The wording of this amendment was written to make it clear that, in fear of a standing national army the founders recognized that the states needed the right to maintain militias, not only for their own protection, but to contribute to a national army should there be a war; that army had to be of the states or the men who fought the war against a military government would not have accepted it. This provision is now called The National Guard, so militias are no longer needed to form an army, therefore the amendment could be considered moot. It was definitely not written to specifically authorize the ownership of firearms.
“Regulated“ naturally means, and can have no other meaning than, to establish, direct, and control. “Well” can only mean efficiently and effectively.
Who was expected to well regulate militias? The States! Who there-in? The legislatures to establish it, the Governors to facilitate it, and act as Commanders-in-Chief. Otherwise, where would be, “regulated?”
The idea that any collection of individuals has the right to form a militia without the explicit authorization, and direction, of the State’s government is ridiculous!
Recognizing State’s rights to protect themselves, the amendment allows that all citizens, being on call to fight, are naturally expected to keep and bear the muskets they will need when called to arms. That’s it! All other verbiage is mere noise, notwithstanding the Supreme Court’s continuous lack of guts to rule against paranoiac Rambos.
NATURAL RIGHTS
There is no such thing as a “natural” right. A “right“ must be declared so - by a society.
The “natural” right of individuals to keep and bear arms to protect one’s self from danger can only be legislated by political authority. “Natural rights” must result from law; without a law declaring a right to be “natural, on what basis can it be considered a right? Rights don‘t come from a figment of imagination.
An individual who considers something to be “a right,” integral to mere existence, does not, by believing it, make it so. It must be declared a natural right, and that takes a vote, and that’s legislation. There is no other source of “Rights,” natural or otherwise. In other than a society, the question of “rights” cannot arise; an individual who claims a right without concurrence from everyone else with an interest could get an umbrella jammed up his chuchoo.
It is a given that the leaders of a nation recognize when a “right” once existent, is no longer appropriate.
Even had it been declared a “Natural” right by a former congress, unless it was put into the Constitution, it could be declared no longer God‘s law; though that would make the Congress a laughing stock.
This argument is actually a waste of time; what each of us wants to believe, we will believe, facts be damned. Each of us chooses to cite others who support our stand, and argue that the citations of the opposition are idiots. Except me. Fundamentalists and fanatics are immune to reason. All members of a conviction never read “forbidden” literature, knowing it will weaken their “convictions…poison their minds.“
Additionally, in a money-driven election system, legislators can show no spine while exposed to, and dependent on, the deep pockets of the gun lobby, and others who have gun, will travel.
My view is that the American Confederation was unsecured, hardly in existence, with fluid borders, exposure to invasion from with-in and offshore at the time of our formation; There’s no such thing now. Our nation’s founders had in mind two entities: An active, and an inactive militia. The inactive was every able male. Now, the active is the National Guard, though not a militia; all able males, and females, are inactive, subject to draft - following necessary legislation to make it so.
Revolutionary soldiers initially fought with their own weapons, if they had one, which was the basic foundation of the second amendment - to have a weapon at hand for call-up. As for citizens having the right to own a weapon for personal safety, that would have been a given, with no connection to the need for, and a right to, a militia, and no need for permission from government; the founders would not have thought such permission to be necessary in a brand new nation surrounded by present and potential enemies. After all, if we were short of enemies, as we do even now, we simply attacked aboriginals, took their land, and declared them savages. So owning a weapon was essential, without a document to say so.
Now, we don’t have any Marshall Dillons, we have Police. We are in an entirely different era when self-styled super-patriots, entitled to own firearms, convince themselves they can withstand an attack by the government. ( The ATF, FBI, military. ) The second amendment, as they read it, feeds their delusions.
Actually, whenever I hear such reasoning, I see a crazy Moslem on his way toward death yelling, “God is great!” * * { “Crazy Moslem” = one who had adopted insane ideas about Islam }
Do we want a nation of Warlords yelling, “Gun is Great!”?
I do, however, support the keeping of arms - only one per adult - a single-shot handgun, not to protect us from the Feds ( the government is us, our representatives, and our siblings and children in uniform - and we had better keep it that way ), but from each other, as individuals. If we are on guard to prevent establishment of a national police force, we have all the protection from take-over we can reasonably expect; Alexander Hamilton had made the point for the constitution that there would be too many militias for the federal government to tangle with. With that reason in mind, I would support an amendment to the Second to state such conditions.
Regardless of the lack of a constitutional basis for an armed
populace, we are an armed populace. Those who live securely in their personal armories will fight to keep them. But there should be no militia not authorized, organized, and controlled by the State. Unlicensed possession of attack-weapons, explosives, or associated parts and material, in forms used primarily for non-self-defensive aggression, should be a felony. And, citizen patrol of our borders, without government consent and oversight is ridiculous. We do a lousy job of securing illegal entry to our paradise, but only government-authorized control should be permitted.
But let it be clear that the cost to the American people, in terms of life, and limb, from guns is, in my opinion, one hell of a lot more of a physical, emotional, and economic threat to all of us - individually and collectively - than the possibility of a government takeover because there are few guns in the hands of relatively few people. That’s a fact. I support gun control.
I support any legislation that would hold weapon manufacturers responsible for making their products as safe as state-of-the-art technology could provide, and that no previously owned weapon be sold without such modification. Every non-modified weapon that finds itself in the hands of government authority should be kept for law enforcement, or melted down and sold as basic material for other things. Not sold as is; the idea of municipal income from such sales should not be permitted a life.
I support any efforts to hold gun manufacturers, distributors, and retailers, responsible for any damages proved to have resulted from advertisements that promote lethal guns as toys.
To hell with the idea of paramilitary kids being prepared to defend themselves against imagined attacks that only immature parents, and political paranoids, can fear, and as a result, invite, with their own behavior.
THE ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY
I’ve suggested elsewhere legislation to hold responsible all who had created an entertainment proven to have provoked a specific act of damage. We should hold actors who agree to contribute their talent to such entertainment financially responsible. I’m sure their resulting caution will cause an astounding drop in irresponsibility, or at least a tremendous reduction in the quality of such films, therefore a reduction in audience. The constitution does in no way forbid this.
WHITE SUPREMACY/RACIAL
INFERIORITY-SUPERIORITY/HATE
It’s all a matter of viewing-point. To whites, white-created society
is superior to all others; to blacks, or any other race, white-created
econo-social society, though vigorous, is not so hot. It may provide
lots of goodies, but people of other races, from their point of view,
see their own values as superior to the white man’s, though
“Whitie” can’t see how.
There’s no such thing as “better.” Explained by B. F. Skinner’s “Conditioned response:” parents breed and promote intolerance. Hate is caused mostly by low self-esteem, but to a large degree, by being taught to hate a culture other than one‘s own.
Our constantly developing over-enthusiastic attempts to give the
persecuted non-white people a break, as groups rather than
individuals, has put a tremendous percentage of white Americans
in a dither; this nation is fast becoming a nation favoring
non-whites, to the detriment of whites, primarily by
whites. Now that’s ridiculous!
Those who personally feel that race is the only basis for him or her to think of one’s self as having quality, are being suffocated;
being white, in a white-created society, and facing the inevitable
prospect of being a minority, is as frightening to Christians who have
to deal with public schools no longer dominated by them, or by formally dominant Sunnis unable to accept life in a Shia-dominated Iraq.
I feel their pain. But hate, and longing for a race war between white and black in America, won’t do a beneficial thing for them but give them something powerful to which they can presently dedicate themselves, even if they never get to see success. That, in itself, eases the lack of self-esteem. ( But, in no way, eliminates it. )
If one who is involved with racists is inclined toward honest
introspection, and sees a basically good person in himself, then my idea about viewing-points should move him away from his racist friends and become involved - not to overdo it - with people of all other races and religions, to experience them. How would you feel living in a garden with nothing but Roses? It doesn’t have to be invigorating, but it should remove the burden of intolerance and hate from your shoulders, giving your soul a break.
Maybe then there’ll be a little less concern about guns; there’ll be
no threat of a race-war for people with black, brown, and
sky-blue-pink friends. Oh! and no reason to envy Jews, and deny
them their legitimacy as descendants of the people who gave us our version of God, and their testament from which it all emanates. Not that most of them give a damn.
In order to support the idea that Hitler was a good guy, Nazis have
been indoctrinating youngsters into the idea that the Holocaust is
a hoax. Information now comes to us that the Third Reich was
bankrupt all along; it was in no way a successful economically
stable state, and would have failed on its own in a short time. I had assumed that many years ago!
Mrs. Vivian Spitz now comes forward, as reported in the papers and informs us that she, as one of twenty-six court reporters, during two years, took down testimony at the Nurenburg trials documenting the atrocities as reported by victims, and partially confirmed by witnesses, and photographs.
All this makes no difference to Nazis who’s need for self-respect is being satisfied by racial pride. ( After all, they obviously don’t feel that they, as individuals, have anything to be proud of. ) Adolph is considered by them to be the century’s symbol of a successful race-based society, so accusations of inhumanity have to be invalidated and ridiculed. I wonder how many Hitler-lovers know that Adolph was a long-haired wastrel for most of his young life, and had never - but for a few paintings, sold for him by a Jew, to Jews - earned his own living. Hitler was a parasite, through-and-through.
As I point out in my Miscellaneous Brief, “The Colorado school
Holocaust,” No truths will change the minds of those who listen
only for confirmation of needed comfort.
( I am convinced that Hitler had no idea how far his ranting had gone in the hands of his Jew-hating henchmen; he had never been to a concentration camp, or seen Jews in captivity. He actually did not really hate Jews, until he talked himself into it as he slowly lost his sanity. I really do believe that! Not that I don‘t think he was an asshole, a drug addict, and in desperate need for Viagra - he was probably a virgin, for heaven’s sake! )
DESTRUCTIVE EXTREMISM
Timothy McVeigh had made a statement to the effect that, when the government gets too brassy, the people have the right to rise up. That’s good!
Where, in a rational mind is there even a particle of support for the concept that a few, or an individual member, of a democratic collective: a cult, tribe, or nation, can lawfully rise up with destructive impact?
All laws and commentaries, in any nation on earth, the heavens, or even in fiction, in connection with citizen rights to seek redress of grievances, stipulates parameters; none would support the idea that one, or a few, unable to restrain their passionate opinion, may slaughter, or injure their own people, or leaders, in the name of their plaint.
An Oklahoma City grandmother and the child of her child are dead, merely because she went to the Social Security office; a multitude of other people's children are dead and damaged,
along with many grownups. none of whom had anything to do with McVeigh’s plaint, and this man, and his fellows, saw fit to do what no government organizers would dream of legitimizing: a few citizens, on their own, avenging a real or perceived crime by government against the people.
McVeigh’s quote of Justice Brandies eluded to “..the whole people...” not any small group of individuals. The Constitution does the same, it refers to the people, as states (even cities) not as individuals. And, the way we rise up, in a nation of hundreds of millions is through public discourse, association, and the ballot box.
Let there be a resounding rejection of this man’s defense that he represented the whole people, he was not elected!, and let it be loud enough to penetrate the eardrums of all who let fester resentments until they can no longer restrain themselves and strike out without the
possibility of their acts bringing about a resolution; guerrilla warfare will always prove counter-productive in a democracy. There is no room in a truly democratic republic for Guerrilla’s; we are not only truly democratic, we are fanatically so, to the point of irrationality. Good changes cannot take place without massive social pressure - over many years, not immediately, and not through individual destructive extremism. McVeigh, rot in hell!
FROM, FRED ON EVERYTHING . NET
(Cut and pasted without permission)
“From time to time I write about the morality of the media as they go about wrecking civilization and annoying hell out of me. For rhetorical convenience I use “New York” and “Hollywood” as a sort of abbreviation for the news racket and the screen trades.
“This column gets a lot of email. Some of it assumes that “New York” and “Hollywood” are code words for “Jews,” and excoriates me mightily for not saying what I am assumed to mean. Let me give you a typical example, the subject line being “Fred Sees No Jews in New York and Hollywood.”
‘Dear Fred,
Good greetings.
Your column on Television Tyranny and Degeneration is strong and important, as your columns usually are. But it also shows you're unwilling to mention that Jews dominate these industries--again, as your columns always are scared to mention Jews.”
( A comment from Ridgeway: So? All non-Jews have to do is to take it over. No one is stopping Gentiles from massing, and overwhelming the Jews with their own propaganda to the public! )
Fred continues:
‘You're not ignorant that Hollywood and New York, movies and television, are Jewish. You're unwilling to say so. You're unwilling to state publicly the hatred consistently pumped by Jews into the Gentile populations they dominate, degrade, and destroy.’
( Comment from me: So? Get in there, and dominate some of it yourself! No conspiracy could possibly put Jews in control of anything Gentiles could! Look! When are you going to pick on Arabs who own all the 7-11‘s? Huh? )
Fred continues:
‘The fact that even Fred Reed submits to the taboo not to criticize Jews--no matter how obvious and ubiquitous is the power of Jewish degradation of Gentiles--is proof of the ruling power of Jews. ‘
‘Hide the truth--protect Jewish power and degradation of Gentiles. That's the policy Fred Reed follows, together with LewRockwell.com and everybody else. ‘
Best wishes,
John’
Another:
‘Fred,
‘I didn’t just get admitted to MIT – I got a PhD from there.
Now that I’ve got your attention, I’d like to tell you just how spineless I think your last column was in omitting the very obvious fact that JEWS have played and continue to play the largest role in television’s slow destructive agenda.
‘Jews have both a genetic and cultural desire to subvert and destroy their host civilizations – it is part of their survival instinct and it is what has caused their genetic strain and culture to survive for millennia.
( Ridgeway inserts:
And how have you come to this conclusion? “Part of their survival instinct, etc . . .”
I didn’t know there was an explanation for their survival, except the Christian belief that God keep them well to prove His existence. Have you discovered some secret papers left behind by the Big Guy? Humm? )
Fred continues:
‘The prevalence of Jews in television and advertising provides a powerful channel for those destructive urges to have their effect. One wonders whether this unprecedented opportunity for their hatred and contempt to be actualized will deliver the final blow to the tired host.
‘You’re no tough guy – forget the cigar and the leather jacket. I will take you seriously when you have the guts to offend the execrable self chosen.
‘Why are you so scared of Jews? Are you just a realist? Do you know more than I do about what they could and will do to you? Or are you just paranoid?
‘Vincent’
I admire the fearlessness of John and Vince in having me take on the Jews. “Let’s you and him fight” is an old call. Being weary of this stuff, I am going to do a doubtless overlong column on the subject, and then go back to better things, such as drinking beer with colorful reprobates.
Now, the conventions of discourse being what they are, it is hard to talk about Jews at all. If you say, “Some of my best friends are Jews,” it means you hate Jews. If you say, “I can’t stand the freaking Jews,” it means you hate Jews. If you don’t say anything, it means you secretly hate Jews.
If you say anything good about the Jews, it means that you are a tool of the Jews, or afraid of the Jews, or have had your mind clouded by Jews. Where does one go from here?
but wotthehell wotthehell.
The premises of letters such as the foregoing are invariant: (1) that Jews want to destroy all that is good and holy, and eat Christian children, and (2) that I know it. It then follows that, since I don’t say it, I must be either cowardly or collusive. The matter is always phrased as a manhood issue: Either you stand up to the Jews, or you lack balls. The Jews of course are a monolithic and conspiratorial group who rub their hands and say “Heh-heh-heh.”
Permit me a different interpretation.
Jews may be exotic in Peoria. (Or may not be: I have never been to Peoria.) In Washington, where I worked for years, they are as rare as automobiles. I have known lots of Jews. I have dated them, gotten drunk with them, danced with them, argued with them, gone on junkets to weird Asian countries with them. I liked most of them.
My favorite lunch buddy for a long time was a retired Harvard professor, Jewish, as decent a human being as I have ever met. My favorite dance partner was a Jewish radical feminist (I know, I know, but we liked each other) who was on an undefeated College Bowl team in the Sixties. My dentist was Jewish. The biochemist I used to windsurf with on the Potomac was Jewish. Beth, the pediatrician I dated at NIH, was Jewish, and an absolute sweetheart. I learned the Texas two-step from a Jewish carpenter (no, another carpenter) who moonlighted as a dance instructor. And so on.
Familiarity—not fear of invisible radioactive death-needles from Mossad, or of being run out of journalism—is why I don’t devote my life to obsessing about the malfeasance of Jews. Are there Jews who do things politically I don’t like? Yes. Are there Jews who do things politically I’m not sure whether I like? Yes. Is there an Israeli lobby? Yes. Yet I have never encountered the evil Jews of The Conspiracy. I simply do not see them as bad people. I am not going to pretend otherwise to establish my virility for John and Vince.
In particular, I do not rave against the Israelis, because I don’t know what I think they should do. I note that their treatment of the Palestinians is indistinguishable from American treatment of the Iraqis and Vietnamese. Virtue does not exactly flood the world's streets, anywhere.
Further, Jews as I have known them are not monolithic. Politically they have been all over the place, though running to liberal: a professional conservative (Herb Berkowitz, the PR guy at the Heritage Foundation, a raucous Boston Jew and delightful loon), a couple of AIPACers, (Seth Carus and Steve Glick, pro-Israel but, I’m sorry gang, not anti-American), Libertarians, Greens, several with little or no interest in politics, some who in varying degrees disapproved of Israel.
I spent my high-school years aboard Dahlgren Naval Weapons Lab, living on Mathematicians Row (Caffee Road, just off the Circle). The names along the street were Cohen, Reed, Strauss, Kemper. I don’t know how they voted, but they designed armament for the Navy. I’d guess Republican.
I don’t see the Jews of the email. That Jews are tremendously influential in the media is a fact, easily verified on the Web. However, the leap from “Jews are powerful in the media” to “Jews are responsible for all social ills, the collapse of civilization, and everything I don’t like” is a bit of a stretch. Those I know have no idea why John and Vince loathe them, incidentally. Being hit on the head by a piano imparts little understanding of pianos.
Further, never do I encounter from the Johns and Vince’s the idea that any Jew, ever, might have done anything good, however inadvertently. My experience is distinctly otherwise. For years I was a science writer in Washington. I spent countless days crawling through NIH, COMSAT, NASA, talking with Bell Labs and IBM Research, and places you have probably never heard of. (The PET lab of NIDA, National Institute on Drug Abuse in Baltimore, for example, then run by a very bright Jewish woman.) The number of Jews in research, and in high-tech industry, is wildly out of proportion to their number in the population. They are a mainstay of the American lead in technology. This is bad?
Let me tell you a story. In the early Fifties, polio was a nightmare for parents. Lots of children clunked around in braces or sat forever in wheel chairs. In summer, the epidemic season, our mothers wouldn’t let us go to public swimming pools because they were thought to be focuses of infection.
One day a fellow named Salk came out of a laboratory somewhere and said, “Hey, I’ve got this vaccine….” A bit later, a guy named Sabin came out of another laboratory, and said, “Hey, if we do thus and so and put it on sugar cubes, see, it will be oral….” You can’t imagine how welcome that vaccine was. Parents grabbed their children by the hair and sprinted through doors, sometimes not bothering to open them, to get to the clinic. Polio just flat disappeared.
Hint: Salk and Sabin were not Rastafarians. (“Jews Destroy American Iron Lung Industry.”)
Does none of this count for anything?
So many of the Jewish crimes popular on the email circuit don’t stand up to examination. For instance, I hear repeatedly that during Vietnam America won in the field but that Jews stabbed Our Boys in the back by means of the anti-war movement, thus seeking to promote godless atheistic communism.
Not quite. The leadership of the anti-war movement was heavily Jewish. The movement itself was overwhelmingly Christian. At the conservative Southern college I attended, the studentry to a boy wanted no part of the war. It wasn’t because of Jewish anything. It was because they didn’t want to get shot. Their girlfriends didn’t want them to get shot, nor did their parents.
People didn’t need help to weary of an endless, bloody, pointless war, in which their sons were dying, in a place they didn’t care about and could barely find on a map. Christian kids in huge numbers did everything they could to avoid Vietnam, which is why the draft was needed to force them to go. Christians like Dan Quayle, George W, and Bill Clinton sought student deferments or ducked into the National Guard. Check how many of the Christian elite from the Ivies served in Asia. The anti-war movement wasn’t a Jewish plot. It was a national revolt.
Most of the things Jews are supposed to be doing, on examination, they aren’t. Is globalization a Jewish plot (as I’m told), or the inevitable result of advancing technology? Is destructive feminism a Jewish plot, or the result of sweeping social changes in which women have found themselves thrown into unaccustomed and unsettling roles? Is the decline of education a Jewish plot, or the consequence of having teaching in the hands of intellectual dregs, of pandering by politicians for racial votes, and of the fact that Americans don’t really care about schooling? Etc.
That’s why I don’t gnaw at myself about Jews.”
END
This says it all, I think. You may want to check Fred out at, www.fredoneverything.net. He’s excellent; very different from me, in that he presents opinion sarcastically, but no less insightful than my highly intelligent un-impeachability. He‘s a better writer than me, but I’m better looking!
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