Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

My neighbor just renewed her Permit to . . . okay, you get the picture.

The Revolutionary War started in 1776 and ended in 1783.  The Constitution was adopted in 1787, four years after the war ended.  What were the Founders doing all that time?  Thinking.  Studying.  Debating.  Trying to answer the most basic questions: what is government?  What is it for?  What is its purpose?  What should it Do and what should it Not Do?

Some people wanted a king, some wanted a strong parliament, some wanted the power of government severely limited.  As for the people who favored the Constitution, we know what they were afraid of and why because we can read their thoughts in pamphlets.  We know which rights they found particularly important to protect from government, because they made a special point of adding the Bill of Rights as the first ten amendments to the Constitution.

The Founders warned us that the right to keep and bear arms is the right that secures all the others.  If The People lack the means to force the government to back off, The People do not have Rights, they merely have Privileges awarded on whatever conditions are set by whomever is running the government at the moment.  My prior posts on Permit to Vote, Permit to Pray, Permit to Publish are intended to highlight just how differently modern society treats the right to keep and bear arms, a distinction the Founders would have found utterly abhorrent.

Joe Doakes

Pretty sure our founders would have long since moved on to another country if they came back to life today.

Poland, maybe.  Some place that appreciates freedom.

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Thursday, June 25th, 2015 at 5:00 am and is filed under Liberty. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.