In case you missed this, Thom Hartmann on 2nd Amendment. [View all]

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I post this for those here who may have missed this. It is from The Thom Hartmann Show and was posted over in Video and Multimedia by fellow DUer Thom Hartmann.

A little about Thom in case you do not know him. He is a remarkably educated historian, especially regarding our founding fathers. He owns an original set of Thomas Jefferson
Diaries which he found in the attic of a house he once owned. Thom is a prolific publisher with well over a dozen books to his credit, most dealing with America, her history and our democracy. The Thom Hartmann Show is broadcast Monday through Friday, noon to three pacific time.

This is a segment from his show which aired Tuesday. Lastly, I post this for those who wish to read it, not for any other purpose. I am not Thom, I can not add anything to further the discussion
of Thom's words. Sometimes (rarely) he answers our posts to him in his OPs.

Entire OP over at:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/101745287

"Rewind back to the early days of America - even after the British were beaten back in the Revolutionary War there was still tremendous fear that American was vulnrable to attack. It could be the Spanish coming up from Florida. Or the French - or the British again - coming down through Canada. And most of our Founding Fathers also had an enormous fear of standing armies during times of peace - after all, thousands of years of history showed them that great nations that kept a standing army during times of peace were often taken down by that very army in a military coup. Jefferson wrote exhaustively on this - even threatening to blow up the Constitution since it didn't include protections from standing armies. As Jefferson wrote to James Madison in 1787: "I do not like the omission of a Bill of Rights providing clearly... protection against standing armies." And as Jefferson wrote in 1814: "The Greeks and Romans had no standing armies, yet they defended themselves...Their system was to make every man a soldier and oblige him to repair to the standard of his country whenever that was reared. This made them invincible; and the same remedy will make us so."

And that's why they formulated the Second Amendment, which would provide for a well-armed militia that could be called on should the nation be under attack. Again - the second amendment is there to protect the nation - and, in part, to protect it FROM a standing Army during time of peace. In fact, it was modeled on the Constitution of Pennsylvania, the state where the Framers met, in Philadelphia in 1787, to write our Constitution. Article 13 of the Pennsylvania Constitution, adopted in 1776, says it pretty plainly: "XIII. That the people have a right to bear arms for the defense of themselves and the state; and as standing armies in the time of peace are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be kept up; And that the military should be kept under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power."

But recently - especially since President Obama took office - that rationale has been flipped on its head - and many - particularly on the Right - believe that the Second Amendment is there to protect the people AGAINST the nation. As though militias in South Dakota armed with rifles, handguns, and shotguns could somehow beat back the U.S. government armed with cruise missiles, tanks, and drones. They can't - and this idea that the second amendment is a protection against tyranny from our own government is a lie - a lie that's increasingly used today to paint President Obama as a radical who wants to take away our freedoms."

The rest can be found over in Video and Multimedia:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/101745287

I strongly recommend reading on as Thom brings things forward to our current Supreme Court where he diagnosis Justice Scalia's recent interpretations.