ONE NATION UNDER...WHO?

It started with one picture.

A recent debate yielded some interesting ideals from some of our Americans whom strongly believe that the statement "ONE NATION UNDER GOD" means its one nation under Christ. They also went to state that this is clearly written in our Constitution.


I checked, couldn't find it and when I brought that up, I was told it was the Declaration of Independence. I looked there as well, and although I found mention of GOD, Nature's GOD and Divine Providence, I still found no mention of Christ.


What I don't get is this, if it is one nation under Christ, why not just state so? Why assume that that is what it means? Also, if you want to have a solely Christian Society, and a government built on Christian ideology, why write the 2nd Amendment?


Wouldn't that be counter productive to the Christian agenda? I mean, If we're free Americans, and have the right to worship which ever god we wish, wouldn't it be safe to say that at some point we would have elected officials of different faiths other then Christianity?


Or do we plan to discriminate them from office? No I don't think so, that wouldn't be American. Would it?


What's your view? Feel free to comment.

I don't get it.

America was discovered by immigrants, founded by immigrants and fought for by immigrants. Why then do we complain when immigrants come over? Its the same ol' rhetoric over and over again. If its not the Irish, it was against the Italians, or the Polish, or the Jew, etc, etc.

When does it end? When will people stop to think, "Wait a second, we've done this before..." and just embrace the prospects of having new life breathed into our community?

Are we all looking for the same thing? Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness?  I don't know. I just don't get it.

Feel free to comment if you're as confused as I am.

How do Gun laws work?

I'm still trying to figure this one out. I mean, I know that the people that are trying to get them passed mean well, but who do they really effect? I don't get why you would want to create a law that would essentially be ignored by the people who will abuse it, and at the same time limit the power of the people who are righteous and law-abiding?

Who truly benefits?

We have forsaken commonsense and reason to quell irrational fears. We have also made the public whose use of firearms would hopefully be based on the right ways to use this tool powerless to defend themselves against those that would deny them their freedoms. I don't get it...I'm also running is circles aren't I?

All I can say folks, is that laws should be passed based on logic, reason, commonsense. Not passion, nor as a way to ease broken-hearts, or some overwhelming sense that you're owed something because of some tragedy! My heart goes out to you, it does, but to trample on our Constitution because you think that somehow your tragedy is worthy of stripping us of our rights makes YOU the abuser! YOUR RIGHTS END, WHERE MINE BEGINS!

Don't get me wrong, there are some laws passed based on some tragedy that really where blessings. Megan's Law, Danelle's Law, etc...but Gun Laws? Yeah, I don't think so.

You can create laws to protect the young and the handicapped and I will support you in every way, but to create one that does nothing but punish the innocent is WRONG and I will rise against you.

What do you think?

The 2nd Amendment, Guns...YEE HAW!

Second Amendment – Militia (United States), Sovereign state, Right to keep and bear arms.

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.

SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED.

Shall not be infringed? 

What the definition is of infringed?

1. To transgress or exceed the limits of; violate: infringe a contract; infringe a patent.

2. Obsolete To defeat; invalidate.

                                                        

  contravene,

run afoul, conflict

breach, infract, transgress,

violate, go against, offend, break

 Or otherwise act in disregard of laws, rules, contracts, or promises; "offend all laws of humanity"; "violate the basic laws or human civilization"; "break a law"; "break a promise"

In other words break the Supreme Law of the land.

Our Constitution.
 

I feel that's exactly what gun laws are doing at this very moment. The concept that gun laws are being written to protect our fellow Americans is to me,is a farce. It is solely designed to disarm  the people and thus rending them less harmful to the powers that be. 

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.~ Thomas Jefferson

 To add further insult to injury we have a proclamation, here in New Jersey were they cleverly add to that back of every gun permit that states something in the lines of the state so generously grants us...(GRANTS US?) the PERMISSION to own a handgun.

"Are you kidding me", asks this blogger. 

So my question is this, since when is a God-given right something that the government can grant you?

Every American deserves the right to be self sufficient and self reliant when it comes to providing shelter, substance and safety to their own home.  It is my very own and maybe silly opinion that every home in America should have the following:

1.      Hammer and Nails

2.      Saw

3.      Handgun and/or Rifle

4.      Commonsense to know how to use all these tools properly and effectively.

Oh, and a electric generator. Got stuck in a black out that lasted 6 days here in my home, let me tell you that sucked. I digress.

Ironically enough, or maybe even hypocritical of me to admit, that I don't OWN a handgun. Never really felt I had the need for one. Fact is, I might NEVER find need to own one. Yet to have the government make a decision that would deny me the opportunity to exercise my Constitutional right I find appalling!

The problem here is that many proponents for gun ownership don't always make reasonable and logical arguments that highlight the very purpose of owning a gun. You can't argue that you need  to own a gun because of possibility of an intruder breaking into your house, or that ever present mugger/rapist/insane liberal is just around the corner waiting to do you in. That's bullshit and the statistics prove it. Not to mention that 9 out of 10 times if someone breaks into your home, you won't be there. I'm not saying it doesn’t happen, but to claim that because of these reason you need a gun is just a load of crap.

Yet before you think I'm going against gun ownership, let me just tell you that coming up with gun laws that prohibit law abiding Americans the power to exercise their Constitutional right in the name of public safely is JUST as idiotic and unrealistic as what I previously stated.

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.~ Benjamin Franklin

  I want to repeat again, all homes should have a firearm the same way we have hammers, saws, wrenches, you get the idea. That's just my opinion, yet its more then that, its an appeal to the American people to fight against any government legislature that slowly chips away at the Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights. 

Think about this, whether your pro-gun, or against it all together. First and foremost is the Constitution. The Bills Of Rights were written to be the very essence of what it means to be an American. It is the soul of this country, its conscience and its moral guiding light. Just like the 1st Amendment is granting me the freedom to post this blog regardless of whether you agree with me or not and just how it forces me to accept the liberties of others regardless if I agree with them or not, so too is the 2nd amendment beyond our own personal convictions regarding gun ownership. As such it should remain without limitations because of them.  

 You may not agree with this, but keep true to the words found in our Bill of Rights, for when the Bill Of Rights are tarnished and its very meaning laid to question will you then wake up to find YOURSELF a SLAVE to the system.

The Definition of GAY and the 1st Amendment.

So I watched a recent PSA with Wanda Sykes confronting several teenagers that were using the term "THAT'S SO GAY" in a manner that displeased Ms.Sykes. She goes on to describe the use of the term as being offensive by equating, "That's so gay" to "That's so sixteen year old boy with cheesy mustache.". The PSA ends with Ms.Sykes telling us to "KNOCK IT OFF".

This little gem of a PSA was brought to you by Thinkb4youspeak.com. A group that I feel mean well, but don't always think before they post a PSA. So I find myself a bit taken aback by this PSA, maybe its the way Ms.Sykes delivers her message, or maybe because it reminds me of people trying to control what other people say. I not entirely sure, all I know is that it really annoyed me.

I know what they are trying to accomplish and I commend them for that yet a PSA that shows Ms.Sykes chastising a group of kids for misusing a word that she herself is misusing just doesn't sit well with me.

Words change, meanings of words change, its part of the evolution of speech. The homosexual community took the word GAY out of its original context and it evolved it to its current meaning, now these teenagers further evolved the word to mean something completely different. Not necessarily a flattering, but then again to many happy and joyful people, being referred to as Gay with its current connotation might be considered an insult to them. So why the hypocrisy?

Amendment 1 - Freedom of Religion, Press, 12/15/1791. 
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.

So although they have a right to assemble and protest the use of the word Gay to mean stupid, they can't outright force anyone to "Knock it off".

Regardless of all this, I do hope that people can be a bit more sensitive to the feelings of others and be respectful, but I'm not going to get all thin-skinned if they don't. 

I've added to this post a couple of definition of gay as found by their respected websites. Feel free to look it over and see if you can agree with my view, or disagree.

Merriam-Webster's

Definition of GAY

1a: happily excited : merry <in a gay mood> b : keenly alive and exuberant : having or inducing high spirits (a bird's gay spring song)

2a: bright, lively (gay sunny meadows) b : brilliant in color

3: given to social pleasures; also : licentious

4a: homosexual <gay men> b : of, relating to, or used by homosexuals <the gay rights movement> <a gay bar>

— gay adverb

— gay·ness noun

Origin of GAY

Middle English, from Anglo-French gai, of Germanic origin; akin to Old High German gāhi quick, sudden

First Known Use: 14th century 

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary they posted the following definition:

GAY

late 14c., "full of joy, merry; light-hearted, carefree;" also "wanton, lewd, lascivious" (late 12c. as a surname, Philippus de Gay), from O.Fr. gai "joyful, happy; pleasant, agreeably charming; forward, pert" (12c.; cf. O.Sp. gayo, Port. gaio, It. gajo, probably French loan-words). Ultimate origin disputed; perhaps from Frankish *gahi (cf. O.H.G. wahi "pretty"), though not all etymologists accept this. Meaning "stately and beautiful; splendid and showily dressed" is from early 14c. The word gay by the 1890s had an overall tinge of promiscuity -- a gay house was a brothel. The suggestion of immorality in the word can be traced back at least to the 1630s, if not to Chaucer:

But in oure bed he was so fressh and gay
Whan that he wolde han my bele chose.

Slang meaning "homosexual" (adj.) begins to appear in psychological writing late 1940s, evidently picked up from gay slang and not always easily distinguished from the older sense:

After discharge A.Z. lived for some time at home. He was not happy at the farm and went to a Western city where he associated with a homosexual crowd, being "gay," and wearing female clothes and makeup. He always wished others would make advances to him. ["Rorschach Research Exchange and Journal of Projective Techniques," 1947, p.240]

The association with (male) homosexuality likely got a boost from the term gay cat, used as far back as 1893 in Amer.Eng. for "young hobo," one who is new on the road, also one who sometimes does jobs.

"A Gay Cat," said he, "is a loafing laborer, who works maybe a week, gets his wages and vagabonds about hunting for another 'pick and shovel' job. Do you want to know where they got their monica (nickname) 'Gay Cat'? See, Kid, cats sneak about and scratch immediately after chumming with you and then get gay (fresh). That's why we call them 'Gay Cats'." [Leon Ray Livingston ("America's Most Celebrated Tramp"), "Life and Adventures of A-no. 1," 1910]

Quoting a tramp named Frenchy, who might not have known the origin. Gay cats were severely and cruelly abused by "real" tramps and bums, who considered them "an inferior order of beings who begs of and otherwise preys upon the bum -- as it were a jackal following up the king of beasts" [Prof. John J. McCook, "Tramps," in "The Public Treatment of Pauperism," 1893], but some accounts report certain older tramps would dominate a gay cat and employ him as a sort of slave. In "Sociology and Social Research" (1932-33) a paragraph on the "gay cat" phenomenon notes, "Homosexual practices are more common than rare in this group," and gey cat "homosexual boy" is attested in N. Erskine's 1933 dictionary of "Underworld & Prison Slang" (gey is a Scottish variant of gay).

The "Dictionary of American Slang" reports that gay (adj.) was used by homosexuals, among themselves, in this sense since at least 1920. Rawson ["Wicked Words"] notes a male prostitute using gay in reference to male homosexuals (but also to female prostitutes) in London's notorious Cleveland Street Scandal of 1889. Ayto ["20th Century Words"] calls attention to the ambiguous use of the word in the 1868 song "The Gay Young Clerk in the Dry Goods Store," by U.S. female impersonator Will S. Hays, but the word evidently was not popularly felt in this sense by wider society until the 1950s at the earliest.

"Gay" (or "gai") is now widely used in French, Dutch, Danish, Japanese, Swedish, and Catalan with the same sense as the English. It is coming into use in Germany and among the English-speaking upper classes of many cosmopolitan areas in other countries. [John Boswell, "Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality," 1980]

Gay as a noun meaning "a (usually male) homosexual" is attested from 1971; in M.E. it meant "excellent person, noble lady, gallant knight," also "something gay or bright; an ornament or badge" (c.1400).

Welcome to The American Concept.

We live in an incredible nation, during some incredible times and never before have WE, THE PEOPLE, ever held so much truth as now. The internet has given us such great opportunities to really educate ourselves like never before, so it is with that knowledge that I hope to inspire some thought about our American way of life. To push for reason and logic over passionate beliefs and to encourage YOU the reader to really think about your own ideals.

So it starts here, a pebble in the pond, rippling the ideas of someone really not all that significant, never truly knowing where it may lead and never truly witnessing the effects. Still it is better to speak then to remain silent is it not?

My Oath is to remain true to the UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION, and to best convey my own thoughts and ideas with the Constitution always in mind. To weigh my own ideas, and those of others to our BILL OF RIGHTS, and to always use the Constitution as a basis for my judgment whether it agrees with me or not. To remain true to Righteousness, Truth and Justice over my own personal opinions. To be open to contradictions, opinions and critique of my readers with the goal of learning always in the forefront.

I hope you follow me along as we tackle different issues, thoughts or just the occasional random babbling. I honestly feel a bit selfish, hoping that I learn as much as I can from you without worrying about pride if you do not learn from me. Until then, is the American Concept truly part of the American condition? Only time with tell.

Thank you.