SECOND AMENDMENT CREATED TO ASSURE SLAVE OWNERS THEY COULD BRUTALLY PUT DOWN REBELLIONS

Below is a letter to the editor to the Indianapolis Star. Although I knew it was longer than the ones they usually print, I felt it had so many points that needed to be made, including information on the origins of the 2nd Amendment.

They rejected it on the grounds of its length, yet I pointed out in a series of emails to Tim Swarens, editorial-page editor, that they have been running lengthy pro-gun articles, so I suggested he not consider it a "letter to the editor," but a “conversation” or “my view” -- and run it. He would not.

Further down in my letter, you will find a description of the true origin of the 2nd Amendment. Those who love guns more than they love children seem to believe that the 2nd Amendment was carried down from the mountain top by Moses. The first step in the process to appeal it, which can’t come soon enough, is to understand why it was created.

You might have thought this point alone would have caught the eye of a fair-minded journalist who wanted to examine and report on this well-documented interpretation of the 2nd Amendment. If you help bring this to the attention of the media, we can get it out there, helping to educate both the media and their readers, listeners, and viewers.

But, please, also read the first part of the letter too that provides details of the Indianapolis Star's lust for guns – in only one issue of the paper. Two days later, on Saturday, January 19, a man shot himself accidentally after shopping at the gun show at the Indiana State Fairgrounds. The Star buried this front-page story back in the Metro section the next day. Earlier, it had also given little notice to the story of three people who were shot at another gun show, again when an idiot (read: gun-show lover) accidentally shot them.

Yes, I do start off with "appalling" a lot - but, aren't we all appalled. A lot?

Dear Editor:

I was appalled by the number of column inches in a single issue of the Indianapolis Star (Thursday, January 17) devoted to pro-gun sentiments.

The top item on Local Living’s “Things to Do Near You” was the Indy 1500 Gun & Knife Show at our Indiana State Fairgrounds. I’ve been appalled for years that the board and staff of the state fairgrounds welcome gun shows. It is even more appalling that your paper touts this as a place to go, with children, no less, especially when gun shows have long been proven to be gigantic loopholes in the efforts to control the sale of guns and the background checks on those who buy them. And you know that.

Erika D. Smith’s column about the delight of shooting the semi-automatic AR-15 rifle (the same one used to murder the children in Newtown, Connecticut) was sickening. Perhaps it would be appropriate to have photos of children to shoot at for target practice?

A survey of our members of Congress brought the expected, knee-jerk reaction defending the right to own guns, ignoring the horrible consequences of owning – and using – assault weapons. The comments from my representative, Andre Carson, said nothing about assault weapons. I want a hero to represent me in Congress, not a coward.

There isn’t room to comment on the idiocy of most of the writing about guns on the editorial page and in the letters to the editor.

I don’t believe in “gun rights.” I believe in human rights, the right to be safe from those who bear arms.

Attempts to sidetrack us into a discussion (another word for “long delay”) of mental illness doesn’t address the fact that the Newtown shooter’s mother owned an arsenal of weapons, including her own AR-15, which proved ineffective in defending herself against her own mentally ill son. We hear a lot of talk about “criminals” – people like her are the criminals, along with those who rob a store or another individual. And, no one who supports the right to own assault weapons is in his or her right mind.

President Obama’s proposals, matching those in the new legislation out of New York, allow current owners of assault weapons to keep them, legally. (We also deserve to have a hero in the White House, not a coward.) As you read this, assault weapons are being sold at a rapid pace, either at a gun shop or, even sadder, at our state fairgrounds. Perhaps Erika D. Smith will buy one at the fairgrounds, if she can stomach the displays of Nazi flags and uniforms, and go whoop it up with her own semi-automatic weapon.

The Second Amendment was willfully misinterpreted by the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision. It is a little-known fact that the purpose of that amendment was to provide comfort to slave owners when the United States was in its infancy. Professor Carl T. Bogus argues in his book, The Hidden History of the Second Amendment, that there is strong reason to believe that, in significant part, James Madison drafted the amendment to assure his constituents in Virginia, and the South generally, that Congress could not use its newly-acquired powers to indirectly undermine the slave system by disarming the militia, on which the South relied for slave control.  Read more at this link: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1465114

Perhaps persons of all backgrounds might be less eager to shout about trampling on the 2nd Amendment if they realized it had been designed to insure that slave owners could brutally put down any slave rebellions.

It’s a great pity that the Indianapolis Star does not have the courage to call for the banning of all assault weapons, including those now or soon to be owned. Obama called them “weapons of war.” Now, however, he has caved, as always, and does not include the banning of the vast arsenal of them already in the hands of the true criminals in this country.

John Sherman

Truth Trumps Lies

YOU WON’T SEE THIS IN THE INDIANAPOLIS STAR

I submitted this post to The Indianapolis Star, proposing it be an op-ed piece. In it, I complain that very few members of the media anywhere are stating the fact that you can be born in a foreign country and still be a U.S. citizen – as was our daughter - and still be eligible to become the U.S. President. Why aren’t they mentioning it? Because most members of the media don’t know.

The Star’s response? Silence. When I asked about it, “We’ll review it” was the response. After events overtook some of the content of this – Donald forced out of involvement in the Indy 500 – I wrote The Star, offering to revise and resubmit it. Silence.

I’ve decided to post it here, as originally written, even with the pace-car embarrassment now in the past, and with Donald’s withdrawal from a Presidential race he never intended to pursue, anyway. He got all the headlines he craved – and more.

I hope you will share this with reporters and editors. Maybe some will listen and write about this aspect of the U.S. citizenship story that is not being told.

Here’s the blog post / proposed op-ed piece:

TRUTH TRUMPS LIES

Let’s cut to the chase: (1) Barack Obama was born in the United States. (2) You do not have to have been born in the U.S. to serve as the U.S. President. (3) It is not too late to replace Donald Trump as the driver of the Indianapolis 500 Pace Car.

As recently as the latest U.S. presidential campaign, it was revealed that one of the candidates was not born in the U.S. — and Donald Trump kept quiet. Quite a feat. If John McCain, born in Central America, had been elected, he would have been eligible to serve as President, as eligible as his opponent, U.S.-born Barack Obama.

I am saddened that Obama felt compelled to release his birth certificate. He has – yet again – caved in to the very people he should be ignoring. He has bowed to the demands of a group of deniers of the truth, the so-called “birthers,” spurred on by various liars, including Indy Pace Car Driver Donald Trump. Willful denial in the face of facts describes the angry protests of those who follow manipulative “leaders” such as Trump.

Of all the disturbing aspects of this ridiculous discussion of birthplaces, perhaps the most disquieting one is that the American media could have buried this issue a long time ago if only reporters and editors had done their homework and if they had ignored and refused to treat as “news” crackpot ideas promoted by crackpots. And, an adherence to “innocent until proven guilty” instead of the other way around would have caused the media to demand proof of non-citizenship from those who have made the wild, false claims. Until such proof was produced, then coverage of the trumped-up charges should have been denied. It is and was not news. It is and was hearsay, rumors, and lies. If you truly believed Obama was not born a U.S. citizen, then the burden of that proof rested with you.

There appears to have been very little mention in most media of the fact that, even if Obama had been born in, say, Kenya, he would have been born a U.S. citizen, since his mother was an American. Our daughter, born in Kinshasa, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), has a birth certificate that’s titled, “Birth Certificate of a U.S. Citizen Born Abroad.” End of discussion. She is eligible to be elected President, just as much as her brother who was born in the U.S., albeit in one of our colonies (Washington, D.C.).

McCain was born to parents who were U.S. citizens in the portion of Panama that was, for nearly 85 years in the 20th century, the Panama Canal Zone, designated by our government as a U.S. territory, after we seized it from Panama. Barry Goldwater, born in the then-U.S. territory of Arizona in 1909, was not challenged when he ran against Lyndon Johnson in 1964. Nor was Mitt Romney’s father, George, a one-time Michigan governor who was born in Mexico, when he sought the Presidency. Questioning Obama’s citizenship isn’t the first time a U.S. President has been the target of false accusations on that topic. President Chester Arthur, born in Vermont to an American mother and an Irish-immigrant father, was said to have been born in Canada with British citizenship. It didn’t deter him from being elected Vice President and succeeding to the Presidency upon the assassination of James Garfield. Arthur was President from 1881 to 1885.

Pace Car Driver Donald Trump, the man of frequent business failures, over-the-top tawdry self-named buildings, a garish lifestyle, and a TV show that has actually dumbed down a medium we hoped had reached bottom, should be denounced for what he is: a publicity-seeking liar. Let’s encourage the media to do some homework and learn the basic facts of U.S. citizenship; let’s also encourage them to dwell on the many critical issues that face us rather than devote column inches or on-air appearances to a man with a harmful-to-others compulsion for attention.

Gail Collins wasted an entire column in The New York Times recently refuting Trump’s lies, one by one. While valuable information might have been there for those three or four readers who somehow missed the birther idiocy over the past few years, she too missed the point. She needed to say, up front, none of this matters, anyway, because Obama’s mother, an American citizen, could have given birth in any country in the world and guaranteed U.S. citizenship to her son because of U.S. Code Title 8, Chapter 12, Subchapter III, Part 1, § 1401. Clarifying the U.S. Constitution’s qualifications for President as being “a natural born citizen” (Article II, Section I), the code offers only a few restrictions to automatic U.S. citizenship for children born outside the U.S. These restrictions (prior residency requirements in the U.S., easily met by most parents) do not apply to the overwhelming majority of foreign-born children of one or two American-citizen parents.

One has to wonder why Trump, even before this latest set of rants against the President, was given the honor of driving the pace car in the first place. It’s an embarrassment for the city and the state and, of course, for the Indianapolis 500 itself. This honor, which should go to someone whom we respect, has been given to a person whose actions and pronouncements are becoming increasingly bizarre. We’re not asking for the driver to be a Mother Theresa. Just be someone that doesn’t repulse us and bring condemnation to our city and its important racing heritage.

Donald Trump represents the worst of American culture. There’s still plenty of time for the Indy 500 officials to say to him: “You’re fired!”

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This post was originally published on another blog on May 17, 2011.