts
of Hunter and Joe Biden were commingled” and “Hunter wanted keys made for Joe
Biden” to his office. They mentioned Hunter two dozen times in their opening
statements alone.
Reporters tried to ask questions about other topics. Comer cut them off.
“If we could keep it about Hunter Biden, that would be great,” he said,
explaining that “this is kind of a big deal, we think.”
“Why make this your very first visible order of business?” one reporter
asked.
Comer assured her that other pressing issues would also be addressed:
“Kevin [McCarthy] said the first legislation we’re going to vote on is to
repeal the 87,000 IRS agents.”
Great idea! After a GOP campaign focused on crime, their first legislative
act will be to protect criminals. They’ll try to block the hiring of IRS
enforcement personnel (the true number is much less than 87,000) assigned to
crack down on the wealthiest tax cheats. Voters who elected Republicans to
fight inflation and gas prices might be feeling puzzled, if not swindled.
But, in fairness, the noisiest voices in the GOP have other plans, too:
They also want to cut off military aid to Ukraine as it fights off Russia’s
invasion.
A few hours after the Comer and Jordan show, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene,
R-Ga., took the same stage to announce plans to force a vote on ending funds
for Ukraine. “Is Ukraine now the 51st state?” asked Greene, who alleged an
elaborate cryptocurrency conspiracy in which military aid for Ukraine actually
funds Democrats’ campaigns.
Not too long ago, the Republican Party stood against Russian aggression.
But with the GOP’s single-digit majority in the new House, the oddballs hold
all the power. “You’ve heard Leader McCarthy say publicly that he doesn’t see
very good odds for much funding for Ukraine going forward in a
Republican-controlled conference,” Greene pointed out.
Fellow crank Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., agreed: “I will not vote for one
more dollar to Ukraine!”
It was heartwarming to see Greene and Gaetz on the same page again.
Earlier in the week, they were feuding about whether to deny McCarthy the
speakership (the defection of even a couple of Republicans could doom him).
Greene backed McCarthy for speaker and told McCarthy’s critics (including
many of her fellow members of the far-right Freedom Caucus) to bring it on.
“I’m not afraid of the civil war in the GOP — I lean into it,” she said on
former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s podcast.
Gaetz shot back: “Whatever Kevin has promised Marjorie Taylor Greene, I
guarantee you this: At the first opportunity, he will zap her faster than you
can say ‘Jewish space laser’” — a reference to the antisemitic sentiments that
got Greene kicked off her committees. McCarthy has promised to restore her
privileges.
McCarthy’s age-old ambition to be speaker is again teetering. Thirty-one
House Republicans opposed his nomination as speaker this week — many times the
number needed to sink him when the full House votes in January.
 |
| Kevin McCarthy, who may or may not become Pelosi's successor as House Speaker |
Even if he wins the job, he might soon wish he hadn’t. That’s because
he’ll only get it by signing an endless pile of IOUs the crazies are demanding:
impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Multiple Hunter
Biden investigations. A select committee to investigate China. An investigation
of the Jan. 6, 2021, investigation. Investigations of Anthony Fauci and the
U.S. Chamber of Commerce. And a panoply of probes into the Justice Department
and the FBI. McCarthy is going to be held “completely hostage,” outgoing Rep.
Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., predicted.
The same day Republicans were yammering about investigating Hunter and
defunding Ukraine, outgoing Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., announced her
retirement from leadership after two decades in charge of House Democrats. She
was the first woman to be speaker and one of the most effective ever to hold
that role.
Yet, most Republicans skipped Pelosi’s announcement on the House floor
(and a few opted for social-media taunts). Among the missing was McCarthy, who
explained: “I had meetings.”
One of those meetings McCarthy had Thursday was with Greene, who informed
him of her anti-Ukraine maneuver. “I said, ‘I’m having a press conference at
4,’” Greene recounted. “And he said, ‘OK.’”
Of course he did. The crazies are all knocking at his door. And if he
wants to be speaker, there is only one answer to their demands: “OK.”
(Dana Milbank is an opinion columnist for The Washington Post.)
This poem
that I wrote for the July 30 posting on this blog, and which has been included
in many postings since then, also recently appeared in my community’s magazine,
receiving much favorable comment. Only the original July 30 posting, however,
included my explanatory notes about the meaning of the poem. Here is the poem again, for the
umpteenth time, and with those notes.
America Afloat
Jack
Lippman
The greatness of America
Is that it does survive
Attacks upon democracy
Whose flame it keeps alive.
The laws that blossom from the words
The Founding Fathers wrote
Still serve us well today to keep
America afloat.
This doesn’t happen by itself,
We cannot wish it true,
The bottom line, my friends, is that
It all depends on you.
* * *
I am proud of this poem. It is not just a collection of
patriotic rhymes. It sums up a lot of my thoughts.
It was written in response to the meaningless slogan of the
defeated former president, ‘Make America Great Again,’ which encourages his
supporters to look back to any time in the past that they think was better than
what America is today, casting negative aspersions on any changes which may
have occurred since that elusive time in the past that they feel have
diminished America’s greatness, and pointedly reduced their own traditional
social and economic positions.
The first verse points out that what really makes America great has been
its ability to survive the attacks on democracy presented by the crises of
1776, 1812, 1860, 1918, 1941, 2001, and most recently, by the efforts of the
defeated former president to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power which has
followed every presidential election in American history except his,
culminating in violence on January 6, 2021. That ability enables America to
continue its role as a ‘city on a hill,’ serving as a democratic beacon to
other nations.
The second verse points out that America is a nation based on laws, as established
in the Constitution and those subsequently developed in the spirit of that
document and of the Declaration of Independence as well. The unspoken
alternative to 'staying afloat' is 'sinking.'
The third verse assigns responsibility for maintaining this greatness to us as
individual citizens.
JL
* * * *
Customer
Service
As of late, I have been having trouble dealing
with the customer service people at several business that I patronize. That’s because these companies had outsourced
their customer service operations to companies that specialize in performing this
function. They are often located in the
Philippines or somewhere in Latin America, resulting in their people lacking
familiarity with the area where the companies employing them do business,
making communications difficult. I suspect that I am not the only person experiencing
such difficulties.
Sometimes these customer service operations
cannot do much more than reply to basic questions, the kind that usually can be
answered ‘online,’ and must refer more complicated problems, such as
authorizing refunds or even changing credit cards, to other sites, unavailable
to the customer, for handling. The result is inferior service from what was once
available when a business maintained its own local customer service operation.
Getting to speak to a supervisor is
rarely possible since the supervisor may be thousands of miles from the
customer service person to whom one is speaking. Another complication is that a
customer service representative may be handling several different companies
from their desk and have different sets of rules to follow for different client
companies.
Finally, it is unpatriotic for American
businesses to ship jobs overseas, and most of these customer service jobs are indeed
outside of the United States, so long as there are Americans available to take
these jobs right here.
A solution to this problem might be to impose a
tax penalty on businesses that outsource their customer service
operations. What they are doing,
providing a service, is different from a company that outsources its
manufacturing, for which such penalties would be impractical, amounting to a
tariff. Customer service is a different ball game entirely and
most businesses can well afford to bring back their customer service to where
it is closer to the customer it is intended to serve. Such a penalty might encourage them to do so.
JL
* * * *
And of course, please forward this posting to anyone you think
might benefit from reading it. The place to send them is:
https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com
Important 'Forwarding' Addendum - It has come to my attention that Google Blogspot, the
platform on which Jackspotpourri is prepared, has revised its forwarding
abilities. If you click on the envelope
with the arrow at the conclusion of every posting, (it looks like this:
), you
will have the opportunity to list as many email addresses as you wish, along
with a comment from you, each of which will receive a link to the full blog
that you now are reading, with all of its bells and whistles. This is a great advance from the very basic
format Google Blogspot originally provided when they forwarded something. It might take a few minutes longer to be sent
but this method of forwarding offers the advantage of being able to forward jackspotpourri
to many addresses simultaneously. Either
way will work, sending them the link above or clicking on the envelope at the
bottom of this posting.
JL
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