I was all prepared to write about the dangers of the stupid, stupid stance that President Obama took in calling for Israel to retreat to indefensible borders to garner "peace" with the so called Palestinians, but Bibi pretty well handled that at the White House and before Congress. So I was left to find something else to write about, and one day at work it popped into my head.

Write about the Second Amendment. That's not usually my bailiwick, but the more I thought about it the more natural it seemed, because I think I will be bringing a different perspective to the issue. What's my fresh new take? Well, I think the Democrats/liberals are exactly right about the Second Amendment...and it makes the conservative point of view the obviously correct one. In other words, the very argument that liberals make in trying to make the Second Amendment a collective right reinforces the correct view that bearing arms is an individual right.

You may be wondering what in the world I am talking about, so let me explain myself, before any of you blow a gasket thinking that I have gone off the rails. My thinking here is informed primarily by the text of the Second Amendment and the thinking of the men who wrote the amendment, which was informed by the times that they had just lived through.

You see, the Founders were always suspicious of large standing armies, fearing that they could be used to harass the citizenry, as the British had done to them, and that the presence of such an armed force would tempt the United States to entangle itself in foreign military adventures. So at the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1784 that officially ended the American Revolution, the United States armed forces were essentially demobilized. The Founders then wrote the Second Amendment, which reads: "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." It, like most of the Constitution, is as simple as can be and not really open to a lot of interpretation, but of course "constitutional scholars" have been parsing this plain language for decades so as to empower the government to infringe on the rights of the citizens to keep and bear arms.

The argument that the left continues to use is that bearing arms is only for the upkeep of a well regulated militia, and when you look at it, they're right. That is exactly what the Founders meant when they wrote the Second Amendment. They meant for American military defense to be undertaken by local militias, not a large standing armed force. And in that very argument, the liberals prove exactly the point we conservatives have been making since the "constitutional scholars" started to say that the Second Amendment meant the exact opposite of what the text clearly states.

By now, my conservative friends know exactly where I am going with this train of thought, and some of them may be slapping their foreheads right now saying "Why didn't I think of that?" Meanwhile, there may be others sitting back in their chairs saying, "That's just what I've been saying all along!" But just to let everyone know precisely my thinking on this, here it is: If you understand what a militia is, then you understand that the Second Amendment refers to an individual right exclusively, and can never be taken as a collective right!

The very definition of a militia reveals the true purpose of the Second Amendment, because a militia is defined as "1a: a part of the organized armed forces of a country liable to call only in emergency, 1b: a body of citizens organized for military service."  Now, the first part of that definition is historically invalid, because the record shows that at the time the Constitution was ratified, America basically had no standing armed forces because the Revolution had ended. So the second definition would be the pertinent one in determining what the Second Amendment truly means, as would a quick review of America's military history.

After the end of the Revolution, America basically had no standing armed forces. The Navy was strengthened somewhat, but overall American legislators and executives did not seek to substantially strengthen the young nation's armed forces. In reality, this state of benign neglect persisted until after World War 2, as the armies involved in our major wars before them were made up primarily of militiamen, called up to serve in a time of emergency to fill out the ranks of the forces as needed. In fact, in the War of 1812 and the Civil War, most of the militiamen and many who would become regular soldiers reported for duty with their personal firearms, since the government could not supply them the weapons they needed. It was not until after World War 2 that America finally decided that having a large standing armed force was a necessity, and only then after seeing the threat that totalitarian regimes posed to freedom across the world, and their willingness to make war on seemingly defenseless nations.

So when liberals are arguing that the right to bear arms is only for the maintenance of a strong militia, they are right; but they make our argument, because only an armed citizenry can form a militia as meant at the adoption of the Constitution. There was no National Guard back then, only farmers, businessmen, and laborers with their personal weapons to rally to our national defense in times of peril.

So for once the liberals are right...and they make our point for us.

I wonder how it must feel to still lose the only argument you truly ever won?