Tag Archives: musket

Declaration

Declaration: (n) an announcement

It is virtually impossible to think about the word “declaration” without completing it with “of Independence.”

You know why?

They lucked out.

In other words, if they had declared independence and lost the war, we would be looking for a declaration of something else.

And keep in mind, our forefathers tried real hard to lose.

If you study history, their habits, prejudices and analyze their whining, it’s a wonder they were able to actually put together the document itself.

If there is a possible way to do it wrong, the Continental Congress, George Washington and all the colonists found it.

They didn’t know what they were doing.

Mistakes were made.

Maybe before starting a war, you could have an army. And in the process of gathering that army, you could make sure they had guns, food to eat, and refrained from shooting each other.

The thirteen colonies did not agree on anything.

Except all of them hated King George.

King George III has been documented by history to be certifiably insane.

If there had been a nicer or better king in England, we all would be eating a helluva lot more fish and chips.

So in the pursuit of a declaration, keep in mind that someone might come along and stick a musket up your nose and say, “Prove it.”

When this happens?

Be prepared to fumble, falter and fail your way to freedom.

 

Bill of Rights

Bill of Rights:(n) the first ten amendments to the US Constitution

Dictionary B

So you’re sittin’ around with your buddies and you’ve just written a Constitution for a new little country which you have dubbed “The United States of America.”

You have high hopes.

But honestly, taking a peek at history, the life expectancy of such a national prospect is very dim.

Meanwhile, you’ve gone to the pub to celebrate your endeavor, and while talking with your friends, it occurs to you that you left out guarantees for personal freedom.

You feel a little silly, right?

So almost immediately, you go in and amend your document by adding ten ideas which guarantee that no tyrant will ever again trample on the God-given personal pursuits of any individual citizen.

Man, it seems noble.

But moving ahead a couple hundred years, we have the situation where the prevention of one tyrant opens the door to over three hundred million of them, as each person determines the boundaries of his or her actions, based upon the Bill of Rights.

This places us in a powder keg of controversy, with each citizen fearing they are being set aside in favor of honoring the liberties of another.

What is missing from the Bill of Rights? Some old-fashioned, damn common sense.

For instance, freedom of speech sounds really good until you actually have to sit and listen to one which is completely filled with nonsense and vitriol.

The right to bear arms may have once been practical, when single shot muskets took a minute to load and had no potential for rapidly firing, killing dozens at a time.

It goes on and on.

Oh, wait. There’s the Fifth Amendment, which supposedly protects us against self-incrimination, while actually ending up being a confession in parenthesis.

Just as people who translate science and the Bible as being immutable and without need of edit, those who worship the Constitution and its amendments fail to realize that the Founding Fathers were really just a bunch of goofs who got tired of being pushed around by crazy King George.

What they wrote and believed is neither supreme nor self-contained.

It is up to the intelligence of each generation to find the common good of all the citizens without making it seem that America is a restaurant with only tables built for one

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