What the Founding Fathers Probably Meant: Part 5

Amendment Four: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

The fourth amendment is the first of a set of amendments which establish the basic rights and practices of the American legal system.  It basically states that, in order to maintain civil liberties, a warrant based on a solid chain of evidence must be granted by a judge before any law-enforcement body is able to begin a search for proof of a crime.

If the third amendment was a good example of how the founding fathers' worries could be somewhat short-sighted, the fourth is the perfect representation of the opposite.  It establishes, very clearly, a set of basic rights regarding search and seizure procedures that are as relevant today as they were when laid out, if not more so.  What’s more, it’s probably the best example of the way an amendment is able to grow and change with the times.

Since its inception, a number of important clarifications and additions have been made which follow in the spirit of the amendment and extend its intent within a clear and logical progression.  It also serves to show how an amendment can grow with changes in time and technology.

For instance, the concept of the fruit of the poisoned tree established that any evidence gathered as a result of illicit practices which broke the established chain of evidence, no matter how damning, were inadmissible.  It’s been argued, of course, that this put too much of a restriction on law enforcement and has given the lawyers of some very bad people procedural loopholes to get their clients off, but, while the debate over the practice may be valid, its efficacy isn’t.

As well, when technology made us able to record phone calls and personal meetings, the judicial branch began to adapt the fourth amendment to encompass those innovations.  Even today, in our courts, the emergence of the internet and the rights of privacy there are being argued in the hallowed halls of our justice system.  We have shown, time and again, then, that an amendment with the proper phrasing and spirit, can do much to preserve the rights of the citizens it’s meant to protect. 

Unfortunately, the fourth amendment is also an excellent case for how, in an organic system of legislature, lawmakers are able to subvert the clear intent of an amendment.  The Patriot Act, first established in the aftermath of 9/11, subverted in numerous ways the protection of the fourth amendment.  Though few protested then, as fear blinded them to reason and temporarily made them unwilling or unable to understand that once a right is given up, it becomes monumentally difficult to get back and opens the door to further infringement.

All told, an organic document like The Constitution is able to maintain its relevance to the society it governs as long as those who fall beneath its protections are willing to pay attention, to advocate and take a hand in its shaping. 

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What the Founding Fathers Probably Meant: Part 4

Amendment Three: “No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.”

The third amendment states, very specifically, that the eventual army that would be raised and trained by the government, the intent to do so being tacitly established in the second amendment, would never be forcibly housed in the homes of American citizens, be it in peacetime or war, barring the meeting of very specific conditions as prescribed under law.  Those conditions would be clearly outlined in the statutes regarding martial law.

The third amendment, taking a back seat to only two others, is a prime example of how the pressing concerns of the founding fathers at the birth of the nation had a profound impact upon their mindsets.  And it was a reasonable concern, then, as Britain, in its attempts to quell the coming revolution, regularly “stationed” its troops in the homes of those suspected to be insurrectionists, thereby severely limiting the homeowner’s ability to work towards independence.  It was because of this that many early revolutionists were found and punished for their sympathies.

While an incredibly valid concern at the drafting of The Constitution, two hundred and more years later, it no longer seems nearly so much so.  Admittedly, this is in part because it was so established when the country was founded, because we have for every generation since not had to worry about a group of soldiers knocking on the front door and taking over our homes without some damn good justification.  And I’d like to think that, in a state of emergency, when the National Guard shows up to help victims of disaster, any good Americans would gladly welcome them in.

At the same time, what seemed so vital then is antiquated now and, while good to have on the books, isn’t nearly as relevant as some of the things which came after, such as the amendments which protect civil liberties in the legal system.  Even given its continued efficacy, its importance as a primary amendment has been removed with the passing of time. 

This shows two things.  First, The Constitution was meant to be an organic body, reflecting those things which are of real, pressing concern to the health of our nation at any given point in our history.  Second, the founding fathers were relying on us, their descendants, to have the good sense to recognize when it was time to let go of tradition and do what was best for the nation, just as they did.  I mean, imagine how radical these concepts were back then, drawing from ideas and philosophies from across both time and the known world and flying in the face of the social order as it was known across The Western World at the time.  And, in so doing, they forever changed the world.

While things like the 14^th amendment have shown that we’re capable of the first part, we’re still lacking a great deal on the second, choosing to hold fast sometimes, as seems to be human nature, to outdated concepts in favor of facing the real work of change.  I’m talking to all the people who say that changing the way we deal with gun control is impossible, or that tax, tort and education reform, from the ground up, just aren’t feasible.  They are, but they will take work, concerted effort and, most importantly, a solidarity that our nation seems to lack most of the time but which, it has been shown over and over, is possible when we truly try.

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Memory and Dream

There are mornings when I wake,

Stumbling out of bed

On legs aching and still somehow numb,

To sit before this screen,

Always too bright.

I know that I should sleep,

But the dreams, the dreams…

Twice in two days,

I wake to the after-effect

The roiling, writhing emotion

Of failure, loss, regret,

Feeling within swollen fingers

The things I could not hold,

The things I cannot catch.

So I stare at the page,

My salvation, and wait,

For the words, the words…

Redemption in verse

Burning hopefully the pain,

Leaving me seared, but whole

Leaving me…

With only the ghosts of morning.

-8:03am

2/5/12

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Thomas Paine on The Birth of a Nation

"We have it in our power to begin the world over again.  The birthday of a new world is at hand." - Thomas Paine, Common Sense Read more!

What the Founding Fathers Probably Meant: Part 3

Amendment Two: “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.”

If not the most controversial amendment these days, it seems to be the most polarized.  At one extreme, you have those who feel that guns are nothing but a danger to society, with the risk posed to the public outweighing the possible safety benefits, and, as such, will fervently refuse to even enter a home where the dreaded object rests.  At the other, you have the gun nuts who think that, in order to be safe, every good American should have a bunker filled to the brim with any and every kind of projectile-firing powder weapon known to man.

Somewhere in the middle are most Americans, who are made a little uncomfortable, or a little excited, by the presence or possession of a firearm.  Even statisticians can’t agree.  There are so many studies to back up both sides that it’s often used in stat classes as a prime example of how easy it is to manipulate statistics to fit an agenda.  It has been to be true that, while guns can be an effective deterrent to criminals, the fact that they are legal and common does lead to a drastically higher number of fatal injuries amongst the public.  There are new studies every year that point out, one way or the other, that guns in the home both make it safer from those outside the home and much more dangerous for those in the home. 

So why did the founding fathers think that this was the second most important thing we needed to form a country?  What you have to realize is that these guys were sitting around a room after a long, bloody war with Britain where it was, quite literally, the common man fighting against an overwhelming, oppressive regime.  Not only that, but many historians acknowledge that, had Americans not made certain innovations in firearm development during the war, we may well all be saluting a different flag every afternoon before tea.

To the men who were drafting The Constitution, the enemy was literally just over their shoulders and they realized how fragile their situation was.  We didn’t have an army, we had a militia.  We won the war not so much because we were fighting for our homeland, but more likely because we were fighting in our homeland, with which we were much more familiar and therefore able to use every dirty, guerilla tactic in the book.  We were able to field a militia only because, in the years prior to the way, most every home had a rifle or two for hunting, because grocery stores were notoriously hard to come by and people loved meat.

So the founding fathers realized that, in order to keep anyone from coming over and taking our new country away, we all needed to have guns and know how to use them, at least until we could fashion a real army like everyone else, which we promptly set about doing.

The problem, and this is almost always the case with decisions inspired mostly by fear, is that they forgot something important, which was that last bit about the army, something which came back to seriously bite them in the ass a few years later when half the country decided that they wanted to be a separate country altogether and had more than enough guns to make a fairly good show of succession. 

While that one was completely on them for not seeing it coming, given that slavery and the business practices which it fueled and around which it revolved, was such a terse issue even then that it very nearly tore apart the first Constitutional Congress, there are a couple of things that they couldn’t have seen coming and, had they, may have made the second amendment a great deal different.

The first was the evolution of the firearm.  In 1787, there was no way any of them could have possibly seen two key innovations coming: handguns and automatic weapons.  While dueling pistols were somewhat fashionable around that time, Samuel Colt was still about fifty years from the first revolver and the gatling gun, the precursor to automatic weapons, was nearly thirty years after that and required multiple people to operate.  Either one of those things alone would have terrified the hell out of them, but the concept of a small, easily concealable weapon that could fire seventeen bullets in a matter of seconds with an average effective range of about 50 meters was probably inconceivable, even for the freakishly prescient Ben Franklin.

Back in those days, if you wanted to kill a man, it took some real effort.  Drive-bys were much more complicated, for instance.  You were only likely to get a couple of shots off before you had to spend a few minutes reloading and/or getting the carriage back under control by calming the horses who were having a perfectly healthy, natural response to a nearby explosion.  And even then, your accuracy probably wasn’t all that great.  So, rather than bothering with all that, people would resort to the more old-fashioned, up close and personal methods, you know, the ones where you had to look someone in the eye and feel the blood on your hands when you killed them.

The other thing that they couldn’t have seen coming was the evolution of American culture into one completely saturated with ultraviolent imagery. It’s gotten to the point now where science is finding that our brains are literally wired differently here than in other developed nations where violence is still abhorred, rather than glorified.  When people from those countries are shown graphically violent acts, even in stills, the parts of their brain that control things like revulsion and terror light up brighter than a Christmas tree.  When your average American is shown the same imagery, not only are those places much dimmer, we have a tendency to light up in the same places that we do when we’re sexually aroused. 

Yep, that means we literally get turned on by the prospect of enacting violence.  Sit and think about that for a second.  Now think about the fact that you and your kids are probably wired that way, too.  The prevailing theory is that it’s the result of a combination of desensitization, which accounts for the dimmer registers of the revulsion and terror, because we’ve become used to the idea, and some base animal instinct that used to be necessary, way back when, to make it possible to go out and beat small, furry things to death with rocks for food.

What it all breaks down to is that we’ve evolved into a country that not only has the ability to kill someone quickly, cleanly and easily, without having to deal with lots of the conscience-searing issues of killing someone with your bare hands, but also one that’s wired to actively get off on the idea of it.

So where does that leave us?  Well, first off, nowadays, every citizen doesn’t need to own a gun in order to prevent foreign invaders from taking over the country, barring some kind of Red Dawn scenario.  We’ve got one of the most effective armies in the world to do that for us.  Should we be allowed to own them?  Of course.  There are a lot of people who still provide meat for their families a good part of the year by grabbing their rifles and heading out into the woods, which is most likely what the founding fathers had in mind. 

The problem now, though, is that, in typical American fashion, we’ve taken the law and run with it.  The sole purpose of a handgun is to shoot not deer or ducks or fish, but other people.  The fact that about 75% of the gun-related homicides in the U.S. each year are committed with handguns backs this up pretty well.  The same is true of fully-automatic assault rifles because, quite frankly, it’s not only overkill but pretty dangerous to take on a hunting trip, where any good hunter will tell you that a single shot is all you really need to take down your quarry.  And before you go bringing up using a handgun to, “put the deer out of its misery,” your rifle does it just as well.

But, they argue, the criminals all have guns and we need our guns to stop their guns.  The rest of the world has actually shown that to be untrue.  If, as in many of them, you make possession of a handgun an automatic charge of attempted murder, for the above reason, within a relatively short span of time, the criminals won’t have them, either, or, at the very least, the average mugger or meth-head won’t.  And, again, if it comes to home defense, your rifle is a hell of a lot more intimidating than a pistol to a would-be burglar.  I promise.  Plus, it’s way harder for him to sneak it up to and inside your home if it doesn’t tuck under the shirt in the waistband of his pants.

Finally, there’s the old standby line, “Guns don’t kill people.  People kill people.”  While true, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense and, I assure you, to anyone who’s been shot, that distinction isn’t terribly comforting.  It’s one of those blame games we play in order to keep from having to face the reality of a situation.  Apply it to a couple of other things in your life and see how much sense it makes.  Bulldozers don’t dig holes, people do.  Sure, true, but good luck digging those holes with just your hands.  Frying pans don’t cook eggs, people do.  Yep, again, you’re going to have a hell of an issue making those scrambled eggs without that pan. 

What it all comes down to is this: while it’s true that a gun is, by itself, a harmless object under most circumstances, it’s a tool that facilitates one thing and one thing only, violence.  While you could kill someone quite handily with a bulldozer or a frying pan, those aren’t their sole functions. 

With guns, that’s all there is to them and, while it isn’t right to blame the tool for the way it’s used any more than it is to thank the bulldozer for digging the hole, we have to acknowledge, as reasonable, aware people with a pretty clear view of the results that gun control as it exists today isn’t working out very well.  What’s perhaps more disturbing is that more than half the gun-related deaths in a given year are self-inflicted.  Of the other 45% or so, the majority are accidental discharges. 

I stand firmly in the middle, where I do with most things, in that we need to reform and rewrite regulation to take into account the complete and utter short-sighted idiocy of the average citizen.  Because, and this is coming from someone who has looked down the barrel of a gun, while the vast majority of people I know who have guns are responsible and safe, I also know a handful of people with whom I would probably be scared to be alone in their home, had they access to a gun.  Think about it this way.  Why are we willing to trust some countries to have nuclear arms while others, like Iran and North Korea, who are run by leaders shown to be completely batshit crazy and willing to bring the world down around them to make a point, we aren’t?  Same deal.

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A Thought: On Flying

You know how they always say that you stand a much bigger chance of getting in a car crash than a plane crash?  While that's true, take a look at the survival rate for one versus the other, then get back to me on how flying is awesome. Read more!

What the Founding Fathers Probably Meant: Part 2

Amendment One: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Perhaps one of the most oft-cited, the first amendment actually addresses three issues which the founders saw as foundational to the creation of a democratic nation.  First, that there be no state religion, nor any law regulating the worship of whatever the hell you choose to deify.  Second, it grants the almighty freedom of speech, going so far as to specifically extend that to a free press.  Finally, they make it perfectly legal to assemble peacefully in order to protest, both in general and, maybe more importantly, in order to air grievances towards the government.  Let’s tackle these one at a time.

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What the Founding Fathers Probably Meant: Part 1

Here in America over the last decade or so, we’ve become very fond of expounding on exactly what it is that our founding fathers meant when they laid out some pretty basic tenets that they figured we ought to use to run the country.  The interpretation of our Bill of Rights has become, in this incredibly heated political climate, a source of great divide amongst the citizens of this great nation.

There are those who believe that, when it suits them, it ought to be followed to the absolute letter with the kind of sacred fervor that many religious folks attach to their holy doctrines.  It should never be changed, nor can those rights be taken away by those in power, as the benevolent, omniscient beings that were our mythical progenitors knew exactly what it took to make a perfect country back in the late 18^th century.

On the other, we have the people who say that it was meant to be followed in spirit, rather than exactly as laid out, which opens an entirely different can of worms.  While I’m much more inclined to be in line with these people, it does allow for some truly terrifying interpretations and presents the key problem of whose is more right, the guy who thinks that freedom of expression means he ought to be able to crap on the courthouse steps as an act of protest to the guy who thinks that the right to bear arms means he can shoot said person for being anti-American.

What people seem to fail to realize is that the guys who drafted The Constitution were completely and totally aware that they couldn’t build a perfect nation, now or ever, because times and circumstances change.  They were laying out guidelines for our nation at its inception, taking into account what they knew and had witnessed in their lifetimes.  That’s why they gave us the ability to change it as we went, something we seem grossly unwilling to do these days.

So, starting tomorrow, in an attempt to muddle through these various viewpoints, I’d like to put forth a contemporary interpretation, in ten parts, using sound logic and basic reasoning (and probably a bunch more jokes of the gaseous variety) to take a look at what our noble forefathers said, what they meant and what they could not have possibly seen coming. 

If you found me on Stumble, Reddit, Digg or any other such service, please hit that like button and share my message so that my slow, insidious rise to power can begin.  There’ll be a place for you in the new world order as one of my trusted aides.  Also, cake.  Thanks!

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I'm a gamer because...

I spend a fair part of my Friday mornings finding new and interesting ways to kill my friends. Read more!

Explaining our economic inequality

This is part of a much longer essay that I'm working on, but I thought it relevant given the tone of last night's State of the Union.

To put it in perspective, if someone who makes the bare minimum to reach the higher tax range pays 31%, after taxes they are left with $172,500 at the end of the year.  Someone who makes the national average, $51,000, pays 27% and takes home $37,230.  Finally, someone working sixteen hours a day making minimum wage will make, before taxes, $31,200.  After paying 15%, they take home $26,520.  That’s literally working twice as much or more than the average 40-hour a week job.  The yearly budget those in the highest bracket have to work with is literally more than six times that of the people likely working for them.  It’s difficult to feel pity for someone who complains that they can’t make ends meet when taking home, even paying all of their taxes, at least four times the amount of the average American.

In order to right this country, economically, we need to face the hard facts, that what we have now is broken beyond repair and must be scrapped and remade into something more reasonably workable.  The tax code should be simple, clear-cut and without exception, from the heads of the wealthiest corporations to the most impoverished worker.  There should be a static set of exemptions, for things like family-size and the repayment of debt, which benefits the economy directly.  Finally, all assets should be considered and taxed as a lump sum, regardless of source.  If a waitress must claim tips, then a CEO must claim investment revenue.  The same rules will apply to corporate taxes, as well, because, as is so commonly heard said about immigrant workers, if they wish to be treated as citizens, they must pay the same dues.

The aforementioned across the board tax reform on both personal and corporate taxation is the key.  By bringing in more money, the deficit will go down.  Run the country as a smart person runs a household.  You pay the necessaries first, then take the rest and put half into savings and the other towards paying off debt.  Does it mean that you can’t always have all the things you want right now?  Of course.  Does it mean that, down the line, you’ll have in essence bought the freedom to do so once you’re finished with the hard stuff?  Yes.  We suffer now to prosper later.  We teach our children that lesson from an early age while, somehow, forgetting it ourselves.  It’s time to remember.

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Just...stop

If you went to school on a pell grant or student loan, if you drove to work on a public road, if you or your kids have ever received government benefits of any kind, such as WIC, unemployment, food stamps or subsidized medical care (like UMC), if your kids are in public school, if you or your parents are on social security and/or medicare, please recognize the hypocrisy in saying that taxes are evil and that the rich shouldn't have to support the poor. It just makes you sound like you don't need the help now that you once did, which is awesome for you, and that, since you don't, no one else should, either. The system gets abused and that sucks, so fix the system, don't just sit and point out what's wrong while taking from others something that you once needed yourself. Read more!

Book Review: Del Toro and Hogan's The Strain

Legends of vampires have been around, as best we can tell, for about as long as humanity has been telling stories.  Prior to when Stoker brought them into the mainstream, however, the legends were wild and varied.  Dracula carved out for them a static form in the imaginations of people which has more or less become the standard template for vampires as we know them.

Over the intervening years, vampires have been approached from more angles than you can shake a stake at, but generally, these days, fall into one of two schools.  The first, the more classical approach that mirrors Stoker’s, is of the tormented monster.  Every vampire in the mainstream, from Anne Rice’s seminal Lestat to Meyer’s Edward Cullen, had been more or less an homage to his Count, representing a dark eroticism while, at the same time, attempting with greater or lesser degrees of success to maintain the monstrous nature of their existence.

The second approach, and one which isn’t seen nearly as often because, quite honestly, it isn’t nearly as appealing to the masses as the first, is the alien vampire, the one so dissociated from its humanity as to have become something wholly different.  There are only a handful of these examples out there and I’m having some real trouble coming up with any that have had achieved mass recognition beyond fans of the genre, like myself.  The Strain, by horror masters Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan, is one of those that very well may.

Written as the first book in a trilogy, the final having recently been released, the authors tackle vampirism from an angle that at once both makes it very different and somehow much more plausible than the idea of a damned soul or demonic possession.  In the universe they’ve created, post-9/11 New York is set upon by something much more sinister and horrifying than a Victorian count.  It’s attacked by a virus.

While I won’t go into detail, as it would ruin some of the more interesting twists in the novel, the vampirism isn’t a curse so much as a sort of sentient disease and the authors play upon some of the more terrifying recent discoveries we’ve made about viruses, such as their ability to replicate by basically re-writing our DNA.  While I’m sure they’re taking some liberties that would make some in the bio-medical field cringe, it’s close enough to reality to make it all the more unpleasant.

The book begins with a nightmare scenario.  A plane lands at JFK then goes completely dark, just sitting on the tarmac, no response from passengers or crew.  The tension-building in this first section is incredible, playing on Freud’s notion of the uncanny, when things about reality are just enough off from what we expect that it unnerves us.  What they finally do find on the plane is even more so.

Perhaps because the suspense of the first section was so well-crafted, the second seems to drag a bit, getting somewhat bogged down in the procedural as the action follows the CDC team and other government officials as they slowly uncover the unbelievable truth behind what’s going on.  I urge you to push through, though, as it ramps right back up soon enough as the nightmare of the infection truly sets in.

Overall, I’m looking forward to the rest of the series.  I enjoy a new take on an old story and this satisfies that.  I feel like it may be able to re-introduce the idea of the vampire as monster to a generation of readers that seem to see them more as the bad boys of fiction than the villains.  That isn’t to say there isn’t some merit in some of that, as I’m as much of a Whedon fan as the next guy, but it almost felt, to the child in me, as though we lost one of the great nightmares to teenage (and grown-up) fantasy.  Del Toro and Hogan have, in the eyes of that kid who thinks we all need reasons to fear the dark, rather than embrace it, gone a long way toward setting things right.

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Why our students are failing at life

While stumbling around the internet, trying to find some inspiration, I came across a post saying that diversified education is useless, that we should just be teaching students what they need for their careers. This is a common viewpoint from those unfamiliar with education or the long-term effects of such an approach. This was my response.

Educating only to the subjects which apply directly to a chosen profession has been shown to have a number of drawbacks in the long term. It was piloted in a number of schools around the world in the last few decades.

First, it assumes that what one wishes to do upon entering 9th year is what will actually make one happy throughout life. Exposure to varied subjects allows us to discover our interests. The work-around they tried to fix this was aptitude testing, which forced students into a path based upon what the test said they were good at. Imagine having your career choice made for you based upon what you were best at in 8th grade.

Second, research has shown conclusively, time and again, that a well-rounded education, including both the arts and sciences, has shown to have a positive impact in both overall learning ability and higher order thinking skills like critical problem-solving and application.

Finally, there's the less analytical and more human approach. If we educate only in, or heavily in favor of, the sciences over the arts, we create students capable of doing amazing things but without the understanding of empathy for one another to determine when and if they should be done. If we favor only the arts, we run the risk of creating those who come up with innovative ideas but lack the ability to enact them.

A large part of the reason that students these days don't understand that the world can change is because they've been taught by our culture that history is useless. This has robbed them of the most imperative thing history teaches us: change is possible. By neglecting English, they're losing the ability to accurately share information and, with the loss of literature, a sharp decline in empathy, as literature is one of the most effective ways we have to "see" the world through the eyes of those in other circumstances than our own. The effects of these losses are readily apparent in the listlessness, hopelessness, apathy and isolationism that are running rampant in the upcoming generation. Read more!

Education, according to Robert Frost

"Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or self-confidence."
-Robert Frost Read more!

A Thought: On Happiness

Find your own happiness. Don't waste time chasing the happiness of others. Read more!