"Is Anybody There? Does Anybody Care?"

Everybody in our extended family knows the words to this song from the musical 1776. John Adams, cranky and brilliant Boston attorney, has been stuck in "foul, fetid, foggy, fuming, filthy Philadelphia" for the better part of a year and still the other members of the Second Continental Congress won't "acknowledge what already exists." Specifically, since the first shots were fired on 19 April 1775, a state of war has existed between the 13 British colonies and their mother land and it's high time, Adams asserts, that we acknowledge that we are "and of right ought to be free and independent states. That all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved."

But it's a hard, slow process, to get people who have been raised as Englishmen, speaking English, fighting on the side of the English in wars with other European powers, sending their more well-to-do children back to England for a good education, and praying for the King of England in Church and in private homes, to believe that now it's time to end all that, scrap what was once a good thing, start shooting the troops whom we would as recently as 1759 have cheered to see coming when they saved us from the French and their Indian allies, and throw them off the continent while simultaneously striving to create a government tolerable to all 13 states which see themselves as 13 separate nation-states, not as one nation.

But in the play and in history, a few people of real vision can see what the nation can become. "I see fireworks. I see the pageant and pomp and parade. I hear the cannons roar. I see Americans - all Americans, free, forevermore!"

When Patrick Henry gave his most famous speech, he was predicting the Battle of Lexington and Concord which was to happen only three weeks later. "The next gale that sweeps from the North will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms." But now, 15 months later, Adams and a few others cling to the notion of American independence and self-government.

It seems pretty easy to look back on their eventual success. Yes, the Declaration was written, chiefly by one committee member. Yes, after dozens of changes it was passed. But saying something and making it stick are two vastly different things. Men from Canada to Georgia will kill each other wholesale for six years before things are finally settled at Yorktown, Virginia. And even then, weak, broke, the new country must endure the derision and the bullying of many older and more established trading partners for decades, finally fighting what some have called "The Second American Revolution," The War of 1812 not to mention the shootout with the Moslem states of the Barbary Coast beginning in 1803.

But somewhere along in there a few things had been decided in a permanent way. In the Constitutional Convention, chaired by General Washington, it had been decided that the government would perform the three functions of any government by being divided into three separate and distinct branches of government. And only under special circumstances could they interfere with each other's powers. The President can call Congress into emergency session, but the House can sit as the President's Grand Jury if he's accused of crime, and the Senate can sit as his petit jury. The President can veto acts of Congress, but they can override him with a 2/3 vote. In 1803, John Marshall's Supreme Court decided that acts of Congress and even partial acts of Congress can be found to be unconstitutional if a simple majority of the justices agree that the laws Congress passes violate some part of the Constitution. I used to call it "the God law" in my classes. All other laws must measure up to it.

The Chief Justice can sit in judgment of an indicted (impeached) President, but the President gets to make appointments to that court, and the Senate must confirm those appointments.

It's a pretty nice set-up. Many other countries have tried to imitate us.

But what we did two years after the 1789 Constitutional Convention is perhaps even more important. Many people, such as Jefferson, had only given their support to the document drawn up in 1789 on the condition - the BIG condition - that a bill of rights be drawn up and amended to that constitution. In 1791, we kept that promise. Twelve amendments were proposed; ten of them made the cut. These first ten amendments are called The Bill of Rights. And just to make sure that future circumstances and future inventions weren't used as excuses to limit the individual rights of individual citizens, we said in the Tenth Amendment that anything not specifically listed in the first ten amendments belonged to the States or to the People.

Of course, human nature being what it is, each and every one of the individual rights has been challenged many, many times during the 233 years since Independence was declared. The one to attack most often these days seems to be the Second Amendment. "A well regulated militia being necessary for the security of a Free State, the Right of the People to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed." So what's this "militia" thing.? It's the plural of an old Roman (Latin) word which meant citizen-soldier. Remember, among the Romans, anyone who didn't own land could not vote or serve in the army. Those were privileges reserved for people who owned a piece of Rome and therefore had a personally vested interested in seeing her succeed. A citizen-soldier was called a militium. Plural - militia. Many today would like you to believe that our modern equivalent is the State level National Guard, commanded by the governors of each state and able to be nationalized by the President like when Gen'l. Eisenhower nationalized the Arkansas National Guard so that it had to fight on the side of integrating, not further segregating Little Rock Central High in 1957.

That's not a true militia. When asked for a definition of the word militia, James Madison, often called "the father of the Constitution," said it means "the people under arms." That's where he stopped. It was clear enough to him and I hope it's clear enough to you.

Why should the people be armed? A host of answers springs to mind. Personal defense. Home defense. Intimidation of crime. Hunting. Recreation. Keeping a people practiced for the day when their government needs them to fight to preserve the above mentioned rights.

But remember the Declaration of Independence, too. Thirteen years before the Constitution and fifteen years before the Bill of Rights, the Declaration told us that we had right of revolution. Such a revolution to correct a corrupt or dishonest government cannot happen without an armed citizenry. When I mention this these days, people often laugh and say that a few million red necks with bird guns and deer rifles couldn't possibly prevail against the armed might of the U.S. Government.

But just a few weeks ago I saw a video which had been prepared by a decorated combat veteran and member of the U.S. Marine Corps. He wore a mask, realizing the kind of trouble he could get in for saying the things he said. What he essentially said was "Don't worry about it. We, your uniform-wearing fellow citizens, will never fire on our armed fellow citizens." He made that point over and over again. He acknowledged that the Constitution and specifically the Bill of Rights were under attack from people whose business it is to protect them.

So, am I advocating the violent overthrow of the government? Absolutely not! We must continue to work within this God-given system to redress the wrongs and wickedness which have crept into it in recent years. We must continue as long as there is breath in our bodies to drive from power and from positions of social leadership those who have gradually led us to accept things we would never have countenanced a generation or two ago. It has happened before. Wicked civilizations have turned around. Jonah got Nineveh, the vile capital city of the vicious Assyrian empire, to repent.

On more than one occasion in the Book of Mormon we see Jaraedites, Nephites, and Lamanites get their hearts softened by the hearing of the word of God. They turned around. They repented. They became kinder, more trustworthy people. Yes, sometimes they had to be humbled by famine, disease, or military conquest before they would repent. But there were other times when they were humbled by the Spirit while hearing the words of Prophets. It can happen again. We can choose to be better, cleaner, less lascivious, more wholesome, more honest, more morally courageous people. We can choose to become what we've always wished we were. It is the prayer of this old Air Force wing nut that we do exactly that. And we'll never do it by giving up any of the rights, enumerated or otherwise, in our inspired Constitution.