Nah - some Christians would just insist that a cross replace it instead.
Some people simply either have absolutely no understanding of the First Amendment, or simply don’t care, or both.
Of course it could. The Constitution provides expressly that state militias are regulated by Congress and at the command of the President.
I dunno – in 2000, Joe Lieberman came within a whisker of becoming VP. (And I don’t recall Bush or supporters or anybody else ever making an issue of his Jewishness.) If that election had gone just a bit differently and anything had happened to Gore mid-term . . .
So, does that mean they can be scared away from the polls? If voter-suppression is sauce for the goose . . . 
If you care to do the appropriate searches on RW news/blog type sites, you will encounter a number of stories from '08 and last year, with pictures, of Black Panthers in quasi-military outfits standing at the doors of polling places. The premise would be that they were there to intimidate white voters, but there seems to be little real evidence of that, they were more probably there to prevent intimidation of non-white voters.
OK, but if we had a lot more of them . . .
Maybe. You hatching a plan?
I’m not a constitutional scholar but I think you are reading way too much into federeal authority to call up the militia. Here are the passages that mention militia in the Constituion.
So congress has the ability to “provide for” (i.e. pay for) organizing, arming, and disciplining (i.e. training) the Militia.
They also have the ability to “govern” the PART of the militia that is employed by the USA (i.e. called to duty, usually in time of war). So, they don’t have the sort of plenary authority to “regulate the milita” that you think they have under these clauses.
You see the last part where it says that limits the presidential authority over the militia when called into the “ACTUAL SERVICE” of the United States? SOo, this clause probably doesn’t give anyone int he federal government the ability to regulate teh militia.
We’ve had many threads on this issue before but it has usually revolved around the right of the states to regulate fireams versus the individual right to bear arms. I don’t know any constitutional scholars that think that a state doesn’t have the right to arm its own militia with semi-automatic rifles with bayonet lugs and high capacity magazines.
I think you quoted me instead of someone else. I was obviously talking about the First Amendment, not the 2nd, and religion, not gun rights.
I have come up with a plan so cunning you could stick a tail on it and call it a weasel! Did you know you can catch HIV if a gay (even an uninfected one) uses the voting-booth before you do?! Well, you do now! Spread the word to all the RW!
Not going to work in my town, we have no voting booths, we do it all by mail. Messing with that will get you in some serious trouble.
(Cunning plan, eh? Are you going to solve the deficit with a process that turns lead into green?)
Yeah, sorry. I was trying to reply to Brainglutton who is misreading the words in the constitution to say what he wants them to say.
What firearms are the rioters and arsonists wielding?
I’m sure your ilk will be complaining that limiting phased plasma rifles to less than a 40 watt range is a violation of the Second Amendment.
Again, try to wrap your mind around the concept that gun ownership can be restricted and limited without taking away your right to hunt and to defend yourself. Unless you think mentally ill criminals should be able to purchase a bazooka, you probably have some limit on what constitutes reasonible and safe gun ownership.
Several had handguns but even without the handguns, are you really supposed to fend off looters with a baseball bat or something?
If that is the weapons technology at the time, then of course. Noone seriously suggests that the second amendment limits people to blunderbusses.
Yes of course. No right is absolute, but can you point me to the where I indicate that I think the second amendment provides an absolute right to own anything I want? Or would you like me to get you some more straw?
The second amendment says nothing about hunting. Its is largely about self defense and while I don’t think an AR15 is a practical choice for home defense, there is a meta level of self defense that some gun rights advocates will argue gives you the right to own effective self defense against tyranny. And yeah, I know, you can’t kill a tank with a bullet but the Afghans seemed to be able to chase the Russians and their tanks our of Afghanistan with small arms.
That would be better than getting into a firefight with them.
Yet, the debate keeps getting dragged into the barn full of straw. “Some reasonable regulation” gets met with “Stop trying to take away all my guns” and that “… my cold, dead fingers …” crap. There is no dialog, just shouting.
Home defense, again. Do you have any real, valid statistics on how much of this violent home invasion is really going on? And if it is pervasive, perhaps we need to address what is driving it instead of just arming ourselves against it. My home has been invaded several times, but never when I was there (probably a bit of casing going on), so I really want to know what the true extent of the problem is. Because if it is mostly absence-burglary, it seems to me that having a well-stocked arsenal at home is exactly the wrong strategy.
US-supplied SAMs are small arms?
BUG-EYED MONSTER: Give me your weapon!
REDNECK: You can have my gun when you pry my cold, dead fingers off of it!
BEM: Your offer is acceptable.
[grabscreammunchmunchmunchurp]
– Men In Black
You think?
FYI, someone pulled this out to a separate thread and I did in fact drop my defense of the word “persecution” there. In this thread I was responding to the wording of the OP, and indeed the dictionary definition of the word “persecution”. But it seems in the SDMB I am in the minority on what rises to the level of “persecution”.
What I think anyone can agree on is that Christians in America are declining in influence and power for various reasons. That’s the simple truth.
Thanks for your thoughtful post, though. There is one bit that I need to correct you on:
What faith do you think is mine? You assume I’m a Christian of some stripe simply because I point out the truth, that Christian’s are mocked in our society in many ways and on the decline in power and prestige. But I’m no Christian. I’ve been an atheist since early childhood.
No its not. Store owners got bludgeoned to death. Many other store owners had their livelihood burned to the ground. Better to shoot them and still be able to pay your mortgage and feed your family.
Do you support an assault weapons ban? Because that is the only thing I’m arguing against (that and the push from some on this board to get rid of guns generally).
Yeah I’ve provided this several times. There are about 10,000 home invasions per day. This results in a violent crime to a family member about 750 times per day. Thats just in the home.
Which has nothing to do with the government going after them.
No, he was just explaining why those Christians you mentioned shouldn’t feel persecuted.