The news of the day was filled with surprises. John McCain addressed the National Rifle Association and mocked Barack Obama's knowledge of duck hunting, while putting while proclaiming his unyielding support for the only amendment of the Bill of Rights that the rightwing wholeheartedly supports--the second amendment (he said that it was "unique" in the world).
It would be foolish to even suggest to McCain that the second amendment was not enacted to insure every citizen the right to accumulate weapons in a free and open market (at the time, fire arms were very primitive even by late 19th century standards and the majority of people couldn't easily afford to purchase them) but as a protection against illegal searches and seizures, detentions without warrants, coerced self-incriminating testimony, arbitrary denials of speech and assembly, and other actions associated with the British colonial rule that most of the rest of the Bill of Right adressed and that today resemble contemporary Bush administration policies. McCain, in the past he acted more like conservatives in the rest of the world in supporting restrictions on some weapons purchases. However, as an NRA leader said on his behalf, he opposed in the Senate a ban on contemporary assault weapons with which, I would say, an individual could possibly take out the Minute Men standing at Lexington.
Meanwhile, the news tells us the Bush administration is preparing for its own little Devil's island or perhaps little Siberia, a huge new prison on the U.S. base in Afghanistan to house foreign terrorists(but if history is any judge, who knows who will eventually end up there). I guess it makes a certain sense. More weapons here and abroad mean more crime here and abroad mean more prisons here and abroad to deter crime and fight "terrorism."
By the way, McCain was speaking before the NRA with two of his former opponents, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee (whose grotesque "joke" against Senator Obama tells you pretty much what he thinks of both his audience and himself) the ever popular Karl Rove, and Oliver North, the big sucker in the arms for hostages deal that the Iranians tricked the Reagan administration into and. of course, the "statesman" who concocted the scheme to siphon off some of the illegal funds gotten from the arms deal to the Nicaraguan "contras."
Perhaps McCain will advocate the globalizing of the Second Amendment as the essence of U.S. democracy, establishing an inalienable human right to own firearms and committing the U.S. to work to help developing nations gain the mass purchasing power so that their citizens can purchase firearms (from American firms). McCain may also call upon the NRA to work directly with the United Nations, the IMF, and the World Bank to advance this policy. It is probably the only national and international economic policy that his new found ultra right friends could wholeheartedly support. Monty Python would understand. So would Jonathan Swift.
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