- As we witness the developing struggle of AIPAC's many
candidates arrayed against Ron Paul, it might be well to discuss the document
on which he depends for his decision-making, since that is the main difference
between him and the other dozen or so presidents-in-waiting. And there
is the long-awaited "decision" by the Supreme Court on whether
or not we can carry guns, based on the deceptively-worded 2nd Article of
Amendment. The US Constitution consists of seven original Articles and
now twenty-seven Articles of Amendment. One of those latter ones rendered
the whole instrument null and void, but we'll get to that later.
-
- It should be remembered that everything Abraham Lincoln
did, everything Woodrow Wilson did, almost everything Franklin D. Roosevelt
did and right up to everything George W. Bush has done were found "constitutional"
by the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court even found its RICO-style appointment
of Bush to the presidency "constitutional." Everything the government
does is "constitutional," with very few exceptions. The Civil
War, the Spanish American War, the First World War, the Second World War,
the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the War on Poverty, the War on Drugs and
the War on Terror, plus slavery, denying women the vote and prohibiting
drinking were/are all "constitutional" according to the Supreme
Court, which was created by the Constitution. The Supreme Court is one
of the three "checks and balances" of the Constitution. But what
is the check and balance on the Supreme Court?
-
- Don't get me wrong - I like Ron Paul. Who doesn't, other
than the owners of our Zionist State Factories, the military-industry complex?
If he became president, their trillion dollar death machine would collapse
like WTC-7. Those who planned the 9/11 massacre don't want him. The owners
of the Federal Reserve Corporation don't like him, of course. But I repeat
myself.
-
- Ron Paul thinks the Constitution is some sort of safeguard
of our rights, some sort of limitation on what government can do. Of the
thousands of congressmen who have been his colleagues over thirty years,
he is the only one who still believes that, which is part of his charm.
Larry McDonald had a similar though less stringent philosophy and we saw
what happened to him. George Hansen, too, believed the Constitution did
not allow terroristic tax collection but he was wrong and we saw what happened
to him. Ask George Hansen if he still believes in the Constitution. Jim
Trafficant believed the Constitution protected the rights of his constituent,
John Demjanjuk, and for that he, too, rots in prison. I don't recommend
asking Trafficant what he thinks of the Constitution.
-
- Now several million Americans have the idea that the
Constitution, if it were our guide for good government, would have prevented
say, our terroristic war against Islam. But I disagree. The Constitution
is not our friend. That is, when it still was in effect it was not our
friend. It has not even been in effect for about 147 years. For all that
time since we have been under the Law of the Gun, or of Deuteronomy, which
is the same thing. We've been pretending that there has been some legal
framework for the police state we call America. But there really never
was, from the very beginning.
-
- I call as my first witness the most significant man in
our history, the man whose combined powers of thinking and speech and action
persuaded Virginians and others to rebel against the cruel and despotic
forces of King George III. He urged rebellion at a time when four regiments
of British troops were camped up in Boston, more were on the way to New
York and nearby Chesapeake Bay, where squadrons of British vessels from
the world's mightiest navy were ready for action. On March 20, 1775 in
Richmond, with George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, George Mason and others
in the audience, he said,
-
- "I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided,
and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging the future
but by the past. And judging by the past, I wish to know what there has
been in the conduct of the British ministry for the last ten years that
justifies those hopes which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves
and the house? Is it that insidious smile with which our petition has
been lately received? Trust it not, sir; it will prove a snare to your
feet. Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss.
-
- Ask yourselves how this gracious reception of our petition
comports with those warlike preparations which cover our waters and darken
our land. Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation?
Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled that force must
be called in to win back our love? Let us not deceive ourselves, sir.
These are the implements of war and subjugation - the last arguments to
which kings resort. I ask gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array,
if its purpose be not to force us to submission? Can gentlemen assign
any other possible motive for it? Has Great Britain any enemy in this
quarter of the world to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies?
-
- No, sir, she has none. They are meant for us: They
can be meant for no other. They are sent over to bind and rivet upon us
those chains which the British ministry have been so long forging. And
what have we to oppose to them? Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been
trying that for the last ten years. Have we anything new to offer upon
the subject? Nothing. We have held the subject up in every light of which
it is capable, but it has been all in vain.
-
- Shall we resort to entreaty and humble supplication?
What terms shall we find that have not been already exhausted? Let us
not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves longer. Sir, we have done everything
that could be done to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have
petitioned - we have remonstrated - we have supplicated - we have prostrated
ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest
the tyrannical hands of the ministry and Parliament. Our petitions have
been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and
insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned,
with contempt, from the foot of the throne.
-
- In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond
hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope.
If we wish to be free - if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable
privileges for which we have been so long contending - if we mean not basely
to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and
which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object
of our contest shall be obtained - we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we
must fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of Hosts is all that is left
us!
-
- "They tell us, sir, that we are weak - unable to
cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger?
Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally
disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall
we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the
means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs, and hugging
the illusive phantom of hope, until our enemies have bound us hand and
foot? Sir, we are not weak, if we make a proper use of those means which
the God of nature hath placed in our power.
-
- Three millions of people, armed in the holy cause of
liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible
by any force which our enemy can send against us, The battle, sir, is not
to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave.
-
- Besides, sir, we have no election. If we were base enough
to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is
no retreat, but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged, their
clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable -
and let it come!! I repeat it, sir, let it come!!!
-
- "It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen
may cry, peace, peace - but there is no peace. The war is actually begun.
The next gale that sweeps from the North will bring to our ears the clash
of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we
here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is
life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains
and slavery? Forbid it, almighty God! I know not what course others may
take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"
-
- Many Americans used to be familiar with this call to
arms, though not anymore. And it sounds familiar, since we are now faced
with just as terrible a threat from the owners of the American empire as
our forebears faced from the owners of the British empire. Same owners,
of course.
-
- Patrick Henry was not just a rebel in words. Thomas
Jefferson became his jealous enemy and slanderer after 1781 but as he neared
his own death he wrote, "Our leader was far above all in the Revolution.
It is not now easy to say what we should have done without Patrick Henry."
-
- This was demonstrated in The Powder Affair. Within days
of his speech in Richmond, the royal governor of Virginia, John M. Dunmore,
prohibited any Virginians from attending the Continental Congress in Philadelphia.
The British government suspended all supplies of gunpowder to the colonists.
Dunmore actually ordered part of the Williamsburg powder supply (20 barrels)
seized and taken to his warship, the Magdalen, in the James River. If
the colonists objected and did anything foolish, he threatened to arm the
slaves and burn down Williamsburg, a typically British gesture.
-
- On April 18th, Governor-General Gage attempted to seize
the gunpowder supply at the Concord arsenal near Boston, which resulted
in the Battle of Lexington and the opening of the rebellion. The following
month, Patrick Henry took command of the Hanover Volunteers militia group
- 120 men - and marched to Williamsburg to secure the remaining powder
supply and obtain repayment for that which Dunmore stole.
-
- By the time they got there, he was leading a force of
5,000 volunteers. Dunmore panicked and got Thomas Nelson to pay Henry
twice the value of the powder, which had been bought by the Virginia colonists
from England for their own protection. The matter was concluded without
violence, although it did lead to much violence by Dunmore, who proclaimed
in his arrest warrant for Henry:
-
- "Whereas I have been informed that a certain Patrick
Henry and his deluded followers have taken up arms, excited the people
and committed acts of violence, I have thought proper, with the advice
of His Majesty's council and in His Majesty's name, to issue this proclamation
charging all persons not to aid, abet or give countenance to the said Patrick
Henry, else the whole county must be involved in the most direful calamity.
God save the King."
-
- Dunmore had fled to his warship and soon became a renegade.
He would use the powder he stole from Williamsburg to burn down Virginia's
biggest city, Norfolk, the following year.
-
- This was the revolutionary background of America's first
rebel and freedom fighter, mentioned to impress upon the reader that if
Patrick Henry, who coined the idea of American liberty, hated the Constitution,
the reasons for his hatred should be known.
-
- The plan behind the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual
Union Between the States was to prevent a powerful consolidated government
and the inevitable tyranny that always occurs, as we see today.
-
- The Articles of Confederation did not provide for a lucrative
way to pay for the Union government because the ones who wrote it liked
it that way, vesting all real authority in the thirteen State governments.
The last thing they wanted was another tyrannical imperial government such
as that they had just got shed of.
-
- Patrick Henry thought the Articles of Confederation and
the Union of States that it defined were just right. He was a Virginian,
a man of the South, and wanted no part of being merged with Northerners.
-
- To Henry and those like him, the States were republics
that required independence from each other. Others, however, demanded that
the Articles be modified in a federal convention in Philadelphia in 1787
to provide for taxation to pay off war debt and to give the federal government
some authority to represent the whole Union in foreign affairs.
-
- The Articles of Confederation were the supreme law of
the land from March, 1781 through March, 1789. At first, Henry was enthusiastic
in his support of an American federal government, perhaps because his good
Virginian friend, George Washington, was in favor of it. Something happened
in 1786 to cause him to become the implacable enemy of federalism.
-
- He learned that John Jay, the foreign secretary, had
negotiated a secret agreement with the Spanish government to turn over
to Spain exclusive rights to the Mississippi River for thirty years! The
six Southern States would have been prohibited from using the river, which
they all knew would be indispensable for future commerce and progress.
-
- The Northerners couldn't have cared less and were willing
to give it away for trade advantages with Spain. Then he read the proposed
new Constitution and refused to take part in the convention, much to the
shock of all - especially George Washington. Rhode Island refused to send
any delegates at all. The proposed Constitution had no provision for guaranteeing
or even acknowledging our natural rights!
-
- Henry thought this outrageous and ominous. What he found
most astonishing was the expression, "We, the People," in the
Preamble.
-
- Today, this phrase seems somehow sacred and fundamental
to American rights but to Patrick Henry it signified a monstrous deception.
The Confederation between the States was just that - an agreement or contract
between the thirteen new and independent States. The people were represented
by their legislatures in the States but the States were the only entities
that could participate in the Perpetual Union Between the States. Henry
saw in the "We, the People" phrase something akin to Lenin's
use of "people" one hundred thirty years later - a power-grab
"in the name of the People." In Lenin's case, "the People"
would mean the Communist Party.
-
- On June 5, 1788 Henry spoke again in the Virginia Convention
on this subject: "I rose yesterday to ask a question, which arose
in my mind. When I asked that question, I thought the meaning of my interrogation
was obvious: the fate of this question and of America may depend on this.
Have they said, We, the states? Have they made a proposal of a compact
between states? If they had, this would be a confederation: it is otherwise
most clearly a consolidated government.
-
- The question turns, sir, on the expression, We, the People,
instead of, the States of America. I need not take much pains to show
that the principles of this system are extremely pernicious, impolitic
and dangerous. Is this a monarchy, like England - a compact between prince
and people: with checks on the former to secure the liberty of the latter?
Is this a confederacy, like Holland - an association of a number of independent
States, each of which retains its individual sovereignty?
-
- Had these principles been adhered to, we should not have
been brought to this alarming transition, from a confederacy to a consolidated
government. We have no detail of those great considerations which, in
my opinion, ought to have abounded before we should recur to a government
of this kind. Here is a revolution as radical as that which separated us
from Great Britain. It is as radical, if, in this transition, our rights
and privileges are endangered, and the sovereignty of the States relinquished.
And cannot we plainly see? The rights of conscience, trial by jury, liberty
of the press, all your immunities and franchises, all pretentions to human
rights and privileges, are rendered insecure, if not lost, by this change.
-
- "To encourage us to adopt it, they tell us, that
there is a plain, easy way of getting amendments. When I come to contemplate
this part, I suppose that I am mad, or that my countrymen are so. The
way to amendments is, in my conception, shut.
-
- "Will the great rights of the people be secured?
Is this an easy mode of securing the public liberty? It is, sir, a most
fearful situation, when the most contemptible minority can prevent the
alteration of the most oppressive government, for it may, in many respects,
prove to be such. Is this the spirit of republicanism?
-
- "SI have just proved that one-tenth, or less, of
the people of America - a most despicable minority, may prevent this reform,
or alteration. Suppose the people of Virginia should wish to alter their
government, can a majority of them do it? No, because they are connected
with other men; or, in other words, consolidated with other States.
-
- "The honorable gentleman who presides, told us,
that to prevent abuses in our government, we will assemble in Convention,
recall our delegated powers, and punish our servants for abusing the trust
reposed in them. Oh, sir, we should have fine times indeed, if to punish
tyrants, it were only sufficient to assemble the people. Your arms, wherewith
you could defend yourself, are gone.
-
- Let me here call your attention to that part which gives
the Congress power 'To provide for organizing, arming and disciplining
the militia, and for governing such parts of them as may be employed in
the service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively
the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia,
according to the discipline prescribed by Congress.'
-
- By this, sir, you see that their control over our last
and best defense is unlimited. If they neglect or refuse to discipline
or arm our militia, they will be useless: the States can do neither, this
power being exclusively given to Congress. The power of appointing officers
over men not disciplined or armed, is ridiculous: so that this pretended
little remnant of power, left to the States, may, at the pleasure of Congress,
be rendered nugatory. Our situation will be deplorable indeed: nor can
we ever expect to get this government amended; since I have already shown,
that a very small minority may prevent it.
-
- Will the oppressor let go the oppressed? Was there ever
an instance? Can the annals of mankind exhibit one single example, where
rulers, overcharged with power, willingly let go the oppressed, though
solicited and requested most earnestly? The application for amendments
will therefore be fruitless. We drew the spirit of liberty from our British
ancestors: by that spirit we have triumphed over every difficulty. But
now, sir, the American spirit, assisted by the ropes and chains of consolidation,
is about to convert this country into a powerful and mighty empire. If
you make the citizens of this country agree to become the subjects of
one great consolidated empire of America, your government will not have
sufficient energy to keep them together: such a government is incompatible
with the genius of republicanism.
-
- "Where are the checks in this Constitution? There
will be no checks, no real balances, in this government. What can avail
your specious, imaginary balances, your rope-dancing, chain-rattling, ridiculous
ideal checks and contrivances?
-
- "The Senate, by making treaties, may destroy your
liberty and laws, for want of responsibility. Two-thirds of those that
shall happen to be present, can, with the President, make treaties that
shall be the supreme law of the land: they may make the most ruinous treaties,
and yet there is no punishment for them."
-
- On another day he said, "Congress may introduce
the practice of the civil law, in preference to that of the common law.
They may introduce the practice of France, Spain and Germany - of torturing,
to extort the confession of the crime. They will tell you that there is
such a necessity of strengthening the arm of government, that they must
have a criminal equity, and extort confession by torture, in order to punish
with still more relentless severity." In other words, Patrick Henry
saw exactly where the United States government would go in the future.
Despite the Constitution and the Bill of Rights which he demanded to protect
us against torture, the US government openly tortures prisoners today,
both foreign and domestic.
-
- Henry's struggle against the coming US empire failed
and the Constitution was passed, although with some watered-down amendments.
He made some grim observations and some dire predictions.
-
- Henry's great-grandson, Edward Fontaine, wrote the following
in 1870:
-
- "While living in retirement with his family, as
planter, and practicing lawyer, the pamphlet containing the Constitution
and the additional 12 amendments adopted by the majority of States requisite
to make them part of the instrument, was brought to him and examined by
him most carefully in the presence of my father and Mr. Dandridge.
-
- He seemed to have been suspicious of the character of
some of the framers of the Constitution, and of the crafty politicians
through whose hands it had passed since its adoption by Virginia, that
he feared they had not only altered the amendments adopted by the Virginia
convention, but had tampered with the body of the instrument itself.
-
- After reading it carefully, satisfying himself that they
had not changed the original paper, he read carefully the amendments to
the tenth. When he read this he threw down the pamphlet upon the table,
and remarked with great solemnity:
-
- 'I find that these shrewd Northern Statesmen have outwitted
our Southern men again in the wording of these amendments. They determined
when this Constitution was framed to make this a great consolidated National
Government of all the people of the States. To secure this object they
inserted in its preamble the words 'We, the People of the United States,'
instead of We, the States.
-
- Their object was to make it a government of a majority
of the whole people, that is a Government of the Northern People; for they
have this majority; and under such a government holding this power they
can and will exercise it oppressively to the South for their own advantage.
To prevent this, and to hinder this majority from doing whatever they
may think proper for 'the general welfare,' which they will construe to
mean their own sectional welfare, I wrote the first 20 amendments adopted,
and recommended by the Convention of Virginia in these words: 'Each State
in the Union shall respectively retain every power, jurisdiction, and right
which is not by this Constitution delegated to the Congress of the United
States, or to the departments of the Federal Government.'
-
- This was intended to secure the rights of the States,
and to prevent the exercise of doubtful powers by the Federal Government,
but they have omitted it, and substituted for it this equivocal thing
to which they have tacked the objectionable and dangerous words of 'the
people.' 'The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution,
nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively,
or to the people.' Why did they add, 'or to the people?' They determined
to make it a consolidated government. They added these words to neutralize
the amendment of Virginia, and they have done it effectually. This government
cannot last. It will not last a century. We can only get rid of its oppression
by a most violent and bloody struggle."
-
- "He at once discerned the craft displayed by this
ingenious amendment, worded to deceive the conventions of the different
States. They were intended to persuade them that they embraced the strong
safeguard to their rights furnished by the clear and explicit amendment
of Patrick Henry. The amendment does this [up] to the word respectively.
If the amendment had ended there, its meaning could not have been perverted.
But the trickery is veiled in the words added "or to the people."
They are superfluous verbiage, if they were added to curb federal power,
and guard state sovereignty, which the amendment was adopted to effect.
-
- But the cunning politicians who inserted them did so
with a design of using them to suit their purpose when occasion should
arise in the future. We are not "states respectively" with any
reserved and sovereign rights. "We are a nation" ruled first
by a northern majority, and then by a "contemptible minority"
of oligarchs. The violent and bloody struggle has ensued, and it is not
yet ended. The Constitution is destroyed. The Government has been over-turned,
and the century has not yet rolled away. Our present Government is not
that framed in Philadelphia; that did not last a century. The new dominion,
which has arisen out of it, is changing continually. What it is now is
difficult to define. It requires another Henry to predict."
-
- This brings up a sore subject: the War of Northern Aggression,
the War to Prevent Southern Independence, Lincoln's War, the Second American
Revolution - the Civil War - predicted by Patrick Henry in 1789 because
of the Northern greed and lust for dominance he recognized in the US Constitution.
Whatever one thinks about the Constitution, it ceased to exist as seven
articles and twelve articles of amendments when eleven states announced
in 1861 that they were no longer under its authority. The seven articles
and their three branches of government remained in force in the Northern
states, but the so-called Bill of Rights evaporated under Lincoln's dictatorial
rule. Thousands of Northern protesters were arrested and denied Habeas
Corpus. Hundreds of Northern newspapers were shut down and their editors
and publishers thrown in prison to rot for years. 620,000 died from 1861
to 1865 and for what? So that all Americans could live under the protection
of the US Constitution? I'll leave it to the reader to ponder the effect
of the Civil War on the American Experiment.
-
- In the aftermath of the war, Southerners were forced
back in the Union. The 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments were rammed into
the Constitution at gunpoint. The Southern States were under Federal military
rule for twelve years. No Southern Congressman was allowed back in the
Congress until his state ratified the 14th Amendment. We all know that.
And we all know that the 16th Amendment, making the IRS the collection
agency for the Federal Reserve Corporation, was never ratified although
it became law in February, 1913. What many of us do not realize is that
the 17th Amendment, which became law two months later, obliterated what
was left of the US Constitution (the first seven articles, since the first
ten amendments, "the Bill of Rights," were just fond memories).
-
- The 17th Amendment provided for the direct election of
Senators. The US Constitution was in effect a contract between the states
and the people. The people were represented in the federal government
in the House of Representatives, the members of which were elected by popular
vote. The states were represented in the Senate, and Senators were appointed
by the State legislatures. When the 17th Amendment forced the popular
vote for Senators, the Constitution, the contract, ceased to exist. It
was rendered technically null and void. Lincoln had rendered it meaningless,
but the 17th made it official.
-
- The fraudulent legal trickery of 1913 also included the
passage of the Federal Reserve Act in December. All of this was accomplished
in the first year of Woodrow Wilson's administration, which was run by
a mysterious little character from Texas named Edward Mandell House. Much
can be learned about the 20th Century by studying this Rothschild agent
and his shockingly bad novel, Philip Dru: Administrator. House was the
kingmaker and fixer who gave us both Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
-
- Anyway, the reader may be saying, okay, the Constitution
is certainly flawed and maybe not even in effect today. But if Ron Paul
uses it as his guide for voting on legislation, isn't that better than
what the other politicians do?
-
- It seems to me that everything depends on the philosophy
of the politician rather than on seven articles and twenty-seven amendments
of a dead document. Ron Paul's value is in his personal morality and philosophy,
which he may disguise as an adherence to the US Constitution. The first
seven articles are the framework of the three branches of our government,
which thanks to the two-party system, have merged into a gigantic and deadly
dictatorship which has just recently killed about two million Iraqis.
The twenty-seven amendments are a mishmash of force and fraud, a playground
for lawyers and judges and as Abraham Lincoln and George W. Bush have demonstrated,
of no value whatsoever for our personal protection.
-
- This writer was responsible for the armed mass movement
known as "the militia," which lasted for a few years. I naturally
took a special interest in the 2nd Amendment, which reads, "A well-regulated
Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of
the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
-
- You must admit that this is a strangely-crafted sentence.
Whether you like guns or hate them, the sentence is a mess. Patrick Henry
and George Mason both demanded that our right to keep and bear arms be
at or near the top of their Bill of Rights. We've already read what Henry
thought about the militia clause (#16) in Article 1, Section 8 of the US
Constitution. He thought it was a joke. In glancing through the revised
Bill of Rights that day he got the pamphlet, when he fixed upon the deception
of the 10th Amendment, he might have missed the deception of the 2nd.
-
- In the book I wrote to kick off the resistance movement
I called "the militia," I discussed fifty-four federal court
decisions having to do with guns and the militia. The great scam that
the writers of the 2nd Amendment started was that the keeping and bearing
of arms would all depend on some connection to "the militia."
And what do you know? Virtually all 54 cases in the US Code Annotated
from 1858 to 1980 were decided so that there is no individual right to
keep and bear arms; there's only a "collective right" and only
if you're in the militia, which has not been officially recognized since
1916, when something very deceptive called the "National Guard"
was invented. Even before that, even before the colonies became a country,
the militia was feared and hated by those who sought power over their fellow
man. The reason for changing its name to the French term, "National
Guard," was to be able to draft all the militiamen for the coming
Great War and obviously you can't do that if it's still called The Militia.
The only actual Supreme Court decision in the bunch (Miller - 1939) produced
the idea that a sawed-off shotgun is not a militia-style weapon and is
therefore illegal as hell. "Collective right" is legalese for
"no right." This is what the Supreme Court is going to think
about next year, whether the 2nd Amendment means the right shall or shall
not be infringed.
-
- So that's why I called my resistance movement "the
militia."
-
- Patrick Henry showed in the Powder Affair what the militia
can do. One thing it cannot do is be "well-regulated." A careful
reading of the US Constitution reveals that no one in the government is
authorized to regulate the militia, because "regulate" means
regular and regulations and that means the army. You can't regulate the
armed male civilian population of this country and you shouldn't even try.
This is what the Supreme Court knows and is why it really doesn't want
to touch this thing.
-
- Punctuation back in 1789 was overdone. The 2nd Amendment
has way too many commas in it and too many words. That amendment has two
clauses in it: the independent clause and the dependent clause. The first
half of the sentence is the dependent clause. The independent clause reads,
"the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
Why there's a comma after Arms, I have no idea. Why the dependent clause
ties our guns to a "well-regulated Militia," I know very well.
It was written to try to keep unruly American men under control somehow.
Some have told me, oh, well-regulated simply means disciplined and ship-shape,
supplied and so forth. No, it doesn't. Regulate means "to adjust
or control by rule." There is no such authority for regulating the
militia in the US Constitution. Article 1, Section 8, Clause 14 says the
Congress shall have the power to make rules for the government and regulation
of the land and naval forces. The land force is the army, which is the
antithesis of the militia. The 5th Amendment reads "except in cases
arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual
service in time of War or public danger."
-
- The writers of the 2nd Amendment really messed things
up with that militia clause. Every court in our history has used it against
us, until the DC court decided recently that the independent clause is
what counts. Think of how life could have been if the guys had just written,
"The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
But they had to mess it up.
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- The US Constitution is full of this contradictory and
confusing language, but that really doesn't concern us anymore, because
it's been dead since 1861. Since we are under the Law of the Gun, we all
need to become good lawyers.
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