It's 2019. Two hundred and forty-three years after the writing of the U.S. Constitution, undoubtedly the most profound and effective document ever written in the history of the world. If it were going to fail, if it were to be found unworkable I believe that would have happened by now. Our founding fathers knew it wasn't perfect, so they provided a means for change, amendments. So far, during the past 243 years twenty-seven have been ratified by the 50 states and become part of the Constitution. Almost 12,000 amendments have been proposed. During each term of Congress since 1789 about 200 amendments are proposed. And only 27 of those have actually been ratified and become law. Every single ounce and drop of power that the federal government has, and it has a lot, is granted to it by the constitution. It has no power to do anything that was not granted by the constitution. It starts with the words "In order to form a more perfect union...". Well, we're certainly not a perfect union, but just think what we would be as a country today if not for the constitution. I don't even want to go there.
The first ten amendments are known as the Bill of Rights. Guaranteed, unalienable rights afforded to every American citizen. As I said earlier, almost 12000 attempts have been made to change it and only 27 passed muster. One of the Bill of Rights is the right to keep and bear arms. Touchy subject of late, right? There's a lot of clamoring to change that in recent times but considering the history of attempts to change the constitution, good luck with that. I think you'd have far better chances of baptizing a cat than changing the constitution. And that is as it should be.
Anyway, back to the point of all this rambling. Since the election of 2016 when Donald Trump was elected president there has been a lot of nefarious activity going on which mostly boils down to friction between those who like Trump and those who don't. I'll not go into reciting a bunch of details, every concerned American has kept up and knows most of them by now. And if you understand what has been happening, then I am sure that like me, you're concerned. Very concerned. This is the closest we have come to having a coup in this country since it began, 243 years ago. Of the 195 sovereign countries in the world, 128 have had a coup or attempted coup in their history. That's 81 percent. That is what any reasonable person would call a "vast majority". Those are things that happen when you don't have a solid framework for governance. A constitution. Someone or some party doesn't like the one who is in power so they plan and execute an attempt to overthrow them and assume power and control themselves. There are always lots of complicated circumstances but the root of it all is really that simple. The string of events since the 2016 election has almost put us in that majority of countries who include a political coup in their history. Make no mistake, many, if not all of these countries that have had 'coup capers' are not pleasant place to live, or even visit for that matter. Many are still to this day marked by violence and unrest, instability. Cameroon, Afghanistan, Ghana, Venezuela, Cuba, Guatemala, Haiti, Ivory Coast, Laos, Libya, Russia, Turkey, Yemen... There are some that have experienced coups and have gone on to recover and form, well, better unions. Denmark, UK, Brazil, Ecuador, France, Germany... But many unfortunately continue to languish. And their people suffer. If this doesn't concern you, then you haven't been paying attention.
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