America has always been awash in bad ideas. The Founding Fathers spoke a good game about liberty but allowed America to become a slave republic, because they didn’t want to alienate the Southern farmers and merchants who helped bankroll and fight the war for independence against the British.

The Southern states wanted access to American liberty based on skin color. They got their wish for disproportionate representation in the early republic with the three-fifths clause enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. Tolerance of slavery was not only a bad idea, it has had disastrous consequences for America ever since.

Right up there in the annals of bad ideas were the notions that women didn’t really need access to the ballot box, that genocide and forced relocation of Native Americans was “progress” and that “corporations are people, too” ― an idea that got traction after the Civil War.

Most people who aren’t brainwashed or willfully ignorant know this about our nation’s history and are thoroughly mortified by it. We look back at bad ideas that were once taken as gospel and shake our heads in bewilderment.

Assuming this country still exists a century from now and we haven’t retreated into armed compounds to await the Rapture, our descendants will look back at our tolerance for Second Amendment extremism and the militarization of the police the same way we shake our heads at proponents of Manifest Destiny, Jim Crow, the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, the Vietnam War and the trillions spent invading and occupying Iraq while our infrastructure at home crumbled.

Yes, once upon a time, most Americans thought all of these missteps were good ideas. If our descendants are feeling charitable toward us, they will diagnose us as having suffered from a peculiar kind of madness perhaps fueled by global warming denial, Internet addiction and consumption of too much high fructose corn syrup.

Recently, a Pennsylvania state senator, Don White, proposed legislation that would permit teachers and other school district employees in the state to carry firearms on school grounds. This, of course, is a panicky overreaction to the mass stabbing at Franklin Regional High School in Murrysville, Pennsylvania in April. Sen. White imagines that giving French and algebra teachers permission to pack heat will dissuade a rampage by the next mentally ill student with legal access to far more lethal weapons at his local gun shop.

If adding the responsibility of armed security guard to the duties of teachers and custodial workers sounds like a bad idea, it pales in comparison with the craziness the federal government has already sanctioned in school districts across the country.

According to an Associated Press story, more than two dozen school districts have participated in the same Pentagon surplus weapons program that doles out military gear to police departments. We saw some of that military hardware on display during the recent protests over the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.

The Los Angeles Unified School District acquired three grenade launchers to keep its 900,000 students in line, but it has agreed to return them to the Pentagon after determining (under community pressure) that such weapons of mass destruction “are not essential life-saving items within the scope, duties and mission” of its police force.

Still, the Los Angeles school district said it will keep its 60 M16s for “training purposes.” It has also agreed to keep its mine-resistant armored vehicle off school premises for now.

Farther south, the San Diego Unified School District is painting its own armored vehicle white and stocking it with medical supplies as a concession to community desire for its schools to stop resembling Fort Bragg.

The AP reports that school districts in Utah, Kansas, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and, of course, Texas have also obtained surplus Pentagon gear, including military assault rifles. There’s no indication yet that Pennsylvania school districts have requested rocket launchers or armored vehicles, but it may just be a matter of time.

Since limiting access to guns for even the blind or mentally handicapped is a political non-starter, we have to deal with school districts that could conceivably conduct firefights in Fallujah if called upon. Now, that’s a teachable moment for America.

By Tony Norman

Tony Norman writes for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. ― Ed.

(Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

(MCT Information Services)