I felt like it was silly season this week. I mean, news networks spent serious amounts of time discussing whether or not Trump really thought he could buy Greenland.
It’s not that nothing important was happening, but we’ve gotten so shell-shocked — by mass shootings, impeachable offenses, attempts to take away our health insurance, putting people with serious anger issues on the Supreme Court, and so on — that this seemed like a slack week.
I decided to step back and take a longer-term look at the gun problem, which always ends up in arguments about the Second Amendment. I have a radical opinion about why these arguments are so interminable: Given how much has changed since the late 1700s, the Second Amendment doesn’t actually mean anything any more. We’re like middle-aged siblings arguing over what Dad wants, when Dad has advanced Alzheimer’s and doesn’t know where he is or who any of us are.
If the Republic were actually working, we’d leave the 1700s behind and write ourselves a new amendment protecting rights that are important to us today. Maybe we wouldn’t all agree with all of it, but at least we’d know what it meant. Interpreting it wouldn’t be like sitting around a Ouija board trying to contact the ghosts of the Founders.
So that’s what I’m doing in this week’s featured post: “How Should We Rewrite the Second Amendment?” It should be out around 9 EDT.
The weekly summary will not talk about Greenland, other than to repeat an Amy Klobuchar quip about it. Instead I’ll discuss the new anti-Statue-of-Liberty immigration rules and the two members of Congress who won’t be going to Israel. I’ll explain what an inverted yield curve is, and why it is one of several recent signs of the economic apocalypse — or at least an approaching recession. A bunch of writers made further attempts to understand Trump supporters. And I’ll mention a few other things that got drowned out by the Greenland discussion, like the fact that July was the hottest month in recorded history. I’ll try to get that out before noon.
The Weekly Sift 
Comments
Looks like you broke the Internet this week, Doug. Good articles. Especially that first one. You let out all the trolls. Bet your readers list is shorter now.