SHADES OF THE CIVIL WAR

While I slowly extricated myself from the extreme right wing and fascist-minded mental delusion that captivated my life for so long, much of that mindset maintained its control over my subconscious and far too much of my conscious mentality.  The growth out of it has been slow and by no means painless.  I have not yet attained, and probably never will, total freedom from it.  It's like a software program that buries electronic "hooks" in your computer and tenaciously refuses to let go. 

For decades, I assumed, like millions of others, that the second amendment to the constitution was inserted primarily to make self-defense possible against foreign incursion and domestic tyranny.  That's not necessarily the case.

Here's a very thought provoking post from the Freethought blog Pharyngula:

Root of all evil?

Categories:

History, Politics

by PZ Myers

While I’m criticizing the South, I should also damn the whole country. They Yankees also contributed to the history of slavery: that whole second amendment thing that troubles us so much now was a sop to slavery, enabling ‘militias’ that were intended to capture escaped slaves and suppress insurrections.

…most southern men between ages 18 and 45 – including physicians and ministers – had to serve on slave patrol in the militia at one time or another in their lives.
And slave rebellions were keeping the slave patrols busy.
By the time the Constitution was ratified, hundreds of substantial slave uprisings had occurred across the South. Blacks outnumbered whites in large areas, and the state militias were used to both prevent and to put down slave uprisings. …slavery can only exist in the context of a police state, and the enforcement of that police state was the explicit job of the militias.

So many of the high ideals of this country were poisoned by compromises to allow deep inequities. And the founding fathers were complicit.