Feeling the ‘Bern’? There’s a cream for that.

         What a funky election process this has been so far, huh? 

Obviously there’s been all the relentlessly entertaining (and alarmingly terrifying) hoopla over at the Grand Ol’. But suggesting that childish, unsubstantiated hysterics, outspoken bigotry and overt racism are a surprise coming from the Republican Party, would simply mean you’ve never heard of them before. Yes, it’s always interesting to hear what those folks are yelling about from time to time, but basically: “Haters gunna’ hate.” (Once again, #TaylorSwift has already said everything I’m thinking.)

But what’s been more subtly fascinating is what we’ve got going on on the Left. The Democrats have been having their own polite scuffle over who they’d prefer to watch make funny faces across the stage from Trump in a few months. While Martin O’Malley is, without a doubt, a very handsome fellow, and seems like a delightful dinner guest, I’m going to pretend he doesn’t exist, just like everyone else. That leaves us with Hillary Clinton, a woman whom some of us are understandably a little tired of, and Bernie Sanders, a cranky old socialist Jew. While just a few years ago that would have been a perfect recipe for putting a republican in the White House, there does seem to have been a black guy sleeping there for a while. What has turned out to be a really fun, and generally friendly debate to have with other liberals is whether or not you’re “Feeling the Bern.” I mean, let’s be honest, we all felt it a little at first there, didn’t we? Who among us doesn’t want to wrestle that guy into a bear-hug while he squirms and barks curmudgeonly Yiddish clichés in protest? Plus, his feathers were all ruffled about banks and Wall Street and all that stuff those folks in tents at Union Square were pissed about a couple years ago. As a liberal Democrat, how could you not want to jump aboard the Bernie Bus? But perhaps it’s time to hop off.

In conversations I’ve had with Sanders supporters I hear a sense of enthusiasm and starry-eyed wonderment that many have referred to as being reminiscent of Obama supporters in 2008. While this sort of liberal fervor is certainly admirable and well-meaning, there is a lot about the political climate this time around, as well as the players involved, that is very different.

First, Barack Obama was (and continues to be) a black man. That fact, whether we’d like to admit it or not, was a tremendous factor in the legendary voter turnout he inspired in 2008. With good reason too. Considering the undeniable and unspeakable history of racism in our country, the idea that there was a likeable, smart, well respected black person in a position to actually become president, was unbelievably exciting to a lot of us. An entire group of American citizens, and potential voters, many of whom had never bothered to vote before because their only choices were white guys who didn’t care about them, finally had an option that mattered. There are even some white folks that had never once questioned whether or not #blacklivesmatter more than our privileged and protected white lives, because ours are not historically, perpetually and overwhelmingly more likely to be put in jeopardy. But I digress… Which is actually my point: Is there something about Bernie Sanders that has that sort of emotional appeal to a significant enough group of previously unrepresented voters?

Another reason things are different now than they were in 2008 is the wild success of ideological and anti-establishment conservatives. The unprecedented amount of support for Republican presidential candidates like Donald Trump, Ben Carson and Ted Cruz changes the tone of this election drastically. The fact that so many conservatives have flocked so far to the right that this sort of candidate can enjoy the kind of support they have, has alienated a large part of the more centrist members of the Republican Party. If one of these candidates succeeds in becoming the Republican nominee, (which is seeming inevitable at this point,) that leaves a very decent portion of conservatives who would feel so uncomfortable giving any of them their vote, that they might either not vote at all, or even deign to cross party lines. So how could Democrats convince swing voters and this new group of freshly embarrassed, left-leaning conservatives to step up to bat for a Democrat? By using the kind of angry, galvanizing rhetoric that is arguably reminiscent of the candidates that turned them away from the Republicans in the first place? By identifying as socialist? I’ve got a very strong feeling that that word is the reason a lot of these folks usually identify as Republican. If a group of centrist republicans gets scared away by social conservatives, that probably means they’re fiscal conservatives who hate nothing more than socialism. As far as I can see, this sort of voter would be utterly turned off by a Sanders nomination.

‘But Bernie is so great! I support what he stands for.’ Yes, absolutely. His grumpy, un-wavering disgust with big businesses taking advantage of the majority of us ‘hard-working’ middle and working class Americans is, without a doubt, the right attitude. Break up the big banks, look out for the little guy, stick it to the man, basically, that one, admittedly important issue. Yes I agree, it’s a good issue. And it’s wonderful that he has been bringing it to the forefront of political discourse. But aside from the fact that it really does seem to be the ONLY issue he has strong feelings about, what is it that he’s actually suggesting? Does he actually plan to break down Wall Street, our entire capitalist economic system and start from the ground up with a completely socialist approach? Maybe he has a less dramatic approach in mind, but considering his consistent brand of vehemently grumpy stubbornness, it certainly seems like the sort of thing he’d be into. But is that something that Americans or the world economy actually wants? American capitalism, while clearly far from perfect, effects the world’s economy and many countries rely on it to stimulate their own. And honestly, does anyone believe something so drastic is going to fly with Congress? Those incredibly wealthy people who control so much of what happens in politics are influential for a reason: they’re rich and powerful and they’re not about to just disappear because we want them to. Hopefully, there are other ways to chip away at just how much power they have.

But how is he as a politician? (Which, by the way, is not a negative thing to call someone, it’s a profession, and it’s the way government happens.) Well, apparently, it turns out he’s actually kind of a prick as far as negotiating and leadership. In the article entitled “The trouble with Bernie,” Mickey Hirten cites a laundry-list of examples that make Bernie Sanders out to be an incredibly difficult person to work with. My personal favorite (if for no other reason than it made me giggle,) was a conversation the author had with Sanders, ending with: “…At which point he jumped out of his seat, told me to go f***myself and stormed out…” As fun as it sounds to watch our old Jewish president do something like that to, say, Putin, or even Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, it’s not a very presidential, or effective way to go about participating in politics. Plus, it comes across as a bit Trump-y, doesn’t it?

The argument in support of Bernie Sanders that I find least convincing of all is when people say that they ‘just don’t trust Hillary.’ If there’s anything we can be sure of in this topsy-turvy, wild ride of an election process it’s that Hillary Clinton really, really wants to be President, and she will do, and has done everything she can, for decades, to prove to us that she should be. Whether it’s because you give a crap about her emails, or you don’t think a woman should be President, or because she’s too much of a Washington insider, or that she pees for too long, or you’re tired of hearing about her, or you just don’t like her face, you also know that she has no intention of leaving American politics alone until she’s the President or dead. If nothing else, you have to give her credit for persistence and will-power. Also, because she’s been around the inner workings of our political system for so long, she’s probably picked up a thing or two along the way. At this moment in American history, there’s nothing more important than preventing the smug reality television star, former ‘WWE’ participant, and confusingly racist billionaire, Donald Trump, from becoming President. Anyone who isn’t horrible enough to think that would be a good idea, needs to band together to get him away from politics. Let’s say Trump is a fire, how do we fight fire? That’s right, a damp cloth. And where are you going to find a wet blanket more suited to the job  (pants-suited, perhaps?) than Hillary.

A.I.: Terminator or nah?

Robotic Sentience and the Fall of Man

We are all familiar with some example of artificial intelligence from pop-culture. Going as far back as Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’ in 1818, there have been references in literature and entertainment to human-created consciousness. Some, show a hopeful, practical view of A.I., as in the loveable ‘droids’ from ‘Star Wars’, the socially bumbling yet ever-useful Commander Data of “Star Trek: The Next Generation”, and even Disney’s heart-warmingly adorable “Wall-E”. Others, like the ‘Terminator’ film franchise, Isaac Asimov’s ‘I-Robot’, and most recently ‘The Avengers: Age of Ultron,’ (Marvel’s 2015 super hero blockbuster,) make A.I. out to be a danger so terrible, and so out of our control that it would threaten all of existence. Within the last few years, artificial intelligence has become a popular topic for debate among some of the world’s greatest living minds. World-renowned scientists, entrepreneurs and thinkers like Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak, Demis Hassabis and Stephen Hawking have expressed the opinion that the existential threat posed by continued research into A.I. may present far more dire consequences than we as humans are capable of dealing with. At the same time, the scientific and technological communities have been experimenting with, and introducing nascent forms of A.I. into a multitude of applications, such as, military operations, space exploration, national security tactics, field medical devices, data-collection, disability assistance, surgical procedures and language translation programs, with overwhelming success. These are only the beginnings of what can be accomplished with continued exploration and a greater knowledge of what can be done with artificial intelligence. Therefore, despite the growing concerns presented by the foremost scholars of our time, the vast array of beneficial possibilities exhibited by this controversial research undoubtedly outweigh the unsubstantiated, arguably histrionic claims of its risks.

Fictional speculation on the subject of AI has been so prevalent across the entire world that its origins are difficult to pin-point. But the beginnings of, what we would now recognize as practical artificial intelligence, were established by the computer scientist and philosopher, Alan Turing in his 1950 paper, Computing Machinery and Intelligence. He proposed, since we have no scientific proof or knowledge of what consciousness really is or how it came to be, that the only way to effectively measure a machine’s intelligence would be to conclusively declare it indistinguishable from that of a human. The Turing Test exhibits this theory by putting a human into two separate, text only, conversations; one with another person, and one with a computer. The goal of the second person, as well as the computer, is to convince the first person that they are a human. The result of this test, according to Turing, would determine the computer’s intelligence by its ability to convince the person that, it too, is a human. While the merits of this theory have been discussed and argued over for nearly a century now, it continues to be the foundation of our concept of artificial intelligence to this day. Other major moments in the history of AI include: the coining of the term ‘artificial intelligence’ at the 1956 Dartmouth Conference, the victory of IBM’s ‘Deep Blue’ super computer over the reigning grandmaster chess champion in 1997 and the overwhelming defeat of the two best contestants from the quiz show “Jeopordy!”  by the question answering automaton, Watson, in 2001. Although these were all significant milestones in the evolution of AI, the pattern suggested by Moore’s law, (which states that the processing capability of computers continues to double every two years,) leads us to believe that we have only begun to scratch the surface.

While there may be some who fear the possible future implications of AI, no one would argue that it is not undeniably useful. Because of the high profile status and nearly limitless funding available to national military programs, they are nearly always the first to utilize any new technology or scientific breakthrough. Artificial Intelligence has proven to be no different. As stated in the letter that was submitted and signed by such scholars as Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk (among others) during the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Buenos Aires, Argentina just this past July, 2015:

“AI technology has reached a point where the deployment of [autonomous weapons] is- practically if not legally- feasible within years, not decades, and the stakes are high: autonomous weapons have been described as the third revolution in warfare, after gunpowder and nuclear arms.”

Many other members of the scientific and technological communities have presented this very same sentiment multiple times lately. And, while the general tone of the conference in Argentina was one of caution, others have inferred that the same information is evidence of continued progress and evolution just as any advancement in another field would be greeted with encouragement and hopefulness.

Already we have seen the use of unmanned drones and even autonomous ground units being used by the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan without incident. When using these types of units as opposed to the traditional enlisted soldiers, we obviously see an immediate drop in the loss of human lives. Instead of a young, healthy, highly trained man or woman being put in harms way, there is a piece of machinery with all the same capabilities and no brothers and sisters or sons and daughters to worry about, completing the same dangerous task. For example, we could have a ‘Pack-bot,’ which weighs 42 pounds and can maneuver through any terrain that a human could, disarm an IED (Improvised Explosive Device) completely autonomously. Or similarly, we could use a ‘raven drone’, which costs a total of one thousand dollars to build and program, to fly over a target and collect information, without any danger of human casualties or even loss of multi-million dollar military aircraft. As one military officer said: “When a robot dies, you don’t have to write a letter to its mother.” This has effectively changed the cost of war. With the continued success of tactics like these, we have the opportunity to re-evaluate what it means to put a soldier’s life at risk. Where as, in the past, we would begrudgingly accept the death of a soldier as merely a sad, yet, inevitable product of our martial objectives, now there is a far more morally palatable alternative. Even further, all of these units are outfitted with video recording capabilities, which, if/when these videos are released to the general public, put a greater level of accountability on the officers making the decisions. (Some videos like these have already made their way on to ‘YouTube’) This changes the dynamic between civilians and our war efforts over seas.

Advancements of AI in fields like factory production have been seen in machines that not only complete tasks efficiently and effectively, as they have since the industrial revolution, but can now be made aware of their surroundings. This allows humans and machines to work together as a more cohesive team by cutting down on worker injuries as well as mechanical malfunctions.

In the field of medicine there have been enormous discoveries and the potential for even greater leaps to be made in the coming years. There are machines that can identify and diagnose disease in a matter of seconds, either in a hospital or out in remote areas of the world where, before the invention of such devices, there would have been no medicine of any kind. In hospitals there are robots that perform menial, time-consuming tasks that would have previously been the responsibility of nurses, allowing them to now spend more time listening and catering to the needs of their patients. Study into the very promising field of nanotechnology (yes, that’s right, we have ‘Borg Nano-probes’) has such varied potential that, not only would it eventually be possible to treat disease or injury on a molecular level, without the need for invasive surgery, but the U.S. government has an entire website (nano.gov) dedicated to its vast array of conceivable applications.

Translation programs that are capable of picking up on the subtleties of a language’s colloquial lexicon and communicating them appropriately; data-collection software that compiles sensitive data without a pre-disposition to social biases and a greater emphasis on discretion; robots with the ability to perform space exploration for periods of time far exceeding a human’s life-span while transmitting their findings back to earth faster; the list goes on. But, this research can only continue to blossom if it is not curtailed by our fear of the unknown.

After learning about all the wonderful things that have and could be made possible by AI, one might think that if these specific people, whom we all know to be incredibly smart and worth listening to, think it’s not worth the risk, what is it they believe AI will do? Stephen Hawking, (world-renowned theoretical physicist and ubiquitously regarded smart guy) who seems to be the most vocal in his opposition, said of AI:

“One can imagine such technology outsmarting financial markets, out-inventing human researchers, out-manipulating human leaders, and developing weapons we cannot even understand.”

(He goes on to add that he doesn’t know who started it but that it was, in fact, us that scorched the sky[see ‘The Terminator’])

 While Hawking seems like he may have watched one too many sci-fi movies, his concerns about AI are supported by Elon Musk, founder of Tesla Motors, SpaceX and PayPal (and, as far as I’m concerned, a real life super hero.) They have both been quoted as saying that they believe AI to be our “greatest existential threat.” But Musk, while originally being guilty of expostulating some similarly flagrant conclusions, has begun addressing his apprehensions with an open mind, just this year donating ten million dollars to companies doing research on artificial intelligence. His hope is that by providing such a substantial contribution to this field, Musk would be encouraging researchers to err on the side of caution when developing these technologies, and that himself and others would be afforded a certain level of oversight as these technologies continue to be developed. Not only does Elon Musk seem to be approaching this issue with equanimity, but the concerns he has presented as to why he believes there is a need for regulation are less melodramatic and have a stronger basis in fact than those of some of his colleagues. The hope for this investment is that it would establish a standard of culpability for the questions of morality and ethics that may be raised by this form of intelligence as it develops. For instance, let’s say there is a robot equipped with an advanced form of artificial intelligence, which has been assigned, by the United States government, with the task of defending U.S. soldiers in a war zone. At some point this autonomous robot is presented with a morally ambiguous dilemma: in order to save the lives of the members of the platoon it has been designated to protect, its only remaining course of action would be to destroy an enemy encampment, killing everyone inside including the few civilians, some of them children. What will it do? Who is responsible for it’s actions? By whom, and with what ethical guidelines, was it programmed? What are the repercussions of whichever option it chooses? Clearly these are questions that would need to be broached before a problem such as this arose. Even on a much smaller scale, being faced with a similar crisis of morality would have huge implications. Without a doubt, there would need to be some level of policy in place and an ongoing discussion to determine jurisdiction as further matters of contention emerged.

         While it is apparent that there are certain considerations that must be examined with great care, there is no doubt that research into the blossoming field of artificial intelligence is worth pursuing. Worries about sentient robots taking over the world and enslaving or exterminating the human race are reminiscent of luddites throughout history. Whenever there has been a technological breakthrough there has always been a voice of dissent that attempts to dissuade us from adopting it. And while being afraid of new technology may raise some questions that need to be addressed, it cannot be allowed to deter progress. In this case particularly, it can be easy to succumb to apprehensions about the apocalyptic results depicted in our pop-culture canon. But if we examine the evidence and don’t allow ourselves to get swept up by ideas based solely in fantasy, we have the opportunity to usher in a future of unimaginable knowledge and growth. In his ‘TED Talk,’ Rodney Brooks, a respected researcher in the field of robotics, explains that creating a “bad robot” is extremely unlikely because first we would have to make a “mildly bad robot” and before that, a “sort-of bad robot” and that, basically, “We’re just not gunna’ let it go that way.” Ultimately, it is not the creation of an inherently evil AI that we should be worried about but rather, what will be the standard of ethics and morality that we one day hope to instill in the ‘C-3P0’s and Arnold Schwarzeneggers of our future.

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A Well Regulated Militia

Why is it so important to such an overwhelmingly large portion of U.S. citizens to “Bear Arms”? Why do we feel safer with a gun in our house? What is it that we believe we achieve by owning them? We know that, in “the wrong hands” they can, and will be used to murder on a massive scale. So, what makes OUR hands so right? Where do we draw that line? 

    There’s been a lot of discussion about these questions lately as the frequency and severity of civilian gun violence has increased at an alarming rate. Many politicians, mostly on the left, have been calling for changes in the U.S.’s policy on gun purchasing and ownership. But they have been met with such strong opposition, so consistently, that no reforms have even come close to being passed. The reasons for this are fairly evident, but we’ll get to that later. For now, let’s get to know a little about how we’ve gotten to our unique position as the country with the highest and most fatal rates of civilian gun violence in the entire world.

     The history of gun control laws in the United States is actually a pretty quick lesson to go over. So obviously, we can begin with the beginning, the birth of the United States Constitution in 1791, including the crowd favorite Second Amendment. 

“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.”

During this period in our country’s history, it was very important to all of us that we could defend ourselves and our families when called upon to do so, be it by our newly formed, and objectively fragile federal and state governments, or as a response to the dangers that lurked around every corner in our vast and mysterious, recently acquired landscape. The next time we hear about gun policy isn’t until nearly a hundred years later, after the most important change our government has ever made: the emancipation of the slaves, marking the first time our country blushed and realized it too can make horrifying, irredeemable mistakes. In 1865 many southern states responded to the freeing of the slaves by displaying their full, unwavering capacity for hate and fear by enacting “black codes” which forbid any black person from possessing firearms. Soon after, in 1871, the National Rifle Association or N.R.A. was formed with the purpose of preparing our civilians for war by improving their marksmanship. Yup, that’s it, no other agenda, pretty good idea at the time, really. Though, I’ll warn you now, they may come up again, with some slight philosophy changes… In 1927 congress realizes it’s probably not a bad idea to ban the mailing of concealable weapons. When 1934 rolls around, the Mafia had become a big problem for law enforcement and their frequent use of ‘Tommy guns’ brought about the very first federal gun control law: The New Deal for Crime. This levied a two hundred dollar tax on the manufacture and sale of machine guns and sawed-off shotguns. In 1938, the National Firearms Act prohibits the sale of firearms to any criminals, convicted or accused. Thirty years later, in 1968, after the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the aptly named ‘Gun Control Act’ and the more long-winded ‘Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act’ are established, together prohibiting the sale of guns to felons, drug users, the mentally ill, raising the purchasing age to twenty one, as well as requiring vendors to keep, ever so slightly more detailed records of their sales. 1972 brings us the formation of the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Commission (A.T.F.) and thus the issuing of gun licenses begins. In 1986 we start to see the influence that our civilian marksmanship teachers  (the N.R.A.) have developed with the creation of the ‘Firearm Owners Protection Act.” This protects our rights as proud gun-toting Americans by forbidding the federal government from establishing a national registry of gun owners, while also limiting the A.T.F.’s gun dealer inspections to only once a year and follow up inspections only for multiple violations. Displaying their irrefutably benevolent capacity for compromise, civilian ownership of machine guns made after 1986 was also banned in this act. In 1993 the ‘Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act’ is passed allowing the FBI to make background checks for buyers before a sale. But don’t worry, this is definitely NOT a registry of gun owners. This is followed closely by the 1994  ‘Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act’ tentatively setting a federal ban on the manufacture of assault rifles, sort of… for a bit. The ‘Tiahrt Amendment’, which prohibits law enforcement from releasing information regarding where criminals purchased the guns they used in crimes is enacted in 2003. In 2004 that thing about assault rifles from 1994 gets thrown out, so we can go ahead and make those again. 2005 brings us the ‘Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act’ ensuring that gun manufacturers cannot be held responsible for what folks end up doing with their products. And finally in 2008 ‘The Supreme Court in the District of Columbia v. Heller” solidifies an individual’s right to possess firearms in order to defend our homes. But that’s pretty much it.  And if the N.R.A. has anything to say about it, (and they do,) the background checks from 1993 will be the last time the Second Amendment gets messed with. But… why is that? What makes this such a particularly difficult amendment to change, even in light of what is becoming a tradition of mass shootings in America? We change our thoughts and policies on other laws all the time. But what makes this one so special?

     In order to take a closer look at the second Amendment to our famously well constructed Constitution and Bill of Rights, perhaps we should take a look at its brother, Amendment III. As we all know, (right?) the third amendment states:

    

     “No soldier shall, in times of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in times of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.”

     The quartering of soldiers was of particular importance to the English. The ‘totally unfair’ parents of our teenaged nation, and former overlords from across the pond, who, because of various dubious experiences from their own infamously illustrious tenure, were strongly opposed to the concept of a government maintaining a ‘standing army.’ The British solution to this taboo was to sprinkle their guys with guns, in uniforms, among the general populace. In proper English fashion, they politely requested that folks graciously allow small groups of these armed, well-dressed blokes to take up residence in their homes. This way, there was not one large building housing a complete squadron of military personnel, (which would constitute a standing army,) but rather a loosely scattered collection of alarmingly well-prepared gentlemen. While perhaps a possible solution to our current gun control debate, (Eh? Think about it, we wouldn’t need guns to protect ourselves if there were a well-trained, even-tempered Brit in our kitchen,) Americans were not keen on even that compromise. Thus, The Third Amendment was born.

     As the U.S. matured and began to grow into the self-reliant, (self-obsessed?) nation we are today, the concept of being the proprietor of a military ‘B&B’ faded from our collective national consciousness. We spread our borders so wide that they eventually reached “from sea to shining sea,” equipped with a sturdy pair of cheap-labor trousers and a maple-flavored, beaver pelt hat. In every state we established a carefully constructed and incorruptible judicial system and a trustworthy, unbiased, police force (note to self: check for accuracy). We became so confident as a country that we even found ourselves getting involved in the quarrels of other countries, sending our casually seated army (don’t worry England,) around the world to meddle in their affairs.

With our motivations and overall demeanor having developed into an entirely different entity than it was when the Constitution and these early Amendments were established, it comes as no surprise that some of the issues that we felt so strongly about began to feel outdated. If we have lost interest in our concern about the quartering of soldiers, then perhaps there might be other Amendments we ought to take a look at.

Maybe the first one? No, that seems to check out, basically just the right to party and complain.

How about the Fourth Amendment?

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated; and no Warrants shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Or, in other words, as the English like to put it:

“Every man’s house is his castle.”

Although, I suppose that also sounds like support for Florida’s “Stand-your-Ground” laws, (which legally justify the use of firearms on one’s own property, even if it leads to death;) the British, and our Founding Fathers were thinking more about the government, (not your unlucky, prankster cousin.) The idea behind the Fourth Amendment is to protect our right to the privacy of our personal property against the government’s prying eyes. It describes the necessity for ‘probable cause’ to be determined before any government organization’s inspection of our bodies while in public, our legally procured property, and even our private documents. What “probable cause” actually means gets a bit dense and murky, and is subject to change based on the given circumstances, but the Amendment itself seems very clear in it’s wording in regard to the basic procedure. Doesn’t it? Well apparently, over the years, even that has become subject to interpretation. For instance, the New York Police Department developed a policy known as “Stop and Frisk.” This policy, based on ‘Terry v. Ohio,’ a Supreme Court ruling from 1968, allowed police officers to perform searches on civilians without pre-determined, court approved, probable cause, under the assumption that this would prevent crimes from being committed.  Under “Stop and Frisk” only “Reasonable Suspicion” is required to perform a search of a suspect. The idea behind the policy was that the process of obtaining a legally sanctioned warrant was hindering law enforcement from identifying criminals who were carrying concealed weapons. They hoped that by giving police officers more freedom to make judgment-calls based on their training and experience, without the lengthy process of proving the necessity for a warrant, violent crime would decrease. While the intention was noble and seemingly justifiable, this is clearly in blatant contradiction with our ‘search and seizure’ rights under the Fourth Amendment. Recently this practice has been brought into question based on the fact that it has been largely ineffectual in actually preventing violent crimes as well as being used more frequently to target black and latino citizens and arresting them for minor drug offenses.

Similarly, you might remember “The Patriot Act” enacted by, then President George W. Bush, after the September 11^th terrorist attack in 2001.  As expressed in an official statement from justice.gov entitled “What is the Patriot Act?” the federal government defends it’s amendment of the Fourth Amendment thusly:

“The Patriot Act updated the law to reflect new technologies and new threats. The Act brought the law up to date with current technology, so we no longer have to fight a digital-age battle with antique weapons-legal authorities leftover from the era of rotary telephones. “

See? Sometimes the world changes and our government policies have to stay updated with those changes. When something horrifying like the events of September 11^th scares us so much that we feel like we are willing to forego our basic constitutional right to privacy, maybe that should alarm us enough to consider other outdated policies and laws that perhaps we should take a look at.  Although, you’d think that the new American tradition of regular mass shootings by members of our ‘well regulated militia’ might cause similar alarm, any mention of our beloved Second Amendment is met with outrage and is immediately shot down and swept under the rug. There is a reason for this, but, well, to be honest, I’m too afraid to mention the name of the organization responsible for this…

Um, yeah, so anyway, (*gulp*), do you remember the whole Edward Snowden/N.S.A. hoopla? Yet again, we have an example of the federal government feeling very comfortable with adjusting our Fourth Amendment rights to suit their needs, this time without even feeling the need to rile up support by playing to our fears. In this case, one very secretive branch of the government (the National Security Agency) made the call, all on it’s own, with a suspiciously unclear amount of oversight, to monitor citizens’ activities. While the N.S.A. very quickly turned the attention back on Snowden, pointing out that some of the information he released may have caused security concerns, it was more of a distraction method. By calling the attention away from what they had been doing to U.S. citizens and blaming Snowden for revealing their unsupervised, unregulated practices, many Americans were too confused to pay attention to what they had been up to anymore. While it is certainly unfortunate that some of the methods the government used to combat terrorism were put out in the open because of Snowden’s revelations, that should not change public opinion about the fact that one of our government agencies had been undermining our constitutional right to privacy. Whether or not our privacy is actually more important than our safety is a matter of some contention and may be another one of the rights that we need to debate in the future. But, again, as it stands now, this is a clear example of how easy it can be to flat out ignore or change one of our original, constitutional rights. So there’s no doubt that the Fourth Amendment is open for interpretation and change.

Many conservative politicians, who regularly defend the second amendment on the basis that our founding fathers were infallible and that we must uphold their values and regard their policies as irrefutable, have recently been bringing up the idea of completely altering our structure for taxation. The U.S. has been using an income based taxation structure since the beginning, but there has been a lot of talk about making the monumental switch to a tax program based, instead, on ‘consumption’. To put it in simpler terms: currently, and throughout our country’s history, the amount of taxes a citizen pays relate to how much money they make. That’s an income based taxation system. What many conservatives have been proposing is changing the way our government collects money from its citizens to a system based on spending. So basically we would no longer pay taxes based on how much money we make, but rather on how much money we spend. Essentially, if you get a big ol’ paycheck every month, the government doesn’t get to touch a cent of it until you buy something; And if you live paycheck to paycheck, spending every dollar you make just to keep up with your basic expenses, you would have to pay taxes to the federal government on every trip to the store or bill you pay. So with a ‘consumption’ based tax system, our poorer citizens would grow poorer and poorer every time they bought anything, and our richest citizens would be more likely to save their money and only buy things when necessary, effectively making those of us with less money pay considerably higher taxes than those of us with more money. Besides the fact that this does not take into account that we are currently experiencing the widest income gap in our country’s history, (so why would we do something to compound that problem, especially now,) it is also completely contradictory to the usual rhetoric that we hear from the very same politicians who generally extol a strict constructionist view. Kind of hypocritical to say that ‘we shouldn’t change our policies because it’s worked so far’ when it comes to things like gay marriage or gun control, but throw the book out the window when we’re talking about taxes, doncha’ think? There are many other examples of our government changing it’s mind or updating it’s beliefs to reflect the popular ideals of the day (Slavery, Prohibition, Jim Crowe laws, etc.) therefore, clearly, the Bill of Rights are not immutable.

     I’ve mentioned how there may be a reason for the persistent stubbornness of the Second Amendment, and while I’m probably putting myself in danger by bringing it up, it’s because of the National Rifle Association. Yeah, those guys, the ones who were teaching us how to aim better so that we could defend ourselves if we were attacked way back in the day. Over the years, since those days that we were worried about attacks from the ‘savage natives’ or whomever else we might have been afraid of, the mission statement of the N.R.A has changed drastically. Since nowadays we’re pretty confident in our safety within the secure borders of our beautiful country, the N.R.A.’s purpose as a civilian training program has become ostensibly obsolete. So instead of going the way of, say, home-soldier-checker-uppers, they made some changes to their agenda. Somehow, this organization has gained untold wealth and immeasurable influence in government.  It has become a well-established fact that the N.R.A. lobbyists have been slipping money into the pockets of politicians who are willing to play nice, for decades. It is in their best interest to prevent any policy changes on gun control because, well, they’re the gun guys. And they’re really good at what they do. Through intimidation, money and influence, the N.R.A. has their paws in every aspect of our political system. Those politicians who choose to play their game, are forever indebted to them due to the constant flow of funding and support that they receive from the powerful organization. After accepting this assistance, (most likely the primary reason for their successful election,) this politician now has no choice but to submit to their generous benefactor’s every whim. Thus, the N.R.A. has ensured that all of it’s positions have enough support to get voted on by a wide majority of elected officials, however they are told to do so. Recently, their lust for power has grown so vast that we have even begun to see evidence of their agenda outside of the United States. In countries such as South Africa, Mexico, Germany, Italy, and most notably in 2005, during an attempt by the Brazilian government to establish new restrictions on gun ownership, due to their own, famously high rates of gun violence. When the National Rifle Association heard about the possibility that Brazil might be enacting tighter restrictions on its citizen’s ability to bear arms, naturally, they sprung into action. They began running advertisements in Brazil proclaiming the importance and benefits of gun ownership and presumably, with even greater ease, buying politicians, in order to ensure their interests are represented just as overwhelmingly as they are at home. The N.R.A.’s fear was that, were gun control regulations passed in a place like Brazil, U.S. citizens might realize that it’s possible to stay safe without our own personal arsenal, and maybe we would fall out of love with our favorite amendment.

But, unfortunately, as far as I can see, we’re basically stuck with them for the foreseeable future… *sigh* So, let’s get back to the real purpose of the Second Amendment: that “ A well regulated Militia [is] necessary to the security of a free State…” Well, I mean, yeah, right, of course… a civilian militia… hmm… Can we think about that for a second? So that would mean a group of your untrained, not necessarily educated, probably politically uninformed, possibly incredibly bigoted neighbors, getting together, arming themselves with guns and taking to the streets… Uhh… Yunno, I’m not sure I like that idea… I mean, I guess that WAS something we needed at a certain point. Like, when there were attacks from natives. Or when there was a criminal on the loose and the police force was stretched too thin to go out and look for him. What we know a civilian militia was used for most often was returning escaped slaves to their masters, because, of course, they were property and belonged to their master; It’s just that, they could escape. So the community would band together to retrieve their neighbor’s expensive tool. So yeah, I see why they needed an armed civilian militia… for that awful reason. But, what would be a modern day equivalent of that? Maybe there isn’t? Perhaps, and I know I’m going out on a limb here, we don’t need a “well regulated Militia” anymore. This concept does not apply to the way our community and political system works anymore. The world has changed and continues to change and we need to change with it.