With some exceptions, like anti-discrimination laws that are irrelevant here, employers are free to employ whomever they choose. Through collective bargaining agreements employers can agree to employ people upon the condition that they pay union dues. Workers are free to seek employment elsewhere if they don’t like such terms or conditions.That’s how freedom works under a capitalist system that is based upon labor contracts.

Historically job seekers have preferred employment at union shops because the terms and conditions of employment are superior to non-union workplaces. But achieving better terms and conditions of employment has a price. If an employee cheats on a time card we all recognize that as theft from the employer. Failing to pay dues in exchange for receiving the benefits of a collective bargaining agreement is not freedom. It too is theft, and it’s not okay because you’re only stealing from your co-workers.

The campaign begins with protestations innocence. The zealots pose as the victims. All they want, they will declare, is the right to practice their religion. But soon, they will proclaim that their rights are violated if others practice differently, or do not practice at all.

Today we see the ugly tactic again rearing its head. Emboldened by a relentless campaign first against “unrestricted abortions” that morphed into “any” abortions for any reason, we now see these same zealots turning their attention to contraceptives. Lead by the same theocrats that brought us the first Dark Ages  — the Roman Catholic Church– politicians such as Rick Santorum whine that the rights of their most extreme religious adherents are being violated if the state does not take their part in a campaign to undermine women’s reproductive health care.

Over the last several weeks, we have been subjected to a debate that attempts to raise a freedom of religion argument in opposition to government regulations that would require some religious organizations to provide certain health care benefits to its workers. This debate is a sham with the ultimate objective of dismantling a health care program that one should expect religious organizations to support for the good of people.

Some see this as simply an attack upon women by misogynist Christian sects (as well as some Jewish and Muslim elements) but it is more than that. Like the canary in the mine that heralds poison gas leaks that will ultimately kill every miner,  if the fight over women’s reproductive rights ends with victory for these zealots, it will prove to be just a jumping off point for their ultimate objective, the utter and complete control over all societal behavior. Religious zealots cannot be satiated until everyone practices their brand of whatever religion they profess, or at least pretends to. The current sparring over contraception is merely a harbinger of things to come, for they cannot stop. They must always have heretics or infidels to crusade against and exterminate. Their promise for society is another Dark Ages, with more book burnings and witch burnings and Inquisitions. Lest there be any doubt, this is Rick Santorum’s real platform, and it is an agreeable Faustian bargain for all of the other Republicans currently running for president.

No one advocates a policy that would prevent anyone from expressing his or her religious beliefs. Nor is anyone being compelled to use contraceptives, or to have an abortion. No one is being forced to have sex out of wedlock. No one is being forced to marry someone of the same gender. Religions are free to convince people to behave consistently with their dogma, but they are, and ought to be prohibited from using the power of the state to force people to obey their dogma.

If a religious institution decides to run a hospital, a thrift store or to operate a university, it is making a choice. No religion is being forced to engage in these activities. But when they do, they are competing in a marketplace and they are hiring employees. The playing field must be level when it comes to voluntary endeavors. Employees should all be subject to the same minimum wage laws, the same laws relating to hours and breaks. If the government mandates that employers provide certain benefits it would be discriminatory to exempt some businesses while requiring other similar businesses to comply. An employer who is exempt from paying a benefit is actually paying its workers less than a non-exempt employer and is therefore at a competitive advantage. Such a result rewards a religious employer with an economic preference.

Take, for example, a thrift store run by Jehovah’s Witnesses. They don’t believe in any medical intervention at all. Are they entitled to a complete exemption from providing medical insurance to their employees? Can they require that their employees refrain from spending any portion of their paycheck for health care? Can the Catholic Church prohibit employees at their hospitals from privately purchasing health insurance that includes contraception and abortion benefits? If the minimum wage is $8.00/hour plus a health plan that provides contraceptive coverage, can the Catholic Church get away with providing a cheaper plan that does not provide that coverage? What if the law says, if an employer fails to provide the coverage, the employee is entitled to a minimum wage surcharge equal to the cost of obtaining such coverage privately?  Can the religiously affiliated employer demand, as a condition for employment, that its employees not use birth control? Not have an abortion? Not seek any medical care at all? Can Baptists tell potential employees that they must sign a pledge to not drink alcohol? Where does it stop?

Our constitution addresses religious liberty in two parts: freedom to practice religion and a prohibition against government establishing religious requirements. There is a tension between these two liberties. One person’s freedom can be another person’s oppression. In some places laws exist that prohibit various commercial activities on Sunday. Is this a government-imposed religious requirement? After all, Sunday is a Sabbath to some, but not to all. Can the government force a Jew or a Muslim to abide a Christian Sabbath? Sometimes courts avoid this question by declaring that there is a secular purpose to a day of rest that simply through custom has fallen on a religiously recognized day. But is that really the case? For some, that would mean two days of inability to do business, their religion’s Sabbath and Sunday. Over time, Sunday Sabbath laws have dwindled, but they are not completely obliterated. However most of us now recognize that the decision to close a business on Sunday, or any other day, ought to be a private one.

The constitution also gives our government the power to regulate commerce. One of the purposes for this power is to insure that there is a level playing field for similarly situated enterprises. If the government makes exceptions, it must justify them. However, the government need not make exceptions. Once any person or entity decides to engage in commerce, it is agreeing to abide by reasonable government regulation of that commerce. For example, just because a religion endorses the use of a hallucinogen, it doesn’t mean that the government must permit a business run by such a religion to sell the drug.

So it is not infringing upon religious freedom to require, let us say Georgetown University, to provide its janitors with the same health plan as NYU. No one is requiring the Catholic Church to operate Georgetown University. But the government does have a legitimate interest in insuring that all janitors get similar health coverage.

The freedom to practice one’s religion is a freedom that pertains to activities involving worship. It is a freedom that entitles church members to assemble together and to employ free speech to convince others to follow their path. But it is not a freedom to advantage the religious institution in its commercial enterprises. Such a demand by any religious denomination is a demand for special treatment. It is a demand that our government must not agree to because it is really asking for all of us to treat as special, a specific religion. To give Catholic universities or hospitals an exemption from any labor laws that apply to similar commercial enterprises would be a violation of the constitution’s prohibition against establishing a government sanctioned religion.

What these advocates of so-called freedom of religion are arguing for is that their practices be imposed upon all of us. They want to prevent everyone from using contraceptives. They want to prevent every woman from having an abortion, regardless of the reason. So they demand that the enterprises they support get special treatment, thus an advantage over others. Over time their demands will prove insatiable, their position intractable and we will find a government edict dictating that we follow their creed. This is not a matter of freedom but a matter of theocracy.

Once upon a time, in ancient Catholic Rome and in Europe during the Middle Ages priests were not subject to the laws of the state. They could not be tried in a civil court. They could commit any crime and walk free, unless the Catholic Church decided to discipline them. Some, like Rick Santorum, would have us go back to those days. But we must be aware of the danger, as were the drafters or our constitution.  Every cleric, of every stripe should be put on clear notice that once stepping out of the church and beyond their roles as leaders of services, that upon entering into the public square the secular laws of our state apply equally to them as to everyone else.  And politicians who advocate special exemptions to clerics from our secular laws, merely because of their religious affiliations, cannot without perjuring themselves, swear to uphold and defend the constitution of the United States. The likes of Santorum, Romney and Gingrich, in particular, are by their own admissions, disqualified to hold public office under our constitution. If we do not want to invite a return to the Dark Ages, we must repudiate them and their extremism.

I think it’s time to get politics right out of professional team sports. Pro players sign contracts that require them to make personal appearances at the team’s request. They can be penalized for engaging in conduct detrimental to the team’s public image. Thomas was not sanctioned in any way for his dissing the president of the United States, who was engaged in a ceremonial, not political, activity. Obama was congratulating the Bruins on behalf of the entire country. It wasn’t an act of self-glorification by any means. All presidents perform this function. So, I think it is fair to say that the Bruins’ front office thinks that dissing the president doesn’t harm their image. Imagine what they would have done to Thomas had he endorsed Occupy Wall Street.

Kraft is a savvy political being. He makes lots of political donations and he gets press for his political opinions. He knew what he was doing when he invited Limbaugh into his box for high visibility at the Super Bowl. It was a political statement.

Now pro sports teams in baseball, hockey, basketball and football especially are territorial. They exploit the local geography reaping team loyalty based upon civic pride. Fans describe their local teams as “we” for this reason. And local governments fawn over these teams providing them with innumerable perks and benefits up to and including financing with tax dollars, sweetheart leases, policing services, tax breaks, loans, waivers, whatever. Virtually every team has a cozy relationship with local governments within their territories. The supposed purpose is to provide the local population with common ground, something they can all get behind. Once a team becomes a political tool, i.e. the Boston Republican Patriots or the Chicago Democratic White Sox, that purpose is nullified. The team becomes a divisive element within the community and not a unifying force.

Thus, when the Bruins permit Tim Thomas to make his political statement, they are encouraging divisiveness. They become a force for breaking apart the community. When Robert Kraft displays Rush Limbaugh in his owner’s suite, he is saying that “I am supporting the Republicans this election year.”  It is a political add, that he gets to make because he owns a team which, by the way, benefits from civic and community support that crosses party lines.

There is far too much divisiveness, meanness, bad blood in this country already without a bunch of privileged, coddled millionaire athletic idols and their billionaire “owners” exploiting their privileges or skills as puck stoppers and runners, by ratcheting up the hostility. It’s not good for sportsmen to pretend they have special expertise in politics because they can run, or catch or even have a willingness to stick their noggin in front of a 90-mile per hour slap shot. And it’s not good for the fans to idolize their sports, their teams or the players when they behave that way. When Thomas failed to show up to receive the congratulations of the country, he dissed me. When Kraft showed himself willing to sit next to a drug-addled, nasty blowhard for three hours, he was saying “fuck you” to me. So I give them both three flying forks. Back at you.

“A few weeks ago, when Newt Gingrich was shooting off his mouth, we thought that we’d found the guy for us, but then he started shooting from the hip and we began to wonder, how’s he going to hit anything that way?

“We took a look at Ron Paul. For a while there, we thought he was a straight shooter, but sometimes he goes off half-cocked and no one’s going to vote for a guy who’s got only half a cock.

“Don’t even get me started on Romney. You ask me, he’s a loose canon. Every time he turns around, he shoots himself in the foot. About a quarter of our constituency seems to like that because he can’t seem to miss but it’s got nothing to do with marksmanship. His problem is he aims to please.

“When you get right down to it, all of our candidates, except Santorum are stuffed shirts. That’s the reason he’s the only one who can wear a sweater vest.”

Holding a copy of the U.S. Constitution, Ouldquest pointed to the Preamble. “Look at this,” he said excitedly. “The purpose of our government is to ‘promote the general welfare.’ Welfare! This is nothing but a utilitarian SOCIALIST document and it ought to be just tossed in the trash heap of history where it belongs.”

When asked what he’d like to see replace the present government, Ouldquest didn’t miss a beat. “Feudalism,” he said, scrounging from that very same historical trash bin. “With feudalism, you didn’t need a government. Everything was private.

“What about roads and bridges?” a skeptic hollered from the back of the audience.

“Back in the good old days, you didn’t need roads,” Ouldquest replied, scowling. “You wanted to go somewhere, you just trampled over peasants’ fields. And if you came to a river, you waded, swam or hired a boatman — just like the way you get to Hell. And sure there were some bridges, but they were private too.  It was pay as you go and that kept the peasants in their place.”

“What about armies, police, fire departments. Shouldn’t those be government functions?” someone challenged.

Smiling, Ouldquest delivered a ready response. “A thousand years ago, if you wanted soldiers, you hung a ‘help wanted’ sign on the parapet of your castle. When your private army wasn’t off trying to rob the guy in the neighboring castle, or starting fires, it was available to put them out. And since peasants had no rights to free speech or to a free press, you could use the same guys to keep them in line. It all worked out fine.”

“But they had taxes back then, didn’t they?”  a reporter asked. “I mean, what was Robin Hood all about if it wasn’t interfering with the Sheriff of Nottingham’s tax collection activities? “

“Look” Ouldquest sniffed, “you must not have been paying attention. Robin Hood was a socialist. He was preventing the guys with the castles from collecting money from the peasants, money they needed to hire their private armies. It’s the guys in the castles, the job providers, I’m worried about, not the peasants whose fields are getting trampled.  You start worrying about peasants, that’s when you get into crap like promoting the general welfare. “

• The Catholic Archbishop of San Francisco dis-invited three clergy who were scheduled to speak at a Catholic Church because they were too gay.
• It was disclosed that there are an average of ten fights per game in the stands at 49er’s games.
• The Golden State Warriors took the position that sending xerox copies of genitalia to women was evidence of a consensual sexual relationship.
• Nikki Haley, the governor of South Carolina accused the federal government of “bullying” her state because it prohibited her from kicking previously registered black voters off the voter rolls.
• Lowe’s Hardware continued to stand by it’s decision to withhold advertising from a T.V. show that portrays American Muslims as ordinary folks because a single white guy protested that it showed Muslims too positively.
• In Pennsylvania, a guy who claimed he was “cleaning his gun and it went off by accident”  killed an 18-year old Amish girl two miles away.
• YOU ARE WELCOME TO ADD MORE CHEERFUL NEWS IN COMMENTS!

There is precedent for such outcomes. As an attorney during the 1970’s, I represented Iranian students who were being hunted in the U.S. by SAVAK, the secret police of the former Shah, Reza Pahlavi. These students were active in organizations seeking the overthrow of the Shah, a loyal retainer of the United States, and the restoration of Iranian democracy. Once SAVAK identified a student as an opponent of the regime, it worked with its colleagues in the CIA to have him (or occasionally her) deported.  Students who were forcibly returned to Iran had little hope of survival.

But it was these students, studying all over the west, who were instrumental in rousing the population against the Shah. Some populated the Mujahedin Khalq, a leftist organization with ties to the Marxist Tudeh Party. But as the revolution picked up steam, so did the forces supporting the Ayatollah Khomeini, who was then living in exile in France. Within two years of ousting the Shah, the Iranian revolution was solidly under the control of the Ayatollah and the mullahs. The Mujahedin Khalq militants were hunted down and killed. A handful found refuge in Iraq during the reign of Saddam Hussein, but with his fall, they were rousted and now exist only in exile or as small isolated cells in Iran. Others managed to remain in or return to the West where they now prosper.

For a time, the Islamists tolerated a limited sort of free elections, but when it appeared that the Iranian people had tired of the extremist religious fundamentalism that was the fare they doled out, the Supreme Leader and his Guardian Council began striking secularists, leftists and moderates from the list of eligible candidates for public office.  And when moderates scored significant electoral support, they had their victories stolen from them through bogus vote-counting. Iranian elections became a sham. Now Iran is mired in popular discontent that can only be deflected by whipping up the masses into anti-Zionist, anti-West and xenophobic campaigns spiced with saber-rattling. There is no more freedom today in Iran than there was under the Shah and the tortures meted out to those in opposition to the Islamists can be even worse because any opposition to it is deemed to be “waging war against God.” Meanwhile, in an embarrassing display of how we can bumble, America has declared the Mujahadin Khalq a terrorist organization and assisted Iraq’s al Maliki in dismantling their safe-haven, when we could use the insights and intelligence they possess, not to mention potential friendship when the current regime departs.

There should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that it is the mission of the Islamists who have gained power through free elections in Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco; who are likely to gain power at the ballot box in Libya; and who will, in time, assume control of Algeria, Yemen and Syria, to make their rule permanent and opposition to them a crime. It is inevitable that Islamists (and indeed all extremist religious parties) will regard opposition to them as opposition to God. And it follows that once in power they cannot brook losing at the ballot box because to lose power is to have failed a holy mission. It is unthinkable. Thus, if it appears even possible that they will lose an election, the Islamists will wipe out viable opposition candidates and rig the results as they did in Iran. And if that doesn’t do the trick, they will call out their militants who will mercilessly and brutally wage a war against the “apostates, blasphemers and infidels” who have the temerity of opposing their rule.

In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood will soon solidify its hold on power. Although they are currently making noises as moderates, the Brotherhood’s protestations of moderation should be received with caution. It may well be a strategy designed to reach an accommodation with the powerful Egyptian army just as in Turkey, where an Islamist party rules but cautiously, because the army has a history of coups against them. Beyond their rhetoric, it must be recalled that these are the same actors involved in the murder of Anwar Sadat. And among their leadership are those who have called for the re-establishment of the Caliphate.

For those who are unaware of the “re-establishment of the Caliphate” platform, it in many ways mirrors the apocalyptic prophesies of Christian fundamentalists who believe in the Rapture as set forth in the Book of Revelations. It holds that Allah has called for a Muslim re-conquest of all lands once Muslim including the Iberian Peninsula, the Balkans and the Caucasus, and of course all of Israel. Once the Caliphate is re-established, the Messiah will return along with Imam Mahdi. Ominously, the center of the Caliphate is foretold to be Egypt.

Not only may we safely assume that a good portion of the forty-five percent who voted for the Muslim Brotherhood, look fondly upon the prospect of re-establishment of the Caliphate, it is fair to attribute most of the twenty-five percent of the Egyptian vote that went to the extremist Salafi party to the same goal. The Salafis are a party dedicated to jihad. They stand for a fundamentalist, religious Egypt at the center of a great Islamic universe, recaptured from the West by force of arms. Recent voting in Egypt should be viewed as an indication that this dream of greatness, willed by Allah and revealed by the Prophet, is now taking hold among the Muslim downtrodden much in the same way that poor working class citizens of Britain and America embraced imperialism.

In many ways, we in the West have our own benighted policies to blame for this turn of events. In 1953, after it nationalized the oil industry, our CIA along with its British counterparts overthrew the freely elected, secular, leftist government of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, replacing it with their puppet, Shah Reza Pahlavi. The ripples of that arrogance haunt us to this day and as much as the Iranian people crave certain aspects of western culture, particularly of the materialist varieties, they are wary of close ties to governments that obviously can’t be trusted to respect their national and personal freedom. So we have a hostile Iran, potentially nuclear and intractably opposed to Israel. We have Iranians who want very much to have the individual freedoms that we in the West take for granted. But when push comes to shove, they will reluctantly side with the mullahs in a confrontation with the West because as benighted as the clerics may be, they are Iranians foremost, and we can’t be trusted.

There is no reason to believe that the outcome in Egypt will be much different than Iran, particularly if the Mubarak-era military loses control.  In short order, Egypt’s women will be compelled to wear the hijab if not a burqa and will be relegated to little better than domestic slavery. Secularists will be silenced and if they do speak up can look forward to being declared apostates subject to execution.

The war to re-establish the Caliphate will, of course, begin with hostilities directed at Israel using the billions of dollars of modern arms we provided to Mubarak’s army. But make no mistake, those with legitimate objections to Israel’s benighted policies toward the Palestinians but who seek a peaceful solution will be brushed aside. There can be no two-state solution when your objective is a Caliphate and the coming of the Messiah.

Machiavelli teaches that what a prince should do when confronted with popular discontent is cook up a foreign war. (Machiavelli may have been an infidel but there is no reason for Islamists not to follow his advice. After all, the fact that nuclear bombs were developed by infidels hasn’t stopped the Wahhabis, Salafis, and the Ayatollahs from wanting to acquire them. Weapons are one thing. Human rights and democracy are something else entirely.) Once the Islamists begin to govern, they will find differences among themselves. To split into factions is inevitable.  Since the downtrodden will remain in the lower strata of society, the same discontent that brought about Mubarak’s overthrow will surely bubble to the surface once again. Because they are the party of God, the new government will not voluntarily share or relinquish power.  As opposition builds and their rule is threatened, the best option will be to engineer a foreign adventure to divert the masses’ attention. What better rallying cry than Allah’s call to re-establish His Caliphate?

We have played right into the hands of the Islamic fundamentalists. Our history in the Middle East over the past century has been a sorry tale of ignorance, corruption and contempt for the culture and human rights of the Muslim population.  Except for a relatively brief period when Nasser governed, Egypt has been run by the British or by clients of the U.S. Throughout the Middle East, we have supported one brutal dictator after another, endorsing their torture of the populace while insuring that the vast majority remains impoverished and powerless. For a century we did nothing to help these new voters achieve the human and civil rights that we hold dear. Indeed, every time they rose up to obtain human rights and dignity, we sent in our operatives with bribes or guns to see to it that they were unsuccessful. We call them rag-heads and hajis. They call us infidels. Whatever common ground there might have been, has been turned into a quicksand of suspicion and fear. Meanwhile we have extracted great wealth from these lands. A few of us have profited greatly. The rest of us have been bought off with cheap oil.

While Islam may not stand for personal freedom, the vast majority of these new voters have no personal experience with concepts such as free speech, freedom of religion or a free press, and we have ourselves partly to thank for the fact they do not. At the moment, their desire is simply to be free of the foreign influences that have financed their oppression for as long as they can remember, and we are they. If the Islamists, who are basically clean of corrupting western influences, offer them a Caliphate and a return of the Messiah in the bargain, so much the better. It should not surprise us then that the region’s newly enfranchised voters have rejected political parties that espouse western-style civil liberties, secularism or even a separation of church and state.

And so the outlook for the West, including Israel, is pretty bleak. A lot of people are going to end up suffering for the sins committed by U.S. and British imperialists over the past century.  In the Middle East, they will include billions of women, secular Muslims and students. But the victims are also likely to include Shia and Sunnis wherever they are in the minority, Israelis, Palestinians, Copts, Maronites, Aliwites and Sufis, not to mention many westerners who will be put on the defensive by the mother of all jihads that looms on the horizon once these Islamic fundamentalists run into trouble –as they inevitably will–while attempting to govern.

For starters, we could fatten the old treasury by increasing income on FCC licenses, oil and gas leases, timber and mining concessions and other assets that we, The People, own but let private corporations exploit for their profit. We could require a percentage of gross profits provision similar to the provisions in many shopping mall leases and restaurants. We’d get the dough off the top. The more they make, the more we make and if it’s on gross, they can stick their fancy accountants where the sun don’t shine. This would virtually moot the issue of corporate taxation.

Then we could charge “competitive rates” for government services using the insurance company model. The more you want to protect from loss, the more you have to pay. Emergency and security services called out to protect private property should result in a service charge and it should be based upon current fair market values. Somebody with a lot of property to lose would certainly pay a lot more than somebody with nothing to lose.

The more a private entity uses our roads, bridges, air routes, the more it pays. For example, corporate jets might pay a toll for using our airspace. Companies that pollute our air and water, would have to pay a resource depletion charge plus the cost of clean up using our people.

If we were running the government like a business, then the government should be able to compete with the private sector. No reason for The People to stay out of business activities where we can make some money. For example, we might stop giving away things to private industry, like the way we give away NIH research to drug companies that end up making large profits from discoveries The People unerwrite. If patients can pay thousands of dollars per dose for some of the medicines developed by our government, then they should be prepared to deliver fair profits to us for the value of our contribution to a drug’s development. And if the drug companies balk at cutting in The People, maybe we ought to compete. I think the government might be able to sell drugs for less, cutting the drug dealers out and keeping the profits.  If we were to use our leverage, we’d have Merck and Pfizer boarding up their shops in no time. That’s how business is run.

Running government like a business would mean that we quit lending to banks at .25% so they can lend back to us ¾when they have a mind to¾ at 4.5% (or over twenty percent for credit card debt.) With that kind of profit margin, we, The People, ought to get into the banking business ourselves. Why shouldn’t we be the ones making those 4.25% loans? I’d bet, if we used our leverage, we’d be able to hire, at pennies on the current dollar, excellent bankers to do the heavy lifting for a real “People’s Bank” that would put right out of business the so-called “to big to fail” banks. And the beauty of the government bank, being run like a business, is that it really is too big to fail.

Indeed, if we want to be/stay in the business of insuring bank deposits and loans –as we do now–we ought to get a piece of that action too. Real insurance companies make money. If that means banks won’t lend, tough. If it means we can offer savers a better return than banks, why not do it.  If it means that we can lend for less and still make a decent profit, which the government clearly can do, why not do it? Right now, banks are really just lending our money back to us, when they deign to lend at all. What kind of real business leverage do they have? They wouldn’t have any money at all to lend if it weren’t for us.

The truth is that if the government were really running like a business, it would have the leverage to put a lot of large corporations out of business, or demand a big cut of their gross profits, not by force or by some violent revolution, but by acting the way big businesses really do. Ironic though it is, a truly capitalist government, operating similarly to a giant for-profit corporation would be a huge job creator, and could reduce or eliminate taxes altogether while putting the richest 1% on the ropes. The one-percenter’s profits could be ours if we ran our government like a business. But the last thing capitalists really want is for our government to run like a business. What they want, and what they have, is a sucker government that will cover their losses and let them loot its citizen’s assets at will.

I recently decided to sell one of my guns through a local gun shop. It worked out quite well, although seeing the quality of the customer base, I sometimes shudder, wondering who bought the thing. It was quite a powerful weapon.

I also write novels – mystery/thrillers and so from time to time I attend to verisimilitude by venturing on-line to check out what’s happening in the gun-toting universe. Not long ago, I stumbled on this:  JEWS FOR THE PRESERVATION OF FIREARMS OWNERSHIP: America’s Most Aggressive Defender of Firearms Ownership, http://jpfo.org/ and its black- hat gun rabbi, Dovid Bendory. When I last checked, the site had more than 2 ¼ million hits! Wow. If I sound stunned, I am.

I find this remarkable for many reasons. First, I doubt that 2 ¼ million Jews in the U.S. own guns. Second, when I surf other gun sites, what I get is a lot of blather about how the U. S. is a Christian nation, how Obama wants to take our guns away and a lot of anti-Semitic stuff that makes me wonder just who is looking at this JPFO site. And although this may be somewhat beside the point, many of the folks who comment on the blogs that attach like leaches to these websites seem to be close to illiterate.

Well, I had such a successful experience selling my gun that I went back with another one, a 12 gauge shotgun in perfect condition,. I did my research on line and knew what my gun was selling for on the private gun market. (In case you are interested, there is an online private gun market and you are free to buy, sell or trade just about anything short of a rocket–propelled grenade launcher without those bothersome waiting periods, or having someone point out to you that the gun in question may be illegal in your jurisdiction.) But to my surprise, the guys at the gun shop were not interested in my shotgun. “We’re running a business,” the paunchy Eastern-European proprietor mumbled, shaking his head as he waddled off to attend t a handgun customer. His assistant intimated that this was a short-handed way of explaining that they couldn’t make any money selling a sporting firearm.

Scanning the other customers in the store, along with the wares on display, I could see they had a point. They were obviously enamored by these military-style items. Just about everything that wasn’t a handgun looked like it came from a National Guard armory. Make no mistake. These were not hunting guns dressed up to look like week-end warrior accouterments. And these guys didn’t look to me like they shot skeet or traps. All you needed to do was look around to tell the guns that matter when you are “running a business” are the ones that are made for one purpose only – to kill people. And the inventory looked to me like any number of those pieces could do that very effectively.

In California, assault weapons are supposedly banned. But there are plenty of work-arounds that are apparently simple enough that even the semi-illiterati can make the modifications. You can’t, for example load up your weapon with a clip that holds more than 10 rounds. But you can get a gun with a fixed magazine that will hold enough ammo to blow away a platoon. And although the mag is fixed, that doesn’t mean you can’t pop it out using a round of your armor-piercing ammo. You can’t have flash suppressors, but they seem to be available. You aren’t supposed to have pistol grips on the stock, but I saw some in the shop. Maybe they were for .22s (I didn’t look at the caliber that closely) but I’ll bet a little filing and chiseling would make them fit something more potent; that is, if you couldn’t get it on line or out of a trunk at a gun show.

The rabbi makes no bones about his interest in guns. He’s a “never again” guy. He’ll go down with his weapons ablazing as he recites the Torah. And– get this –they seem to have a women’s auxiliary. Check out the interview with Candace Dainty.  https://txlady706.wordpress.com/2011/02/17/wisconsin-jewish-women-supporting-gun-ownership-meet-a-non-suicidal-jew/

So, like the rabbi and Miss Candice, let’s be up front. The current gun fetish has nothing to do with hunting. (The next time some politician puts on a yellow vest and claims to be pro-gun because he is a hunter, you can tell him he’s full of it.) It has nothing to do with going after game (for which needing even a ten round magazine is something of an embarrassment) or for target shooting, (because you don’t need a 40 round mag to do that either.) It has nothing to do with defending home and hearth from intruders because —as any hillbilly will tell you — the best defensive weapon for those purposes is a shotgun, (Especially since you almost can’t miss hitting an intruder and even if you do miss the shot won’t travel through five of your neighbors’ houses, bumping off their family members along the way, prior to expiring.) and the gun shops that are “running a business” can’t make a living selling those. It’s all about stocking up for the Armageddon.

I know this is going to cause some people to go ballistic, on both sides of the gun argument. I have no quarrel with the Second Amendment. I just would remind folks that our founding fathers put the words “well regulated militia” in it. They didn’t write those words for the fun of it. And they specifically gave the government authority to put down insurrections. (Hell, even our premier icon, George Washington, put the cabbosh on one of those.) The old white men who wrote the Constitution were FOR the regulation of guns. And so am I. When I see and hear the NRA bitch and moan about how regulation is one step short of confiscation, I have to laugh. They don’t seem to have a problem with the government regulating protest marches, a right we have under the First Amendment, for which permits have long been necessary. Is that one step short of eliminating free speech? You don’t hear that from them. And their whine about registration is completely lame. If I were the government and I wanted to know who owns guns in this country so I could confiscate them, I’d just hack a copy of the NRA’s mailing list off their computers. Don’t tell me the government can’t do that.

So, this whole gun nut thing that’s going on right now in statehouse after statehouse is just a pile of out-of-hand paranoid crap. And to top it off, many of these so-called Second Amendment advocates are so self-conscious about what jerks they are that they have to advocate concealed carry so they won’t be shunned. They’re practically confessing that they are a bunch of losers who can’t qualify to get a carry permit the old-fashion way: need, competence and sanity. Back in the olden days only cowards, gamblers and felons hid guns on their person. It’s not so different today.