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Defending the Constitution by Endorsing its Enemies?

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How can one defend Constitutional integrity by endorsing the view of its enemies? How can one defend its meaning if ignorant of that meaning? The former is akin to an attorney telling the jury every word uttered by prosecutors with respect to his client’s guilt is true, but, find him not guilty anyway. The latter would be like a football team taking the field having spent zero time studying and learning their plays. Both are doomed to failure.

Chris Stigall is a conservative radio talk show host out in Kansas City, Missouri. The Pacific Legal Foundation, headquartered in Sacramento, California, is a conservative nonprofit defending American’s individual and property rights in Court against abuse by the federal government. I was able to pick up the Stigall Show on Monday 3 October 2022. He was interviewing an attorney for Pacific Legal about a pending case. During the discussion, she said, and Stigall agreed, under the Commerce Clause, the federal government has the authority to regulate anything that crosses state lines. Both are profoundly wrong. Prior to penning this refutation, I attempted to contact Stigall through several channels including his station manager, without success. That conservatives are ignorant of the Constitution to the point of endorsing interpretations counter to its meaning, is testament to public education’s success in teaching an imposter. The talk show host and attorney’s error possibly stem from a misapprehension with respect to America’s form of government, nature of delegated powers, state’s reserved powers, and meaning of the Commerce Clause.

America has a federal not national form of government. Although these terms are used interchangeably by teachers, they are, in fact, not at all the same. Under a national system, all power is consolidated in a central government and states comprise its regional subdivisions and have little or no autonomy. The central government makes all laws and applies them to states irrespective of local interests.1 America has a federal system in which States created the general government and delegated to it finite powers. Its authority is limited to international relations, foreign trade, war, copyrights, and standardization of currency, weights and measures, and a postal system. States are not political subdivisions of the general government but retain independent authority within their boundaries.2 They also have the right to take back powers they delegated to the federal government.3 States reserved all powers to themselves over domestic affairs. Federal and state power operate in separate autonomous spheres. Like trains, they run on parallel but separate tracks that do not intersect.4 States enumerated the federal government’s 18 powers in Article 1, Section 8. Any power not delegated is a power denied to the federal government. State’s exclusive authority over non-delegated powers is codified in the Tenth Amendment.5

The federal government may exercise only its enumerated powers and may not create implied from explicit ones. It may acquire new or expanded powers only through the amendment process. Only states may amend the Constitution. It cannot be amended by any branch of the federal government through interpretation. It may not make national laws as those operate on and within states which would violate the 10th Amendment. How does this relate to the Commerce Clause?

The Clause reads;

“The Congress shall have Power: To regulate commerce with foreign Nations,

and among the several States, with the Indian Tribes” [capitalization in the

original].6

Through the Declaration of Independence (1776), Articles of Confederation (1781), and Treaty of Paris (1783), Britain’s 13 former North American colonies declared they were independent sovereign states (nations) and recognized as such by Great Britain and the world. Each possessed an autonomous government and constitution. To raise revenue and protect native industry and agriculture, states erected tariffs and tolls on goods crossing their borders, by land, sea, and river, from other states. They also disputed the boundaries of western lands won through the war.7 In addition, they made separate trade treaties with foreign powers without regard to whether or not it harmed the interests of other states.

For example, under its colonial charter, Maryland controlled the Potomac River right to Virginia’s shoreline. Both used this river to ship upstate and western goods to the coast. To gain access to the river, Virginia successfully negotiated a trade treaty with Maryland. James Madison and others believed similar arrangements might be expanded to include the other eleven states. This might unify them and lead to settlement of western land claims. They called for a Convention to meet in Annapolis, 1785. Some states sent delegates, some arrived too late, and others boycotted. Congress called for a second convention to meet in Philadelphia.8 They met from May through September, 1787, debating and working out a constitution to replace the Articles of Confederation. They faced many challenges. Chief among them were trade disputes.

If states created a trade system benefitting all and disadvantaging none, it would diffuse interstate conflicts and bolster their economic strength vis a vis Britain and Europe. A clause eliminating interstate barriers to trade and commerce was the solution. In time, this policy would transform the United States into the “largest area of free trade in the world”. The Commerce Clause would put an end to “mercantilistic systems” of trade.9

John Taylor, perhaps the most towering intellect of the Founding period, noted the power to regulate commerce states delegated to the federal government served two purposes, “to prevent foreign nations from obtaining unjust advantages over the United States” and “to prevent one state from making another tributary to itself”.10 However, and this is crucial, the Commerce Clause delegates to Congress power to regulate trade between the U.S. and three forms of “sovereign entities; the States, foreign nations, and the Indian Tribes”.11 This refers to trade arrangements. It does not grant Congress power over commercial activities in or between states.12 The Commerce Clause’s purpose is to create one voice with respect to foreign trade and to facilitate free trade between states. How is the latter accomplished? By eliminating interstate tariffs and tolls not to erect rules governing commercial activity within and or crossing state lines.

In Federalist 42, James Madison explained the Commerce Clause only delegated to the federal government authority over international trade but not over the commercial activities within states or crossing their borders.13 Under this clause, the federal government makes trade treaties with foreign nations. To argue it empowers a federal government to make national laws governing commercial activities within states is nonsensical. States created the federal government. Did they assign it the function of making trade treaties between it and individual states? Of course not, because states are not foreign nations and commercial activities fall under state’s reserved powers. For example, the federal government may make trade treaties with Indian tribes but it has no authority to make rules governing the manufacture and sale of goods by Indians or sold to non-Indians. It is crucial to keep in mind that commercial activities and trade are not the same.14

The federal government has no authority to make rules governing the manufacture and sale of goods, working conditions, wages, or rules for transportation by air, boat, train or truck, private or public, inter or intrastate. These are functions of state governments.15

Madison noted delegates to the federal convention used the term commerce 34 times during debate and discussion typically in reference to trade with foreign nations. They used the terms commerce and trade interchangeably. This was true for the 63 times authors of the Federalist Papers [Hamilton, Madison, and Jay] used the terms. No delegate to the federal and subsequent state ratifying conventions, used these terms to mean other than trade.16

In Federalist 45, Madison wrote;

“The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government

are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are

numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external

objects as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the

power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected. The powers reserved to

the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of

affairs concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal

order, improvement and prosperity of the State”.17

What about the word “regulate”? Does it not mean the federal government has authority to control commercial activity? Does not control necessarily imply authority to make rules governing such activities in states, especially if it crosses state lines?

Fortunately, we have a treasure trove of documents from the framers. They demonstrate the common usage of the word “regulate” with respect to the Commerce Clause did not mean authority to make rules governing commercial activity. On the contrary, it means “to keep moving” to make regular. The Clause’s purpose is to keep trade moving by, as noted, eliminating interstate tariffs and tolls. The federal government’s power is reactive. It may remove barriers to interstate trade but may make no rules governing commercial activity.

Article 1, section 9, clause 6 states;

“No preference shall be given by any Regulation of Commerce or Revenue, to the

ports of one State over those of another; nor shall Vessels to or from one State, be

obliged to enter, clear, or pay Duties in another [capitalization in the original].18

The Article is clear, Congress’s commerce power is to eliminate specific trade policies, employed by states, favoring their domestic industries and commercial activities at the expense of sister states.

Comparing the Constitution’s sections on commerce, with the dictionary extant at the time [1785 edition of Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language], it is clear commerce is defined as trade not the manufacture and sale of goods or any other gainful activity. This includes all phases of agricultural production and trade between individuals.19 Hence, the federal government has zero authority to make national laws governing the economic activities of private individuals, companies, or states within or crossing state borders.

Vice President John C. Calhoun, regrettably binned by modernity over his views on slavery, was correct in observing regulation of commerce applies to relations between the United States and foreign nations. Congress cannot “regulate” commercial activities within or between states because such power belongs only to a national form of government and the United States is constituted a federal republic. Calhoun noted the only time the clause would empower the federal government in relations with states would be if one chose to erect tariffs on goods from other states.20

University Professor of Law and Government, Randy E. Barnett, notes in every case when the Constitution’s framers used the word “commerce”, the “narrowest” construction is employed. The phrase “among the states” referred to trade between states and “regulate” meant “to make regular”. Again, Congress has no authority to make rules governing economic activity in any state whether it crosses state lines or not.21

Professor St. George Tucker, an officer in the Virginia Militia during the War of Independence, and later law professor, wrote the Constitution never authorized the federal government to regulate or interfere with domestic commerce in any way. The Commerce Clause was designed to protect domestic commercial activity from federal interference. States never delegated Congress authority to make rules for any form of economic activity among people, businesses, and states.22 Yet, today, Congress and the Court interpret “to regulate” opposite of its meaning. Justice Clarence Thomas observes the “original meaning” (indicating the current one is in error) of commerce “was limited to the ‘trade and exchange’ of goods and transportation for this purpose”. Courts today have turned this meaning on its head by applying it to “any gainful activity”.23

A common understanding of the Commerce Clause remained consistent throughout the founding era. There is “not a single example from the reports of these proceedings [drafting and ratifying the Constitution] that unambiguously used the broad meaning of commerce, and many instances where the context makes clear that the speaker intended a narrow meaning”.24

Professor Brion McClanahan writes, since Chief Justice John Marshall, who was a strong proponent of a national as opposed to federal system, used Gibbons v. Ogden (1824) to create for Congress a “right to regulate interstate commerce”.25 Marshall had access to founding documents and even spoke in favor of ratification at the Virginia Convention. He knew the meaning and intent of the Commerce Clause. He knew Congress has no authority to regulate private or public economic activities inter or intrastate. But he, like Alexander Hamilton, supported abolishing state governments by consolidating all power in a national government. He ruled, Congress could intervene and make rules for commerce “within a single state” if it affected trade with or in another state.26 In so doing, he overturned the Constitution. From Marbury v. Madison (1803) McCulloch v. Maryland (1819), Gibbons v. Ogden (1824) and subsequent cases, Marshall created from thin air, a new power for Congress rejected to it by the States and Constitution.

Marshall believed the framers meaning and intent for the Commerce Clause was “too narrow”. Congress should have the power to intervene in the economic affairs of state and people. He wrote, “The manner in which the Congress decides to regulate commerce is completely at the discretion of Congress”.27 Of course, he did. Such power would go a long way toward transforming a federal into a national system and destroy state’s reserved powers. Subsequent Courts built precedent on Marshall’s invalid rulings.

For many years they were successfully opposed by Presidents and Governors but, with the passage of time, and for various reasons, Americans began to accept this rewriting of the Constitution and extralegal abolition of the 10th Amendment. Federal Courts ruled Congress could now make laws governing all economic activities within and across state lines if such activities had a “substantial effect (determined by Congress and the Court), on other states. This is an open-ended grant of power because any “activity when taken in the aggregate, could be said to have a ‘substantial effect” on interstate trade. Marshall and subsequent courts eviscerated limits on Congress’s power.28

States created a federal not national government. Through the Constitution, they delegated to it limited and defined powers. They include foreign relations, international trade, war, and standardization of currency, weights and measurements, copyrights, and a postal system. States did not surrender but reserved all other powers to themselves. No federal branch of government, legislative, executive, or judicial, was given the power of judicial review. None has the sole or final authority to interpret the Constitution’s meaning. That right belongs to the people. Consolidationists at the federal convention proposed granting this power to the federal court but delegates voted it down knowing full well States would never ratify the proposed constitution if it contained such a provision. Therefore, the Court has zero authority to rule on the constitutionality of any law, federal or state. The Commerce Clause was written to prohibit states from restricting the free flow of interstate goods through internal tariffs and tolls. Period. Congress has no authority to regulate the economic activities of people, businesses, private or public, within states or because they cross an imaginary line.

How can anyone defend what they know little or nothing about? This amounts to an inexcusable forfeiture on the battlefield. As one who taught government for more than two decades in the public high school system, I am well aware what they teach is an imposter in place of the real Constitution. This is no excuse for conservatives and those claiming to be originalists, to promote the same imposter. After all, I too was taught the false constitution. I took the time to find the real one and others should as well. You may be surprised to discover how far removed, the one taught in public schools, is from the Constitution ratified by the Thirteen States. Hint, no amendments were ever passed to change the intended, and now opposite, meaning of t

11 Richard J. Hardy, Government In America (Boston, Massachusetts, Houghton Mifflin Company, 192), 12.

22 Clarence B. Carson, Basic American Government (Wadley, Alabama, American Textbook Committee, 1996), 500.

33 Yale Law School, Avalon Project, Ratification declarations by States, at https://www.avalon.yale.edu/18th-century/ratsc.ap.

44 John Taylor of Caroline Virginia, New Views of the Constitution of the United States, James McClellan, editor (Washington, D.C., Regnery Publishing, Inc., 1823/2000), 7-8, 20-21, 27, 29, 42-43, 136, 203, 207-213.

55 IBID. 1, 189-190, 255, 257-258, Carson, 40.

66 Harold J. Spaeth & Edward Conrad Smith HarperCollins College Outline: The Constitution of the United States, 13th Edition (New York, N.Y., HarperPerrenial A Division of Harper Collins Publishers, 1991), 202.

77 Rebecca Brooks Gruver, An American History Volume 1 to 1877, Second Edition (Reading, Massachusetts, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1976), 165-174, 184.

88 Ralph Ketcham, James Madison A Biography (Charlottesville, Virginia, University Press of Virginia, 1996), 169-171.

99 Forrest McDonald, Novo Ordo Seclorum: The Intellectual Origins of the Constitution (Lawrence, Kansas, University Press of Kansas, 1998), 18, 266.

1010 Taylor, 328-329.

1111 Edwin Meese III, Matthew Spalding, David Forte, The Heritage Guide to the Constitution (Washington, D.C., Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2005), 107.

1212 IBID. 100.

1313 James Madison, The Federalist Papers , Clinton Rossiter, editor (New York, N.Y., A Mentor Book from New American Library, 1961), 264-268.

1414 IBID. Federalists 42 and 45, 269-269, 293.

1515 Brion McClanahan, The Founding Father’s Guide to the Constitution (Washington, D.C., Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2012), 34-56, 86.

1616 Randy Barnett, “The Original Meaning of the Commerce Clause”, The University of Chicago Law Review (Winter 2001), 113-114, at http://www.bu.edu/rbarnett/origins.html.

1717 Madison, 292-293.

1818 Spaeth & Smith, 203.

1919 Barnett, 13-114.

2020 John C. Calhoun, Selected Writings and Speeches, H. Lee Cheek Jr., Editor, (Washington, D.C., Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2003), 66-74, 113-114, 272.

2121 Barnett, 112-113, 114-116, 124-125, 142, 146-147.

2222 IBID. 135-136.

2323 IBID. 101-102.

2424 IBID. 112.

2525 McClanahan, Founding Father’s Guide, 50. New York State granted to Robert R. Livingston and Robert Fulton a twenty-year monopoly over commercial shipping on rivers within the state. Aaron Ogden operated steam boats out of New Jersey and wanted a piece of the New York trade. He sued in federal court. See Gibbons v. Ogden, Oyez, LII, Supreme Court Resources, Justia, Supreme Court Center at http://www.oyez.org/cases/1789-1850/22us1.

2626 Thomas E. Woods Jr., and Kevin R.C. Gutzman, Who Killed the Constitution (New York, N.Y., Crown Forum, Random House, Inc., 2008), 106.

2727 Meese, Spalding, and Forte, 101-102.

2828 Woods, Gutzman, 138.

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"News Media", Constitution, Courts, gun control, Law, Rights, SCOTUS, So Much Stupid!, Violence-Enabling Victim Disarmers

The Supreme Court of the Public Broadcasting System?

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A few days ago, I ran across a column by a Terrence Cummings, “COMMENTARY: But for Rittenhouse doctrine.” It was the usual garbage you’d expect from victim disarmers. I didn’t — at the time — think it worth a response column, but I did write to Cummings.

“But for the Rittenhouse doctrine, you would think you would have a right to take your AR-15 to any grievance or protest near you and across state lines. Then, you could possibly “murder” (used loosely throughout this piece) two people, injure another and call it self-defense.”

Lessee…

1. Rittenhouse didn’t have an AR-15. It was a Smith & Wesson M&P rifle.

2. Rittenhouse didn’t take the rifle across state lines.

3. “Murder” is a specific term best not used “loosely,” unless you enjoyed being sued for libel/defamation. Murder is the deliberate, unjustified killing of a human being by another human being. The general term you are searching for (if you were being honest) is “homicide.”

3a. Rittenhouse fled his first attacker. He fired only when trapped and physically attacked. That is confirmed by video evidence and witness testimony.

3b. Rittenhouse again fled an attacking mod (video & witnesses). He fired again when, laying on the ground, he was again attacked with potential lethal force (the skateboard; if you doubt that’s potentially lethal, ask the family of the Santa Monica man killed by being struck in the head with a skateboard, or check with the California police officer who ended up in ICU when struck with a skateboard by an Antifa protester).

3c. Rittenhouse — still on the ground — fired again at a person who repeated aimed his own unlawfully possessed firearm at Rittenhouse. Video & witnesses.

4. Immediately after the shootings, Rittenhouse fled the pursuing crowd and attempted to turn himself in to the police.

I never made it much past that, since you’d already proved yourself ignorant of federal and state law and the events of the night, and that you are grossly biased.

Cummings’ reply was simple.

Thanks so much for your email and sharing your perspective. It is welcomed and appreciate.

I assumed that was the end of it, until this morning when I received another email from Mr. Cummings. He referred me to another, earlier column he wrote: “COMMENTARY: America worships guns.”

Continue reading The Supreme Court of the Public Broadcasting System? →

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authoritarian swine, Constitution, Courts, gun control, gun grabbers, Law, Rights, SCOTUS

Gun Courts And Constitutionality

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I ran across an opinion column advocating for a ban of semiautomatic weapons — all of them; not just “assault weapons” — that raised the usual bogus points: The Second Amendment is not an individual right, the National Guard is the militia, no defensive usefulness, and so on.

I could address so many points in that column, but one truly stands above the others.

Why all semi-automatic weapons must be banned on a national basis
“The Constitution expressly allows Congress the right and authority to dictate the jurisdiction of the federal courts. To make sure the will of a majority of U.S. citizens are implemented, Congress could remove from the jurisdiction of the federal courts the ability to rule on the constitutionality of a ban of semi-automatic weapons (similar to the removal of jurisdiction over habeas corpus during the Civil War).”

The author, Bob Reid, is, according to the mini-bio, an attorney who has practiced for 46 years, working on “both state and federal constitutional issues.” That makes his bizarre claim even more incomprehensible.

I have studied the Constitution for decades but that provision still eludes me.

Article III, Section 1.
“The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court…”
Section 2.
“The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution…” (emphasis added)

That would appear to assign jurisdiction over determinations of constitutionality to the courts. As for the suspension of habeas corpus as a pseudo-precedent for limiting the power of the Supreme Court, specifically delegated to the Courts by the Constitution…

Article I, Section 9
“The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public Safety may require it.” (emphasis added)

Is Reid seriously proposing that Congress declare war (Article I, Section 8, Clause 11) on the people of the United States, as a means of suspending the Constitution?

And, frankly, citing Lincoln’s abuses of that suspension to imprison his judicial and press critics is bad enough; but the more recent suspension of habeas corpus used for the WW2 internment of thousands of Japanese-American families — including children — is hardly something I would use as justification for more constitutional abuses.

I wrote to Reid, to ask him to cite the constitutional provision which allows this proposed limitation on the Supreme Court. He surprised me by responding.

The Constitution lays out the original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, but relegates to Congress the unrestricted right to create the judiciary under the Supreme Court, which it has done by creating District Courts and Courts of Appeal. Under this power, Congress can clearly dictate what kind of cases these lower courts can consider (and has exercised this power in the past). If the lower courts are not granted jurisdiction over certain subject matters, and the issue is not part of the Supreme Court’s original jurisdiction, the matter could not make its way to the Supreme Court.

He completely ignores the Article III assignment of jurisdiction for all federal courts, Supreme and inferior, and pretends to find it in the power to institute lower courts. I believe Mr. Reid, apparently primarily a tax attorney, is confusing Article I Tribunals with Article III Courts, and forgetting that tribunals are still “inferior to the supreme Court, just as Article III courts are “such inferior Courts.”

Tribunals are specialized “courts” that Congress can — and has — created for special limited purposes, “administrative courts” such as “tax court.” They are limited in their scope and power compared to Article III Courts.

In theory, Congress could create an ATF “gun court” tribunal responsible for ruling on GCA and NFA charges. But that tribunal — once again — is still “inferior to the Supreme Court” and its rulings would still be subject to Supreme Court review. That means The Supreme Court can still determine whether the tribunal’s acts, and the laws it enforces, are constitutional.

I hope Reid is better at tax law than he is at constitutional law.

He did have one other innovation for his ban; one that avoids the need for a few million door-kicking confiscators (and body bags for them).

These prohibitions should be coupled with a national buy-back program of semi-automatic weapons, but the refusal to sell these weapons or magazines to the government would not itself be a crime. Rather, if a crime is committed using a prohibited weapon or magazine, the owner or immediate seller of such a weapon or magazine would be equally liable for any crime committed with such weapon or magazine, regardless of who pulled the trigger.

So it’s a not a ban. But the criminal use of a semiauto would be a crime.

Hint, Mr.Reid. It already is.

 

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authoritarian swine, Courts, gun control, Law, Political philosophy, Politics, spirit of rebellion

So You Want To Repeal The Second Amendment

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Jabba the Hutt Michael Moore thinks it’s time to repeal the Second Amendment.

“Who will say on this network or any other network in the next few days, ‘It’s time to repeal the Second Amendment?’”

Bad idea, Lardo Calrissian.

You can’t repeal the Second Amendment, any more than you can repeal any of the other nine. It was a package deal, you see, an absolute prerequisite to ratifying the main body of the Constitution. Repeal one, you repeal them all. Do that, and you repeal the whole Constitution — and with it, any legal authority that the government has to exist (let alone repeal the Second Amendment).
— Alexander Hope

That comes from chapter five of Hope, by Aaron Zelman and L. Neil Smith. The style makes me think that particular passage was penned by Neil (and it seems like he had a stand-alone essay to the same effect), but I don’t believe Aaron would have let that go into their co-authored novel unless he agreed with it.

As a casual student of history, who has read much about the ratification of the Constitution, I also agree.

Lose one, lose them all. Lose it all.

I suspect that Moore, and most Dims currently in DC — and far too many Repugnicans, as well — would be happy to lose the few remaining Constitutional limits on their power. They don’t particularly care about “legal authority;” just power.

The problem is… if our wanna-be tyrants are no longer restrained by that pesky Constitution, neither are the people.

The people pissed off at senseless bans, and illegal ballot drop boxes, might just decide that turning to constitutionally-enabled courts — who already defecate on individual rights at the slightest provocation — really isn’t necessary.

Voting out scumbags, and voting in new replacement scumbags who promise to use KY while screwing us? Why bother with that discarded constitutional process? Wouldn’t high-velocity lead be cheaper and faster? Not to mention proactively educating would-be replacements.

Court-blessed “constitutional” takings of property? Get rid of the Constitution and former property owners might resort to ex-constitutional re-takings, enforced with ropes and lamp posts.

Lose one, lose them all. Moore himself might want to consider the ramifications of chucking his First Amendment protections to defame folks for a buck. The people might decide, lacking that lost constitutional recourse, to go bowling for lying documentarians.

Get rid of the Constitution, and the people’s  pretend recourse… and they might stop pretending they do.

Maybe the tyrants will be counting on the out-numbered police to prop up their post-Constitution regime. How many officers would continue to be willing to do that once they’ve lost “constitutional” sovereign immunity, and the people know it?

Perhaps the Constitution has only been an illusory paper restraint on government. But it has been a potent symbolic restraint on the people, preventing them from eliminating abusive politicians and government agents out of hand. I do not truly comprehend the willingness — nay, the eagerness of the Left to go there, to surrender that protection, given the likely consequences.

We’d be starting from scratch, with new rules written by the survivors.

 

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authoritarian swine, Culture, Law, Political philosophy, Politics, Rights, Sellouts and traitors, Voting

How A Republic Dies

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“Ours, as you know, is a government of limited powers. The Constitution confers the authority for certain actions upon the President and the Congress, and explicitly prohibits them taking other actions. This is done to protect the rights and liberties of the people”.1

President Calvin Coolidge

“Of course one does meet brilliant men’, said Nikolay Nikolayevich, ‘but they are isolated. The fashion nowadays is all for groups and societies of every sort.—It is always a sign of mediocrity in people when they herd together…The truth is only sought by individuals, and they break with those who do not love it enough”.2

Dr. Zhivago

Long ago, in the year 1787, a tribe known as Gardenites dwelt in the lush valley Arboretum that provided all their needs. Growing in its midst was a tree named Liberty. Inscribed on its sacred bole was General Welfare, a list of powers delegated to Arboretum’s government they called Steward. Only one piece of fruit grew from this tree. Because it contained the seeds of Liberty’s renewal, Gardenites prohibited anyone to eat it. Even though they lived in paradise, some residents began imagining how they could make Arboretum better, if they were charge. Instead of limiting Steward to only protecting Liberty, the imaginers, called Consolidators, would grant him unlimited power to reorganize and reorder life in Arboretum according to their vision for how it should be run. When Consolidators made their proposal to the Gardenite Assembly, they in turn consulted Liberty. General Welfare forbade Steward from taking any action not on its list. Finding no authority for the proposal, Gardenites voted no. A silver-tongued man named Beguile led the Consolidators. His manners were serpent like; his clothes shimmered as if gold. Words flowed from his sibilant tongue like honey as he promised Gardenites a life freed from toil and a cornucopia of plenty for all if they but ate the fruit of Liberty. Seduced by Beguile, Gardenites took and ate the fruit. With the last seed consumed, the words inscribed on Liberty faded, dissolved, and blew away like dust. Consolidators, whose desire was to rule over all Gardenites, seized control and became Steward. Soon briars and thorns grew up among the crops making harvests meager. Rains ceased, the ground grew parched and cracked, and crops began to die. Steward beat the Gardenites to work harder, taking the first portion of each harvest to share with obedient followers. They raided Gardenite homes for items of value they dispensed among themselves. A great sound rent the air. Liberty cracked, split asunder, and crashed to the ground. Arboretum was no more.

At this writing, Democrats and Republicans debate the size and cost of Mr. Biden’s “infrastructure” bill. Missing from the debate is the question as to whether or not federal infrastructure bills are legal in the first place. If not, arguments over size and cost are moot.

Professor Brion McClanahan writes the “general welfare” is one of the most misunderstood phrases in the Constitution. Many, if not most Americans believe it means the federal government is to provide for their material well-being. This includes food and poverty assistance, medical care, paying for college, building roads and bridges, and so forth. This results from an “incorrect reading of the Constitution” leading to approximately “90 percent of what the federal government does being ‘unconstitutional’—and it’s all due to an expansion of government power under the guise of the ‘general welfare”.3

The most important part of the Constitution with respect to the exercise of federal power are Article 1, Sections 7, 8, and 9. They comprise “the power of the ‘sword and purse” consisting of restrictive clauses relative to Congress’s exercise of power. By ill-informed and dishonest reinterpretation of these clauses, they are the mechanisms by which those in power metamorphosed a federal into a national system of government. From day one, Founders who favored consolidating power in a strong central government [Consolidationists] worked to transform the restrictive design of the general welfare phrase into a positive authorization for what they wanted to do.4

Article 1, Section 8, the enumerated powers, comprise a closed loop. The states delegated to the federal government no powers outside it. Professor Forrest McDonald notes the taxation authority of the U.S. government is limited to the common defense and general welfare. Government may tax, borrow, and spend only for what is in the enumerated powers. No authority for infrastructure, roads, bridges, canals, transportation, and so forth is among that list. The Founders rejected federal funding for infrastructure projects because the states as a whole would pay for projects benefitting only one region or locale.5

States sent delegates to Philadelphia in May 1787, to revise the Articles of Confederation. Instead, during the next several months, they drafted a new Constitution. Among the factions attending were “nationalists” who wanted to create a strong central government of consolidated powers. Consolidated from the states, which then would become appendages of the central government with no autonomy or sovereign power of their own. If they succeeded, American government would become much like those in England and Europe wherein the powerful used it as a means to promote favored regional, commercial, nepotistic, and political special interests.

Delegates may not have shared a common vision for what form the new government should take, but they did share a common understanding of the words general welfare. They “lifted” them and their meaning from the document they were sent to revise. In both documents, general welfare refers to government actions benefitting “the union as a whole such as military hardware for the common defense” but not tax expenditures or financing of projects benefitting only specific localities, regions, states, and so forth. This restriction excludes federal involvement with any form of infrastructure or its maintenance.6

In order to create a national as opposed to a federal system, Consolidationists knew they had to alter the meaning of general welfare. James McHenry, of Maryland, wrote in his journal on 4 September 1787 that under the proposed Constitution, the “national” (sic) legislature could not, but should have the power to appropriate money to “erect lighthouses or clean out or preserve the navigation of harbors”. He discussed this with Nathaniel Gorham, Massachusetts, and Gouverneur Morris and Thomas Fitzimmons, delegates from Pennsylvania. Morris said, “The Congress could do so under the ‘General Welfare Clause”. McHenry was aware such an interpretation would allow Congress to grant trade monopolies which, Southern states rejected. Benjamin Franklin also sought to circumvent the restrictive nature of the general welfare. He proposed the words “to provide for cutting canals where deemed necessary” be added after the words “post roads” in Article 1, Section 8, Clause 7. James Wilson, and the rest of the Pennsylvania delegation, supported this motion. Considering Philadelphia was a major trading port, their self-interest was obvious. Roger Sherman, Connecticut, opposed this change noting, “The expense in such cases, will fall on the United States, and the benefit accrue to the places where the canals may be cut”. Wilson countered that Sherman was not only wrong but his restrictive construction of the term constituted an obstruction of the general welfare. Rufus King of Massachusetts, a state with the important port Boston, saw the larger picture and came to Sherman’s defense. He noted Wilson’s interpretation of general welfare meant government would have authority to establish banks, build roads, and erect commercial monopolies “that would sharply divide the states”.7 Delegates voted Franklin’s proposal down. King’s comment was a foreshadowing of backroom deal making. Politicians call it “log-rolling”. Coastal states obtain federal funding for projects appropriate to their geography by supporting funding for projects in land locked regions. The general welfare prevented such practices.8 Consolidators did not give up.

Gouverneur Morris continued to insist the general welfare should allow the general government to build docking piers (infrastructure) in port city harbors. He told McHenry and Gorham delegates should promote this interpretation. “McHenry was horrified by the implication of so broad an interpretation of the clause”. Morris attempted to alter the meaning of general welfare through subterfuge. As principle penman for the Committee of Style, he wrote the Constitution’s draft. When he penned Article 1, Section 8, he “itemized the powers of Congress in clauses, separating them by semicolons. He inserted one between “To lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises’ and the qualifying ‘to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare”.9 A semicolon is a “punctuation mark; used chiefly in a coordinating function between major sentence elements (as independent clauses of a compound sentence)”.10 Morris’s alteration would have turned general welfare from a dependent phrase into a stand-alone clause transforming a restrictive into a “positive grant of power”. Congress could then do whatever it wanted. Roger Sherman caught Morris’s trick, brought it to the Convention’s attention, and they directed a comma replace the semicolon.11

Instead of a clause, the general welfare is a dependent or subordinate phrase, a distinction with a difference. Clauses are a “Collection of words that has a subject that includes an active verb”.12 An independent clause “can stand on its own” [contains both a subject and a verb] and “it does not need to be joined to any other clauses because it contains all the information necessary to be a complete sentence”. In addition they; 1) have a subject which tells the reader what the sentence is about, 2) have an action or predicate [verbs that explain or tell what the subject is doing], and 3) express a complete thought, something that happened or was said.13 A phrase is a “collection of words that may have nouns or verbals [nouns-words that name. Verbs/verbals-words that do or are].14 Dependent or subordinate phrases do not complete a thought and cannot stand-alone. For example, the words “general welfare” to a reader mean nothing. For a clause or sentence to stand-alone, it must contain a word or group of words acting as a noun and is the main-focus of the sentence.15 A phrase cannot stand-alone otherwise; it is a sentence fragment, “and is considered one of the worst writing errors one can make”.16 What does all this mean?

The general welfare is a phrase dependent on and attached to the common defense and the enumeration of powers that follow. This enumeration defines the general welfare. Infrastructure is not among the powers listed. The taxation authority of the U.S. government is limited to the common defense and enumerated powers. The federal government has no authority to appropriate money to build roads, bridges, canals, and so forth. To do so would improve the welfare of a specific area, not the nation and thus delegates rejected delegating this power to the federal government.17

When the Convention first presented the proposed Constitution to delegates in Philadelphia, the words “common defense” and “general welfare” were absent. A motion to add them was defeated. Delegates grounded objections on the fact that since Article 1, Section 8, the enumerated powers, constituted the common defense and general welfare, these words were redundant. In addition, delegates who supported a federal as opposed to national system of government, contended consolidationists would twist the meaning of general welfare to expand federal power beyond its enumeration. Roger Sherman noted these words applied to very few “objects” limited to protecting the nation from foreign powers and insurrection.18 South Carolina delegate David Ramsey agreed the Constitution confined the powers of Congress to providing for the common defense and general welfare. To raise money for any other purpose, including internal improvements (infrastructure) was illegal as those were among the reserved powers belonging to the states. Upon this understanding, delegates added the words when the Convention closed in September 1787.19

Criticisms by opponents of the proposed Constitution compelled proponents to defend and explain its problematic parts. They did this through newspaper editorials, essays, and the Federalist Papers. Madison and Hamilton, to a greater degree, were nationalists. Both considered the Articles of Confederation an impediment to creating an American nation. Both supported a national as opposed to a federal system of government. However, they understood states would not support the former because it meant relinquishing state sovereignty. Hence, they supported the proposed Constitution as a first step toward a larger goal. They conceded the general welfare did not authorize Congress to fund infrastructure. Common sense dictated states fund their own projects.20

Anti-Federalists claimed the general welfare “clause” (sic) constituted an unlimited delegation of power to the general government. James Madison addressed this in Federalist 41. He noted Article 1, Section 8, and its 18 sub-clauses comprised the sole meaning of general welfare. The list was restrictive. Congress has power to tax, borrow, and spend only for what is on the list. Most of the list comprise actions relative to the military, foreign commerce, and war.21 In Federalist 45, Madison wrote; “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State”.22 Madison provides a concise explanation of America’s republican form of limited government and federalism. Hamilton could not help but show his true colors.

Writing in Federalist 30 and 34, Hamilton insisted the federal government’s ability to acquire revenue and spend had to be commiserate with challenges it faced especially with respect to the machinations of foreign powers. Because no one could predict the future, government’s power to tax and spend should be untethered from limits imposed by Article 1, Section 8. It was logical Congress have the power to tax and spend on any project it deemed for the general welfare.23 Jefferson and Madison corrected Hamilton noting the purpose of the enumeration was to limit Congress’s application of the meaning “general welfare”.24

Future Chief Justice of the United States, John Marshall, ardent nationalist, and enemy of state rights, nevertheless defended ratification at the Virginia Convention. He conceded an enumeration limited the powers of Congress. It had no authority to pass laws beyond that enumeration and, if it did, judges would strike them down as “void” and unconstitutional.25 Anti-Federalists were unconvinced. A critic writing as “Brutus” insisted Consolidationists would use the general welfare to transform the federal into a national form of government.26 The vote to ratify the proposed Constitution was unanimous in only three of thirteen states and was close in five others.27 Tenche Coxe, Pennsylvania delegate wrote the states had not delegated to the federal government power to involve itself in the construction and operation of buildings and canals in the States or to subsidize such ventures. Had this not been the case, the States would never have ratified the Constitution. Delegates later added the Tenth Amendment to make clear all powers the States had not delegated to the federal government, they reserved to themselves.28 This issue was bound to come up again.

In 1794, members of Congress proposed allocating federal funds to resettle French refugees from Haitian slave revolts in Baltimore and Philadelphia. Maryland Congressman Samuel Smith argued such an appropriation was constitutional. Virginia Congressman James Madison opposed the bill on constitutional grounds observing, “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress for expending on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents”.29 Virginia Congressman John Nicholas agreed with Madison. He proposed, instead, colleagues raise funds through a “private subscription”. Attempting to shame him, Smith said if Nicholas beheld the misery and suffering of the French refugees, he would never have made such a proposal. Backers of the bill said no money would come from the public treasury. Instead, they would subtract the amount of the appropriation from the debt the U.S. owed France from the war.30 Like lawyers then and now, they do not have to be right only have the better sounding argument.

Congressman Madison was President Madison in 1817. Congress submitted to him a bill for “internal improvements”, an appropriation for roads and canals. He vetoed it because it was unconstitutional. Madison observed in his veto message that the States delegated no authority for internal improvements to the federal government in Article 1, Section 8. Any other interpretation would mean Congress had the power to do whatever it wanted.31

Thomas Jefferson explained in a letter to Albert Gallatin, Secretary of the Treasury, (1822) that President James Monroe had “negatived” [vetoed] an “act for internal improvement” passed by Congress. The bill’s supporters claimed authority to tax and spend for any purpose they considered the general welfare. Jefferson countered that Congress did not have unlimited powers to “provide for the general welfare but were restrained to those specifically enumerated”. It was through the exercise of that finite list of powers Congress provided for the “general welfare” and the same applied to taxing, borrowing, and spending. Jefferson believed it was fortunate the bill was passed because Monroe’s veto would “settle forever the meaning of the phrase, which, by a mere grammatical quibble” [semicolon] at the end of each list or subsection, had been used by the so-called Federalists, to expand the powers of the federal government at the expense of the State’s reserved powers. “It is a mere question of syntax, whether the two last infinitives are governed by the first or are distinct, and co-ordinate powers; a question unequivocally decided by the exact definition of powers immediately following”. In his veto message of the appropriation for the Cumberland Road, Monroe asked, “Have Congress a right to raise and appropriate the money to any and every purpose according to their will and pleasure? They certainly have not. The government of the United States is a limited government, instituted for great national purposes and for those only”.32

Although dead some 24 years, Hamilton’s philosophical successors continued working to undermine the restrictive nature of the general welfare phrase by introducing bills for internal improvements. South Carolina Congressman William Drayton declared, “Hamilton’s view would make a mockery of the doctrine of enumerated powers, the centerpiece of the Constitution, rendering the enumeration of Congress’s powers superfluous. Whenever Congress wanted to do something it could simply declare the act to be serving the ‘general welfare’ and get out from under its limits imposed by enumeration”. What would be the sense of an enumeration if, by invoking the general welfare, Congress could violate any restrictions placed on its power by the Constitution?33

One hundred years after delegates in Philadelphia signed the Constitution, President Grover Cleveland vetoed the Texas Seed Bill a drought relief measure, because it was unconstitutional. He asked rhetorically, “If government supports the people, who will support the government”? It has no wealth and produces no goods. It can enlarge its role in the lives of people only by taking more of what they earn and produce reducing their freedom and prosperity in equal measure.34 He wrote in his veto message:

“I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution,

and I do not believe that the power and duty of the General Government

ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is no

manner properly related to the public service or benefit.

A prevalent tendency to disregard the limited mission of this power and

duty should, I think, be steadfastly resisted, to the end that the lesson

should be constantly enforced that, though the people support the

Government, the Government should not support the people”.

Cleveland consulted the Constitution to determine if the proposed action was legal. It was not. Presidents like Cleveland, and later Calvin Coolidge, became the exception. Congressmen continued proposing bills violating the meaning of general welfare. Presidents from Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Herbert Hoover participated in undermining federalism, the basis for a government of limited powers. Franklin Roosevelt turned a drip into a flood.

Although the Supreme Court in United States v. Butler (1936) struck down Franklin Roosevelt’s Agricultural Adjustment Act, it nevertheless held that under Article 1 of the Constitution, Congress had broad powers to tax and spend for whatever it deemed the general welfare of the nation, what Hamilton always wanted. Looking back in 1945, Chief Justice Owen Roberts observed that this case decided the long-standing debate between Hamilton and Jefferson over a loose versus strict construction of the enumerated powers and general welfare in favor of Hamilton.35 Although many more decisions to come drove the final nails into its coffin, on that day the Constitution died overthrown by nine men.

The States created a federal system of government. To it, they delegated power over international affairs, treaties, war, peace, and trade. States reserved all other powers to themselves. They prohibited federal involvement in any form of internal improvement. This would include dredging Boston Harbor, building bridges in Minnesota, constructing flood levies in Missouri, subsidies for Amtrak in NYC, a dam in Arizona, windmill farms in California, aid to indigent in Oregon, and farmers in Iowa, all of which it does. “The central government does not exist to provide a paycheck, a job, a road, healthcare, charity for the indigent, or a minimum wage”. The Founder’s acceptance that these are the responsibilities of states and individuals was universal. They would “not have viewed the transfer of responsibility from individuals to the government as a sign of progress”.36

Republican Senators Roy Blunt and Marsha Blackburn, Missouri and Tennessee respectively, support infrastructure projects, roads, bridges, and internet access, but not the Democrat’s bill.37 Today neither Democrats nor Republicans debate the Constitutionality of their acts especially infrastructure bills. Instead, they quibble over cost. They have abandoned federalism, the principle of limited government, and the Constitution. The liberty, property, and even lives of Americans cannot be safe under such a tyrannical form of government. When people say, “Well, at least we live in a free country” and “Land of the free, home of the brave” I shake my head at such ignorance. Like an over the hill actor, they are living on a past reputation that died a long time ago.

11 Calvin Coolidge, Foundations of the Republic: Speeches and Addresses (Freeport, N.Y., Books For Libraries Press, 1926/1968), 122.

22 Boris Pasternak, translation by Manya Harai and Max Hayward, Doctor Zhivago (New York, N.Y., Everyman’s Library, Alfred A Knopf, 1958/1991), 15.

33 Brion McClanahan, The Politically Incorrect Guide To the Founding Fathers (Washington, D.C., Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2009), 77.

44 Brion McClanahan, The Founding Father’s Guide to the Constitution (Washington, D.C. Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2012), 38.

55 Forrest McDonald, Novus Ordo Seclorum: The Intellectual Origins of the Constitution (Lawrence, Kansas, University Press of Kansas, 1985), 264-265. The Latin phrase means “New Order of the Ages” and appears on the reverse of the Great Seal.

66 McClanahan, Politically Incorrect Guide, 78.

77 McClanahan, Founding Fathers Guide, 55-58.

88 Richard J. Hardy, Government In America (Boston, Massachusetts, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1992), 355.

99 McDonald, 265.

1010 Frederick C. Mish, Editor-in-Chief, Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Addition (Springfield, Massachusetts, Merriam-Webster, Inc., 2001), 1060.

1111 McDonald, 265.

1313 Your Dictionary, “Independent And Dependent Clauses”, at http://grammar.yourdictionary.com/grammar-rules-and-tips/independent-and-dependent-cl.

1414 C. Edward Good, A Grammar Book For You And Me (Sterling, Virginia, Capital Books, Inc., 2002), 8-9, 30-33.

1515 IBID. 3-4, 14-15.

1717 McDonald, 264-265.

1818 McClanahan, The Founder’s Guide, 43.

1919 IBID. 43.

2020 McClanahan, The Politically Incorrect Guide, 78-79.

2121 Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison, The Federalist Papers, Clinton Rossiter, editor (New York, N.Y., A Mentor Book for the New American Library, 1961), 262-263.

2222 IBID. 292-293.

2323 IBID. 189-193, 205-211.

2424 Legal Information Institute, “Spending for the General Welfare”, at http://www.law.cornell.edu/anncon/html.

2525 John Marshall, Article 3, Section 2, Clause 1, Virginia Ratifying Convention, 20 June 1788, Papers 1: 275-85, Volume 4, page 247 at http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/as21s26.html.

2626 Herbert J. Strong, Editor, selected by Murray Dry from The Complete Anti-Federalist, The Anti-Federalist: Writings by the Opponents of the Constitution (Chicago, Illinois, The University of Chicago Press, 1981/1985), 166-174.

2727 Ashbrook Center, “Teaching American History” at http://teachingamericanhistory.org/ratification/overview/ashbrookcenter/Ashbrook University, Ashland, Ohio, 401 College Avenue, Ohio, 44805.

2828 McClanahan, Founding Father’s Guide, 59, 171, 179.

2929 National Archives, “Santo Domingan Refugees, 10 January 1794” Founders Online, National Archives at https://founders.archives.gov/documents/madison/01-15-02-0017. Original source is Thomas A. Mason, Robert A. Rutland, and Jeanne K. Sisson, editors, The Papers of James Madison, Vol. 15, 24 March 1793-20 April 1795, (Charlottesville, Virginia, University Press of Virginia, 1985), 177-179.

3030 IBID. 179.

3131 Clarence B. Carson, Basic American Government (Wadley, Alabama, American Textbook Committee, 1996), 48.

3232 Martin A. Larson, The Essence of Thomas Jefferson (New York, N.Y. Joseph J. Binns, Publisher, 1977), 145-146. From Thomas Jefferson, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (Washington, D.C., Taylor & Murray, 1854), Volume VII, 17-86 to Albert Gallatin, 16 July 1817, 78-79.

3333 Roger Pilon, CATO Handbook for Congress (Washington, D.C. CATO Institute, 1999), 28-29.

3434 Clarence B Carson, A Basic History of the United States, Volume 5: The Welfare State 1929-1985 (Wadley, Alabama, American Textbook Committee, 1987), 1.

3535 Legal Information Institute. The Court held, in a 6-3 vote, federal funding for agriculture in states was legal but federal management was not.

3636 McClanahan, The Politically Incorrect Guide, 79.

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authoritarian swine, gun control, gun grabbers, Law

ATF Recruiting Call

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The ATF held a Zoom recruiting call, and one man had a very pertinent question for them.

“Am I required to not know the Second Amendment, or am I trained to ignore it?”

Silence. And finally an evasive nonanswer.

Frankly, that surprised me. The ATF has been called out for decades for existing to destroy the Second Amendment. I’d expect, by now, that they would a prepped response for that and the lines of Our work is always consistent with the Second Amendment as found by the courts.

But declining to address it at all tells me that the official position is that even lip service to the 2nd is not an ATF concern.

They aren’t even pretending any more.

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Academics, Culture, duty, gun grabbers, guns, Law, mindset, Political philosophy, Politics, Rights

Freedom and the Role of the Militia Part III

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You can’t fist fight tyranny

“The American people, Lee wrote Samuel Adams, had not fought the British only to be ‘brought under despotic rule under the notion of strong government, or in the form of elective despotism; Chains still being chains, whether made of gold or iron’. The “Corrupting nature of power’ made it essential for public safety that ‘power not requisite should not be given’ to government and ‘that necessary powers should be carefully guarded”.1

Richard Henry Lee

“America is a system of taxation to which a government is attached.”2

Part 1 covered an article by conservative journalist Daniel McCarthy wherein he rebutted liberal solutions to Public Mass Shootings (PMS). He hit the right chords at first but then notes turned sour. McCarthy tied private ownership of firearms to membership in a militia under strict State control. He contends the Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776) “inspired” the Second Amendment. He adds a reason to keep arms is to maintain a well-regulated militia “under strict subordination to, and governed by the civil power” dismissing as “right-wing folklore” claims the Amendment’s authors in any way intended it to support citizen uprisings against a tyrannical government i.e. Shay’s Rebellion.3 Stephen King writes in Danse Macabre that Bram Stoker’s Dracula inspired his novel Salem’s Lot, an homage to Stoker. However, King’s novel is wholly his own and the narrative quite different.4 McCarthy’s problems are more serious than errant extrapolation.

Article III of the Virginia Declaration of Rights written by George Mason reads, “That a well regulated militia, composed of the Body of the People, trained to Arms, is the proper, natural, and safe Defence of a free State; that standing Armies, in Time of Peace, should be avoided as dangerous to liberty” [emphasis and spelling in the original].5 Regardless of inspiration, Virginia’s Declaration of Rights is not the Second Amendment. In addition, local autonomous militias pre-existed declarations and constitutions.

Colonial survival, especially in outlying villages and settlements, required individuals possess and be skilled with arms long before the Revolution. For the most part, Americans did not acquire skill at arms serving in militias or in standing armies.5 No army or police force existed to protect colonists from criminals or against attacks by the French and their Indian allies. When British Royal Governors began seizing the firearms and ammunition of colonials, Virginians George Washington, and George Mason formed the Fairfax County Militia Association. It was a ground up not top down unit. Enlistment was voluntary. Each member had to supply his own weapons and ammunition and they chose officers through election.6

Mason shed light in 1775 on the meaning of militia noting a “well regulated militia” was comprised of “Gentleman, Freeholders, and other Freeman”. Its purpose was to “protect ‘our ancient Laws & Liberty’ from a standing army” [emphasis and spelling in the original].7 For Mason and many of his contemporaries, a standing army, whether British or American, national or state, was a threat to liberty. Mason wrote, “All men are by nature born equally free and independent”. The greatest threat to liberty was government in all its forms. He defined a “well-regulated” militia as the whole of the people, possessed of arms, who formed and organized themselves into “independent companies” prepared to “resist the standing army of a despotic state”.8 Founding Father Richard Henry Lee observed a militia could only consist of the people as a whole. If it was organized and maintained in continual service, it would constitute a “select militia” no different from a standing army in peacetime a practice that the Founders, for the most part, abhorred.9

Americans and political leaders universally viewed the individual right to keep and bear arms, and the right of States to call up a militia, as two separate issues neither dependent on the other. Beyond the Founder’s hope that Americans would maintain their precision with arms, the right to keep and bear arms had/has nothing to do with membership in a militia. If states called on the people to form a militia, prior experience with arms would lessen the time to train them.10 Had the Founders known future Americans would manufacture confusion concerning the Second Amendment’s meaning, they might have bifurcated it into two separate amendments. Why didn’t they? At the time State delegates ratified and then amended the Constitution, there was no confusion with respect to the right to keep and bear arms. It was an individual G-d given right. Some delegates opposed adding a Bill of Rights to the Constitution as superfluous. States delegated specific authorities to the federal government enumerating them in Article I, Section 8. Government cannot regulate activities or rights over which it has no authority. The States delegated to the federal government no authority to regulate the right to keep and bear arms. For it to do so is unconstitutional. Various state delegates argued to declare that people have an individual right to keep and bear arms was akin to declaring people breath air.11

Part 2 explained the so-called “Shay’s Rebellion” in Western Massachusetts was used by proponents of a strong national government, who wanted to jettison the Articles of Confederation, as a boogeyman to whip up fear among Americans that the nation was falling apart. Like public schools today, merchants of mendacious propaganda told Americans then that landless rabble, thieves, bandits, and poor hardscrabble farmers deeply in debt had formed a violent mob and marched on Boston to overthrow the state government. If successful, the rebels would have freed men in debtor’s prisons, erased public and private debts, and seized the land of the rich to divide among themselves. This story is problematic to say the least.

Shay’s was actually several rebellions led for the most part by leading men in their communities. They were patriots, Revolutionary War veterans, political and religious leaders, landowners, and men of means.12 They called themselves “Regulators” organized into militias to halt depredations committed against them by the corrupt government in Boston controlled by a coastal banking and commercial aristocracy.13 Only three years prior (1783), Americans had concluded a war against Great Britain based on similar offenses. It is incongruous that leading Founding Fathers then and textbook authors today, fail to see the parallels and similarities.

Daniel McCarthy is a credentialed well-established journalist writing for conservative and Libertarian publications. It is unfortunate he dismisses as “right-wing folklore” the notion the Founders intended the Second Amendment support a Shay’s-like rebellion. They certainly did. If the federal and or State governments commit crimes against the people’s rights, they have but two choices, submit or resist. The Left employs the labels “right-wing” and “far-right” equally to the former Nazi Party, Ku Klux Klan, and their modern iterations. They also apply it to patriots from Ronald Reagan to Rush Limbaugh and other conservatives, the antithesis of such groups. Although their motive should be obvious, regrettably such a malicious and deceitful practice works in post-literate America. How disappointing a learned man like McCarthy would follow suit. Was Shays’ Rebellion emblematic of anarchy, lawlessness, and chaos verging on destroying America or, were their actions an embodiment of the spirit that sparked and guided the Revolution of 1776? Is it possible to find support for the rebellion in the Founder’s writings?

The Federalist Papers are not part of the Constitution nor do they necessarily reflect majority opinion among America’s Founders. They are a collection of polemics in support of ratification of the proposed Constitution (1787). Its author’s opinions represent a spectrum spanning desires for a strong national government with states as appendages, Hamilton and to a lesser extent, Madison, to true Federalists like John Jay.14 Nevertheless, with respect to resisting government tyranny, they represent commonly held views among Americans.

Hamilton and his allies adopted the name Federalists but they were actually nationalists. They sought to extinguish state autonomy and sovereignty in favor of a central unitary government much like that in England. Hamilton believed the English system was the best of all. Others, like James Wilson of Pennsylvania, were Federalists but recognized Hamilton’s plan to destroy state sovereignty would also destroy the Constitution hence supported creation of a federal system of government. The central government would have authority over international relations, trade, war, and functions only a central government could execute. States would retain all other functions and authorities, sovereign in their own sphere. Both nationalists and true Federalists supported the right of the people to overthrow their own government should it become oppressive, tyrannical, and destructive to their liberties.

In Federalist 28, Hamilton writes there exist circumstances in which the “national” (sic) government may “resort to force”. They would include “seditions and insurrections” that are “maladies as inseparable from the body politic as tumors and eruptions from the natural body…” He also refers to uprisings in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania.15 However, Hamilton addresses circumstances in which the people have a legitimate right to rise up against their rulers. He observes, “If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no resource left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government…” Hamilton adds that self-defense (armed resistance) against a “national” (sic) government offered greater “prospects” for success than against an “individual state”.16 Whether resistance to a federal or state government would likely be more successful, Hamilton affirms the right of the people to rise up against a tyrannical government. Only an armed people could execute such an undertaking.

Hamilton condemns those who betray the people’s liberties as “usurpers”. Although people might organize for armed resistance, “usurpers, clothed with the forms of legal authority, can too often crush the opposition in embryo”. Hamilton argues states should be in charge of organizing and executing the resistance not local militias raised by the people. This is because the states would have more arms and larger forces to resist a federal army.17 However, suppose States, not the federal government, commit usurpation against the people’s liberties. Did Hamilton forget that the people of their respective states raised their own local militias to oppose the State Militias controlled by Royal Governors? He explains the methods by which states can organize in cooperation with each other to resist “invasions of the public liberty” by the central government. Even if a federal army quelled resistance in one state, others states would respond “with fresh forces”.18 Strategies and methods aside, Hamilton establishes that States have the right to raise an army to resist usurpation of their powers by the federal government. The people possess the same right against their respective states. Is Shays’ Rebellion a great departure from this principle? Hamilton, nor anyone else, argues people have a right to arm and rise up against government over pet peeves or perceived injustices. The standard justifying resistance is gross violations of the Bill of Rights and suppression of the people’s liberties by government with no possibility of redress.

Critics of the proposed Constitution warned the federal government might turn its power to call up, organize, and equip state militias against the states turning militias into a federal army. Hamilton addressed this possibility in Federalist 28.19 He conceded in times of extreme emergency (invasion by a foreign power, insurrection) the federal government would need to call up and train state militias because such training allows them to act in concert. However, it would not be the same as raising, organizing, equipping, and disciplining a federal standing army. To do so would be futile requiring too much time in the face of an immediate threat. It was not feasible to take the “yeomanry” far from their towns and farms long enough to transform them into professional soldiers. If the federal government called up State militias, the latter would be responsible for arming, equipping, and choosing their officers. The federal government would train and subject them to military discipline. The point is militias come from the people. If harnessed for a national purpose in times of extreme emergency, their loyalty remains to their respective states. Once the crisis had passed, the federal government returns militias to their states. This would create a trained body of armed people large enough to oppose a standing federal army should one attempt to suppress the states. Hamilton wrote that militias were the “best possible security” against a standing army. For any of this to be remotely feasible, the people would have to retain their own arms.20

In Federalist 46, James Madison noted, “Ultimate authority wherever the derivative may be found, resides in the people alone” and not in the federal or state governments.21 If the federal government attempted to expand its “power beyond due limits” at the expense of states, the “latter would still have the advantage in the means of defeating such encroachments”. The States would resist the federal government by force. Even if the latter had the resources to raise powerful standing armies, states would always possess a greater resource in the number of citizens within their boundaries. State militias would outnumber a federal army.22 He added that Americans possessed a great advantage over all others in the world; whether the threat came from federal or state governments, the people are armed. In America, all government is “subordinate to the people” and the people are ultimately the masters of the militia because they are the militia.23

The Founders are clear. People have an individual right to keep and bear arms independent of membership in any form of militia or military unit. States have a right to resist, by force, federal usurpation of State rights and Constitutional liberties. The people retain the same rights with respect to both. Why do some attempt to tie firearms ownership to service in a quasi-professional militia or “national” (sic), State guard? Perhaps they do not trust the common man to be the master of his affairs including responsibility for his safety. People buying, building, and selling arms sans government oversight frightens them. What you smell is the aroma of elitism that permeates all aristocracies, economic, political, or professional. They have never trusted the Great Unwashed with freedom. To the elite, for anyone to claim people have the right to keep and bear arms, as a defense against the federal and state governments is unthinkable. Nevertheless, that is how this nation was born.

11 Pauline Maier, Ratification: The People Debate The Constitution, 1787-1788 (New York N.Y., Simon & Schuster, 2010), 67.

22 Author, 12 March 2020.

33 Daniel McCarthy, “Liberalism Cannot Stop The Shootings” American Spectator at https://spectator.us/liberalism-cannot-stop-shootings/

44 Stephen King, Danse Macabre (New York, N.Y. Berkley Books, 1982), 25, 26, 62, 63, 79, 80.

55 Stephen P. Halbrook, The Founders Second Amendment: Origins of the Right to Bear Arms (Chicago, Illinois, Ivan R. Dee, 2008), 129.

55 Stephen P. Halbrook, That Every Man Be Armed: The Evolution Of A Constitutional Right (Oakland, California, The Independent Institute, 1984), 58.

66 IBID. 60.

77 IBID. 61.

88 IBID. 61.

99 IBID. 71-72.

1010 Forrest McDonald, Novus Ordo Seclorum: The Intellectual Origins of the Constitution (Lawrence, Kansas, University Press of Kansas, 1985), ix, 60-63. See also, Gary T. Amos, Defending The Declaration (Brentwood, Tennessee, Wolgemuth & Hyatt, Publishers, Inc., 1989), 35-74, 117-118. Sheldon Richman, “Properly Interpreting the 2nd Amendment”, Human Events (June 16 1995), Halbrook’s The Founder’s Second Amendment, 221, and Gary A. Shade, “The Right to Keep and Bear Arms: The Legacy of Republicanism vs. Absolutism”, at https://www-firarmsandliberty.com/papers-shade/TheRightToKeepAndBearArms.Pdf

1111 Maier, 56.

1212 Leonard L. Richards, Shays’s Rebellion: The American Revolution’s Final Battle (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), 43-62.

1313 IBID. 89-116.

1414 Kevin R. C. Gutzman, J.D., Ph.D. The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution (Washington, D.C. Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2007), 15-28.

1515 Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison, The Federalist (Birmingham, Alabama, Library of American Freedoms, Palladium Press, 2000), 170-171.

1616 IBID. 173.

1717 IBID. 173.

1818 IBID. 174.

1919 IBID. 175.

2020 IBID. 175-176, 178, 179.

2121 IBID. 305.

2222 IBID. 309-310.

2323 IBID. 310-311.

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"News Media", authoritarian swine, Culture, Junk Science, Law, Media, mindset, Politics, So Much Stupid!

Corona Mad hatters and Viral Narcs

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“There are currently no vaccines available to protect against human Coronaviruses…”1

Won’t hurt a bit

I am fresh from my son’s orthodontist appointment where a stern faced dental hygienist, hidden behind a lab coat, oversized gauzy surgical mask, and opaque gloves confronted us before a locked door. As we began up the steps, she waved a spray bottle back and forth like a crazed gunman yelling something unintelligible. Seeing my lack of comprehension, she stabbed a Latex coated finger at a sign jutting from a flowerbed like an East German prison guard. Words in red letters ordered us to return to our car, telephone the orthodontist to announce our arrival, and then wait until we received a callback summons for my son to enter. Can I not tell you we are here, I asked. She shook her head and yelled “no”! We must follow the system. My response in English questioned the intelligence of this process but a phrase in French crossed my mind.

This is a polemic but not necessarily a dissertation on the science of Red China’s2 virus. After all, what exactly is the science? Is it the proclamations of government mouthpieces or the opinions of scientists censored by Face Book and other social media platforms? Claims to having the “science” are like moles popping up from numerous holes, no two alike. Science? My high school’s government course included a required unit on AIDS. On the one hand, teachers were to scare the bejabbers out of kids over how easy it was to contract AIDS so they would practice “safe sex”. I was relieved no one asked me to differentiate safe from unsafe sex. I thought it had to do with rhinestone cowboy boots, a unicycle, a giant kite, and a rope bridge spanning an Andean gorge. On the other hand, teachers were to stress how difficult it was to get AIDS in order to relieve homosexuals of further stigma. Science? Yeah, public education. Regardless of what the “science” is, reactions by Americans to China’s virus has been a revelation.

From the nation’s experts: politicians, movie stars, entertainers, and professional athletes, comes the rallying cry, “We’re all in this together”! What a joke. Who is this “we”? How are they suffering? If anything, the frenzied manner in which greedy grubby fingered savages ravage store shelves, hogging up the product de jour, demonstrates it is really, every man for himself. And it’s not even Black Friday. Reaction by the Great Unwashed provide us a peek as to how they will react in the face of a greater crisis.

In the very early days of the Wuhan Pandemic, American officials raced breathlessly to microphones announcing the virus did not originate from a laboratory nor had Commie scientists biologically modified or weaponized an existing virus. These premature declarations reminded me of government officials, following an explosion, mass shooting, or rental truck mowing citizens down in a city center, racing before news cameras to announce, “It’s not terrorism” even before the names of the injured or suspects were known. Okay, what did they say was its origin? It came from Chinese raw bat eaters who coughed on Chinese raw baby Koala bear eaters in Wuhan, China. Make’s sense, doesn’t it? Like ripples from a rock thrown in a pond, Red China’s virus continues to have reverberating consequences.

No Tourists

Years as policeman and teacher left me with a lifelong need to decompress. Peace and quiet in the outdoors, far from Thomas Harding’s Madding Crowd, has proven the best medicament. I spend a fair amount of time in the wild especially winter, my favorite season. For any outdoorsman/woman, the attraction is nature’s beauty, aroma of wild flowering plants, animals, birds, and the sound of wind rushing through branches absent the strident cacophony of civilization. All was good until government lockdowns spawned disastrous levels of people practicing unprotected tourism in the woods and along once tranquil trails.

New to the outdoors, CoronaTourists tend to be loud, obnoxious, and display self-centered ignorance with respect to trail etiquette (yield trails to runners and the mountain bikers who built them). They don jackets, coats, hats, and mittens to brave frigid 60-degree temperatures. Millennial CoronaTourists seem to drag every vestige of civilization along with them. Blaring radios, clouds of marijuana, screaming children, tampons, fast foot wrappers, baby binkies, Big Gulp cups, Happy Meal toys, condoms, cigarettes, Band Aids, undergarments, and beer cans are now parts of the “regular” landscape. For Pete’s sake, shouldn’t these people be crowding into stores fighting over the last roll of toilet paper and box of 9mm ammunition? With respect to Touristbasms, winter has proven the only effective disinfectant to clean them out of the woods.

Gimme shelter

Following a recent hike, I crossed a rural road to the above shelter perched in a lonely field surrounded by woods. A sign announced the shelter is closed. The incongruity of closing an outdoor shelter, in the middle of nowhere, in the wind, fresh air, and sunlight, as opposed to people cooped up in homes, apartments, and buildings rebreathing the same air, is unfathomable. County officials cannot trust people to limit gatherings to ten or less so, they closed the shelter. One size fits all rules with no appeal to common sense permitted. Typical bureaucrats. Suppose more than ten people gather beneath the shelter to commemorate a War Veteran’s passing, a child’s birthday, or a teen’s graduation. Who would know out there, unless someone snitched? Probably liberals. Would the Coronastapo come and round up these malefactors? Prior to all this, I accepted lockdowns, quarantines, and that millions of us were going to die. However, these incongruities caused me to begin asking questions about the efficacy and legality of the government’s response to the viral outbreak.

If only two people are in a store, one healthy and one infected with the virus, and the latter coughs on the former, the healthy person is now likely infected. Suppose there are two hundred people in the same store, and none infected, and those with a dry throat cough on others, how many will be infected with the virus? None. Stay with me now. Healthy people cannot transmit what they do not have. Why quarantine masses of healthy people? Why is it “safe” for ten or less people to congregate but add one more, and now they are all doomed? It makes no sense. There is one possible explanation however implausible. The Wuhan virus is super-intelligent and someone has taught it arithmetic. Loathing humans, nevertheless, it can tolerate up to ten people but if one more comes along, Red China’s virus goes berserk.

I began asking more questions. Before long, I discovered many Americans have so fallen in line with the government’s talking points that to ask questions makes them go berserk.

I texted a friend about a humorous incident. I found a surgical mask on a trail that is no more than a sliver of dirt, boot width wide, bisecting a large field. Facing the woods from the gravel parking lot, the field extends approximately one hundred yards to the left and a half-mile to the right of the trail. It is always windy out there. Instead of seeing the humor in the situation, like bicyclers and people in cars wearing surgical masks, my friend was outraged. He denounced people who do not wear masks and practice social distancing as “disgusting”, lacking in “proper education” who had probably been “born and lived under a rock” and needed hit over the head by one. He was ecstatic that our governor, Maryland Republican Larry Hogan, had “taken the bull by the horns” implementing “strict enforceable guidelines” and thanked G-d we had a governor with “insight and fortitude”. Considering Hogan is a RHINO, called a “closet Democrat” by the ultra-liberal Baltimore Sun,3 I thought he was joking. I asked if this was sarcasm and he replied with an emphatic “no”. I replied, “I’m sorry to say, I see it a bit differently”. His demand to know why was more emphatic than his no. We had never discussed politics and, not wanting to step on toes, I tread lightly.

Instead of specific arguments, I listed categories; lockdowns based on debunked models, Constitutional problems, and the efficacy of quarantining entire populations. I observed it was remarkable Governors closed down gun stores and churches but deemed pot shops, liquor stores, and abortion mills essential. That was it. My friend’s responses came so rapid fire I could not keep up. I was answering question one but he was on number four. I tried to explain the government based its rationale for shutting down entire countries first on Neil Ferguson’s Imperial College-London computer model predicting two-million dead and then the University of Washington’s model claiming several hundred thousand dead by sometime in April. Reality and the subsequent work by scientists obviated the need for shutdowns when they debunked both models.4 Ignoring this, my friend declared medical emergencies superseded my “constitutional theory” adding that the Constitution had been amended many times. I noted the Constitution was the law of the land and superseded by nothing. Uncertain as to the relevance of counting amendments, I pointed out it has been amended only seventeen times since 1792. I added no amendment had abolished the Bill of Rights or principle of federalism. He became angry and told me to pass an amendment overruling the virus. I asked, what is the rationale for shutting the country down for three weeks, why not four, and why six as opposed to seven? I asked how long should we be in lockdown and what was the rationale for his answer. What should happen if, when the government lets Americans out again, there is a spike in viral infections? Do we all go back into lockdown? Refusing to answer my questions, he instead accused me of treating him like a student in one of my classes and called me a “pompous ass”. It went downhill from there. Hoping we could emerge still friends, I did not descend into ad hominin attacks. Had he not ended the conversation abruptly, I would have explained this; the Constitution is a contract between government and the people. It lists specifically what governments, state and federal, may or may not do. It bars the federal government from engaging in any activity not authorized by the Constitution. The Constitution is also a restraining order against government to protect the people’s rights from infringement. If people accept an “exception” to the law in but one case, it establishes precedent for future exceptions made by those in power. Exceptions to one’s Bill of Rights. Witness now how quickly people rush to snitch on those daring to exercise their Bill of Rights. Google how many states are hiring folks to execute contact tracing surveillance schemes. Will the government and schools create National Antiviral Zealous Informer Youth Leagues to Narc on people, even their own parents?

The President’s powers are found in Article II of the Constitution and comprise but three paragraphs. Other than exercise of military powers in time of war, appointing listed government officials, and granting pardons, his/her only other function is to ensure “the laws be faithfully executed”.5 No mention is made of executive orders. At most, one could argue presidents may issue an executive order in furtherance of a constitutionally legal law or bill passed by the Congress. However, no such order could create law, directives, regulations, restrictions, and so forth, as those are the sole functions of the legislative branch. The Constitution does not authorize the president to shut down commercial businesses, confine people to their homes, restrict any legal activity, dictate what people must wear in public, social-distancing, or send taxpayer’s money as bailouts to businesses and individuals. Therefore, these activities are illegal. If true, cannot Congress do all this?

The Constitution lists the powers of Congress in Article I, Section 8, known as the Enumerated Powers. Seven of the eighteen deal with the military. The others cover land set aside for the capital, laws regulating immigration, post offices, coining of money, creation of federal courts, copyrights, punishing pirates, trade, and taxing and borrowing money to fund the above.6 Congress has no power, under the Declaration or Constitution, to shut down commercial establishments, schools, or confine people to their residences. It has no authority to appropriate the wealth of Americans and transfer it to others for any purpose whatsoever. Nor do Governors. These are grotesque violations of the Constitution. Regardless of what people, mostly liberals, say, there are no “for the public safety” or “for the common good” exceptions to the Constitution. America’s Constitution is over the government. The subordinate cannot overrule its superior. Does anyone care? No doubt, enemies of the Constitution will argue the Commerce Clause grants Congress authority to engage in illegal activities.

At the time [1787] delegates meeting in Philadelphia drafted and debated the proposed Constitution, States had established trade barriers against sister states. They taxed goods crossing their borders. Coastal states with ports added additional tariffs on goods from abroad. This led to a great deal of conflict between states. Delegates wrote the Commerce Clause to deny states the power to restrict interstate commerce in any way. Liberals disguise and lie about Congress’s power to “regulate commerce”7 by ignoring its 18th century common use meaning in favor of their redefinition. Regulate did not mean control, supervise, or make rules in any way. Regulate meant to keep “regular”. If states enacted taxes and tariffs restricting the flow of commerce across their borders, Congress had the power to knock them down. Congress has no authority to control any commercial activity simply because it crosses state lines. It has no authority to direct, regulate, restrict, or control commercial activity within any state whatsoever.8 American ignorance with respect to their own Constitution is appalling. Even a conservative Baptist preacher with whom I’m acquainted texted church members saying he had to obey the government’s order to close the church based on Romans 13: 1-2; (1) “Every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from G-d. (2) “Therefore whoever resists authority has opposed the ordinance of G-d; and they who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves”.9 I wanted to ask him what he would say to America’s Founding Fathers who rebelled against George III, King of England, King of the English Empire, King of the colonies, and Head of the Church of England. I held my peace.

Historian and theologian David Barton writes that the pastor’s opinion gave birth to the principle of “Divine Right of Kings”; the notion G-d selected every ruler who ruled, a principle eagerly embraced by monarchs and emperors. Regardless of how arbitrary, capricious, and tyrannical, people have to obey these rulers. French theologian Philippe du Plessis Mornay wrote in 1579 [Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos, A Defense of Liberty Against Tyrants] the government ordained by G-d referred to “the general institution of government” not each and every distinct form of government. G-d’s purpose expressed in Romans 13 was to oppose anarchy. Dissolution of society leads to lawlessness ending in rebellion against and ultimately rejection of G-d and His law. Therefore, G-d opposes rebellion if it leads to anarchy and chaos. Otherwise, people would have to obey the dictates of murderous Communist regimes.10 Another way to look at is this; if presidents, Congresses, and Governors violate their own Constitutions and state laws, are they preserving G-d’s order or provoking resistance? If the acts of political officials in violation of the law become so egregious, it sparks rebellion, whose actions then are leading toward anarchy, those of political leaders, or those of people attempting to restore the rule of law?

Red China unleashing yet another Coronavirus has revealed much. If government officials can scare enough people with claims a crisis menaces the United States, (global warming, murder hornets, viruses, etc.) then people will do what they are told without question even if to do so violates the Bill of Rights. If these officials can convince them it is their patriotic duty to obey, they will turn against their neighbors reporting those who do not comply. There is no longer a “we”. In a crisis, it is every man for himself. As Tucker Carlson would say, “I have to live in the same country as these people”? Finally, people who lust for power will always stoke fear, panic, and anarchy in order to promote their personal agenda that, throughout history, has always been to rule over others.

Health worker?
Nope, snitch
Yeah, it’s been done

11 National Federation For Infectious Diseases, “Coronaviruses” at https://www.nfid.org/infectiousdiseases/coronaviruses/ There are approximately seven Coronaviruses. There are no vaccines for any of them.

22 As a high school government teacher, during a “discussion” with colleagues over certain countries hosting symposiums on education (Cuba, Communist Vietnam, and Communist China) Jenny, a liberal colleague at a sister high school, became incensed over my use of the term “Red China”. After all Jenny said with rage, she had adopted two children from China and that made me a racist. Why would adopting children negate the nature of their country’s government of origin? I have no idea. Jenny had a map in her classroom with South America at the top and North America at the bottom stating the current north/south designation was “racist”. She also had pro-Obama posters hanging prominently. A few years later, one of my government students was telling me about the District sponsored student trip to China. She revealed that Jenny had personally attacked me, in front of the students, in China. My student thought my reaction would be anger. On the contrary. I smiled the remainder of the day basking in the glory of having been trashed out, by name, in a Communist Country!

33 Baltimore Sun, “Larry Hogan: Closet Democrat”? April 10 2018, at https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/editorial/bs-ed-0410-larry-hogan-20180409.story.html

44 Douglas MacKinon, “What if the sky is falling Coronavirus models are wrong”? The Hill at https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/489962-what-if-the-sky-is-falling-coronavirus-models-are-simply-wrong/html.

55 Richard J. Hardy, Government In America (Boston, Massachusetts, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1992), 122-23.

66 IBID. 116-17.

77 IBID. Clause 3, 117.

88 Randy E. Barnett, “The Original Meaning of the Commerce Clause”, University of Chicago Law Review (Winter 2001), at http://www.law.edu/rbarnett/origins.html. See also Brion McClanahan, The Founding Father’s Guide to the Constitution, (Washington, D.C., Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2012), 38, 50, 54-56, 86. James Madison, The Federalists #42 Clinton Rossiter, Editor (New York, N.Y., A Mentor Book, New American Library, 1961), 267-68. John Taylor of Caroline Virginia, James McClellan, Editor New Views of the Constitution of the United States (Washington, D.C., Regnery Publishing, Inc., 1823/2000), 328-30.

99 Editors, New American Standard Bible (Grand Rapids, Michigan, Zondervan, 1995), 1081.

1010 David Barton, “Was the American Revolution a Biblically Justified Act”? Wallbuilders, at http://www.wallbuilders.com/resources/search/detai.php?ResourceID=40

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Media, mindset, Politics, Rights, self defense, Violence-Enabling Victim Disarmers

COVID Catastrophe

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Sheila told us that the coronavirus has her feeling not terribly well. I know the feeling, and thought I’d share my own misgivings.

Per the CDC, the virus is killing 1,000 – 6,000 people per week; probably around 3,500. There are 2,000,000 – 6,000,000 new cases every week.

No. Not COVID-19. That one killed around 4,000 that week. Funny how we have hard numbers for that. There were around 200,000 new cases.

I meant the Flu.

As many as 6,000 flu victims dead vs. 4,262 for COVID-19.

6,000,000 new flu cases vs. 200,000 COVID-19.

Flu? Business as usual.

COVID-19? The sky is falling! The lion is sleeping with the lamb! ITEOTWAWKI!

We must destroy the Constitution to save the village country from the flu… I mean, COVID-19. Starting with the Second Amendment. After all, you can’t shoot a virus… Never mind that no one but violence-enabling victim disarmers have suggested such a thing, as a strawman argument against people being armed to defend themselves.

Of course, what we are concerned about, why the people are arming themselves, is the “authorities” doing mass releases of inmates, the police telling us they won’t respond to calls, and even closing entire police stations.

An over-reaction? Communist lefties are calling for looting. And yes, it has begun. That’s why stores and restaurants are boarding up their fronts. Crime is rising dramatically.

But… Coronavirus! No one needs a gun for a virus!

The First Amendment hasn’t fared much better.

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, unless COVID.

Somehow I missed the COVID-19 exception in the Constitution.

I wonder why de Blasio didn’t mention mosques in his threat against churches and synagogues.

But these rapes of basic freedoms are all good and necessary because tens of millions have sickened and tens of thousands have died… Oops, that was flu; we don’t care about them. Ahem.

But these rapes of basic freedoms are all good and necessary because a couple hundred thousand of people got COVID-19, and a few thousand have died! That’s what matters.

Right, Rahm?

I can’t help but wonder what impact this COVID-induced economic shutdown will have, long term, on American livelihood and lives. So let me end on a humorous note. Humor is one of humans’ best ways of dealing with stress.

[Permission to republish this article is granted so long as it is not edited, and the author and The Zelman Partisans are credited.]

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Academics, authoritarian swine, gun control, SCOTUS, You can't fix stupid

The Right to Keep and Bear Arms Is an UNenumerated Right?

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Trigger Warning: The referenced column is written by a left-wing whacko acting professor at the People’s Republic of Kommiefornia’s UC-Davis, and is published in The Atlantic.

I don’t know what constitution Aaron Tang — who purports to be a “Constitutional law & education law prof” — teaches, but he should bone up on the United States Constitution. If he taught anywhere but the University of California – Davis, I’d call that fraud. But he’s par for the anti-rights course there.

What If the Court Saw Other Rights as Generously as Gun Rights?
Both gun-rights advocates and educational equity activists use similar legal strategies. Why does the Supreme Court treat them so differently?

Probably because the right to keep and bear arms is specifically mentioned in the Second Amendment to the Constitution, and education is not. check for yourself; no mention of education, learn, teach, school, university, college, or anything else education-related. (While we do speak of an Electoral College, that term doesn’t actually appear in the Constitution; only “electors.”)

If the courts treated education the same “generous” way they do Second Amendment rights, you might need a license to go to school, minors wouldn’t be allowed to go to school, you’d need to pass a background check before every class, you might be allowed one class per month, and you’d be limited to a low-capacity tenth grade education. The Department of Education could arbitrarily ban knowledge of algebra and imprison you for knowing it. You might be allowed to go to college, but only after paying $200 for the permission slip that would come eight or nine months later, and local law enforcement would be informed. Depending on your major, even with the permission slip you would not be allowed to attend a college or university established after 1986.

Spearheaded by new leadership at the NRA in the late 1970s, gun-rights activists engaged for decades in an effort to persuade the Supreme Court to recognize an individual Second Amendment right to bear arms for self-defense at home. The Court ultimately enshrined that right 12 years ago in D.C. v. Heller, displacing a long-standing consensus to the contrary.

Tang clearly didn’t read Heller, or he’d have seen Scalia’s many, many citations of Supreme Court cases, law, and history supporting the individual right. The Supreme Court has been recognizing an individual right of the people since at least 1857.

At first glance, the gun-rights movement and the pursuit of educational equity seem to have little in common. But they in fact share an approach: Both promote arguments that rely on what are called “implied” or “unenumerated” constitutional rights.

Oh, really?

Article II: 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.

Article II, Two, 2. Numeral. Enumerated.

The argument for a constitutional right to train at any shooting range is far from obvious. The Second Amendment speaks of a right to “keep” and “bear” arms, but says nothing about a right to train or practice.

I’ll grant that the words “train” and “practice” don’t appear, but please note that “well regulated Militia.” What did “regulate” mean when that was written?

regulate: 1. to adjust by rule or method 2. to direct

What the heck kind of well regulated, ordered, prepared, methodical militia is untrained, unpracticed? Certainly not the sort specified by the Second Militia Act of 1792 which required militia members (each and every free able-bodied white male citizen of the respective states, resident therein, who is or shall be of the age of eighteen years, and under the age of forty-five years) to arm themselves with militarily suitable firearms and equipment.

That every citizen so enrolled and notified, shall, within six months thereafter,How to be armed and accoutred. provide himself with a good musket or firelock, a sufficient bayonet and belt, two spare flints, and a knapsack, a pouch with a box therein to contain not less than twenty-four cartridges, suited to the bore of his musket or firelock, each cartridge to contain a proper quantity of powder and ball: or with a good rifle, knapsack, shot-pouch and powder-horn, twenty balls suited to the bore of his rifle, and a quarter of a pound of powder; and shall appear, so armed, accoutred and provided, when called out to exercise, or into service, except, that when called out on company days to exercise only, he may appear without a knapsack.

Further note that government officials and employees were not included in the militia; dispensing with the common violence-enabling victim-disarmer argument that the militia is the army and national guard (a point the Supreme Court noted in 1990, which for numerically-challenged people like Tang is many years before Heller).

But see that “exercise”? That isn’t talking about jumping jacks and sit-ups. A /militia/military exercise is training and practice.

And just in case Tang is as hazy on law as he is the Constitution, the militia is still codified in 10 U.S. Code § 246. Militia: composition and classe. And yes, government officials and employees are still exempted.

Aaron Tang is clearly at UC-Davis because the heads of every other law school in the country were smart enough not to hire the ignoramus.

[Permission to republish this article is granted so long as it is not edited, and the author and The Zelman Partisans are credited.]

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