Lefty Laments: “When Governments Go Bad”

Via HotAir, David Brooks at NYT wants so much more government involved in your life, but it’s so sad that sometimes so much more good government that will tell you how to live doesn’t turn out perfect like it should.  Aww.. poor statist tyrant:

Most government workers are amazingly dedicated and talented, and they put in a level of commitment that is far out of proportion to their salaries.

But we’re also seeing government workers, who, far from checking their own desire for control, have taken it out for a romp.

Brooks is an idiot.  At the bottom of the page, it notes that he’s filling in for Paul Krugman, who’s also an idiot, so he must be competing with Paul Krugman for some inter-office idiocy award.

Auditing low-level agents at the IRS do not “take their desire for control out for a romp”.  Doesn’t work that way.  They may agree with the IRS conservative crackdown plans and go along with them, but the guy doing the paperwork does not come up with schemes and machinations.  The mid-level manager gal doing the office paperwork to make sure the guy doing the lower paperwork doesn’t come up with these schemes.  She may go along with them, but they have to be passed down to her from someone with the authority to be able to waive all the concerns about repercussions for IRS personnel doing something wrong and getting fired.  Normal people do not get together to “take their desire for control out for a romp” at the low level, as though there’s some spontaneously generated lust for power in people who double-check math all day.

It’s hard to tell now if the I.R.S. scandal is political thuggery or obliviousness. It would be one thing if the scandal is just a group of tax people targeting the most antitax groups in the country. That’s just normal, run-of-the-mill partisan antipathy.

Sure, it’s okay if they target people who try to restore the nation to founding priciples.  That’s okay.  It’s fine if you’re tax collectors who target people who want the tax burden reduced through legal means and legislation.  Of course that’s fine.  No problem with that kind of targeted oppression by government whatsoever.

It’s just as okay as if the government targeted any other group that the government didn’t like.  Because after all, the citizen exists solely for the government to deem either worthy or unworthy.

It would be far worse if the senior workers of the I.R.S. have become so isolated by their technocratic task that they didn’t even recognize that using the search term “Tea Party” was going to be a moral and political problem.

Gee, it’s too bad they didn’t come up with a more clever way to target those sniveling teabaggers.  If only they had been smart enough not to outright say they were targeting the Tea Party.  Then they could’ve gotten away with it.

Everyone is treating the I.R.S. issue as a bigger deal, but the Justice Department scandal is worse. This was a sweeping intrusion that makes it hard for the press to do its job. Who is going to call a journalist to report wrongdoing knowing that at some future date, the government might feel perfectly free to track the phone records and hunt you down?

I would have thought a dozen Justice Department officials would have risen up and splashily resigned when they learned of the scope of this invasion. Aren’t there some lawyers in the Justice Department, and, if so, did they go to law schools where the Constitution is left unassigned?

The DOJ smuggled guns to narcoterrorist cartels and hushed it up and you and your reporter friends helped hush it up.  Brooks, when the DOJ decides to make you sign your own confession Soviet-style, you will have earned your statist utopia and all the hard labor it will sentence you to until the end of your days.  Maybe after a few decades in the ground, they’ll even take the time to posthumously rehabilitate you.

We clearly have a values problem in the federal government. We clearly have a few or many agencies where the leaders don’t emphasize that workers need to check themselves, or risk losing what remains of the people’s trust.

There is no “values problem” in the fedgov.  There is a fedgov that is unconstrained by the document that created it.  Men are the same, that’s why we have a Constitution.

We have a Constitution, and that creates our government.  The Constitution is what creates the government and limits it – it is the laws by which the government is created and those it must abide by.  When government ignores the Constitution, as it has been doing, it should have no trust – because it is an entity of domination composed of men with power – whether malignant or benign.   When it ceases to be an entity that exists at the behest of the citizen, it becomes oppressive.  A massive, distant power composed of men with power and no constraints are never deserving of any trust.

I generally support the little behavioral nudges that Cass Sunstein describes in his outstanding book “Simpler” — the subtle policy shifts that induce people to save more, or eat healthier.

Ah, David Brooks, lickspittle for tyrants.

I’d trust somebody with a minimalist disposition like Sunstein to implement these policies.

That’s so precious that you want to be dominated, David.  You’re so vanilla.

But I wouldn’t necessarily trust the people at the I.R.S. or Justice Department to implement them.

Guess who you’re going to get?  Guess who’s going to be running your health care?  Guess who’s been hushing up the murders of your Mexican neighbors to the south?

Cass Sunstein is a tyrant wannabe, along with all of his authoritarian ilk.  Revisit his rave review of “Against Autonomy: Justifying Coercive Paternalism”.  They want to coerce you – to force you – into something they think is good for you.  Brooks wants to be coerced – to be forced – into something someone else thinks is good for him – and he wants you forced as well.  Everybody knows what’s best for you, and they’re going to force it on you, because they’ve decided you need to be forced into what they think you should be.  Brooks wants to be dominated and be controlled by government.

Brooks wants a bad government to dominate him, he just wants one that doesn’t spank too hard.

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But I’ll end this with a quote from a tax collector and freedom fighter:

If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.

Glenn Beck’s NRA-ILA Leadership Forum Speech

A fair number of highlights.  Good speech.

Some folks don’t like his delivery (just a tad melodramatic at times), but few can argue against the actual message.

CSGV: “AR-15… The Weapon Of Choice For Violent Insurrectionists”

From the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, aka Coalition to Ban Handguns:

Except for times when it’s necessary, like The Battle of Athens.

There might’ve been other times when it was justified but not exercised, too… like when the government rounded up Americans of Japanese descent, took their property, and stuffed them into concentration camps.

I think that quote goes quite well next to a tyrannical, military concentration camp that denied the rights to life, liberty, property, and happiness, where there was fear of actual military firepower – because it was in the guard towers.

This declaration that the insurrectionist argument “has no place” in the debate is ridiculous.  The Founders made it pretty damned clear.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

In general, our government, even though currently run by economically destructive Keynesians and professional anti-colonialist Marxist-socialist street agitators who want to fundamentally transform the nation, isn’t yet wholly destructive of the security of the rights of Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Property (which was what the Founders wrote before they changed it to the intangible Happiness).  A government that is of, by, and for the citizens that institute it by their consent, has no real reason to fear insurrection, nor to give it a second thought.

The citizenry, armed, represent the nation as well, and should never be a threat to the state, provided the state is operating with the consent of the governed, as outlined by their charter – the Constitution.

The Coalition to Disarm Everyone is giving the knee-jerk reaction of tyrants everywhere, giving that tyrant’s plea of necessity, and mocking any concern that a government might, just maybe, get out of hand.

Inalienable rights to life, liberty, property and happiness all exist until someone violates them.  That’s why we have natural rights to defend ourselves, as individuals, citizens, and as a nation of citizen-individuals, against all enemies, foreign and domestic, oppressors large and small.  And because of those inalienable natural rights of self defense – specifically noted in the Constitution with the Second Amendment’s acknowledgement of the right to the tools of self-defense, it’s exceedingly rare that we have to exercise the rights of self defense.

“The beauty of the Second Amendment is that it will not be needed until they try to take it.”

- attributed to Thomas Jefferson

Update: Welcome Merry Band of Three Percenters.

Generals and Admirals Demand a Plan (For Citizen Disarmament)

From Bloomberg’s Dictatorial Mayors Against Citizens Owning Guns group:

A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home.

- Madison

Washington Gun Ban Bill Includes Police Inspection Of Gun Owner’s Homes

Via Drudge, from a leftist anti-rights useful idiot at the Seattle Times:

Misstep in gun bill could defeat the effort

One of the major gun-control efforts in Olympia this session calls for the sheriff to inspect the homes of assault-weapon owners. The bill’s backers say that was a mistake

It’s a “misstep” because they said what they want to do.  They gave away what their plan is.  They’re not opposed to it, it’s just a mistake to say so this soon.  It’s not a misstep, it’s the next step.

“In order to continue to possess an assault weapon that was legally possessed on the effective date of this section, the person possessing shall … safely and securely store the assault weapon. The sheriff of the county may, no more than once per year, conduct an inspection to ensure compliance with this subsection.”

In other words, come into homes without a warrant to poke around. Failure to comply could get you up to a year in jail.

The author, a typical leftist statist idiot who supports “common sense” gun bans, which means of course means total eradication of citizens’ rights and the supremacy of the state, isn’t intellectually honest enough to acknowledge that this is what his side wants.  Assuming he’s being truthful, he’s amazingly naiive.  Somehow he manages, along with the rest of the leftists who supported “common sense” home invasions by the state, to be shocked, shocked, I tell you:

I have been blasting the NRA for its paranoia in the gun-control debate. But Palmer is right — you can’t fully blame them, when cops going door-to-door shows up in legislation.

I spoke to two of the sponsors. One, Sen. Adam Kline, D-Seattle, a lawyer who typically is hyper-attuned to civil-liberties issues, said he did not know the bill authorized police searches because he had not read it closely before signing on.

“I made a mistake,” Kline said. “I frankly should have vetted this more closely.”

It’s eight pages long.  He either read it and supports it or he’s phenomenally incompetent, and is destroying civil rights without even bothering to look at what he’s doing – but since he says he supports the idea, he still supports it.  The Founders would’ve tarred and feathered him and ridden him out of town on a rail.

The prime sponsor, Sen. Ed Murray, D-Seattle, also condemned the search provision in his own bill, after I asked him about it. He said Palmer is right that it’s probably unconstitutional.

“I have to admit that shouldn’t be in there,” Murray said.

He said he came to realize that an assault-weapons ban has little chance of passing this year anyway. So he put in this bill more as “a general statement, as a guiding light of where we need to go.” Without sweating all the details.

This is their guiding light.  The prime sponsor is, just like all leftist politicians who get caught, blaming someone else and denying his own involvement.  He still thinks it’s a good idea, and it is the guiding light of where they “need” to go.  Straight into a dictatorial world where those filthy serfs are controlled by the enforcers of the state, and their will to resist is crushed, their homes are invaded at will by the enforcers, and the supreme political ruling class is firmly in control, leading the people to the glorious future.  The people are too stupid to live their own lives, they need to be controlled, they need to be dominated, they need their homes invaded by the state to force them to comply.

They want tyranny.  It is their goal.

Later, a Senate Democratic spokesman blamed unnamed staff and said a new bill will be introduced.

Sure.  Unnamed staff.  “Oh, shit, we got caught – blame the intern!”

“We will only win if we reach out and continue to change the hearts and minds of Washingtonians,” Murray said. “We can attack them, or start a dialogue.”

Good plan, very bad start. What’s worse, the case for the perfectly reasonable gun-control bills in Olympia just got tougher.

Clausewitz is famously paraphrased as saying: “War is a continuation of politics by other means.”  This is a war.

Murray speaks in terms of forcing a change of will on the people.  Representative republics elect their officials to represent the will of the people.  Here, the Seattle Democrat senator Murray is dictating that he will change the will of the people to his ends.  He speaks of “hearts and minds”, made famous by the Iraq war, and he speaks of “attacking them”.  This is a would-be tyrant pushing his will on the people – telling them what they shall be given, and what they shall live by.  The people didn’t choose dictatorship.

The leftist lapdog author writes “good plan, bad start”, not because he disagrees, but because he can’t get his total gun bans that he, a Ruling Class information minister, wants to see.  He wants tyranny as well, because he’ll be on top.  His Orwellian newspeak “reasonable” is ban on civilian ownership of modern rifles.  His “good plan” is to destroy citizens rights, he just is sad because the “very bad start” is by telling people what he and the rest of the left ultimately wants – to invade their homes and disarm them.  He’s upset because there will be resistance to this – because they showed exactly what they are.

“I’m a liberal Democrat — I’ve voted for only one Republican in my life,” Palmer told me. “But now I understand why my right-wing opponents worry about having to fight a government takeover.”

He added: “It’s exactly this sort of thing that drives people into the arms of the NRA.”

There’s a saying – a conservative is just a liberal who’s been mugged.

People are going to the NRA because they’re seeing from experience what the left wants.  The left is upset that they’re being exposed.  They aren’t upset at all at what they’re proposing (as evidenced by the “good plan, bad start” commentary by the propaganda arm apparatchik at the Seattle Times).

He “understands” worry, and laments that people go to the NRA.  He’s lamenting that his cause has made a “misstep” and showed people exactly what they are – dictator wannabes.  And the Democrats in Washington are just upset that they haven’t quite brainwashed everyone into becoming lockstep drones who beg the state to come and control them.

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If this post seems a little more harsh than many of my other ones, it’s because it is.  We’re seeing an apologist for tyranny twisting words to mean things they don’t.  He speaks of “common sense”, “reasonable”, and “good”, all in the same breath that he defends the people who wrote a bill that puts the government into your house.  He claims to lament that, but still supports the idea that leads to it.

This is the “just the tip” with the rapist.  There is no compromise with these people.  None.  Either you stand your ground, or they will simply bleed you dry, little by little.  They will lie and say “common sense” that isn’t, “reasonable” that’s wholly unreasonable, and “good” when the entire force, purpose, and history of their argument is evil itself – of the domination of mankind and destruction of liberty.

There is no compromise with this.  This is the kind of outrage that the Founders overthrew and then sought to prevent.

Update: HotAir has a little day-after roundup on this.

WVCDL’s Keith Morgan On Gun Control

Very good interview.

Morgan’s point at 5:20 that law enforcement has no duty to defend you has been held in several court cases, the most famous being Warren v DC.

He begins to cut to the real heart of the matter towards the end – the interviewer, an anti-gun Ruling Class media elite (even a lower-rung one) doesn’t trust the citizenry.  There is an assertion by the antis that they are better than everyone else, and that everyone else needs to be lorded over and controlled.  Morgan begins to make the Friedman-esque point that everyone is people, and every system, whether pro-gun or anti-gun, is composed of people – but the pro-gun side allows everyone freedom, while the anti-gun side only allows those in power with guns freedom… to rule over their fellow man.

It’s a very good interview, especially for the calm that Morgan projects.  He’s a very level-headed guy.

A Tale of Two Georgia Women

One was unarmed:

FULTON COUNTY, GA (CBS ATLANTA) -

A woman is recovering from gunshot wounds after burglars broke into her Fairburn-area home and found her hiding in a closet.

According to the police report, Melissa Burke told police she heard the suspects break into her Estonian Drive home just before midnight Thursday. The thieves first rang the doorbell and when no one answered, police said they went in through the back door. Burke called 911 and hid inside a closet. They found her there and shot her multiple times.

Burke’s uncle can’t comprehend how and why someone would hurt her.

“She was a sweet, loving, caring person who would do anything for anyone anytime, that’s her,” Otis Burden said.

Woman, unarmed, hides and is shot by intruders.  It’s a tragedy because some people can’t comprehend that there’s evil in the world.

Neighbors said there’s been a lot of doorbell ringing in the neighborhood recently. They had just chalked it up to kids until now.

“It’s not just someone just playing just to be playing. They’re looking to see if someone’s home so they can come in and take whatever we have,” Robinson said.

Less than 24 hours before, a man who lives in a subdivision about five miles away also was injured during a violent home invasion. He was grazed by a bullet and declined medical treatment. Detectives are looking into whether the cases are related.

The other one was armed:

A home invasion in Georgia last week ended with the hapless intruder getting shot five times in the face by a frightened mother holed up in the closet with her 9-year-old twins.

The harrowing incident began Friday afternoon when an unexpected visitor began knocking at the door of a residence in Loganville, Ga., about 30 miles east of Atlanta

The woman who lived in the house didn’t answer, and when the man began furiously pressing the doorbell, she called her husband, who called 911. The woman, whose name authorities are withholding, then got a .38-caliber revolver she kept in the house and gathered her young twins and hid with them in a closet inside the house, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

Seconds later, the man at the door, later identified by police as Paul Ali Slater, broke into the house with a crowbar and began ransacking the house.

Slater soon came upon the upstairs closet where the three were hiding and opened the doors, only to immediately be shot five times in the face and neck by the woman.

The TV report notes that the invader was from Long Island, NY, a gun-free zone.

From other reports I’ve read, she fired all 6 rounds, but only connected with 5, and even so, 5 shots to the face and neck was not enough to immobilize and fully stop the invader.  That’s why a modern semi-auto with a 15 round mag is good, or a modern rifle with a 30 round mag is better.

The wounded intruder stumbled out of the house, attempting to flee in his car, but crashed into a nearby wooded area and collapsed in a neighbor’s driveway as he attempted to exit the car.

The woman, meanwhile, fled to a neighbor’s home with her children. The three escaped unharmed.

The New York-based news story then goes on to cite some study that says you’re eleventy billion times more likely to shoot yourself in the head if you own a gun and you should turn them all in… because (as noted in the comments of the story) gang members who get into gang fights throw off statistics.  And they have a huge “sign our ban on guns” part thrown into the story, too… because, y’know, journalism means screaming “DESTROY THE BILL OF RIGHTS!  CREATE THE POLICE STATE!  CITIZENS SHOULD BE SUBJECT TO THE STATE!”  Or maybe it’s just this sweet pair of sunglasses I got…

It is interesting to read a paper taking advocacy against the teeth to the Bill of Rights.  Ultimately, as I’ve said time and time before, the Second Amendment is about the right of the citizen to enjoy natural rights – that of self defense against oppression – especially by government.  The Founders stated as much, many times.  To them, the AR-15 wouldn’t be a negative.  A federal government that controls the states and that abrogates civil rights on a whim, while calling out with tyrants’ pleas of necessity would be a horror.

NYT Editorial: Let’s Give Up On The Constitution

The NY Times hosted an editorial writer just recently, which, as an editorial, ultimately represents the opinions of the paper.  Nice to see they’re finally showing their true colors.  From Louis Seidman, one of those lettered “Constitutional Law Professors” much like the president who wants to destroy it.

AS the nation teeters at the edge of fiscal chaos, observers are reaching the conclusion that the American system of government is broken. But almost no one blames the culprit: our insistence on obedience to the Constitution, with all its archaic, idiosyncratic and downright evil provisions.

What follows is the kind of steaming pile of garbage that would have been considered parody of a leftist a few years ago.

Our obsession with the Constitution has saddled us with a dysfunctional political system, kept us from debating the merits of divisive issues and inflamed our public discourse. Instead of arguing about what is to be done, we argue about what James Madison might have wanted done 225 years ago.

Hint: James Madison was smarter than you, Mr. Professor Something-You-Want-To-Be-Nothing.  Also, the objective was to create a political system that would actually create gridlock, that would prevent immediate and rash decisions made by a central power.  The Constitution functions when it slows the processes of government to those that are deliberate and considering of input via the representative republic.  That’s the point.  In such a manner, its objective is to preserve the maximum amount of liberty for the citizen.

As someone who has taught constitutional law for almost 40 years, I am ashamed it took me so long to see how bizarre all this is. Imagine that after careful study a government official — say, the president or one of the party leaders in Congress — reaches a considered judgment that a particular course of action is best for the country. Suddenly, someone bursts into the room with new information: a group of white propertied men who have been dead for two centuries, knew nothing of our present situation, acted illegally under existing law and thought it was fine to own slaves might have disagreed with this course of action. Is it even remotely rational that the official should change his or her mind because of this divination?

Acted illegally under tyrannical law, and in accordance with natural law, and made laws that intended to free men from tyranny.  The “fine to own slaves” argument is defeated in and of itself by the actual intent of the 3/5 compromise, by which southern states would be admitted to the new nation but couldn’t count slave populations towards their representatives, thus limiting the power of slave states, with the subtle intention to ultimately, slowly break the institution of slavery.

If NASA decides that the world is flat after considered judgement on their next rocket launch that they decide is best and “suddenly” someone bursts into the room and reminds them that Eratosthenes already showed the world was round, is it remotely rational that NASA should acknowledge the wisdom of those who came before them?  Nah, let’s just launch that rocket into the dirt.  Dead white guys are stupid and they know nothing!

Seidman represents the kind of rot from inside that Yuri Bezmenov warned about years ago.

Suddenly, Thomas Paine!

From The Rights of Man by Thomas Paine:

But it will be first necessary to define what is meant by a Constitution. It is not sufficient that we adopt the word; we must fix also a standard signification to it.

A constitution is not a thing in name only, but in fact. It has not an ideal, but a real existence; and wherever it cannot be produced in a visible form, there is none. A constitution is a thing antecedent to a government, and a government is only the creature of a constitution. The constitution of a country is not the act of its government, but of the people constituting its government. It is the body of elements, to which you can refer, and quote article by article; and which contains the principles on which the government shall be established,  the manner in which it shall be organised, the powers it shall have, the mode of elections, the duration of Parliaments, or by what other name such bodies may be called; the powers which the executive part of the government shall have; and in fine, everything that relates to the complete organisation of a civil government, and the principles on which it shall act, and by which it shall be bound. A constitution, therefore, is to a government what the laws made afterwards by that government are to a court of judicature. The court of judicature does not make the laws, neither can it alter them; it only acts in conformity to the laws made: and the government is in like manner governed by the constitution.

When “Constitutional professors” come to the conclusion that you should throw out the document and organization by which a government is created and ignore the law in favor of the whim of their current favored ruler, then yes, maybe some of us start sounding like Walter Sobchak.  But unlike bowling, a government unfettered by rules is instant tyranny.

Idiot Seidman rambles on:

The two main rival interpretive methods, “originalism” (divining the framers’ intent) and “living constitutionalism” (reinterpreting the text in light of modern demands), cannot be reconciled. Some decisions have been grounded in one school of thought, and some in the other. Whichever your philosophy, many of the results — by definition — must be wrong.

Seidman is an idiot.  Paine explained what a Constitution is.  There is no “living constitution”.  It says what it says.  If you want to change it, you amend it.  If not, government is limited by what it says.  There are no powers that can be divined from the Constitution that aren’t enumerated.  The Constitution is what it is.

The problem stems from those who want expansion of government, and in their relentless desire for more and more and more control, they seek to, as Seidman says “give up on the Constitution”.  The thing is, the Constitution is what limits government.  It maintains a rule of law.  Without it, we have the rule of men, of tyrants, of mobs and dictators.

And that leads, as usual, to the oppression of the individual, the minority in number, the minority without government power, ultimately the oppression of both the few and the many, which is why we have a Constitution to begin with.

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I was almost done, but Seidman the Idiot had this gem that jumped out:

This is not to say that we should disobey all constitutional commands. Freedom of speech and religion, equal protection of the laws and protections against governmental deprivation of life, liberty or property are important, whether or not they are in the Constitution. We should continue to follow those requirements out of respect, not obligation.

Seidman comes across not only as a useful idiot for totalitarians, but as incredibly, woefully, dangerously naiive.  If the charter which orders, establishes and defines government is meaningless, then the laws are meaningless.  Saying that “we should follow those requirements out of respect” really goes to show what a profound fool he is, assuming that truly powerful men unburdened by rules have respect for those they dominate, the peons they could crush like insects.

Seidman then goes on to couch his statements by saying things he wants and doesn’t want – like the tyrant he begs for but then thinks he can say no to.  None of those benevolent things he wishes for happen in a situation in which the government does what it wants, and then he goes on with this:

What would change is not the existence of these institutions, but the basis on which they claim legitimacy. The president would have to justify military action against Iran solely on the merits, without shutting down the debate with a claim of unchallengeable constitutional power as commander in chief. Congress might well retain the power of the purse, but this power would have to be defended on contemporary policy grounds, not abstruse constitutional doctrine. The Supreme Court could stop pretending that its decisions protecting same-sex intimacy or limiting affirmative action were rooted in constitutional text.

If there is no Constitution, there IS NO LEGITIMACY.  Then there is no “We The People”, there simply is the government – there is simply force.  “Might well retain” is pretty slim.  Plenty of parliaments get dissolved by executive order, and plenty of strongmen rule nations with weak or no constitutions.  SCOTUS right now making decisions that are “living constitution” decisions with no input from the Constitution are very simple to solve – stop making them.  The 10th Amendment is there for a reason.  Prior SCOTUS decisions like Wickard v Filburn are the reason for many of our current problems, as progressives who wanted to expand government simply did so by abusing the Constitutional system and fabricating laws through that “living constitution” chicanery.  Ignoring the Constitution in one manner and then saying because you ignored it, it should be trashed, is the height of self-destructive, self-fulfilling stupidity.  It’s like hitting yourself in the head with a hammer and then blaming your head for hurting… so you choose to hit it harder until your head is gone.

I could fisk Seidman’s entire piece, but each element of it falls apart in its own sanctimonius hubris.

Gun Control Tramples on the Virtues of a Heavily Armed Citizenry

Via Sipsey Street Irregulars, from Forbes:

It is time the critics of the Second Amendment put up and repeal it, or shut up about violating it.  Their efforts to disarm and short-arm Americans violate the U.S. Constitution in Merriam Webster’s first sense of the term—to “disregard” it.

Hard cases make bad law, which is why they are reserved for the Constitution, not left to the caprice of legislatures, the sophistry and casuistry of judges or the despotic rule making of the chief executive and his bureaucracy.  And make no mistake, guns pose one of the hardest cases a free people confronts in the 21^st century, a test of whether that people cherishes liberty above tyranny, values individual sovereignty above dependency on the state, and whether they dare any longer to live free.

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The Second Amendment was designed to ensure that individuals retained the right and means to defend themselves against any illegitimate attempt to do them harm, be it an attempt by a private outlaw or government agents violating their trust under the color of law.  The Second Amendment was meant to guarantee individuals the right to protect themselves against government as much as against private bad guys and gangs.

That is why the gun grabbers’ assault on firearms is not only, not even primarily an attack merely on the means of self-defense but more fundamentally, the gun grabbers are engaged in a blatant attack on the very legitimacy of self-defense itself.  It’s not really about the guns; it is about the government’s ability to demand submission of the people.  Gun control is part and parcel of the ongoing collectivist effort to eviscerate individual sovereignty and replace it with dependence upon and allegiance to the state.

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That is why the Founders looked to local militias as much to provide a check—in modern parlance, a “deterrent”—against government tyranny as against an invading foreign power. Guns are individuals’ own personal nuclear deterrent against their own government gone rogue. Therefore, a heavily armed citizenry is the ultimate deterrent against tyranny.

A heavily armed citizenry is not about armed revolt; it is about defending oneself against armed government oppression.  A heavily armed citizenry is not about overthrowing the government; it is about preventing the government from overthrowing liberty. A people stripped of their right of self defense is defenseless against their own government.

It’s an excellent piece.  Read the whole thing here.

David Gregory and “The Greater Good”; Cass Sunstein and the Crazy Second Amendment

From Katie Pavlich at Townhall.com, an excellent piece and roundup of the David Gregory Magazinegate story, with this wonderfully smug snippet of spurned media with rationalization for crime:

POLITICO’s Glenn Thrush took to Twitter to express his disdain for efforts to hold Gregory accountable.

Oh, yes, the public interest.  Only to a certain type of individual would it seem that David Gregory was “acting in the public interest” by violating the law in order to try to crush the rights of citizens, working to gut the Bill of Rights.

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Over at Sipsey Street Irregulars, Mike found a column by Cass “the peons are stupid Homer Simpsons I can manipulate” Sunstein:

Gun Debate Must Avoid Crazy 2nd Amendment Claims

The rise of the Second Amendment as a serious obstacle to U.S. gun control legislation is astonishingly recent.

Its rise is a tribute less to the vision of the Founding Fathers than to the skill, money and power of the contemporary gun-rights movement, which has not only exerted disproportionate influence on Congress, but also helped transform the landscape of constitutional argument. We should be able to have a serious national discussion uninhibited by wild and unsupportable claims about the meaning of the Constitution.

Let’s try that again, Cass.

Its rise is a tribute less to the vision of the Founding Fathers than to the skill, money and power of the contemporary gun-rights movement, which has not only exerted disproportionate influence on Congress, but also helped transform the landscape of constitutional argument. We should be able to have a serious national discussion uninhibited by wild and unsupportable claims about the meaning of the Constitution.

Now, the problem with this radical leftist-statist tyranny-enabling regulatory-nudging deceit is easily illustrated by the following statements:

The beauty of the Second Amendment is that it will not be needed until they try to take it.

And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two?The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes….Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.

No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.

The constitutions of most of our States assert that all power is inherent in the people; that… it is their right and duty to be at all times armed;…

-Thomas Jefferson

And:

“And that the said Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the Press, or the rights of Conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms; …”

Among the natural rights of the Colonists are these: First, a right to life; Secondly, to liberty; Thirdly, to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can. These are evident branches of, rather than deductions from, the duty of self-preservation, commonly called the first law of nature.

- Samuel Adams

Milton Friedman often pointed out that throughout human history, mankind has almost always lived under the heel of some tyrant, trading one king, emperor, or warlord for another.  The American experiment has been one of the rare times where freedom has existed and been preserved.  We have seen examples such as The Battle of Athens where Americans had to use force to repel tyrants inside our own nation, as the Founders intended.  Samuel Adams’ last quote there about defense of property as a duty of self-preservation and an extension of the First Law of Nature goes back a ways.  It’s not just to repel an immediate physical threat to one’s life, but to the greater threat of the state.  That the state can be held in check by the citizen is what keeps the state honest and sustains liberty.  We need not look further than our southern border to see evidence of what happens when the state (and criminals) have a monopoly on force.

That some manipulative communist wannabe-dictator slimeball like Cass Sunstein would outright lie isn’t really a surprise.  He’s one of those masters of men that knows what’s best for you, and will force you to submit (though he tries to subtly force you to submit for your own good – what was once defined as Liberal Fascism – a term coined by HG Wells).  That anyone could take it seriously, however, means sad times for the republic.

Kurt Hofmann at Examiner.com has some good observations on Sunstein’s call for tyranny.

Sipsey Street has another observation on the graphic:

I look at it as the visual expression of every modern tyrant’s fear. Ten minutemen are replaced in the cartoon by ten rounds, a third of the standard capacity of an AR or AK. In other words, a ten-man modern minuteman squad carrying ARs and just one magazine per has an immediate firepower available of 300 rounds versus 10. Can there be any better illustration of the fear behind the tyrannical eyes of the advocates of citizen disarmament? THIS is why they have been striving mightily to ban semi-auto rifles.

It’s no wonder the Founders wanted her armed, and the tyrants want her disarmed: