Founders warned us

As this Memorial Day passed, I wondered again what the Founding Fathers really intended when they wrote into the Second Amendment the words “a well regulated militia.” We get a hint from reading a long dissertation by Samuel Adams in a 1776 letter to a colleague in which he wrote, in part, “A standing Army, however necessary it may be at some times, is always dangerous to the Liberties of the People. Soldiers are apt to consider themselves as a Body distinct from the rest of the Citizens.”

He was advocating then for what we called in World War II a “citizen army” that, after the war, would return to being citizens and who would love peace, not war.

We now have the worst of possibilities. A bloated military which has a vested, virtually hereditary, interest in war, and a citizenry, much of which loves war and its violence and worships that military.

This seems to be just what the Founding Fathers warned against and were trying to prevent.

Allan deLaubenfels

Spokane Valley