Monthly Archives: January 2022

THE SECOND AMENDMENT OF THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION.

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Madison wrote a draft of the Second Amendment. It was accepted by the House of Representatives and was delivered to the Senate during the summer of 1789. Madison’s version of the Second Amendment passed by the House of Representatives reads,

“The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country: but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person.”

The Senate revised the Second Amendment making a grammatical change by using an asyndeton, a linguistic/grammatical device which changes Madison’s clear announcement in the House draft. The Senate’s version, now the Second Amendment reads today:

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.

Before us today are arguments about the meaning of the Second Amendment, and how to interpret it. Many Second Amendment rights advocates believe the amendment should be interpreted as James Madison wrote it in the version approved by the House of Representatives in 1789. However, it was changed in the Senate, and next adopted by both houses of Congress and ratified by the States.

The Second Amendment emphasizes “well-regulated militias” and “the security of a free State” become tools in the arsenal to provide such conditions. But in both Madison’s version and the actual Second Amendment, the right of the people remains a right, not a freedom. That right, like rights in the eighteenth century and today, are not absolute; they are not freedoms. In Anglo- American jurisdiction a right can be changed to reflect conditions faced by the free society in which if operates and is enforced.

THE WEATHER UNDERGROUND – DOCUMENTARY

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Recommended

Invaluable in this film is the original footage accompanying a mostly true telling of events, somewhat non-chronological. Like many presentations of youth during the Nixon years the participants-interviewees glom onto an event or a group to use as a stepping stone to go to another issue or time in one particular life.

ONE PROBLEM, NOT ALL EVENTS ARE IN THE FILM.

The Weatherman did not usurp SDS. They split, as well as groups could in 1969. SDSers said of their departing members: “You don’t have to be a weatherman to know who the assholes are.” Next, significant structural changes affecting young American men happened. The first Draft-Lottery was in December 1969. About 40 percent of young men were excluded from being drafted at that time. For the remainder there were ways and means to avoid being drafted. Moreover, after the draft-lottery, Cambodia (six months later) and the bombing of the math building at the U of Wisconsin (eight months later), campus opposition to the Vietnam War was much reduced (save the bombing of Haiphong/Hanoi in the Spring 1972 – also omitted from the film).

The Women’s Movements preceded the 1969 split of the Weathermen from SDS. The Woman Movements gained steam in 1967 after the SDS convention; they gained notoriety (burning bras) in August 1968. The film indicates a later birth of the Women Movements. Likewise, the Black Panthers were not allies of the Weathermen, and Kathleen Cleaver was not a spokeswomen for either. She was the wife of Eldridge Cleaver, but Cleaver had a split with fellow Panther leaders. The Panther/Weatherman disconnection should have been made more apparent.

As people went underground, distancing themselves and losing communication with one another, the film implies tactics of the authorities (like COINTELPRO) were responsible. No one says the obvious, the Weathermen were a marginal group doomed to failure; their numbers were so few that no one knew who they were. Plus people on the Left, including the Weathermen, were not the most likable human beings to outsiders or to one another. From the film one conclusion is obvious: No one builds a political/social movement by being disagreeable.

This last point may be wrong. There are striking similarities between the Weather Underground and the far-right, gun totting forces today, including personal appearance: All men (if they have hair) is longish; they are decorated with jewelry and/or tattoos; many have beards; they appear dirty, or at least unwashed. Americans should be reminded of George Wallace’s four- letter words for such derelicts: Soap and work.

BEGAT

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DAVID CRYSTAL – RECOMMENDED

This book attempts to tell how various editions of the Bible influenced the evolution of English. It is incomplete; the text could be longer, much longer.

The text introduces the reader to the subject, succinctly refreshing readers/writers to the subject matter and its sensitizes writers to the contents. The book is organized by idioms, phrases and verses, like it is a guide explaining business or management practices. [Robert Townsend, Up the Organization was one of the first types of this book.] Hence Begat becomes a valuable quick resource for references to Biblical idioms, phrases and verses, sometimes from the original usage to the present.

There are omissions. Before 1559 the English Bible was in prose and paragraphs. Thereafter, the Bible was in verse. Its style was greatly influenced by poetry and the playwrights of Elizabethan England. Prose and poetry obviously differ. Modern prose stresses the verb; poetry has always been about using and associating nouns and sometimes using specific forms and linguistic devices. Prose seems much more accepting to change of grammar, use of words, shifting words and odd word order.

The original language of the Volgate Bible, in the fourth century from the Greek, was Latin, with its five declensions. Modern day English has three declensions – subjective, possessive and objective. Most modern English speakers nail the subjective declension but botch or ignore the other two. Miss declensions in Latin, German, Russian or languages stressing nouns and get the word order wrong, and the student fails!

In Begat there is nothing about the prose/poetry shifts in English, when the Bible was being translated and through time to today.

SUCCESSION OF TEXAS

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An idiot on Morning Joe (January 3, 2022) promoted his futuristic book and stoking fears: Succession of individual states of the United States – like Texas. Succession will not happen. The economic consequences for each such state will be disastrous.

The idiot was vague about the legal complications arising when a state tries to leave the United States. Before legal complications will come the economic consequences. What would the independent country of Texas be forced to do?

RAISE TAXES A LOT

Texas has the Texas Rangers, fine and fit group of law enforcement personnel, counting 200 or so persons. That’s not enough to police a small Texas city, let alone defend it.
Texas would have to pay for the state’s defense because the United States Government would leave. The Federal government would take all its military equipment and personnel and move it all to the remaining states. Texas has no Navy; it has no Coast Guard; it has no Army; there is no Marine Corps; there is no effective Air Force.

Start a military from scratch in the 2020s. What are the costs? Who wants to serve? There will be compulsory military service. Texans who are first most Americans, will leave before being compelled to serve. If evading the draft during Vietnam was bad, think about draft evasion during the Internet age.

Texas needs to improve its infrastructure which it will have to do on its own. Everyone knows they have bad electrical connections. And no more money from the Infrastructure Bill passed in 2021. Indeed, most Texas Congressmen and Senators voted against it.

POOR ECONOMY

Texas currently prides itself on a solid economy, low taxes and productive people. If Texas wants to remain prosperous, it should follow the example of Rhode Island. In 1790 the Rhodes did not want to ratify the United States Constitution, while the 12 other states had done so. Congress passed tariffs against imports from Rhode Island. So how long will it take before the United States passes tariffs on Texas products? How much will the Texas economy not grow? Will new companies go to Texas? Will companies in general move from Texas?

How long? A year.

NEW POPULATION

When Texas becomes independent, with foreign border exposure on the south and west, and it has no military and no border guard, Mexicans and persons from other countries will emigrate. How will the Texans handle the unending surge? More of them will enter Texas than are wanted; there will not be enough low paying jobs. Meanwhile, Americans living in Texas will leave.

The day will come when political power shifts to the emigrants. They will tear down the Alamo, and every town square will be required to erect a statute of Santa Anna: For some persons Santa Anna is a forgotten person of civil worship.

Next step: Texas becomes part of Mexico.

REENTRY INTO UNITED STATES

It’s no so simple. All past agreements are historical oddities and void. Texas will become a territory of the United States and under the rule of Congress, much like Puerto Rico is today. I doubt if a Congress of the future will allow Texas to exist in its present landmass. Before reentering the United States, parts of Texas can be chiseled off and given to Oklahoma, New Mexico and Louisiana (reasons for those states not to leave the U.S.A). The remainder can be broken into separate states, not all at the same time but whenever Congress is generous and feels another state is needed.

So this is the reaction of the day: New York author raises alarms about the Texas Succession movement, while overlooking the obvious: Texas secessionists are idiots. Wanting to spread fear, New York publishers, also idiots, give author an advance and publish QAnon speculations. The idiots of Morning Joe advance the rumors of terror and interview author who ineptly and incompletely tells how real his book is.

CRYTPO and the FED

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They say the FED has let cheap, easy money circulate for so long. People – the rich – have access to that money and need a place to put it. Crypto prices have benefitted. When an old name of finance flipped to crypto investments, he said because crypto was all mathematics and related fields, stuff he had learned in college. Investing was obscurely nostalgic. But part of the foundation of crypto is public confidence – it will continue to trade and there are enough like- minded persons to trade. Atop this foundation is the cheap money of the FEDERAL RESERVE, of other central banks, and large government deficit spending from 2017. A report says the Europeans may do away with negative interest rates.

So what happens to crypto when the FEDERAL RESERVE raises interest rates, as everyone seems to think will happen, despite the lure of mathematics? Now, does pure mathematics controls or set the prices? Public perceptions are being presented but not channeled. Crypto no longer advertises on TV; the mystery of those products are in the open. Frequent price updates on the streaming lines (worms?) are presented underneath each TV financial face. Crypto is seen everyday.

The crypto market is changing, and ready for academians to study. Don’t wait for conclusions to be published.