Red Flag down on the battleground of our Bill of Rights: the American Mind - To Keep and Bear Arms Across Time - pt6

The Bill of Rights which once defined and united us as Americans, is now the issue which least defines and most divides us. Unfortunately what we are so divided over is not what those amendments of the Bill of Rights were written to protect - our individual rights - but over various particulars involved in aspects of exercising them, while the rights themselves are rarely even mentioned. This is especially noticeable in the targeting of the first two, as the importance of those rights that are protected under them, in favor of spittle spewing matches over particular types of speech: 'hate speech','divisive', etc, or in favor of shrieking hysterically over one of the particular types of arms which the 2nd Amendment secures from abuse for us: Guns. This is not the behavior of people who understand and are concerned with the 'inalienable' nature of their individual rights, but that of a people who consider such rights (to the extent they do at all) for their utilitarian usefulness or nuisance value, to the conveniences of everyday living.

This lack of interest is a tri-partisan affair, shared by most on the Left and Right and the non-aligned, so it's not surprising that the rights that are protected by the first and second amendments, are treated not as individual rights, but as lists of privileges that were permitted to us in the past by an old landlord, but which need to be tinkered with so as to be made more useful for the 'greater good' today. In everything from Beto O'Rourke's 'Hell, yes, we're going to take your AR-15, your AK-47', to Mitch McConnell & Atty General Barr's memo proposing 'common sense gun laws' (for political purposes), we're awash in proposed legislative assaults such as Red Flag laws, Safe Speech Zones, national gun registration databases, Hate Speech Laws, waiting periods, 'gun buy-backs' or flat out confiscations, all are proposed as a means to alter and reform us by adjusting this or that environmental factor in society, to bring about the 'change!' that they so desire to see in you & me.

The fact that there is absolutely no proof that such tinkerings have ever, or will ever work (and much to indicate that they make matters tragically worse), or that their marching and chanting has more in common with efforts to work sympathetic magic than with objective law, doesn't sway them for a moment, should hint at just how contentedly disconnected from reality such people are - the flashing lights and sounds of the political games they are playing, and their relative ranking amongst the players, are more than enough reward for them. The responses of those who do still grasp the importance and inalienable nature of our rights, shy away from the virtue signaling and calls for limiting everyone's liberty because the criminal actions of a few, they focus on reminding us of the dangers which these proposals pose to our lives, individual rights and responsibilities; the sober need to punish actual wrongs, and the importance of having a deeper understanding of these important principles. The people who care about our individual rights, tend to see you, not as a statistical blip in a political pinball game, but as a human being, and the need to be secure from our own worst and best intentions, because they see the deep and widespread damage which such tinkering will have on our ability to live lives worth living. Case in point, Dana Loesch's comments about the various proposals of Red Flag laws, has been focused on what most other people seem to work so hard at not noticing, that these proposals are reckless attacks not just on guns, but are attacks [as all regulatory law is] upon concepts that are fundamental to all of our rights, such as “innocent until proven guilty": 1) #RedFlagLaws are an inversion of “innocent until proven guilty.” The standard of evidence is low and while state laws vary, many different people, not just family, can report you. , and the right to face your accusers:

The Utility of Tyranny - To Keep and Bear Arms Across Time - pt5

Here's a conundrum for you: There are many things in life that some of us might be unfortunate enough to have to defend ourselves against - thugs, thieves, mobs... lions, tigers & bears - but there is only one power that has the potential to prevent each and everyone of us from choosing to think, speak and act in our interests, or in the defense of them. And of course that fearsome power is held by the very same institution which our society channels our collective power through, in order to safeguard those interests and actions for us: Government.

That is a conundrum. Enter our Bill of Rights.

Our 2nd Amendment was not written simply for us to have easy access to arms (guns, or any other form) - It was written and ratified as a 'No Trespassing!' sign to be thrust into the faces of that collective power of our society, who would understand it to be backed up by those personal arms each judges to be best suited to the defending of them, to dissuade us from intruding ourselves into those choices and actions that we engage in during the course of living our lives.

Why? Not to fight against our society, but to live in liberty within it! If you can be prevented from having the means to defend your decisions, your life and your community, then you do not have the liberty to have or enjoy any of them.

I'll repeat that: If you do not have the right to defend your rights, then you do not have the liberty to exercise them.

It is that simple.

Sure, your society may permit many, any or all of those actions you typically choose to take, but only by appointing someone with the power to grant (or deny) you their permission, which is a very different thing altogether - isn't it? For government to transform our rights into their permissions, it first needs the ability to disarm its citizens ability to resist it.

The 2nd Amendment exists to prevent that sort of transformative trespassing. In fact, every amendment in our Bill of Rights, exist to prevent that.

The existence of our Bill of Rights, and every amendment within it, is evidence of your liberty. Its compromise is evidence of your lack of it.

Did you notice that when our Founders' said "Shall not be infringed", they were looking directly at you?
What the clear intent of our Bill of Rights is, and that its promise was fulfilled, is evident in how it was presented for the approval (ratification) of We The People, with the following preamble:

"The conventions of a number of the states having, at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added; and as extending the ground of public confidence in the government will best insure the beneficent ends of its institution;-"

IOW, We The People demanded that clear limitations be put upon our government's power to exercise its (our) powers, through law, for what would doubtless be seen as being for the greater good, because We The People understood so well that We The People are too prone to misuse power with "the very best of intentions".

Our Bill of Rights comes down to us from those who had a clear understanding of our limitless ability to convince ourselves that doing what is wrong is ok, if, in our humble opinion, it is done 'for the greater good'. Our Founders - and in this case I am not talking about those who gathered to frame the constitution at the convention in Philadelphia, but rather of that general population of We The People - who on reviewing the Constitution which that 'assembly of demigods' had proposed, found it wanting. The people conditioned their acceptance of that document which was to define the limits (or lack of them) of our laws, on the promise that it be amended to prevent their new government from exercising its power in the most politically essential areas of our lives.

Of those twelve amendments that were proposed, what became the 1st through 10th Amendments, were designed to limit and prevent We The People's best and brightest from using the collective power of their own government, to alter, limit, eliminate or otherwise violate the ability of any number of their own people from enjoying the liberty of those essential rights, 'for their own good'. These amendments are explicitly there, because their understanding of history taught them that tyranny couldn't easily rise to power, in the face of a people who were armed with the liberty to exercise those politically essential rights.

The Bill of Rights, and the 2nd Amendment in particular, exist to prevent ourselves from using our own govt to do what it should not do. Not out of a fear of some anonymous 'they!', and not because they feared some bogeyman called 'government!' - this is an important point that few seem to realize: they didn't fear someone else, they understood and feared themselves! Us! We The People!

That we today have forgotten to even be wary of our own selves, and of our own good intentions, is a confirmation of how well placed those fears of theirs were - and how fortunate we are that they safeguarded our essential individual rights from us.

How have we forgotten that? Easy - it was thought to be useful to.

Tyranny's Slippery Slope
People too easily slide into tyranny. Have you ever wondered why? It doesn't really require any deep learning to understand, only a basic grasp of the fundamentals of human nature and a regard for what is in reality right and true. We are prone to becoming tyrannical, not from a desire to do evil (though true, some few may), but from our well intentioned desire to 'do good', even if that means imposing 'Good', upon others, to 'fix them'. For their own good.

My friend Virginia Kruta, saw this firsthand this weekend, when she went to see self-described 'Democratic-Socialist' Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speak in St. Louis this last weekend, where, from speaker after speaker, she saw the frightening lure of such good intentions:

"...I saw something truly terrifying. I saw just how easy it would be, were I less involved and less certain of our nation’s founding and its history, to fall for the populist lines they were shouting from that stage. 

• I saw how easy it would be, as a parent, to accept the idea that my children deserve healthcare and education.
• I saw how easy it would be, as someone who has struggled to make ends meet, to accept the idea that a “living wage” was a human right.
• Above all, I saw how easy it would be to accept the notion that it was the government’s job to make sure that those things were provided."

I watched as both Ocasio-Cortez and Bush deftly chopped America up into demographics, pointed out how those demographics had been victimized under the current system, and then promised to be the voice for those demographics..."

As they stare and yearn to 'do good!' with those policies, as they see that usefulness as being 'good', they are not seeing (or looking for) the fine print in what powers must be brought to bear upon (all) others in society, in order to do that 'good', and they are not seeing the ramifications of having done those 'goods' unto us all. It's conveniently not easy to see what is out of sight - but what they want it to be 'good' is easily seen; seeing how it could go bad... is... not what you're looking for when you're looking to 'do good'. If you'd like an example of doing bad for 'good' reasons, read all of Ginny's short piece linked above, and then read how it's deliberately parsed to alter her meaning in this, and so many others, so that what she said is easily ignored, and so that what she didn't say, could be criticized, as if it was what she had said. That's a lie... for the 'greater good'.

These issues are 'the ends justify the means', in action - telling lies for the greater good, because they do not doubt that those 'goods' will be useful... no matter how often they have repeatedly resulted in disappointment, hardship, corruption, destruction, and eventually wide-scale death (and they can never do otherwise - in the end).

People are rarely willing to see what they are doing, as being wrong. If you've ever looked back upon some dark point in time - present or past - and wondered 'how could they do that?!'; this is how they could, and did, do what they did - whether in Venezuela, Cambodia, Cuba, Red China, USSR, Nazi Germany, and so on, and so forth - the darkness we see in looking back upon those times, is not the darkness that they saw when looking around at what they themselves were doing. They saw in what they were doing, their good intentions, and they saw themselves as opposing that darkness which they did see all around them, which is what they saw as justifying those actions that needed to be taken 'for the greater good' - as they saw it.

Those policies that Ginny listed - government provided healthcare, government provided education, government provided wages for the needy, and looking to government to provide privileges instead of upholding rights under law, those are the very same justifications for policies that were used to 'do good', in Venezuela, Cambodia, Cuba, Red China, USSR, Nazi Germany, and so on, and so forth.

If you don't see that, it's because that is not what you are willing to look for. And yet it is true nonetheless.

The motive power of pulling the saintly wool down over our own eyes, is Utilitarian in nature, through replacing 'The Good' with the useful, motivationaly empowering 'The ends justify the means!', in which the 'good' (meaning...?) they intend to do unto you, provides them with all the justification needed to exercise whatever 'unfortunate' means might be necessary for that which they fear or desire. For the 'greater good'... as they see it.

The problem is that "The Good", then, has less to do with what used to be described as the 'Good, Beautiful and True', and more to do with what is useful in getting what they desire - transforming it from what was good, in and of itself, into a means of the power to do something else... followed by something else... and always more something elses' will be necessary, for evermore. And by that time what was once understood to be 'wrong', is no longer seen in their mind as being wrong, or at least not in the same way; 'wrong' having been transformed into 'needed' - is almost certainly urgently necessary to do.

Our interests and desires have a natural tendency to shift our awareness away from looking for what is right, good and true, into looking for what is useful, efficient and needful. It is in that action of shifting our ethical perspective, that we succeed in hiding the wrongful nature of our actions from our own eyes, eclipsing them with the more interesting 'good' which we intend to do, blinding us from the possibly unsettling (or even evil) nature of what is now clearly seen as being oh so necessary and useful for our chosen ends.

If you are unaware of this tendency in yourself, then you are, in an important and essential way, uneducated, and a danger to yourself and to those around you. What a proper Education is supposed to accomplish, is to enable us to see this tendency in ourselves, and to question the reality of what we are so eager to 'see' as being so. Not to question reality, but to question our pretenses of it: Are we seeing what is, or what we desire it to be?

"...We are told that the aim of Socrates in his training of the young was not to make them efficient, but to inspire in them reverence and restraint ; for to make them efficient, said Socrates, without reverence and restraint, was simply to equip them with ampler means for harm..." Irving Babbitt "Literature and the College", from 'Bacon and Rousseau' - 1908

Our Founders' generation was well educated on the whole, and so were wary of their own potential to do wrong for the best of intentions... but they were already well on their way to losing that habit of seeing their own shortcomings. The re-purposing of Education away from 'moral ambitiousness', towards economic utility, which even some of our Founder's generation helped to lay, laid down a foundation that our nation could not have been erected upon had it come just a few decades earlier, and those new inclinations have been weakening our true foundations ever since. What had soared from Locke to Adam Smith to Jean Baptiste Say and crested into Frederic Bastiat, was already giving way to its mirror imagery, in Rousseau, Robespierre, Babeuf, and then Marx and the swarm of 'isms that followed in their wake.

IMHO, our Declaration of Independence, and our Constitution, were created, at the last historical moment that it was possible for them to be established, and just how close we came to being too late, can be seen in the success of the American Revolution, and the horrific failure(s) of the French Revolution so soon afterwards. We were at the peak point of a couple century's spread of common understanding of the ideas in those works that Jefferson had called 'the elementary books of public right', but their comprehension of them had hit its peak by 1793, and was already in the process of giving way to the up and coming mechanistic, utilitarian views. Those new directions are easily seen in what were popularized in Rousseau's enthusiasm for naturalism, over civilization, and in his popular reforms for Education, moving as they did away from striving to inculcate an intelligent virtue in mankind, in favor of a tantalizing and youthfully indulgent sense of self-fulfillment. Taken together, they served to move us away from our Founder's understanding of inalienable rights, and towards Jeremy Bentham's view of such rights as 'nonsense upon stilts'.

I can't tell you how many times I've been in discussions with Pro-Regressives of the Left or Right - with those few who are at least willing to discuss their proposals - who will within the same sentence, chide 'the other side' for 'seeing every disagreement as of evil intent' and then go on to rail against 'the evil 1%!'; they'll roundly denounce the other side's use of the broad generalities of 'they' and 'always' when discussing their opponents, and then immediately denounce the 'Right' who are all 'greedy' and unethical. They will fume against the use of propaganda by 'Fox News!', while demanding a restoration of state regulated and approved speech (aka: propaganda) through a new 'Fairness Doctrine'.

Yes, that is nonsensical if you are focused upon what you see as being right, good and true. But for those that have replaced what is good (which in any meaningful sense, tightly integrates with all of your life, morality, manners, ethics, etc), with what they see as being for 'the greater good' (which needs have no more consistency with other policies you promote than the right people are for them - which is the entire point of pivoting their orientation towards power), they are simply seeking what is useful, efficient and needful to implementing the 'greater good' unto us, which, of course, makes 'perfect sense', and as such applications of force upon 'bad' elements, is necessary to achieving that greater good. For all. Obviously..

They do not see it as being wrong or bad, because their definition of 'good', now follows from the pragmatic ideal of 'what works' for the moment, instead of the ethical and philosophical ideal, of what is timelessly 'Right, Good and True'. What they see, is that what you do, is 'bad', because it conflicts with what they would have done. When they do the very same thing, it is 'good', because it furthers their good intentions. What this means for the use of political power, is that virtue - its substance, not simply the appearances of it - is no longer able to serve as motivation or guidance for them, only power can fill that role - not the power to objectively identify or correct wrongs that have been done, but the desire to forcefully act upon others, to do unto them, utilizing power that others will surely see as being useful and needed for 'the greater good' - that form of understanding is incapable of containing meaning that is in conflict with what you, in your own eyes, see as being useful.

And still they do not see it. To be clear, this excuses them from nothing - they would see the wrongs in what they do, if they would put reality and truth ahead of what they wished reality to be, but they will not, and so they do not, and we all suffer the consequences, seen and unseen.

The ability to see that what seems sensible to you, might pose unforeseen dangers to you and all you love, the ability to '...to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it...' is an important aim of an Education, to be "... released from a multitude of opinions...", and the distracting shadows on the wall of Plato's cave. Conversely, the inability to see - or to even look for - the possibility that what you see as being necessary and justified, just might endanger all, is a result of, in at least some significant area, a lack of education - particularly if you attained that ability through years of classroom earned degrees.

The views of those educated as our Founders generation was, aimed at a pointed self-reflection that questioned what you were inclined to think seemed certain, that is what enabled We The People, to gift ourselves with our Bill of Rights.

The views of those 'outmoded' ideals of education replaced with getting a good job, had an enthusiasm to act upon 'obvious' certainties, and is what is driving our current efforts to dent, damage and dispense with the protections of our 2nd Amendment, and the 1st Amendment, and all of the others, which enables us to be protected from 'the greater good' which they are so eager to do unto us - which is when We The People need to hold on to them more strongly than ever - not to fight our society, but to live in liberty within it.

There's a quote from C.S. Lewis that sums the danger of this up well:

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." "The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment". "God in the Dock". Book by C. S. Lewis, 1970.

And to those armed with good intentions - a power that is far deadlier than any material weapon - they will seek, use, and apply that power to achieve their ends, and they will do so with a clear and approving conscience. Tyranny is above all else, in the minds of those who deny they seek it, useful.  Unless their minds are turned anew towards the nature of those essential rights that our Bill of Rights were created to protect, they will, with the very best of intentions, turn each of them against the other.

How that is done, in the next post.

Americans vs America - To Keep and Bear Arms Across Time - pt4

America, and Americans - what do they have left in common? If that strikes you as an odd question to ask, you probably haven't taken a public position (as I've been doing in these recent posts) on something like the the 1st, or 2nd Amendments to our Constitution. Do that, and I think you'll quickly notice, as in these examples below, how divided we now are by the very ideas that once defined us:

• On our college campus's, opposing views are increasingly being met not with the force of persuasion, but the persuasion of force:

  "...A controversial conservative commentator was escorted by police from California State University, Los Angeles as angry demonstrators protested his presence on campus Thursday afternoon...."

• in the state of California, a State Senator has proposed infringing upon the freedom of speech, by proposing a bill, SB1424, to have the state approve which news is fit to print:

  "...This bill would require any person who operates a social media, as defined, Internet Web site with a physical presence in California to develop a strategic plan to verify news stories shared on its Web site. The bill would require the plan to include, among other things, a plan to mitigate the spread of false information through news stories, the utilization of fact-checkers to verify news stories, providing outreach to social media users, and placing a warning on a news story containing false information...."

• Dana Loesch is a clear example of how exercising those rights that are protected under the 1st Amendment, in support of those protected by the 2nd Amendment, can result in not only a barrage of tweets and shouts for you to be raped and murdered (non-violently, of course), but it can also leave you in need of physical protection to escape those who'd physically like to harm you:

  "..."I had to have a security detail to get out," she said of the Sunrise, Fla. event. "I wouldn't be able to exit that if I didn't have a private security detail. There were people rushing the stage and screaming burn her. And I came there to talk solutions and I still am going to continue that conversation on solutions as the NRA has been doing since before I was alive."..."

• Even the idea of Americans being 'United' is dividing us, as this 'think piece' that was endorsed by the CEO of Twitter as a "Great Read", which yearns for one party rule, the end of the GOP, while promoting California as the role model for a new 'peaceful' Civil War to banish 'The Right' from power, and from 'respectable' society. If you doubt that, just take note that part 4 of this 'great read', is subtitled:

  "Why there’s no bipartisan way forward at this juncture in our history — one side must win"
  

  

These are not simply emotional outbursts that've been stirred up in public gatherings, they are the results of persistent, considered intellectual positions that have been percolating up from academia, and have been spilling out into our mainstream conversations for decades. Some recent examples can be found in last year's debates over whether it was ok to "Punch a Nazi" (with the implication being that violence as political speech is ok, if you happen to think of the other side as being a Nazi, or in sympathy with them), or the New York Times' opinion piece calling to "Repeal the 2nd Amendment", and of course we recently had a retired Supreme Court Justice writing an op-ed in that same 'newspaper of record', calling to Repeal the 2nd Amendment, on the basis of public opinion - or at least that part of the public that agrees with him - rather than on the basis of those American ideals which the Constitution was written to preserve, protect and defend.

As I say, it's easy to see what divides us today - but how easy is it for Americans of today to see what it was that once united us, and how?

Back at the time of our founding, America was 13 colonies of people who then, as now, held often radically different views and interests, and were prone to dislike and distrust the people in those 'other' colonies. How were they able to unite? Today, more than ever, that's a question worth re-asking.

Ideas, not positions, united us
When Thomas Jefferson took up the task of writing the Declaration of Independence, he intended it to express ideas that were common to the American mind,

"...Neither aiming at originality of principle or sentiment, nor yet copied from any particular and previous writing, it was intended to be an expression of the American mind, and to give to that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion. All its authority rests then on the harmonizing sentiments of the day, whether expressed in conversation, in letters, printed essays, or in the elementary books of public right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney, &c...."

Dear America: Guns aren't your problem, You are. To Keep and Bear Arms Across Time - pt3

What do you think of when thinking about the 2nd Amendment? I've said what I think of: what the meaning of the 2nd Amendment is, I think of those objections I have to both those who're promoting something they call 'gun rights!', and 'gun control!', and of how I think its opponents evade honest discussions through ideological falsehoods and evasions for political gains. But that's me - what comes to your mind when you think of the 2nd Amendment? Are you, like many, one of those who think about shooting statistics and reducing crime numbers through common sense gun policies and laws?

Personally, I'm most definitely not thinking about statistics, in any way, when thinking about the 2nd Amendment. But for those of you who do, it probably wouldn't surprise you to learn that I welcome those who, having once relied upon such statistical studies arguing for 'common sense gun regulations', have since had their views on their effectiveness changed, by the very statistics they once used to justify imposing various restrictions upon the 2nd Amendment, with. This former believer and researcher, who revised her position to say that 'gun control' does not work, is a good example of that:

"...Before I started researching gun deaths, gun-control policy used to frustrate me. I wished the National Rifle Association would stop blocking common-sense gun-control reforms such as banning assault weapons, restricting silencers, shrinking magazine sizes and all the other measures that could make guns less deadly....."

, and that,

"...I researched the strictly tightened gun laws in Britain and Australia and concluded that they didn't prove much about what America's policy should be. .... And in both Australia and Britain, the gun restrictions had an ambiguous effect on other gun-related crimes or deaths...."

You might of course believe that your own review of the 'statistical facts' leads you to conclude that your 'gun control' methods would, or even do work, as this delightful manufacturer of two faced straw man arguments claims. But perhaps not. Or, if you wonder whether the Australian gun confiscation model might work here, since it seemed to lower shooting deaths there, this paper, which doesn't agree with me, presents a very reasonable case for why that is unlikely to be true for us here, or even for that matter for them there, and explains why.

But even if favorable findings and statics such as those were accepted without question, they still are not something that I'd use to make an argument for the 2nd Amendment.

Why? Because if that is your approach, then you are not thinking of what, IMHO, all such discussions should begin from - and that is a mistake. You cannot make a sound argument for something, on the basis of something that is not essential to the nature and purpose of that thing you are arguing for. Personally, I tend to think that any consideration of the 2nd Amendment, which actually begins with the premises that the 2nd Amendment was written from, and which define the purposes that it was written for, will lead you too to conclude, with me, that what it upholds and protects is deeply valuable to everyone's life, then and now. But even if you somehow had statistical proof, or some other claim of proof, for the effectiveness of 'gun control' measure or another, showing the numbers of lives it would save, and asked me what I thought of that, then I would reply as clearly and transparently as I possibly could:

I really don't care whether 'gun control' proposals will, or won't, 'work' to reduce crime and murders, and my opposition to them would remain unchanged.

Why? Because the 2nd Amendment has nothing to do with crime, or with reducing criminal behavior, or with our failures as a society to reduce murders or other criminal behavior, and I'm not giving it up for a false appearance of relevance.

Try looking at it this way: If it could be shown - and I've zero doubt that it could be - that by repealing the 4th Amendment (which preserves the right "...to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures...", requiring warrants, etc.), or even that putting (further) 'common sense restrictions upon it', the police would be able to prevent an enormous number of crimes by having the ability to enter anyone's house on a hunch, arrest anyone on the basis of suspicion alone, and hold them for as long as they thought best, I've no doubt whatsoever that we would immediately see a drastic reduction in crime and murder rates across the nation.

Would you be for that?

I would not.

Why? Because reducing crime is not the purpose of the 4th Amendment, or of the 5th Amendment, or of any of those other essential individual rights that are being protected by any of the other amendments in our Bill of Rights. Not even in those amendments which deal directly with limiting police activities in pursuit of criminals, they are not about crime, or murder, they are about safeguarding our individual rights by specifically preventing governments from gaining those powers which have been historically proven, over, and over again, to be horrifically dangerous to that government's own people, for it to acquire such powers over their lives.

They don't need to have bad intentions for bad things to follow from them, good intentions will more than suffice. It doesn't matter whether such powers are to implement traditional conservative policy

The 2nd Amendment's role in our abusive and violent society of social & legislative reformers. To Keep and Bear Arms Across Time - pt2

Clearly, as we're repeatedly beset with violent actions ranging from robbery, to assault, to murder, to the mind numbing mass slaughters we've experienced at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, a small town church in Texas, and now the sprawling high school in Parkland Florida, our society does have a problem with those who take up arms against the lives, rights and property of the rest of us. But just as clearly, confronting what the nature of that problem actually is, and why, as well as what actually can be done about it, is something that we've been fiercely unwilling to face up to - and that's worth taking a closer look at.

I argued in a previous post that it is because the primary purpose of the 2nd Amendment is not about Guns, that it is able to secure our right to keep and bear the personal arms of your choice, including guns. But why is that important? If you see its purpose as being nothing more than your possessing 'Arms', then you'll be easily diverted with irrelevancies, such as which arms (a .38 Special was the 'bad' weapon when I was young, as an AR-15 is today), or crime, or how much of that 'right' you actually 'need' - and if you don't see the problem there, it's that sort of perspective that would ask Rosa Parks why she needed to sit in the front of the bus. With a Utilitarian view like that, it may never occur to you that the purpose of the 2nd Amendment is wedded to the rest of the Bill of Rights, in that its purpose is to secure our natural right to keep and bear arms in defense of all of our rights, and if you can manage to take that perspective, you'll quickly see that criminals are the least and last of the threats to the 2nd Amendment's purpose.

What most people are not thinking about when the 2nd Amendment is brought to their mind, is our willful failure to identify the nature of what our rights are, which not only prevents us from dealing effectively with those who trespass against them, but encourages the greater trespasses and the very violence which the social & legislative reformers so noisly (and usefully) decry. It is that blank spot in our thoughts, whch has brought about one of those ironies which history delights in, as the attentions that both 'Gun Rights!' and 'Gun Control' enthusiasts mutually focus upon particular guns, serves to push the concepts of Arms and Individual Rights ever further from our minds, so that both groups are busily weakening our understanding of what the 2nd Amendment requires us to know, in order for it to be able to preserve those rights that it was written to defend for us.

Without an adequate understanding of the concepts behind the 2nd Amendment, its revolutionary statement:

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.

, becomes empty words ("nonsense upon stilts" is the pragmatic and Utilitarian view) that fall easy prey to 'what the meaning of IS is', making it that much easier to deny or avoid dealing with what the issue of armed violence actually is. The 2nd Amendment's power can be no greater than our understanding of it, and those who stand to gain ever more power with its loss, are very much aware of the the possibilities that our ignorance holds for them, and they are using that power to socially and legislatively reform America, into something less than what our Constitution is capable of serving.

The role which the 2nd Amendment has in our abusive and violent society today, even today, is to provide We The People with the means of defending and preserving our individual rights, from those social & legislative reformers who justify using the power of government to infringe upon our lives through our rights, for their vision of the 'Greater good' - no matter how much disorder and violence those reforms might be shown to visit upon us. The role and responsibility of We The People in defending our rights through the 2nd Amendment, is to understand, and apply the concepts which its words defend us with. Those whose efforts are thwarted by it, know that, and they use every trick they can to muddle, evade, and ignore its meaning, so that such thoughts will continue to remain unthought by you, when the 2nd Amendment is brought to mind.

While the 2nd Amendment is proof that the pen is mightier than the sword (we would not still have either arms or rights without the words of our Bill of Rights), its unprotected flanks expose it to attack from those grounds it doesn't explicitly defend. The 2nd Amendment is not about Guns, Criminals or Hunting, but in the intellectual guerrilla warfare we're currently engaged in, those issues serve as excellent cover for snipers firing fusillades of misdirection and falsehood into our midst. If you want to defend the 2nd Amendment's ability to defend us, you must make the effort to understand it, and to spot, and disarm those assaults upon it, or it will be rendered powerless to help us. The Pen is mightier than the sword... but only if its words - and those fired against it - are understood.

Looking directly into the disinfecting sunlight
Before taking a look at how our social & legislative reformers evade reality, and the dangerous abuses that are inherent in, and will result from doing so, let's have a look at the truth that is so painful for them to look upon. The dose of reality that our fellow citizens so desperately need, doesn't take a lot to say:

• There are NO LAWS that would prevent these shootings.

What if I told you, that guns aren't the point of the 2nd Amendment? To Keep and Bear Arms Across Time - pt1

What if I told you, that guns aren't the point of the 2nd Amendment? Heads would be exploding in bi-partisan living color, right? Well, that's what I'm saying: Guns aren't the point of the 2nd Amendment (... 3... 2... 1...BOOM!). And while that will cause heads on both sides of the aisle to explode, they will do so for very different reasons. The Right side will explode, because they'd assume that such a statement intends to weaken, and/or limit our access to guns - which is the opposite meaning, purpose, and affect which that statement would have. The Left side (and not a few on 'The Right') - those who get the tactical point of their spin - will explode because they'd realize that such a statement, if widely understood and adopted, would not only lead to the loss of decades of their hard fought limitations upon arms, but would also explode their primary tool for making those restrictions: equating Arms, with Guns.

You see, despite the fact that firearms are the most effective, efficient, practical means with which to keep and bear arms, they are, as that simple fact implies, not the actual point of the 2nd Amendment, but only one means of our carrying out what is protected by that amendment. Despite what often seems to be the best efforts of those on all sides, the 2nd Amendment is not primarily about gun rights - in fact there is no such thing as 'gun rights'. Nope. Not. Things, of course, do not have rights, but by claiming a right to things, it eventually eliminates all rights, because it means that someone, somewhere, is obligated to supply what others have claimed a right to, whether they want to, or not - that's not how rights work! BTW, that's the same strategy behind demands that 'Healthcare' be treated as a 'Right'.

What the 2nd Amendment is all about, is securing the right of each individual to be able to act in the defense of their community, persons, property and interests, by freely choosing the personal arms which in their judgment is best suited to that task. That's possible, because the 2nd Amendment assures We The People, that the government will neither infringe upon those actions we deem necessary to take, nor will it make any law that would come between ourselves and those arms we may choose from in order to act.

With that in mind, take note of the word 'Arms' in the language of the 2nd Amendment :

'...the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.'

And no, the 2nd Amdt is not about 'bearing arms against foreign militias'

If you keep in mind that this amendment was written during a time when 'gentlemen' still wore swords at times, and occasionally still used them, it becomes less surprising that the term refers to the general category of Arms,