To Double Naught Spy: You are guilty of applying contemporary standards of morality and equality to a situation almost 250 years ago. At that time slavery existed in most of the world, and had been that way since time immorial. To expect the American founders to simply and universally say that we should outlaw slavery, grant full rights to native Americans who were viewed as savages at the time, and accept women as equals when nowhere in the civilized world was this the case, is preposterous. The fact that so many of our founding fathers, including John Adams, were vehemently anti-slavery is quite amazing. There never would have been a United States had some of the northern colonies/states insisted on outlawing slavery in the Constitution since the South would not have gone along with this at all. The wisdom and foresight shown by our founders in the writing of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution is, to many, clearly divinely inspired. It is these documents, and the adherence to them by many generations of Americans, that have made this the greatest nation in the history of mankind and continues to be the shining beacon of liberty for oppressed people throughout the world. The Bill of Rights, including the 2nd Amendment, is an affirmation of our inalienable rights that is without precedent. That many Americans today would forego the rights that were so dearly fought for and won, in the desire for a cocoon of government determination of our choices in life, is a larger threat to us as a nation than any foreign invader will ever be.