[ExI] what does "bear arms" mean now and then?

[Damien Broderick]

At 03:35 PM 7/12/2008 -0500, I wrote:
>Here's some interesting discussion, with useful links:
>
>http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=255

One of the comments notes:

<We're all terribly eager to convince everyone 
else that the Constitution's meaning lines up 
with our political agenda. I suspect that this is 
rooted in the myth we pass along to our children 
from elementary school onward ­ that the 
Constitution is a perfect (and perfectly clear) 
document that lays out our God-given rights. 
Instead of a framework designed by some guys who 
were ultimately only statesmen doing the best 
that they could according to their ideals. >

I get this strong impression as well. One of the 
benefits of being a visitor who shared only 
somewhat overlapping ideological loading in 
childhood is that such a visitor might sometimes 
see elements of, uh, habituated superstition in 
the reasoning of nationals. I admire what I know 
of the Constitution, as a good try by a group of 
smart, practical Enlightenment thinkers hundreds 
of years ago--but I never ever have to fight off 
early conditioning informing me that the document 
is "sacred," a sort of Testament from God via His 
representatives on earth. I had enough of that when I was a Catholic kid.

If the Founders (with or without cap) had 
included, say, a "right" for male citizens to own 
slaves or women--which was only the case by 
practise and implication--we would not now, I 
hope, be under the thrall of supposing that this 
was anything other than a contingent, 
contextually-framed statement of the way they did 
things then. But *understanding* such framing is 
probably fairly important in practical terms, 
since the US state keeps referring to this 
document as its legal basis (or so I gather).

Damien Broderick