Good book. Thoroughly researched and documented. If you’ve ever read the founding documents of the United States, you already know the conclusion, because it’s written in easily-understood English. The Second Amendment follows upon the heels of the first because the individual rights enumerated in the first require the protection afforded by the exercise of the individual right to keep and bear arms.
I’m impressed at how much our our nation has changed since its founding. Some changes are for the better, such as the abolition of slavery. That was a necessary consequence of adopting the ideals in our Constitution and Bill of Rights. However, the people of our country, and particularly its political leaders today do not have the same liberty-loving mindset as its founders. Reagan was a rare recent example of a true statesman who could both articulate and teach the classic American love for liberty. As for the rest, some genuinely try, but progressivism has replaced classical liberalism (now called conservatism) in the ideals of far too many hearts.
As progressives drag us all into their utopian nightmare, it’s encouraging to see that our constitution remains. The Bill of Rights was crafted for such a time as this, and the wisdom of the Second Amendment may well be tested soon, if the forces of progressive tyranny continue to disembowel the principles of personal liberty and responsibility that have been such a blessing to our society.
This book was not a quick read, especially on my schedule, but I recommend it for those who actually care what our constitution says and means, and also for those who would like more insight into the founders’ point of view. Having read this, I could never accept the claim that Americans should be prevented from retaining small arms of any kind, nor from carrying them at will. There are laws currently on the books that likely infringe upon the right protected in the Second Amendment, in the opinion of someone like Thomas Jefferson. Yet for better or worse, the law of our land is interpreted through the imperfect efforts of the judical branch, and some of those battles are yet to be finished.
If you think the abuses against which the Bill of Rights were written “could never happen here,” then you need to pay more attention to the news. Not the news that comes from the professional “news media,” because that’s filtered by the political perspective of those who produce it. Find the news sources that are vilified and mocked by the professional newsies, and read or listen carefully, understanding that everyone has an axe to grind.
The way forward for personal liberty and responsibility, for classical liberalism (aka conservatism), is probably not through the government of our country or even our states. We can elect conservative politicians, but even the best will find the needed reformation to be impossible, when tried only through the government.
The way forward is through regular people, through citizens like you and me. We need to exercise our rights to speech, to religion, to publish, to gather, to petition, and to bear arms. Maybe not all at once, and maybe not all for each person, but as a whole, the people need to be a free people at heart, and then we will be able to reform the soft tyranny that has been progressively gripping our nation through the last century. When we know liberty, then we will know the kind of change that must take place. We the people are the best hope for our country. You and me.
I may have written about it before, but I think I’ll post again soon on why I think freedom is such a precious thing in this world.