words, words, words

Damn you Beagles, you made me go to the damn wiki. I remember reading some time ago that there isn’t much similarity between the militias of yore and the national guard of today, but I had forgotten the details of that so I went to the wiki, and it seems like part of the definition of a militia, back in the day, is of an unpaid force, which the national guard decidedly is not.

I did use ‘if’ instead of ‘since’ because I thought it would make my case more clear. It seemed to me that in this case the use of ‘since’ was similar to ‘if’. Since the weather is warm, we will go swimming implies that if the weather is cold we will not go swimming.

Words, words, words, that’s the problem with words. To you militia and the national guard are the same thing, to me they are distinctly different entities. The construction of ‘since’ in that sentence looks the same as ‘if’ to me, but not to you.

And yeoman, I looked up yeoman while I was on wiki, and it says that a yeoman was a property holder, and it was certainly a class thing since they were better than the landless, so does that mean renters aren’t part of the republic?

And I wouldn’t put a nickel on anything old Tom Jeff had to say. He was opposed to slavery, but he kept his. He was opposed to factories, but he built one on his farms. He was all for independent freeholders, but he was always neck deep in debt. He did have the power to stir men’s souls, but I don’t think that is necessarily a good thing. There’s been a lot of guys coming down the pike who stirred our souls and for the most part, we have ended up worse off for their passage.

Anyway it’s not like you are going to turn in Old Betsy if the gummint does away with the national guard, or if the supremes rule that that ‘since’ is really an ‘if.’ In fact you don’t look to the second amendment to justify your firearm at all. Seems like a wise move to me.

Seems to me if you think that your having your gun makes it a better world, you should stick to the reasons of why that makes for a better world (I think we should all work for a better world, no really, it’s the altruist in me.). Seems kind of foolish to say because the constitution says so, since some other guy can just as validly say I don’t think the constitution says so, and then you are arguing about what you both think the constitution says rather than whether it is a good idea to let Beagles walk around with the big iron. And then it really doesn’t matter what either of you guys think the constitution means, because some guy in a black robe will decide that.

If a law is constitutional until it is declared unconstitutional then it has like a time stamp on it. It was constitutional at 11:40 AM Feb 26th 2014, but after that it is unconstitional, and after 12:22 PM Feb 28th 2024 it will be constitutional again.

But what am I trying to say here? I’m not saying the constitution is a scrap of paper. Actually I think I already said that, but I was being a little showboaty, the way I sometimes get. The constitution is like this plan that we all agree to, like the rules for chess, this is how the game is played, and we all play fair, and I think this is what keeps us from manning the barricades and shooting at each other, which I think is a good thing.

But I think some people (on both sides) want to have some kind of law, say to make it illegal to smoke pot, and they look up their pocket copy and they find some phrase in it that they think supports their case, and now suddenly they are not simply advocating making pot legal, they are Defending the Constitution, and their chests puff out because now they are engaged in a noble cause. And then we are discussing the meaning of some phrase written down over two hundred years ago instead of whether or not legalizing pot will make it a better world.