My father would often say, when referring to some repetitive action, "I wish I had a nickel for every time... ." Today I wonder if the president feels that same way when he is asked to comment about another mass shooting. How many times has he had to do this and yet the beat goes on.
In the preamble to the Constitution of the United States, are these few words: "To form a more perfect union." Notice they didn't say, "a perfect Union." They wanted better than what they had, but they knew it would never be perfect. They wanted freedom to live as they wished but yet they wanted boundaries because they knew without those boundaries, good intentions can easily become bad. You see, people like to stretch those boundaries for their own selfish needs.
In less than two and-a-half centuries we, as a nation, have taken that Constitution and litigated it to pieces. We have defined freedom of speech to pretty much saying anything you want, whether vulgar, blaspheming each other or telling lies. We have defined the freedom to bear arms to mean weapons that have no use but to kill people. We have taken freedom of religion to mean only within the sanctity of your own home, church or synagogue. Those same freedoms we hold so dear have been turned against us and, if you look around you today, you can see the effects.
When this country was established as a nation of immigrants, we must have known that along with the people would come their prejudices and grudges. Somehow we felt we could change all of that. On paper the original Constitution might have had a chance. That is until we changed it to mean what it means today.
Mike Holst
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Crosslake
