I was listening this morning to Bubba the Love Sponge on our local affiliate, and he was ranting and raving about how the FCC wanted to shut him down and how he was fined out the ass and how our First Amendment Rights were being taken away. As much ranting as raving as he did, he has no concept of what the First Amendment is and how it has been interpreted over the centuries. If I can ever find the piece from NRO (Edit: First Myths), you will see the First Amendment was not interpreted nearly as liberal as it is today. As late as the Nineteenth Century, blasphemy laws were upheld and newspapermen jailed based on the First Amendment. That sounds funny today, but it's true. However, the same people who desperately want to say "$#@&!" on the radio are also the same ones who have little to no respect for the Second Amendment, and, I would argue, the First Amendment is useless without the Second. Why? Chairman Mao had it right. "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." If that is true (and I believe there is enough history to prove it is), then protecting the Second Amendment needs to be our chief concern. Bubba, however, probably hasn't given this one iota of thought and, thus, when Bubba gets to the ballot box, he will vote for some guy who thinks porn is a good thing and guns are bad. Thus, this person will allow Bubba to spew, but us "right-wingers" will not be able to say what a joke these politicians are because, guess what, they're going to restrict speech. The restrictions, however, will not be on Bubba and company, but they will be on people like me and all the people named Chris and Josh and Erica and Ron and Tim. In the end, however, those who believe in the Second Amendment will prevail over those who don't. "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun."

Chris Burgwald has a post up on whether the Supreme Court is Supreme. Good reading and good links.

Finally, I do want to make a small comment on something brought up last Sunday. It had to do with Luther's Small Catechism, namely, this small section in the preface.

[T]he pastor should most carefully avoid teaching the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, the sacraments, etc., according to the various texts and differing forms. Let him adopt one version, stay with it, and from one year to the next keep using it unchanged. Young and inexperienced persons must be taught a single fixed form or they will become confused, and the result will be that all previous effort and labor will be lost. There should be no change, even though one may wish to improve the text--Luther's Small Catechism, p. 244, 1991, CPH.

How many times do we have to translate this until we get the point? I memorized the 1943 version (don't ask me to repeat it all right now. I can't do it.) and I still blurt out the Ten Commandments without thinking using "Thou shalt not." Do we really need a new Bible in English every 20 years or so? Do we really need a new hymnal now? Is this why there is so much division within the LCMS?