Tag: Abigail Spanberger

15 Minutes Past Midnight: Virginia Votes

Many of us recall the doomsday clock during the Cold War.  It was always minutes before midnight:  Nuclear Armageddon.   Today there is another clock ticking away as our democracy ebbs.  If midnight was the hour when democracy ends, the clock today would read 15 minutes past midnight.  Yes, we have crossed that line into the shadow of autocracy.  We can, however, reset that clock, but we must do it quickly and the first step is to vote.  

Election day is upon us here in Virginia and we have an opportunity to reset that clock.  It will be a consequential election with generational impacts for Virginians.  Think of the world your child, or grandchild, or great grandchild will be born into if Trump has his way. 

First and foremost, your vote will help keep Virginia from following several Republican states down the rabbit hole of one-party authoritarian rule.  Texas is the architype of such a state: Texasistan.

 A neo-theocratic state where women are surveilled and reduced to second class citizen.  A state where race equates to citizenship; a state where people of Latino ancestry are subject to constant local, state and federal police stops and detentions for simply having a certain physical appearance, speak Spanish, and work in low wage jobs.  Guilty!  

Texas is a state that happily offers to deploy its national guard soldiers to occupy cities in Democratic lead states as Trump’s armed enforcers.  A state where Christianity is foisted on folks’ children in public schools who worship differently or choose not to believe.  Ones relationship to your god is between you and your creator and the state has no place in that relationship.  We don’t want to be that kind of state, Winsome Earle-Sears does.

Second, Sears wants to turn the clock back to the 19th century regarding women’s rights.  She spent her whole campaign using trans kids as political fodder, ostensible as a women’s rights issue.  Meanwhile, she voted ‘no’ on a tie-breaking vote as Lt. Governor on a bill that would have given Virginia women reproductive choice rights, in particular access to contraception.   

She claims to protect your daughter from supposed predators while whole heartily supporting a president found by a civil jury to have sexually assaulted a woman in a department store dressing room.  And then Sears has the temerity to tell a woman that she has no right to reproductive choices or contraception, the right to choose when and how to have a family.    

Third, a medical and insurance crisis is in the offing after the passage of the Republican’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” which Sears endorsed.  Many Virginians will lose Medicaid coverage starting in 2027 as part of the bill’s multibillion dollar cuts to Medicaid.  Three rural health clinics have already closed or plan to close because of the bills impacts.

Approximately 400k Virginians get medical insurance through the Affordable Care Act (ACA).  Given the lapse in ACA insurance subsidies under the bill’s provisions, many of these Virginians will have to give up medical insurance given that premiums will double and even quadruple as subsidies for low-income folks lapse under the bill by the end of this year.  Health care insurance will once again become unaffordable to average Virginians.  

Spanberger has a plan.  According to the Virginia Mercury, Spanberger said, “It’s essential that we be able to strengthen access to health care, improve affordability, and recognize that for so many Virginians, they’re one medical event away from really substantial ruin,” Spanberger adding. “But for so many, (health care cost) is just one more worry that keeps them up at night.”  Sears on the other hand has no plan, except to support the big, beautiful bill.

Fourth, Spanberger will return our schools back to the people, and rid us of the Youngkin and Sears Orwellian thought police.  Remember Governor Youngkin’s attempt to turn our schools in to Stasi-like institutions where teachers and students were under constant surveillance for utterances that contradict sacrosanct Republican notions of history.  Youngkin even started an informant hotline one could call or email to report thought transgressors.  Is that how we raise our children? Turning them into government snitches. 

Youngkin’s education policy was a flop at best.  Under his administration, standardized test scores that remained essentially the same after four years of his administration, and well below pre-pandemic scores.  In short, a failure to achieve one of his top priority goals. Winsome Earle-Sears won’t do much better, I suspect, since she is an advocate for reducing public school funding in favor of private charter schools.

Fifth, Spanberger will be a voice for Virginia’s farmers who are hard hit by Trump’s self-inflicted tariff wars (see last week’s post).  Virginia farmers are losing overseas markets, losing income, and being weighed down by unsustainable debt.  Bail outs aren’t an answer, the preferred Republican solution.  It’s the coward’s way out of not confronting Trump head on.  If you are a afraid to criticize Trump, you already live in your own mental dictatorship.  

Spanberger will speak truth to power, I believe. Nor cower before Trump like so many Republicans in Congress and state governments.

Sixth, Spanberger will fight for Virginian’s serving in not only our military, but our civil and foreign services as well.  Our foreign and civil service Virginians are patriots and deserve much better than mass illegal firings, the constant dehumanization and criminalization, the threats and intimidation.  

They, along with the men and women who serve in our armed forces, are the frontline against Trump’s extra-judicial and unconstitutional attempts to turn America into a police state, an autocracy.  Congress is AWOL, the lower courts are fighting a brave rearguard action, only to be undermined repeatedly by the Supreme Court in yet another opinionless shadow docket ruling.  

States are the bulwark against a tyrannical central government.  It’s how our founders envisioned our federal alliance in 1787.  States need to stand up to Trump and his federal maladministration. Virginia needs to be one of those states.

Things will get worse for America and Virginia under Trump in the next few weeks, months, and years.  We need a strong democratic coalition in Virginia to weather the coming constitutional tempest and damage that may prove fatal to the rule of law.  We must fight, and fight to win.  A Spanberger win in November will set the tone for 2026 and beyond.

Let’s keep Virginia democratic and its people free: Vote.

Virginia Farmers: A Case to Vote Democratic

This past Saturday at the Fall Fiber Festival and Montpelier Sheep Dog Trials near Orange, Virginia, something remarkable happened.  During the afternoon sheep shearing demonstration, the 70 something farmer from Louisa, teared up when describing how he came to raising sheep and learning how to shear them.  He paused, wiping tears from his eyes, sheepishly apologized.  He had heart surgery last year, he said.  The crowd in the tent was silent, . . . .then a booming gruff, male voice, said, ‘No apology necessary.’  He paused, ‘in fact more people in this country need heart surgery.’  Applause erupted in the crowded tent.

I don’t know the politics of the farmer shearing the sheep, I don’t know the politics of the man comforting the farmer, I don’t know the politics of the crowd, and I certainly don’t know the politics of the sheep.  It was a moment of vulnerability, and the response was compassion, a common humanity.  

The man with the gruff voice called out the heartlessness of our partisan divide, the hate mongers, the primal chest pounding in some quarters.  The farmer then got a 50-pound sheep out of the pen, rassled him into position, and started to shear her with traditional shears.  Impressive for anyone, much less a 70-something farmer who recently had heart surgery.   

Farming is not for the faint of heart.  My wife’s side of the family were Kansas wheat farmers starting in the 1920s.  Her mom was one of 12 kids, the first one arriving at 16, the last at 46.  Her mom remembers the dust, the jack rabbits, and the wheat.  She left when she could.   They worked hard, took second jobs to make ends meet. Alas, the farm was sold in the 2003.

Let me snatch your mind back from the precipice of agrarian nostalgia and sentimentality and bring you back to reality.

Americans have long been fascinated by the imagery of a yeoman farmer clearing the fields and tilling the soil.  Hard work, independence, self-sufficiency were the supposed hallmarks of America’s rural farmers.  American Historian Richard Hofstadter called it the “agrarian myth,” arguing that the “more commercial” America became, “the more reason it found to cling in imagination to the noncommercial agrarian values.”  Adding, that “the American mind was raised upon a sentimental attachment to rural living….  The agrarian myth represents a kind of homage that Americans have paid to the fancied innocence of their origins.”  Farmers, Hofstadter wrote, are businessmen, first and foremost.

During several past national election seasons, “Farmers For Trump” road signs dotted Louisa County.  I always thought the imagery of the word “farmer” was meant to evoke the ‘agrarian myth’ of good honest living, hard work, self-sufficiency, independence and somehow attaching it to a man who has never had a callous from working with his hands, never used a shovel, much less an axe.  Who has probably spent more cash on manicures than many farmers have paid for their tractors.

Trump’s policies hurt farmers, to include those in Louisa County.  His tariff war, especially his war on Beijing, is bankrupting farmers across the country.

Here are the ground truths.  

Virginia’s top agricultural export countries in 2022 were China, Canada, Venezuela (go figure), and Taiwan in that order.  Virginia farmers did close to $1.5 billion business with China.  Canada came in at a distant second with $370 million.  Exports are crashing to these countries because of Trumps policies. 

China buys 60 percent of the global supply of soybeans.  This year, however, they have bought ZERO soybeans from American farmers.  So, 60 percent of the potential Virginia’s and Louisa County’s soybean sales, gone, evaporated, zilch, in the flick of a social media post.

Because of Trump’s tariff war with China, Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil are now China’s biggest suppliers of soybeans. According to the latest figures I have, Virginia harvested 21.6 million bushels of soybeans in 2023 and that jumped in 2024 to 26.4 million bushels, most destined for export markets, primarily China. This years harvest is at risk of being unsold.

Louisa in 2022 had 8058 acres of soybeans under cultivation.  At 44 bushels per acre, that amounts to 354,552 bushels.  Assuming that the same number of approximate acres are being grown today, at today’s market value that come out to about $3.6 million.  A potential loss of $3.6 million to Louisa farmers if it is left unsold. Net cash income for Virginia and Louisa farmers is dropping because of Trump’s policies.

Crashing commodity prices and massive loss of export buyers is why Trump is promising a farmer bailout.   More free cash handouts to loyal farmers.  This worked during his first term when Trump bailed out farmers to the tune of billions of dollars because of failed tariff wars.  They voted for him again in droves. Why?  I don’t know. Makes no sense.

The White House recently proposed a $38 to $50 billion bailout for America’s farmers.  That’s about $16k per farmer.  I know it won’t be disbursed equally across the board, but it is a bailout for the row crop farmers who are losing export business because of Trump’s shortsighted and counterproductive policies.  

In a supreme act of irony, Trump wants to use tariff dollars – basically a consumption tax Americans like you and I pay — to fund the famer bailout.  Picking my pocket to give free cash to his farmer voting base.  Problem is, Trump can’t just reach into the Treasury and take the money, like a personal piggy bank.  He needs Congress to authorize the funds.

Farmers voted for Trump for a variety of reasons, one being they thought he is a good businessman.  Well, you got screwed…. again.  Time to get beyond the culture wars, hate mongering, and bullshit rhetoric of who is and who is not a real American.  

 According to government stats analyzed for a 2024 Politico article titled Did Trump or Biden deliver more for farmers?  The answer may surprise you,  “Biden has been better for farmers than Trump.  Net farming income has actually gone up since the Democrat entered the White House.  On average, net farm income has totaled $165 billion between 2021 and 2023, compared to $94 billion between 2017 and 2019.  Farm income reached a record high of nearly $189 billion in 2022.”

The 2022 Census of Agriculture Louisa County Profile, a U.S. Department of Agriculture publication, supports Politico’s analysis.  According to the profile, net cash farm income in Louisa County increased 2269 percent (yes, 2269) between 2017 and 2022.  The market value of products sold increased 143 percent over the same period.  Mostly, Louisa’s 452 farmers did well under Biden, but many threw away these Biden gains made after Trump’s first term mistakes, exacerbated by Trump’s thoroughly horrible mismanagement of the pandemic response, by helping to elect Trump to a second term.  100 days into his second term Trump later needs to bailout farmers once again. Enough, no?

I think I made a good economic case that voting for Trump is bad for business. Like sheep, he is herding farmers in order to fleece them. He isn’t much better in most measures regarding democracy and rule of law as well. Please vote for Abigail Spanberger for Governor this November, and in the mid-terms in 2026, help throw out 5th District representative John McGuire so Congress can do its constitutional duty to reign in Trump’s dash toward autocracy and bankrupting America’s farmers.  A vote for Democrats is a vote to return to prosperity.

Liberty’s Chrysalis

“The love of power is natural; it is insatiable; almost constantly whetted; and never cloy’d by possession.”

Henry Saint John, 1st Viscount of Bolingbroke

This spring my wife and I planted a small rain garden.  The plantings included several swamp milkweeds, the preferred plant for Monarchs to lay their eggs on.  It’s Latin name is Asclepias incarnata for the serious gardeners out there.  The other day, to our delight, we discovered a dozen monarch caterpillars denuding the milkweeds.  

It took several days for them to consume every leaf.  Fully fueled with toxic bitterness and relatively immune from predation, they slowly wandered off to other plants, leaving the bare stalks of the milkweed as testament to their presence.  One by one they moved on, rambling off into the garden seeking leaves or branches to safely transform into chrysalises.  

Within several days of the caterpillar migration, we spotted two bright green chrysalises hanging under leaves.  A third caterpillar wasn’t quite there yet. We hope that within 14 days, given the mild weather, the caterpillars will be reborn as butterflies.  A well-tended garden brings unexpected joys.

The discovery of the caterpillars reminded me of the words of Henry Saint John, that liberty is like a tender plant.  He penned these words close to 300 years ago and the metaphor could not be more relevant in our time: “liberty is a tender plant which will not flourish unless the genius of the soil be proper for it; nor will any soil continue to be so long, which is not cultivated with incessant care.”  

He wrote these words in the early 18th century, a time of upheaval in England: political factions vying for power in a deadly struggle.  He didn’t always choose wisely, backing the Stuart’s claim to the crown and the ensuing Jacobite Rebellion, ending up in exile in France for some time.  He is most famous, I think, for his essay “The Idea of a Patriot King,” arguing that a King should be above faction.

This idea of a King above faction is important in our own history. It informed how Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and John Quincy Adams saw the presidency.  A president above faction.  They tried mightily to be above faction, not always successfully, however.  Andrew Jackson threw the notion of a patriot president out a White House window along with the contents of a chamber pot.   

Today, we are ruled by an unsound and troubled president hell bent on hyper factionalizing our country, resorting to violence and armed soldiers patrolling city streets.   He has taken the notion of faction to new extremes in America, not seen since the late 1850s.   This includes sending the military to occupy blue cities to show his political muscle;  flaunting the rule of law; criminally investigating critics; ruling solely by dictate; musing publicly about being a dictator; rewriting our history; engaging in extrajudicial killings on the high seas off Venezuela; and setting the stage to nullify next year’s mid-term election results unfavorable to him.

Our garden of democracy needs tending.  And damn quickly.  

We must steadfastly feed and nourish our democracy.  Stay informed in the face of daily trespassing against our liberty.  Although in today’s world where most Americans get their ‘news’ through social media, ‘informed’ is perhaps obsolete.  There still are reliable news sources out there.  Social media is not one of them.  Social media is an avalanche of computer driven feeds designed to elicit clicks, rage, and profit.  Curate your news sources. Go old fashioned and read books, lots of them.  The more you read, the more you realize how little you actually know about things you thought you knew a great deal about. That’s a good thing.

We must clear out the authoritarian weeds that plague our garden of democracy.  We must elect leaders that reflect our values and are in tune with today’s generation and willing to fight.  The continual reelection of octogenarians does the party no good.  

We must go to the polls this November and elect Abigail Spanberger governor and weed out the noxious plants occupying Virginia’s governor’s mansion.  We must not just elect her but elect her in a historical landslide. We don’t want to become an autocratic state like Texas or Florida. 

We must seed our garden of democracy with plants that are robust and acclimated to our current political reality:  An opposition party bent on one-party authoritarian rule.  We can do that by supporting new faces and ideas in the Democratic party at all levels.  Starting with David Rogers who is running for the Mineral seat in our local board of supervisors.

We must amend the soil of our garden.  Get friends and family to register to vote, get them to the polls on election days.  Attend rallies or local meetings.  Donate to candidates you support.  If you can, canvas for that candidate. Volunteer with the Louisa Democrats.

We must not only resist the orange piped piper of Mar-a-Lago but fight him at every junction.  Write or call your representatives, write the Supreme Court Justices, write our governor.  Tell them your story and how you are impacted by Trump’s dangerous and illegal actions.  That food, housing, and healthcare will be unaffordable and unattainable once the full impact of Trump’s tariffs, deportation of farm and food processing workers, and regressive taxes are felt.   

Plant a garden an act of subversion against Trump’s war on climate science.  Whether you have only a south facing front door stoop, a small balcony, or quarter acre, or ten acres, plant a garden in the dirt or in pots.  Every plant you grow feeds or houses an insect or animal and soaks up carbon.  Get radical and grow a victory garden.

Our garden of democracy is in big trouble, but with our incessant care and nourishment our democracy can flourish once again.  Together we must tend the garden of democracy and create the space and time to protect and nurture liberty’s chrysalis from Trump’s insatiable drive to possess absolute power. 

A Virginian’s “Notes” on the Constitution

This week, after another dismal showing by the Supreme Court, I asked myself whether our Constitution is all smoke and mirrors.  A Potemkin Village.  A parchment signifying nothing.  Like Macbeth’s soliloquy for his dead wife, “a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, full of sound and fury signifying nothing.”  

At least that is how I interpreted a recent series of Supreme Court’s shadow docket rulings.  As someone who spent 29 years in law enforcement and for decades closely read the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center’s quarterly summaries of federal court rulings as they pertained to constitutional rights, it is my considered judgment that the Supreme Court has abandoned sanity and the rule of law in favor of partisan power.  

One of my favorite references as to the intent of the framers of our Constitution is James Madison’s ‘Notes on the Constitutional Convention.’  My copy is well worn, with markers and scribbles in the margins and since January 20 has been a constant companion.   I even had Chief Justice Scalia sign it when he visited the embassy in Lisbon when I was assigned there between 2005 and 2008.

Every time the Supreme Court makes a ruling, I go to Madison’s ‘Notes’ — and the Federalist essays — and read the debates at the convention relevant to the issue the Court just decided.  The delegates at the convention did not leave many stones unturned in their debates, disputes we continue to dredge up and debate to this day. As for the conservative super majority, who fancy themselves die hard textualists and originalists, they seem to ignore the intent, spirit, and tone of the constitutional convention when it suits them, if not the very text of the Constitution.  

The ‘Notes,’ are a compilation of Madison’s minutes of the daily proceedings of the constitutional convention in Philadelphia during the scorching summer months of 1787.  It was published posthumously some 50 years after the convention.  Revised and amended by Madison over the 50 years before publication, one must approach the ‘Notes’ cautiously.  Nonetheless, they are a remarkable account of the discourse and debates that resulted in our Constitution.  Madison’s summaries of the day-to-day debates, however flawed, provided unique insights into the worldview of the delegates that created our government and fundamental laws of the land. 

Our Constitution was radical and captured the spirit and ideas of over 300 years of renaissance and enlightenment thinking, enshrining into a written constitution the primacy of the people as sovereign:  We the people.  Nonetheless, our new Constitution was far from perfect.  In fact, it was deeply flawed because those at the convention convinced themselves that slavery was on its way to extinction, that it would diffuse and extinguish itself soon.  Instead, they ended up sacrificing generations of captive African Americans to slavery for the sake of white national unity.  As it turned out, they only deferred our country’s reckoning with slavery until 1861.  It would take a ‘second’ founding after a Civil War to amend the Constitution to reflect the original premise of the Declaration of Independence, the bit about equality. 

Our founding thinkers did not invent democracy, republics, or even the concept of separation of powers.  The ideas that animated their debates go back to Greece and Rome,16th century Republics such as Florence, Renaissance writers such as Machiavelli, and later enlightenment thinkers such as Montesquieu, Hume, and Rousseau.  If anything, our founders took their history seriously.  They believed in the ancient notion of virtuous leaders and feared the mob, that is the tyranny of the majority.  

The result a novel invention of a republic with two sovereigns – sovereign states within a sovereign federal union – and a hybrid government mix of the one, the few, the many (President, Senate, House of Representatives).   The key ingredient: built in checks and balances.  In short, compromise.  A word now considered a pejorative by right wing conservatives.  

They codified their fears into hard checks and balances into our founding document.  Co-equal branches of government, designed to check one another out of jealousy for one’s own power.  That is the foundation, the spine, the bedrock, whatever metaphor you want to use, of our Constitution.  Without checks and balances it collapses like a dying star.  

Our history is complex.  On the one hand, America has a legacy of horrific racist policies since independence from England: slavery, ethnic cleansing of Native Americans, Chinese Exclusion Act, Separate but Equal segregation, interment of Japanese Americans are but a few.   But there was also the New Deal, the long Civil Rights movement, and women’s suffrage. Through all this our constitutional system – the mechanics — functioned as designed for the most part.

The mechanics of our system is collapsing.  Since January 20, ruling by decree, Trump is squashing America’s rule of law like a junkyard car crusher.   The cowards in Congress mute as they render themselves into useless piles of worthless scrap.   While Democrat leaders twirled and lurched like bungling idiots during the initial onslaught of presidential decrees, the lower courts held their ground, pausing many of these orders after hearing arguments.  Unsung men and women if you ask me.  For the most part the appeals courts also held firm.  

The Supreme Court on the other hand is a disaster, ripping out the valves, pistons, and belts that kept our system humming.  They continue to hand Trump unprecedented powers one shadow docket ruling after another.  And in their own power grab, kneecapping the lower courts.  In many cases, rulings are announced without even offering an explanatory opinion: the ‘why.’  Mostly I think because they don’t have a legally sound ‘why’ to back up their decrees.   Yes, that is what their rulings have become in essence under this regime of shadow dockets: Decrees.  Like a solar eclipse, the proliferation of these rulings is thrusting the rule of law into darkness, something one sees in authoritarian regimes. 

So, here is where we are now. 

In Philadelphia 238 years ago, a group of delegates representing 12 of the 13 states, assembled, debated, and drafted the rudimentary structure of a new type of government never seen before.  The great experiment began.  They knew the document they produced wasn’t perfect, and they recognized the need to be able to change the document with the times, outlining a process to amend the Constitution through considered debate and argument.  They were also cleared eyed about power and how it corrupts, building in checks and balances.  

Those checks and balances are disappearing like Epstein’s client list.  We now have a President who unilaterally rewrites the Constitution through edict and is immune from official acts that are criminal in nature; a Supreme Court that unilaterally changes the Constitution through opaque shadow rulings; a Congress and Supreme Court willfully and energetically empowering a tyrant King.  Like Macbeth’s monologue, I ask myself, “Is American democracy on its way to dusty death?”  Our candle snuffed out? 

It is not too late. The candle can be relit but will take time and effort.  We should focus on what we, in Virginia, can control.  The next step is to vote Abigail Spanberger in as Governor this November and keep our state legislature majority blue.  This November’s election will be a bellwether for the mid-terms the following year.  It is an opportunity for Virginians to send a message to Trump, the do-nothing Virginian Republican sycophants in Congress, and the Supreme Court.  

The Second Amendment and the Seizure of California’s National Guard

“The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country: but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person.”

Initial proposition that would become the Second Amendment

Several weeks ago under the pretext of executive power and spurious claims of out of control wide-spread protests and violence, Trump seized California’s National Guard and turned it on the citizens of Los Angeles.  Protest is not insurrection or rebellion; it is the fight to assemble and protest government actions and policies. Local police authorities in Los Angels City and County have tens of thousands of officers and the capability and will to control any lawlessness by a minority of protestors. 

California sued. The initial ruling in federal court was that the activation of the California National Guard was illegal. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals stayed the ruling almost immediately and recently ruled that Trump may continue to to retain control of the California National Guard while the State’s lawsuit continues.  California did not make a second amendment argument, but I think it should have.  I argue that Trump’s seizure of the California National Guard is a fundamental violation of the Second Amendment’s original intent.  

The first federal Congress in 1789, fearing the possibility of one day having a despotic central government, wanted to amend the Constitution to restrict the federal government’s ability to strip state militias of the ability to ‘bear arms’ (among other things). That is essentially the states’ abilities to individually or collectively resist a repressive federal government.  California’s National Guard is just such a well-regulated militia.

By seizing the California National Guard and deploying it against the wishes of the governor, Trump took away California’s right to defend itself from a despotic and corrupt President and central government.  Adding insult to injury, active-duty Marines were also deployed to Los Angeles.

If you read the Congressional debates and follow the revisions surrounding the Second Amendment, the original intent of the Second Amendment was to prohibit the federal government from seizing or disbanding state militias.  Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has so mangled and distorted the amendment in the past decades that the second amendment’s original intent is unrecognizable. 

On June 8, 1789 — 236 years ago this month — James Madison introduced nine propositions or resolutions for amending the Constitution. From these propositions the House of Representatives would derive 17 amendments, of which, ten would eventually become what is known as the Bill of Rights. Way down the list, buried in proposition four, after statements about religious freedom, freedom of speech and press, the right to peaceable assembly and petitioning for redressing of grievances, Madison, proposed what would become the second amendment.

The Annals of Congress contains the record of the running debates surrounding the amendments to the Constitution and reflect contemporaneous conceptions of the meanings of these amendments, and how they changed over the debates. Madison, borrowing from the other state constitutions and even the 1689 English Bill of Rights, proposed the following language regarding the right to bear arms (House Records, pp. 451-452):

“The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country: but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person.”

Madison’s propositions did not gain much traction in Congress. Members of Congress were more concerned with the mechanics of setting up a functioning government. The debates preceding and surrounding the discussions on the proposed amendments centered on funding mechanisms and structure of the various executive departments being contemplated. Madison nonetheless persisted, and on July 21 requested further consideration of the amendments. After “desultory” conversation on the amendments, they were referred to a committee of eleven, which included Madison.

Just short of a month later, the committee of eleven finished their work on the proposed amendments and presented them to the House of Representatives on August 17. Madison’s language on bearing arms was revised and read:

“A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, being the best security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; but no person religiously scrupulous shall be compelled to bear arms (House Records, p.778)

Eldridge Gerry of Massachusetts, a veteran of the constitutional convention in Philadelphia in 1787, and who was one of three delegates who refused to sign the Constitution at the end of the convention, led the debate regarding the amendment to bear arms. His remarks are crucial, I think to understanding, the intent of this amendment. He states:

“This declaration of rights, I take it, is intended to secure the people against the mal-administration of the Government; if we could suppose that, in all cases, the rights of the people would be attended to, the occasion for guards of this kind would be removed (p. 778).”

Not one person during the debate contradicted or challenged Gerry’s assertion, which seems to state that the ability to keep and bear arms referred to the people’s ability to form militias as a collective defense against a tyrannical central government. The remainder of the debate that day on this amendment surrounded primarily the question of religious scruples and service in the militia.

After more “desultory” (I love that word) conversation, 17 proposed amendments to the Constitution were sent to the Senate on August 24. The bearing arms amendment was number 5 and read after some minor tweaking (Senate record, pp. 63-64):

“A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, being the best security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed, but no one religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person.”

On September 4, the senate, whose records of debate are not as detailed as the House’s records of debate, showed that senators objected to a few of the amendments, but without comment as to why. “On the motion to adopt the fifth article of the amendments proposed by the House of Representatives, amended to read as followeth: ‘a well regulated militia, being the best security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed:’ It passed in the affirmative” (Senate Record, p. 71).

That senate version is today’s second amendment.

Trump’s actions run counter to the second amendment and are provocative and meant to inflame the citizens of Los Angeles and California.  He deliberately and recklessly tried to provoke a larger conflict and failed.  Now, instead of quelling protests, they are being used as an occupying army – with police powers – to accompany militarized ICE agents.  

It is not a good sign of democratic health when federal law enforcement agents dress and act like soldiers and the military act like police officers.  The stark historical difference between civilian police and the military are dangerously blurred and will eventually disappear.  For a president who increasingly sees military action as a solution to both domestic – blue states — and overseas issues we will witness an increase of National Guard activations and deployments to suppress domestic opposition soon I fear.  

If the Supreme Court sides with Trump, how will we, denizens of Virginia, defend itself from Trump’s provocations, corruption, and illegalities when Abigail Spanberger is elected governor this November and Virginia becomes a State with a blue governor?