The Quiet Conservative June 28, 2008
When the Republic Hung by a Thread
While sensational on the evening news for a night, the decision of District of Columbia v. Heller
hasn't made an impact on the minds of most Americans. Soon after it was published by the court,
editorials from emotional liberals were hitting the Chicago Tribune and the New York Times decrying
the radical revision of the meaning of the Second Amendment. They claimed it was mutated from
the right to form a militia, to the right to bear arms. People noted the temper tantrums only briefly
before moving on. What the people missed was the fact the future of the Republic had hung by a
thread.
The left has dreamed of disarming America for decades. The push for any restrictions on firearms
has been a liberal core belief. The effort is dressed in the guise of public safety or of concern for
“the children,” but the left couldn't care less about you as an American or your kids. What they
want is you disarmed. Socialism cannot flourish if the population has the means to resist.
In D.C. the handgun ban hasn't worked. While the left has disarmed the honest citizen, the
criminal element has been shooting anything that moves. It seems liberalism hasn't wrapped it's
demented reasoning around the fact that a criminal who would sell drugs, or commit armed robbery,
or rape or murder, isn't especially bothered by the fact the gun he is using to victimize the citizen is
illegal too. So despite the body count, thirty years of failure hasn't stopped the liberals from
cherishing draconian gun laws that keep the people vulnerable.
Throughout history the first means any state has used to control the population is to disarm the
population. The Founding Fathers knew this. When the Constitution was written the Amendments
were added so specific guarantees were spelled out to protect freedom. It is vital to note the
Founding Fathers meant individual freedom, not a group collective freedom.
This is the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of
religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the
press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a
redress of grievances.” You can see how the left has been chipping away at the simple text above.
In many peoples minds they have now been conditioned to believe religion should be restricted only
to within a church or synagogue’s doors. Schools have attempted to eliminate all religion from their
grounds under the lie of separation of church and state. Leftists have attempted to eliminate any
public property or venue from showing any expression of religion, especially Christianity. Their
demand is for freedom of religion be transformed into freedom from religion. The simple
straightforward language of “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of
religion, or prohibiting the free exercise therof” has been twisted to suppress religion in favor of
secular progressive atheism. This agenda goes well beyond speech. The left would dictate your
actions through their prism of state morality. If you refuse to proscribe abortion pills, or perform
abortions in the medical profession, you can lose your job. If you refuse to accept homosexuality as
normal and healthy and moral, as the Catholic Church does not, you can have your activities
curtailed. In Massachusetts Catholic Charities has had to close their adoption services because
otherwise they would be forced by the state to adopt children to people who engage in
homosexuality. (It could be noted the state of Massachusetts is not Congress, but neither is the local
school board. It is schizophrenic thinking to equate the state forcing gay equality as not a Federal
Constitutional matter, but the local school board prohibiting prayer in school is.)
Abridging the freedom of speech? Oh yes, liberalism loves that. The very term “hate speech” is
used to crush freedom of discourse. Say something that might offend or something the left does not
approve of, and you can be branded as using “hate speech.” Therefore what you would say can be
suppressed.
A perfect example is the left is trying to revive the "Fairness Doctrine" to crush free radio speech as
we speak. Congressperson Boyda has stated she will not sign the discharge petition to allow the
Broadcaster Freedom Act to be brought before the House to stop this censorship effort. Liberals
would use the Fairness Doctrine to force conservatives from the airwaves.
But while trying to crush the First Amendment is constantly on the liberal mind, it is the Second
Amendment that truly is the bar to the imposition of state socialism. The Supreme Court case of
District of Columbia v. Heller was about the Second Amendment. The text of the amendment reads:
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the
people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Simple language easily understood by the
people, right? Au contraire. This one sentence is the lynch pin of American freedom. It is the one
sentence that stands in the way of the secular progressive triumph of replacing individual freedom
with state control. It is the one sentence that guarantees all other amendments and the structure of
our government. On Thursday June 26, 2008, it came within one vote of being lost to the
malleability of relativism pushed by the left.
The plan was simple. Attribute the right of the people not to the right to keep and bear arms, but
instead to form a militia. This then means, to the left, the National Guard formed by the Militia Act
of 1903. The fact the first ten amendments were proposed in 1789 seemingly poses no problem to
the liberal mentality. The fact the first ten amendments- the Bill of Rights- all speak to individual
rights and not the right of states, means nothing to those who believe the ends justify the means.
To the Founding Fathers any able bodied man was the militia. If you were an able bodied man you
could be banded together with others to defend your community. It happened before we were a
nation at Lexington and Concord. It happened on the frontier. It happened during the war of 1812.
The very existence of armed citizens stopped Mexico from even thinking of invading during the First
World War. Until modern times when socialists began making a play to remake our nation, the right
has always been understood to mean an individual right.
Now, however, the usual suspects who believe the right to an abortion is in the Constitution, the
right to sodomy is in the Constitution, the right to take private property from an individual only to
give it to another individual if they can bring in more tax dollars, is in the Constitution, tried to say the
right to keep and bear arms wasn't in the Constitution.
Let’s suppose the hard leftists like New York Senator Schumer had triumphed in the past with
their litmus tests, and only ideological liberals had been appointed to the Court. Imagine the
possibilities had the decision gone the other way and it was 5-4 for the District of Columbia. The
Second Amendment would now be mutated to mean that firearms possession only extends to the
group right of a militia. In modern sense that would be the National Guard. This is exactly the
approach used in the incoherent dissent by Justice Stevens. Only now in this alternative universe this
“grotesque” dissent would be the majority opinion of the Court.
Immediately across the nation Democratic politicians would be pushing through gun
control/confiscation legislature. With the right to possess a firearm no longer a Constitutional right,
the left’s only bar to outlawing weapons would be gone. Weapons manufacturers would be shut
down as well as ammunition manufacturers. You couldn't own a gun or buy ammunition. Ownership
would be criminalized and any purchase of weapons or ammunition would be a crime. You would
be required to turn in all weapons or be imprisoned.
Bringing forth noble sounding goals such as preventing handgun violence, domestic violence, crime,
and safeguarding ‘the children’ the left would be in complete concert in crushing firearms ownership
and possession. Then the only way for you and your family to be physically safe would be to
depend on the government. The fact the left tries this even with the Constitutional right as it has
historically been understood, makes their intentions crystal clear.
But such an attack on freedom didn't succeed. Stevens didn't write the ticket for the socialist
revision of the nation. Instead, Justice Scalia wrote in the conclusion of the majority opinion:
“We are aware of the problem of handgun violence in this country, and we take seriously the
concerns raised by the many amici who believe that prohibition of handgun
ownership is a solution. The Constitution leaves the District of Columbia a variety of tools for
combating that problem, including some measures regulating handguns, (see supra, at 54–55, and
n. 26.) But the enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off
the table. These include the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the
home. Undoubtedly some think that the Second Amendment is outmoded in a society where our
standing army is the pride of our Nation, where well-trained police forces provide personal
security, and where gun violence is a serious problem. That is perhaps debatable, but what is not
debatable is that it is not the role of this Court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct.
We affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals.”
With that conclusion Scalia ended a sixty seven page judgment on the one line sentence of the
Second Amendment. The impact is known to political insiders but not to the general public. For
decades the left has pushed for more and more restrictions on gun ownership, ammunition purchases,
and even lawsuits against gun manufacturers. What couldn't be done at once has been done in tiny
increments. With the Heller decision as it stands Justice Scalia along with the other Justices on the
Court faithful to their oaths, have laid the groundwork the left is horrified to consider. Americans are
free and will remain so.
Instead of gun confiscations and disarming of the populace the left is now facing the onslaught of
those freedom loving individuals filing lawsuits to peel back decades of creeping fascism. Justice
Scalia has not established a “new right” as some in the press are claiming. Instead, the opinion
enshrines the Second Amendment to mean what it was written to mean. The people already had the
right to defend themselves. They had the right to band together to keep themselves free. They had
the right to arms to ensure that freedom. The Constitution did not grant any freedoms, it codified
freedoms the people already possessed.
By focusing the majority opinion on this crucial fact, Justice Scalia has written what is likely the
most important legal opinion of modern times. What grows from this opinion is the shaking off of
decades of liberal/progressive attempts to hammer the people of the United States into the common
denominator of the group. Instead we remain free individuals with the right and power of free
determination and self protection.
With the Second Amendment secured, it is time to expand the rights it secures back to it’s original
meaning. Already those lawsuits are planned across the nation. These cases will roll back the
infringement on the people’s right to keep and bear arms. The left is terrified. The Senator from
New Jersey, Frank Lautenberg (D) was quoted in the New Jersey Star Ledger: "Today, President
Bush's radical Supreme Court justices put rigid ideology ahead of the safety of communities in
New Jersey and across the country. The American people demand and deserve strong, common-
sense laws to prevent gun violence."
Three things come immediately to mind. The first is the American people demand no such thing. A
Gallup poll from Princeton, New Jersey on March 27th showed that 73% of the American people
believe the Second Amendment is an individual right. Either Senator Lautenberg is out of touch
with the populace, or he doesn't actually care about what they think. The second thought to come to
mind is "rigid ideology" means to Senator Lautenberg that five of the Justices were true to their
oaths of office and ruled on the Constitution as it was written and intended to be read. The third is
the breathtaking lack of shame for the Senator to claim his opposition to judicial activism. He was
put on the ballot in violation of New Jersey State law when the prior candidate (Toricelli) dropped
too far in the polls to win. The protest against this blatant illegality went to the Democratic controlled
New Jersey Supreme Court. They ignored the statutes and put Lautenberg on the ballot. Their
reasoning was the people deserved a choice regardless of how the law was written. This is the man
complaining of judicial activism? He has his job because of it. There is nothing radical about the
majority opinion in Heller other than it stopped the corruption from socialists spreading to the
individual rights listed in the Bill of Rights. Lautenberg is typical of those unconcerned with
individual liberty, ethics, or the rule of law.
Now with the decision of District of Columbia v. Heller, the Second Amendment is secured in
principle. The work has just begun. It is time to expand the effort in courts across the nation to
resuscitate the meaning of the individual right to keep and bear arms in practice. Then it will be time
to rebuild the First Amendment. With freedom of religion and freedom of speech restored and
secured by the Second Amendment, the left and socialism will finally be vanquished and liberty
restored. Maybe then people will look back and realize this was the time the Republic hung by a
thread.