Things George Washington and Others May Have Said

One of my friends posted a misquote of an actual quote from George Washington in favor of an individual's right to bear arms. The misquote is "A free people ought not only be armed and disciplined, but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government." The actual quote is from George Washington's First State of the Union, and it goes like this: "A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined; to which end a uniform and well-digested plan is requisite; and their safety and interest require that they should promote such manufactories as tend to render them independent of others for essential, particularly military, supplies." If my reading comprehension serves, it sounds like he is calling on Congress to rev up the Military/Industrial Complex, not for Joe Sixpack to stuff his house with small arms.
I could go several directions in this blog:

• In 1790, they just got the freaking government going, would George Washington actually advocate the individual citizenry being well armed so that he could be overthrown by the same citizenry if necessary?
• If a person advocates a position based on a false quote or faked evidence, how credible is this person's position?
• My friend(the quote poster) is a policeman, does he really want everyone armed to the teeth?
• If George Washington referred to the U.S Government in 1790, would he have meant Us instead of Them? Who do you shoot if you don't like the government in a functioning democracy? If the government is Them now, is this still a good country to live in?
• Did the U.S. Civil War create an Us and Them in terms of government, a dichotomy that still exists depending on your own personal viewpoint? Does this explain the desire for authoritarian hierarchy in the mind of a politically conservative individual, but also the hatred of the authority figure/hierarchy who was not chosen by that same individual, even though that person's vote was counted and the election was fairly decided and legal?
• Are We the People still an Us? Was it ever? Will it ever be if it wasn't?

These are interesting questions, some are almost philosophical in nature. Since I'm not sure I can do service to these topics, I decided to go in a completely different direction by making up better quotes than the gun lobby misquote from above. Here it goes, the following are some made up quotations that actually make sense and are at least historically possible:

• Martha, where are the rolling papers? The yellow ones, dear, this crop of sticky icky is truly the chronic. - George Washington
• This Sorghum tastes like Alexander Hamilton's brown-eye. - John Adams
• An ounce of beaver fat to polish the outhouse throne will prevent a bleeding by the barber for an infected boil from a three inch splinter in the arse. - Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanac - The Director's Cut
• Pass the Sorghum, sirrah! - Abigail Adams
• Is that human being for sale? How much? That sounds kind of high, I don't know. Could you throw in the butter churn and the yarn de-woolinator as well? - Thomas Jefferson
• And if this Union should last, I would pray that Providence will deliver to the future generations the strength and will to make up things we said to promote logically fallacious arguments in service of a post-radical reactionary agenda. Amen. - Horner Vanderhoeven

Etc. Add your own in the comments, the best one(judged by me at my discretion when I get a moment) gets a six-pack of empty Diet Dr. Pepper cans.

A Solution to the Euro Crisis

A sovereign currency needs a sovereign government and vice versa.

The current manufactured crisis in Europe exposes a similar but opposite situation that existed in the era of the pre-constitutional Articles of Confederation government of the United States of America. The Articles of Confederation established a Nation that was unable to make and spend money easily. It only took roughly 10 years for people to realize that an ineffective, broke, and decentralized government was a sure path to disaster, and a constitutional convention was called for that eventually established the current governmental institutions of the United States. The U.S., now a country of over 300 million people, is the financial bedrock of a world inhabited by almost 7 billion people.

On the other side of the mirror, we have the European Union, an entity that can issue currency freely but is populated by countries that despite being financially locked in(burdened or otherwise), they are not emotionally invested in the preservation of that same Union. From this comparison, a possible solution logically emerges. The European Union, if it is to continue, requires a weakening of its member states, and a strengthening of the central body that makes decisions. The EU needs a federal constitution that establishes a strong central government. The Euro will not last otherwise.