OFF: Reefer Madness?

[Jonathan Jarrett]

On Tue, Jul 31, 2007 at 03:27:18PM +0100, M Holmes typed out:
> vzenv14m writes:
> > someone I believe it was Malcolm X), put our government  into an interesting
> > perspective, would you like to be eaten by the lion or the wolf??  I don't
> > trust anyone with that much power.
> Neither did the Founders of the US, who had a very great distust of
> authority.  That's why there are sundry Constitutional limits on the
> powers of politicians and judges and, because you always need a backup
> plan, that's why US citizens have the right to bear arms. 

	It's not, is it? That's certainly how it's spun now by the gun 
lobby but that provision of the Constitution originates in the need to 
maintain a militia to deal with the possibility of reconquest from the 
UK. So I imagine that the Founding Fathers envisaged those arms-bearing 
citizens doing so under the aegis of the government, not against it... 
That's not to say it can't be read differently, of course, but just from 
the historian's perspective, that was written by the guv'mint for their 
own reasons. Yours,
		    Jon

-- 
"When fortune wanes, of what assistance are quantities of elephants?"
	    (Juvaini, Afghan Muslim chronicler, c. 1206)
 Jon Jarrett, Fitzwilliam Museum, jjarrett at chiark.greenend.org.uk