December 17, 2012--The Black Helicopter Crowd

One of my Florida neighbors and his wife recently published a book titled, Here Come the Black Helicopters.

They may or may not know that the first reference to black helicopters by the conspiracy-minded was Hal Lindsey in his 1970 bestseller, The Late, Great Planet Earth, an apocalyptical work that foretells the end of times after global famines and earthquakes and the takeover of the world's governments by an entity much life today's UN, which will move its stormtroopers about to suppress freedom and stifle dissent in a fleet of black helicopters.

In their PR material, my author neighbors claim their reference to black helicopters is meant to be metaphoric--not literal--because they are not talking in eschatological terms but rather about the terrible things that Barack Obama has on his second-term agenda. Among others, he plans to turn America into a socialist country while outsourcing and subverting much of our law and constitutional rights to the actual UN.

But since they also know how to make a buck from screeds of this kind, I suspect they are fully aware of Lindsey's appeal to the unstable and delusional and are attempting to cash in on it. Though their target readers can barely read, they still buy books of this kind.

My neighbors could be poster children for what Eric Hoffer once said about great causes. As quoted recently by Bill Kristol of all people, the very liberal Hoffer said--

"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket."

We are at the racket stage of the great Republican Party movement that traces its history back to at least Abraham Lincoln.

Among the numerous preposterous claims in Here Come the Black Helicopters is the one that we have been hearing for years--that Barack Obama wants to subvert the Constitution by eliminating or ignoring the Second Amendment, the one that says--

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.

The irony is that constitutional scholar and law professor Barack Obama, in addition to being excoriated during his initial run for the presidency for saying that when economic times are hard people "cling to guns and religion," has yet even to speak forcefully and in detail about wanting to see any additional forms of gun control much less advocating any.

Why not, President Obama?

I can understand the first time around--presidential ambition and fear of the electoral power of the National Rifle Association inhibited him from even engaging in the issue--but why not now?  Isn't it time, after being reelected, to try to "educate" Americans about what the Founders' intended in the Second Amendment? How they included it because they rejected any idea of the country having a standing army and thus wanted Americans to have the right to have arms of their own in case they were called upon to fight to defend the security and freedom of their new country?

Obama should argue that now that we have a standing army, navy, and air force, with their own arms and weapon systems, the Second Amendment for militia purposes is obsolete.

Tragically, there is right now a clear opportunity to mount a full-throated call for a faithful history of arms in America and what, today, through federal law and the Constitution, it is appropriate to protect and ban.

That opportunity is because of what tragically happened in Newton, Connecticut where late last week a crazed gunman slaughtered 27 innocents, 20 of them children seven years-old or younger.

As in Columbine in 1999; as in Blacksburg in 2007 at Virginia Tech; as at Fort Hood in 2009; as in Tucson in 2011; as in Oakland in 2012; as in Aurora earlier this year; as in too many other places; and now in Newton, while there never will be adequate explanations for what motivated these mass murders, what drove these evil people, all of them committed atrocities using automatic weapons. Not muskets, not target pistols, not hunting rifles, but military weapons such as AK 47s all equipped with magazines that held enough ammunition to potentially kill dozens, and in some cases did.

Though this is not mentioned in our Constitution, a compromise might be possible to permit weapons for hunting and self-defense at home. But no assault rifles, no submachine guns, no high-capacity magazines.

We elected and then reelected Barack Obama to provide leadership. In this arena he has thus far  been a great disappointment. But as the father of two young girls, who openly wept when he commented on Friday about the shootings, it is time for him to act like one. It is past time for him and us to take on the black helicopter people for the sake of his and our children.