I'm going to try not to move too much off-topic and what I'm about to say can definitely be applied to certain WBTS writers.

Recently, I've had two (2) topics that I've been trying to learn more about, related to the American Constitution. They are the the "Second Amendment" and the view of the Founding Fathers regarding "Church and State". As my primary source, I have been reading the Federalist Papers and specifically the writings of Alexander Hamilton and James Madison.

Here's what I want to know, how could anyone read the Federalist Papers and other period writings by the Founding Fathers and draw the conclusion that the Constitution was written to protect the Federal Government and American Society from "the church" or religion? If one reads the Federalist Papers with basic reading and comprehension skills, it is clear that the U.S. Constitution protects the citizenry from a "state-run" or official religion. In the cases of almost all of the countries in Europe, there was collusion between the government and the official state religion, they were one in the same. Our Founding Fathers wanted to prevent the establishment of an official or favored religion, but this did NOT mean they intended for "the church", independent from government not to have a powerful voice in our government and politics. Many "academics" and ideologists have misconstrued this resistance to an "official religion" as resistance to religion, in general. They call the Founders deists, agnostics and in other ways misrepresent their, primarily Christian, religious beliefs. From my reading, the Founders are overtly religious in their writings and believed that only a church independent of an overbearing and intrusive government could do its job to spread "the Good News". To draw this "anti-religion" conclusion from any basic reading of the Founder's writings is purposefully misleading. In other words, someone had to think about how to "spin" the Founder's words to reach this conclusion, then rely on an uninformed or lazy readership to accept their conclusions at face-value.

On the Second Amendment, I wanted to confront this issue of whether or not it protects individual citizen's rights to keep and bear arms or only an organized "state-run" militia and was the purpose of the amendment to allow Americans to defend themselves from criminals and to protect their property. Well....

The anti-Second Amendment people say that only an organized militia is referenced in the Second Amendment. Well, that's true BUT, when Madison refers to this militia he counts all of the adult males in the United States as the size of the force. Much like modern countries like Switzerland and Israel, every adult male in the United States was considered a part of the "militia". The primary misunderstanding from the Federalist Papers is this, the Second Amendment does not emphasize its purpose for protection of heart and home from other citizens. The Second Amendment exists to protect the people from the government. The Founding Fathers were very concerned about the loss of their new found freedoms by an oppressive federal government. Madison does a calculation in the Federalist papers where he states that the "standing army" a tyrannical government could field against the people to strip them of their rights and return to a dictatorship or monarchy was about "30,000". In opposition to this he stated that an armed citizenry could call out a militia of 500,000 at a moments notice and to paraphrase him, no federal government would dare attack the rights and freedoms of the American people as long as this threat of massive armed resistance existed. Maybe it would be politically incorrect for this to be talked about at this time, but our Founders wanted an armed citizenry to protect us against our own government, not from each other. In fact, though I don't own, nor do I encourage others to do so, but I think if the Founders were questioned about what the current population should be allowed to own privately, they would probably respond with the question, "What is being issued to the American infantry man in the U.S. military? Whatever that is, the citizenry should be allowed to own the same or comparable weapons." I do not believe the Founders would support an assault weapons ban.

Here again, the wording is very clear, yet ideologues and academics again have misconstrued the Founder's words for a lazy and uninformed public that will not read the source materials on their own.

I am not a "conspiracy theory" sort of person, I generally trust the information I receive from news and written sources, but I tend to take one more step and read a little about alternative views and source information before I reach my "own" conclusions. Recently, we've been talking about Mr. Beck's misstatements based on his own ideology and poor scholarship. It's just a matter of being lazy and speaking out without knowing what you're talking about. He hits on some very valuable and "basic truths", but he is dangerous because he is a "newbie" when it comes to history and he relies on the writings of modern authors and academics.

I'd like to hear from some of you folks, because I respect your opinions. What's going on here? Are the current writers on both sides of these issues, not reading the source material? Are they uninformed or is there something more sinister going on? Are they starting with their ideology and constructing a story of "half-truths" and mis-applied quotes to justify their arguments? Is there a "grand conspiracy" to re-write our history for political and power reasons and to steer the American people with left or right-wing propaganda? Have our academics lost all honor and professionalism? Are they strictly tools of one political group or another? Where are the "independent" professional historians and the "Free Press"?

I guess I have one thing to say to everyone on this board and maybe we need "to shout it from the hilltops". When it comes to modern history writers and those commenting on our history, the Founding Fathers, the Constitution, etc., "TRUST BUT VERIFY". We need to tell people to quit listening to their ideologically driven professors, the latest popular book or even the most charismatic TV or radio personality and tell them to read the documents for yourself. I believe anyone with a sixth-grade reading level and basic comprehension skills can draw their own conclusions on these issues.

Okay, that's enough for me, I just thought I'd spout off a little on some current issues I'm dealing with and my approach to learning about it on my own. I went through about a two-month journey with my daughter to better understand the religion of the Founding Fathers. I've reached the conclusion from "source documents" that they were far more religious, Christian evangelicals, than I though previously. After that exhaustive journey, I've just had another family member who is one of our more secular and honestly, immoral members, throw up this Founding Fathers "deist, agnostic thing" on a family email. All I could think was "here we go again". He had cut-and-pasted something he found on the internet to justify his assertions, as THE FACTS and THE TRUTH. I don't know if I have the energy to fight this battle with him, at this point, but, I guess I need to.

Your thoughts and comments on the above please.

Jim