A Short Memory About Long Ago

"Before the war, it was said 'the United States are' - grammatically it was spoken that way and thought of as a collection of independent states. And after the war it was always 'the United States is', as we say today without being self-conscious at all. And that sums up what the war accomplished. It made us an 'is'." Shelby Foote, historian, The Civil War, (1990).

It is axiomatic - etched in stone, as it were - that on-line political arguments waste time, offend and confound. Often, the bold statements are baldly false, opinions masquerade as facts and friends...FINOs?...excoriate each other mindless of years, or decades, together. Nothing good comes of entering the fray. Or, does it?

Much has been said, written, screamed about guns and gun laws. It is good, to revisit the text of the Second Amendment:

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Americans, and American courts, have struggled with this amendment for two centuries, inasmuch as it is one sentence composed of...

There my writing teacher would get out her famous blue pen and wonder (aloud, at least as aloud as ink on paper affords) which the writer intended as the subordinate clause. Does the right to keep and bear depend on one's status in a Militia, or does the Militia depend on the arms kept and born by the people?

Such was the pretense of the argument into which I waded. A friend had made a reasonable point about an essay posted on line. Another individual (an honest and reasonable man) had pointed out that my friend's beef, and ensuing exchange, were with the author. The author entered the fray and we were off. 

We exchanged pleasantries. There were a few pointed comments. It got me thinking. It got me reading - one recommended book and several I have read before. It brought me back to the initial argument. It brought me back to A More Perfect Union.

I've already written a lot about this subject. The e-book is 360 pages long. Guns, drones, constitutionalists...

And, the story of a young woman of immense character who finds herself torn between ideas as they existed over two hundred years ago, and the here and now of her law enforcement life. It's about freedom, and the price paid to understand and safeguard it in the Twenty-first Century. It is fiction - and I hope it always stays that way.