The World Turned Upside Down

On year’s longest night,

moon tilted on its side, the

world turned upside down.

Last Thursday, the night cleared briefly, the first time this month, and there it was -- a half-moon tipped over, bottom lit, top dark, lighted from far below the equator by a sun at its farthest away. I suppose “The world turned upside down” comes to mind because I have been reading Kenneth Roberts’ Rabble in Arms. Roberts’ tale is of our 1776 retreat from Quebec, the stubborn defeats along Lake Champlain that delayed Burgoyne and denied the British until we rallied in ’77 to defeat him at Saratoga, the turning point of the war. That 18thC English pop song was played by the British as they stacked arms and surrendered at Saratoga (and again six years later at Yorktown.) My Mom gave me Rabble in Arms when I was twelve, beginning my life-long love of American History. I just sent my 12-year old grandson a long out-of-print copy for Christmas, hoping to set him on the same path.

Roberts extols the tactical genius and battle-field leadership of Benedict Arnold while vividly describing the travails of the Continental Army and the inconstancy of the militia that were to supplement it. A few militia units excelled, but most proved unreliable, undisciplined, incompetent. The difference lay in leadership. Perhaps that is why Mason penned “… a well regulated militia…” later to be the conundrum of Madison’s Second Amendment. Mason wrote “That a well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defense of a free state; that standing armies, in time of peace, should be avoided as dangerous to liberty;….” Even when Washington came to see the need for a professional army, the first force formed in 1792 avoided the word; it was constituted as “The Legion of the United States.” Its first General was Anthony Wayne; one of its key commanders Arnold’s old nemesis, General Wilkinson, who later also turned traitor to the US.

So there was no standing army in 1789 when Madison wrote the 2nd and said that (therefore) citizens’ right to bear arms should not be abridged. What a far cry from today; now we have a huge standing army, and military suppliers adapt an individual’s weapon of mass destruction and sell it to most any of us – three and a half million assault weapons so far in civilian hands, more than the army has. Is this not madness?

… Madness … General Wayne was known as Mad Anthony Wayne, a tribute to his fiery, battlefield leadership. The Army says Sgt. Bales is not mad – despite wearing a cape costume while assaulting Afghan women and children asleep in their homes, and going out a second time without remorse to do it again that same night. Sounds pretty mad to me. And the Army Psychiatrist, Nidal Hasan? Mad? No, says the military court, but not a terrorist either. ???

And Virginia Tech’s Seung-Hui Cho, who bought semi-automatic handguns from licensed dealers? Who passed background checks with flying colors? And Newtown’s Adam Lanza, said by his mother to have Asperger’s Syndrom? But that is not madness. Is it mental illness? My Asperger grandson, raised by patient, loving, caring parents and specially trained teachers, is now a fully functioning adult, married to a woman he met in college (yes, college), thriving in his auto repair career, loving father of Natalie, my first great-grand child.

What is mentally unfit? Who is to judge?

My grandson’s fine, responsible Dad, my first-born, says guns are inanimate objects, that guns don’t kill people, etc., etc. Well, bats don’t hit homeruns, but take them away and there are no home runs to marvel at …. And then comes Wayne LaPierre who wants more -- more guns, more ammo, more high capacity magazines, more automatic hand guns, more old white guys volunteering to guard public places with concealed weapons … because a highly regulated militia is essential to our freedom.

Oh God….

Just northwest ruminations on a dark December day … the world turned upside down.