IN THE WAKE OF THE ORLANDO, FLORIDA, SHOOTINGS

Last night, I didn't sleep well. I don't have to tell you what made me restless. During the night I woke up several times and thought of the 50 people who were killed in Orlando, Florida, and their grieving families and friends, and I prayed for consolation and and peace for them. I thought of the 53 wounded and their families and friends, and I prayed for healing.

I thought of LGTB friends who, while they have seen progress in acknowledgement of their rights and privileges as citizens of the country, were forcefully reminded yesterday of the hateful and life-threatening prejudice that remains.

I thought of the Founding Fathers who wrote the 2nd Amendment of the Constitution in the days when "well-regulated militia" were allowed to own muzzle-loading muskets. How, in God's name, did we arrived at this moment when citizens (not militia) are permitted to own military style assault weapons? Could the Founding Fathers ever have envisioned or intended us to be where we are now - in a place where, under the guise of 2nd Amendment freedom, people are permitted to own weapons of mass destruction?

If, after 20 children and 6 staff members were shot in their school in Connecticut, we did nothing, then I have little hope that the deadliest mass shooting in the history of the country targeting an LGTB nightclub in Orlando will bring change. But I know this: we can't give up; we can't stop trying for change.

LITTLE KNOWN QUOTES FROM THE FOUNDING FATHERS

Check out David Atkins at Hullabaloo. Here's one:

James Madison:

There is an evil which ought to be guarded against in the indefinite accumulation of property from the capacity of holding it in perpetuity by … corporations. The power of all corporations ought to be limited in this respect. The growing wealth acquired by them never fails to be a source of abuses."

There's more, much more at the link. Someone tell the Supremes!

THE FOUNDING FATHERS OF OUR 'CHRISTIAN' NATION

Nevertheless, because the revolutionary leadership sprang from the social establishment in several colonies, it included many who were Anglicans by denominational loyalty, no less than two-thirds of the signatories of the Declaration of Independence. Elite egalitarians tended to lead these Founding Fathers not to the Awakening but to the Enlightenment and Deism: cool versions of Christianity, or virtually no Christianity at all. The polymath Benjamin Franklin seldom went to church, and when he did, it was to enjoy the Anglican Book of Common Prayer decorously performed in Christ Church, Philadelphia; he made it a point of principle not to spend energy affirming the divinity of Christ. Thomas Jefferson was rather more concerned than Franklin to be seen at church on key political occasions, but he deplored religious controversy, deeply distrusted organized religion and spoke of the Trinity as 'abracadabra...hocus-pocus...a deliria of crazy imaginations, as foreign to Christianity as that of Mohamet'. In the face of such low-temperature religion, many on the present-day American religious right, anxious to appropriate the Revolution for their own version of modern American patriotism, have sought comfort in the ultimate Founding Father, George Washington, but here too there is much to doubt. Washington never received Holy Communion, and was inclined in discourse to refer to providence or destiny rather than God.
....

What this revolutionary elite achieved amid a sea of competing Christianities, many of which were highly uncongenial to them, was to make religion a private affair in the eyes of the new American federal government. The constitution which they created made no mention of God or Christianity (apart from the date by 'the Year of our Lord'). That was without precedent in Christian polities of that time, and with equal disregard for tradition (after some debate), the Great Seal of the United States of America bore no Christian symbol but rather the Eye of Providence, which if it recalled anything recalled Freemasonry. The motto 'In God We Trust' only first appeared on the American coin amid civil war in 1864, and it was 1957 before it featured on any paper currency of the United States.

From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years by Diarmaid MacCullough, pp. 763-764.

So much for the United States as a 'Christian' nation established by 'Christian' Founding Fathers. Citizens who do not know the true history of the country make up from whole cloth a false history to suit their individual purposes.

You may find this hard to believe, but during all my years in elementary and high school, I said the Pledge of Allegiance minus the words 'under God' and, I came out of that period of my life unscathed. The words were added in 1954, during my university years.

Further reading on the subject of the 'Christian' Founding Fathers in a splendid article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on the religious views of George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Thomas Paine, none of whom would be electable today.