A couple of thoughts about the American Revolution *UPDATED*
Bookworm on Mar 08 2009 at 2:06 pm | Filed under: Uncategorized
We finally received from Netflix HBO’s six-part production on the life of John Adams. It’s very good, although it tends to take itself a little bit too seriously, which reveals itself in the . . . very . . . slow . . . scenes . . . as . . . if . . . people . . . in . . . the . . . old . . . days . . . were . . . always . . . sedated. I also have a problem with Abigail Adams being portrayed as a dour, angry woman, which is not how I read her witty, informed letters. But those are small quibbles regarding an otherwise excellent show.
Watching the show, I came away with two thoughts, both of which I’ve had before, but both of which the show reinforced.
First, the show should remind us that not all fights are created equal, and that whether David is the good guy or the bad guy vis a vis Goliath depends upon the purpose behind his fight. What’s fascinating about the Revolutionaries, who took on the might of the English Empire, was what they were fighting for: liberty, freedom, self-determination. There is no doubt that slavery tainted those goals, but there is also no doubt that, as they said time, and time, and time again, those were, in fact, the goals at issue.
Contrast the purity of the Founders’ gaols to a few of the fighters the world today wishes to characterize as Davids. Let’s take Hamas, for example, which much of the world tries to characterize as a pure David fighting the evil Israeli Goliath. Certainly in terms of weaponry, it’s true that, at least now, Hamas is the little guy with the slingshot. That’s a cheap, shallow comparison, though. What one needs to do is look at Hamas’ goals in this fight.
What is Hamas fighting for? It’s easy to for us to say because, just as the Founders did, so too do the Hamas representatives tell us frequently and with clarity what their goals are: The destruction of Israel and the genocide of her citizens, the complete subjugation of women, the death of all homosexuals, and a worldwide Caliphate in which all are forced into submission to Allah and sharia law.
It’s equally instructive to look at the society Israel wishes to protect from the scrappy little “David” attacking her. Israel is a democratic republic that allows religious freedom and that provides equal rights to all citizens. She may be big, but she’s on the side of good.
All fights are not created equal. It doesn’t matter the relative size of the combatants. What matters is the cause behind the fight.
The other thing that became clear watching the show is that the Second Amendment must have been intended to protect citizens from an overreaching government. The American colonists could not have contemplated insurrection against a tyrannical government in the first instance if they were not armed to begin with.
This means that, when the Founders drafted the Second Amendment, they were not writing it to ensure that citizens could help the government engage in battle against a foreign power (although citizens arms would help). Instead, the Founders wrote the Second Amendment with a clear memory of the fact that citizens may be called upon to protect themselves against their own government.
As the Continental Congress had stated only a few years before enacting the Bill of Rights, “That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” This cannot be done unless the people have the ability to defend themselves against the government.
UPDATE: At Noisy Room, a couple of days before this post, Terresa put up reminders of the Founder’s own words about citizens and their guns.
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10 Responses to “A couple of thoughts about the American Revolution *UPDATED*”
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Good points, Book. Soooo…when will you finally make the jump to arm yourself?
When I was a hip liberal kid I used to laugh at the John Birchers who’d ride around with bumperstickers on their cars proclaiming, “When Guns Are Outlawed Only Outlaws Will Have Guns.”
“Delusional, paranoid thinking,” we young bien pensants used to reassure one another.
These days, looking at gun-control-fetish leftist strongholds like Detroit, St. Louis and Washington, DC, I’m thinking that maybe those crazy Birchers were on to something.
I too saw most of the series. What I loved most were the scenes in France where the TV series showed the difference between the grand Ben Franklin and the Puritanical Adams. Yet, Franklin was much greater and more important than Adams to the young American nation than was portrayed.
Worse, Adams was given undue credit in the TV series for Constitutional contributions that a man of such Puritanical, political ineptness could ever have claimed.
I didn’t see the final discs…too slow and I could already see the TV series attitudes writ large.
The genius of Hamilton was badly slighted and the horrible ideas of Jefferson (still with us today in countless failed ways) are overly approved.
“We young bien pensants.” Simply abbreviated WYBP. I was there too, part of that demographic. I voted Standard Liberal most of my life and only wised up in middle age. There’s no going back. I fear America may very well be lost — see a recent Michael Ledeen column about Tocqueville (link: http://pajamasmedia.com/michaelledeen/2009/02/14/were-all-fascists-now-ii-american-tyranny/ — but I’m determined not to go back.
It’s like 9/11. If you don’t have the experience to know that foreign immigrants can be a security threat, then you won’t be able to connect the dots between A and B.
Even if someone told you that A plus B equals a terrorist attack, you won’t believe it because you won’t be able to see in your mind’s eye how that could possibly happen.
The same is true with outlawing guns. For a person that grew up within the restrictions of law and community, they cannot imagine how a law will do the opposite of its intention. Even if they have experienced this very state of being, having a law do the exact opposite of its stated purpose, they won’t be able to connect the dots to the new situation. When a person’s world view consists of following the law, it is hard for them to visualize how people who don’t follow the law would act. There is a disconnect between point A and point B, to the effect that if you tell them that banning handguns will give only outlaws handguns, people won’t believe it because they don’t see how they could be. They may even understand the intellectual argument on our side, but they still don’t get it. They can’t allow themselves to get it. The mind has closed itself off, as a defense mechanism, the same people people regress or lose their memory. It’s too damaging otherwise, you see. Too hard. Too difficult. Too inconvenient.
Zhombre…
Why are you “determined not to go back”???
Excellent link, btw…
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