Category Archives: Constitution

Update III: On Libertarians Who Dismiss The NRA (& 'Heller')

Business, Constitution, Individual Rights, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Multiculturalism, Natural Law

Myron Pauli, a valued reader whose letters are always stimulating, has given in to the sin of abstraction so many libertarians are guilty of. (See the Comments Section of the previous
post.) The root of this error comes from being high on your own ideological purity. So high you walk around with a hangover that clouds clear thinking rooted in reality.

Such individuals have discovered libertarian theory (often from dubious sources), and have set about enforcing it with the zeal of soviet apparatchiks, instead of working with reality. Which is what the very flawed, non-ideological NRA does.

For example, the fact that the NRA has acquiesced to—or rather works around—licensing, causes libertarian purists to dismiss the NRA. This is silly, if not a non sequitur, given the enormous amount of good work the NRA does. And given the fact that libertarians have achieved precious little in this respect. Without the NRA and its formidable clout, there would be no Second Amendment rights in this country. The fact that they are hated by the Left is a notch on their Second Amendment scorecard. (But, as I said to Sean the other day, libertarians don’t share my visceral hatred of the left. Passionless people, for the most)

Myron’s particular argument goes as follows: Because the NRA is “suing private company Walt Disney for the ‘right’ to take their guns on Disney property,” they are useless, not to be supported, and, for good measure, let us call them props of the Republican Party who only pretend to recognize gun rights. More non sequiturs. (No evidence is offered for the accusation that the NRA doesn’t really recognize Second Amendment rights.)

The NRA’s ideas of private property are not my own. But, equally, very many libertarians reject my hard-core propertarian position. For example, lots of libertarians think the libertarian law should not countenance the right of a property owner to eliminate a home invader out of hand. (How many libertarians think Joe Horn is a hero?)

Liberty lovers, instead of being high on their own purity, should take a deep breath and work with reality. This does not mean compromising principles. With respect to the NRA, this implies recognizing and articulating its theoretical flaws but reconciling its realistic gains for liberty.

The NRA’s lack of libertarian purity on private property and their alliance with the GOP notwithstanding, they are a formidable force when it comes to their rather narrow mandate: Second Amendment rights.

Update I (July 13): Let’s see, in an imperfect, ideologically impure world, where corporations are second only to the state in their demands for compliance with diversity doxology, the cult of multiculti, and all manner of suppression–who do I root for; Walt Disney or the little guy with the gun?

It’s much like asking me who I support in the case of another of America’s leftist corporations, Pizza Hut, which sacked James William Spiers for defending himself during a delivery that was really an ambush. Writes blogger Big Dog:

“The details are pretty straight forward. A woman, an accomplice of a criminal, placed a [sic] order for a pizza. The delivery man, James William Spiers, attempted to deliver the pizza when he was confronted by a man who put a gun to his head. Spiers, who has a permit to carry a handgun, grabbed the assailant’s gun and pulled his own weapon. The attacker was shot three times.”

“When police arrived at the scene Spiers placed his hands in the air and dropped to his knees and told the police that he had both weapons in his pockets. So far no charges have been filed but Pizza Hut has suspended Spiers. The company has a policy against carrying a weapon, even for those who have a permit to carry one…”

Pizza Hut prefers for its innocent employees to die rather than defend themselves on the job. This is not the first time the company has followed through on this preference. Here’s a similar story.

Most Americans, who spend their days on the job, cannot carry to work. That rules out self-defense during a good part of the day. Even if workers leave the thing in the car—ill advised, of course—a colleague who discovers their “deviancy” might just tattle, and they risk being retrenched.

Corporations are not that different to government when it comes to rights. Yes, strictly speaking, in libertarian law, the former have a right to write the suspension of rights into their contracts, whereas the latter doesn’t. However, it must be obvious with who I sympathize given what I know of America’s corporate culture—extreme leftism, commitment to making the workforce as multicultural as possible (in the face of the misery and inefficiencies it breeds), a concomitant devotion to forced integration (or else); gay-centric propaganda and circulars routinely foisted on Christians, and a pervasive hostility to Christianity (while prayer rooms for Muslim workers are erected everywhere).

Update II: To those who conveniently “forget” my immutable position on property rights, sympathizing with the Davids in this story doesn’t imply, not even remotely, a support for litigation against the Goliaths. But then those who read this site know I’m a strict propertarian.

Update III (July 14): one of the more vigorous libertarian battles being waged in this country with a good degree of success is that over the Second Amendment. This is one natural right that Americans who want it upheld understand perfectly well. Yet on my blog, there has been a great deal of obfuscation and negation of the gains made to date. Instead of the loopy libertarians who’ve been referenced on BAB (the same loopy sorts dissed Heller Vs. The District of Columbia), let’s listen to some “heavy hitting” clear thinkers.

Randy Barnett is one of the sharpest, most original legal minds in the libertarian community (which is why I was overjoyed when one of my formulations jibed with his, unbeknown to both of us). Dave Kopel is formidable on the Second Amendment. He lives and breathes this jurisprudence and assisted in its litigation. (Imagine; someone who’s been in the thick of the fight, instead of standing on the sidelines dissing everyone.) Here they are on Reason Magazine Online:

RANDY BARNETT: “Justice Scalia’s historic opinion will be studied for years to come, not only for its conclusion but for its method. It is the clearest, most careful interpretation of the meaning of the Constitution ever to be adopted by a majority of the Supreme Court. Its analysis of the “original public meaning” of the Second Amendment stands in sharp contrast with Justice Stevens’ inquiry into “original intent” or purpose and with Justice Breyer’s willingness to balance an enumerated constitutional right against what some consider a pressing need to prohibit its exercise. The differing methods of interpretation employed by the majority and the dissent also demonstrate why appointments to the Supreme Court are so important. In the future, we should be vetting Supreme Court nominees to see if they understand how Justice Scalia reasoned in Heller and if they are committed to doing the same. Now if we can only get a majority of the Supreme Court to reconsider its previous decisions—or “precedents”—that are inconsistent with the original public meaning of the text.”

Randy Barnett is the Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Legal Theory at Georgetown University Law Center and author of Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty.

DAVE KOPEL: “Heller is a tremendous victory for human rights and for libertarian ideals. Today’s majority opinion provides everything which the lawyers closely involved in the case, myself included, had hoped for. Of course I would have preferred a decision which went much further in declaring various types of gun control to be unconstitutional. But Rome was not built in a day, and neither is constitutional doctrine.

For most of our nation’s history, the U.S. Supreme Court did nothing to protect the First Amendment; it was not until the 1930s when a majority of the Court took the first steps towards protecting freedom of the press. It would have been preposterous to be disappointed that a Court in, say, 1936, would not declare a ban on flag-burning to be unconstitutional. It took decades for the Supreme Court to build a robust First Amendment doctrine strong enough to protect even the free speech rights of people as loathsome as flag-burners or American Nazis.

Likewise, the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment was, for all practical purposes, judicially nullified from its enactment until the 1930s. When the Court in that decade started taking Equal Protection seriously, the Court began with the easiest cases—such as Missouri’s banning blacks from attending the University of Missouri Law School, while not even having a “separate but equal” law school for them. It was three decades later when, having constructed a solid foundation of Equal Protection cases, the Court took on the most incendiary racial issue of all, and struck down the many state laws which banned inter-racial marriage.

So too with the Second Amendment. From the Early Republic until the present, the Court has issued many opinions which recognize the Second Amendment as an individual right. Yet most of these opinions were in dicta. After the 1939 case of United States v. Miller, the Court stood idle while lower federal courts did the dirty work of nullifying the Second Amendment, by over-reading Miller to claim that only National Guardsmen are protected by the Amendment.

Today, that ugly chapter in the Court’s history is finished. Heller is the first step on what will be long journey. Today, the Court struck down the most freakish and extreme gun control law in the nation; only in D.C. was home self-defense with rifles and shotguns outlawed. Heller can be the beginning of a virtuous circle in which the political branches will strengthen Second Amendment rights (as in the 40 states which now allow all law-abiding, competent adults to obtain concealed handgun carry permits), and the courts will be increasingly willing to declare unconstitutional the ever-rarer laws which seriously infringe the right to keep and bear arms.
As the political center of gravity moves step by step in a pro-rights direction, gun control laws which today might seem (to most judges) to be constitutional will be viewed with increasing skepticism. The progress that the pro-Second Amendment movement has made in the last 15 years has been outstanding. As long as gun owners and other pro-Second Amendment citizens stay politically active, the next 15, 30, and 45 years can produce much more progress, and the role of the judiciary in protecting Second Amendment rights will continue to grow.”

Dave Kopel is Research Director at the Independence Institute, in Golden, Colorado. He was one of three lawyers at the counsel table who assisted Alan Gura at the oral argument on March 18. His brief for the International Law Enforcement Educators and Trainers Association was cited four times in the Court’s opinions.

Updated: Wayne LaPierre On Sovereignty & The Second Amendment

Barack Obama, Constitution, Individual Rights, Natural Law, UN

WRITES WAYNE LAPIERRE, NRA EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT:

Gun rights advocates considering skipping this November’s presidential election should keep two things in mind–the Supreme Court and the United Nations. …

Recently, I’ve encountered some friends who are disillusioned over the political scene. As one recently put it, “The country would be better off with Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton in the White House, because after four years, the American people would have their fill of ‘progressives’ and demand a true political revolution.”

What I have said to them one-on-one must also be said to any of our number who might have that same “sit-this-one-out” mentality. Two things I mentioned to the cynics changed their minds–the Supreme Court and the United Nations.

Consider this: In November, we will not just be electing a president for four years. In essence, we will be electing a U.S. Supreme Court majority for a lifetime. And we will be electing scores of lower court judges to lifetime posts.

Sen. Hillary Clinton, who has embraced every form of gun control you can think of–from registration, to licensing, to gun bans–actually put it better than I can. She told a newspaper editorial board in Iowa:

“I think you can make it clear that elections have political consequences, and among them are who gets to pick our judges . . . who has power and how they get to exercise that power . . .”

That power, Clinton understands, extends to the entire federal government, and she understands how that power can be used to pack the court with those unfavorable to the Second Amendment.

This is the fundamental fact that the “sit out this election” folks are forgetting. Whatever issue is driving our disheartened friends to believe that “worse will be better in the long run,” we must remind them that the long run is exactly why the makeup of the U.S. Supreme Court trumps everything else.

Supreme Court justices are appointed for life. A relatively youthful anti-Second Amendment justice or two could hold supremacy over our Right to Keep and Bear Arms for the next 30 to 40 years.
In the next few years, it is likely that two, maybe three, Supreme Court vacancies will occur. The one appointing replacements will be critical to everything we hold dear–and that holds true for all of our friends who are dedicated to preserving freedom involving other important issues.

Right now, we are seeing just how critical a change in the membership of the U.S. Supreme Court can be–especially concerning the Second Amendment. Nothing accomplished during George W. Bush’s presidency has been more important than his appointments to the Supreme Court and the lower federal courts.

In the next few years, it is likely that two, maybe three, Supreme Court vacancies will occur. The one appointing replacements will be critical to everything we hold dear–and that holds true for all of our friends who are dedicated to preserving freedom in other areas.

Here is what Sen. Barack Obama sees as the role of the Supreme Court; he recently declared during one of his town hall meetings:

“What I really believe is that the Supreme Court has to be first and foremost thinking about and looking out for those who are vulnerable. People who are minorities, people who have historically been discriminated against. People who are poor. People who have been cheated. People who are being taken advantage of. People who have unpopular opinions. People who are outsiders.”

In other words, it’s about social engineering, not interpreting the law.

As for Clinton, her vision is also very clear–and just as frightening:

“I’m going to be looking for people,” Clinton said, “who respect that the Constitution is an organic, growing, evolving set of principles that have stood the test of time, and we can’t just be looking at it as though it is frozen at some point in the late 18th century . . .”

To my mind, that statement from Clinton defines exactly why we don’t need any more activist social engineers creating law from the bench.

In truth, the only major presidential candidate talking about strict adherence to the Constitution by the courts is Sen. John McCain. In May, he laid out his vision of America’s court system to a Wake Forest University audience:

“In federal and state courts, and in the practice of law across our nation, there are still men and women who understand very well the proper role of our judiciary, and I intend to find them and promote them,” McCain said. “My nominees will understand that there are very clear limits to the scope of judicial power, and clear limits to the scope of federal power.”

Counter that with Clinton’s view of what is at stake for her party’s progressive philosophy come November. Again, remember Hillary’s words: “I think you can make it clear that elections have political consequences, and among them are who gets to pick our judges . . .”

She’s right.

With a Senate controlled by party members who agree with her, Clinton knows what is up for grabs–nothing less than the entire federal court system, with scores of vacancies created by a politicized confirmation process designed to kill the nomination of any “strict constructionist.”

To see how important this issue truly is, let’s look at the damage just one U.S. district court judge can do. Many of the most outrageous abuses of the federal judicial process have been before Brooklyn federal judge Jack B. Weinstein. Anti-gun to the core, Weinstein has even gone so far as to ban the use of the words “Second Amendment” and “National Rifle Association” during court proceedings.

Many of these cases are based on an abusive, Orwellian legal claim that the federally licensed firearm industry is somehow responsible for the violent acts of armed criminals in New York City. Anti-gun groups have tailored their cases and abused court procedures to get into Judge Weinstein’s courtroom.

Judge Weinstein has provided endless opportunity for this serial abuse of the judicial process with punitive, crackpot legal action piled upon legal action. And in case after case, his rulings have been reversed.

But what if, in the future, appeals court judges appointed by Obama or Clinton were to uphold one of Weinstein’s wacky decisions? Further, suppose that decision is supported by a Supreme Court majority appointed by Obama or Clinton.

Such a scenario could spell the end of lawful commerce in firearms in America, and it could mean the end of federalism as we know it.

The latest case before Judge Weinstein involves New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s vigilante action to control the lives of innocent firearm dealers in every state in the nation from his Manhattan office. Billionaire Bloomberg wants to be a self-appointed dictator ruling over gun owners’ lives, no matter where they live. And Weinstein has granted him that authority.

“The basic premise … that American law should conform to the laws of the rest of the world, ought to be rejected out of hand.”

–Justice Antonin Scalia

So if Obama or Clinton were elected, and endowed with the ability to appoint even more activist judges in the Weinstein mold, everything we believe in, and everything we practice under the Second Amendment, could be destroyed.

As consumers, we are already paying for such judicial travesties–Judge Weinstein’s inquisitions have already cost the firearm industry over $100 million in legal fees. Several companies have even gone belly-up because of the legal costs.

Imagine an Obama or Clinton administration–supported by a rubber-stamp progressive U.S. Senate–with 10 more, 20 more, even 50 more judges like Weinstein. For that reason alone, gun owners and others who believe in the Constitution cannot afford to sit out this election.

In McCain’s Wake Forest speech, among the activist directions of the Supreme Court that he attacked was the notion–expressed by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Anthony Kennedy and Steven G. Breyer–that international law takes precedence over American law, or even the Constitution.

In a 2005 death penalty case, for example, Justice Kennedy wrote for the majority:

“It is proper that we acknowledge the overwhelming weight of international opinion . . . The opinion of the world community, while not controlling our outcome, does provide respected and significant confirmation for our own conclusions.”

In his scathing dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia countered:

“‘Acknowledgment’ of foreign approval has no place in the legal opinion of this Court . . . the basic premise . . . that American law should conform to the laws of the rest of the world, ought to be rejected out of hand.”

Yet conforming to the laws of the world–for example, laws to disarm all civilians–is the very goal of the likes of globalist gun-banner George Soros and his international political hand-maiden Rebecca Peters. In their view, world opinion demands total civil disarmament on a global scale, including free citizens of the United States of America. Peters heads the powerful International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA), which is bankrolled by billionaire Soros and deep-pocketed governments that have forcefully disarmed their own citizens.

When Peters and I debated before a crowd at Kings College London in 2004, she stated:

“I think American citizens should not be exempt from the rules that apply to the rest of the world . . . this is the irony that the gun lobby . . . should be obstructing a global process . . .”

This global process Peters champions brings me to another huge stake that American firearm owners have in this election, yet might not have carefully considered: the United Nations.

And in the case of an Obama or Clinton administration, U.N. supremacy over American sovereignty would be a clear danger.

During President Bush’s tenure, no better service to the cause of American freedom has been rendered than that of United States Representative to the United Nations John Bolton, who was honored as banquet speaker at the 2007 nra Annual Meetings & Exhibits in St. Louis. From the first months of the Bush administration, as undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security, Bolton stunned the gun-ban world, telling the U.N. international gun control conference in July 2001:

“The United States will not join consensus on a final document that contains measures contrary to our constitutional Right to Keep and Bear Arms.” Bolton consistently held that line against an unrelenting effort by the U.N. to create a treaty that would jeopardize our national sovereignty and trump the Second Amendment.

You can be certain, however, that under an Obama or Clinton administration, there will be no John Bolton in the halls of the United Nations to protect the interests of American sovereignty and our rights under the Constitution. Consequently, upcoming U.N. disarmament efforts could prove far more devastating to our way of life than anything we’ve so far witnessed.

Stop and consider a gun hater representing the United States in the U.N. gun-ban process, and you can see just how real this threat could be.

An Obama or Clinton administration, appointing anti-gun Supreme Court justices along with U.N. representatives friendly to Soros’ and Peters’ gun-ban plans, would create a well-oiled anti-gun machine–both within and outside the country–bent on destroying the Second Amendment.

Once in place, that machine could pursue its desired endgame–a total U.S. gun ban–unfettered by those gun owners who chose to “sit this one out.”

We simply can’t let that happen.

***

Update: Support the NRA’s Castle-Doctrine initiatives.

Updated: Wayne LaPierre On Sovereignty & The Second Amendment

Barack Obama, Constitution, Individual Rights, Natural Law, UN

WRITES WAYNE LAPIERRE, NRA EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT:

Gun rights advocates considering skipping this November’s presidential election should keep two things in mind–the Supreme Court and the United Nations. …

Recently, I’ve encountered some friends who are disillusioned over the political scene. As one recently put it, “The country would be better off with Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton in the White House, because after four years, the American people would have their fill of ‘progressives’ and demand a true political revolution.”

What I have said to them one-on-one must also be said to any of our number who might have that same “sit-this-one-out” mentality. Two things I mentioned to the cynics changed their minds–the Supreme Court and the United Nations.

Consider this: In November, we will not just be electing a president for four years. In essence, we will be electing a U.S. Supreme Court majority for a lifetime. And we will be electing scores of lower court judges to lifetime posts.

Sen. Hillary Clinton, who has embraced every form of gun control you can think of–from registration, to licensing, to gun bans–actually put it better than I can. She told a newspaper editorial board in Iowa:

“I think you can make it clear that elections have political consequences, and among them are who gets to pick our judges . . . who has power and how they get to exercise that power . . .”

That power, Clinton understands, extends to the entire federal government, and she understands how that power can be used to pack the court with those unfavorable to the Second Amendment.

This is the fundamental fact that the “sit out this election” folks are forgetting. Whatever issue is driving our disheartened friends to believe that “worse will be better in the long run,” we must remind them that the long run is exactly why the makeup of the U.S. Supreme Court trumps everything else.

Supreme Court justices are appointed for life. A relatively youthful anti-Second Amendment justice or two could hold supremacy over our Right to Keep and Bear Arms for the next 30 to 40 years.
In the next few years, it is likely that two, maybe three, Supreme Court vacancies will occur. The one appointing replacements will be critical to everything we hold dear–and that holds true for all of our friends who are dedicated to preserving freedom involving other important issues.

Right now, we are seeing just how critical a change in the membership of the U.S. Supreme Court can be–especially concerning the Second Amendment. Nothing accomplished during George W. Bush’s presidency has been more important than his appointments to the Supreme Court and the lower federal courts.

In the next few years, it is likely that two, maybe three, Supreme Court vacancies will occur. The one appointing replacements will be critical to everything we hold dear–and that holds true for all of our friends who are dedicated to preserving freedom in other areas.

Here is what Sen. Barack Obama sees as the role of the Supreme Court; he recently declared during one of his town hall meetings:

“What I really believe is that the Supreme Court has to be first and foremost thinking about and looking out for those who are vulnerable. People who are minorities, people who have historically been discriminated against. People who are poor. People who have been cheated. People who are being taken advantage of. People who have unpopular opinions. People who are outsiders.”

In other words, it’s about social engineering, not interpreting the law.

As for Clinton, her vision is also very clear–and just as frightening:

“I’m going to be looking for people,” Clinton said, “who respect that the Constitution is an organic, growing, evolving set of principles that have stood the test of time, and we can’t just be looking at it as though it is frozen at some point in the late 18th century . . .”

To my mind, that statement from Clinton defines exactly why we don’t need any more activist social engineers creating law from the bench.

In truth, the only major presidential candidate talking about strict adherence to the Constitution by the courts is Sen. John McCain. In May, he laid out his vision of America’s court system to a Wake Forest University audience:

“In federal and state courts, and in the practice of law across our nation, there are still men and women who understand very well the proper role of our judiciary, and I intend to find them and promote them,” McCain said. “My nominees will understand that there are very clear limits to the scope of judicial power, and clear limits to the scope of federal power.”

Counter that with Clinton’s view of what is at stake for her party’s progressive philosophy come November. Again, remember Hillary’s words: “I think you can make it clear that elections have political consequences, and among them are who gets to pick our judges . . .”

She’s right.

With a Senate controlled by party members who agree with her, Clinton knows what is up for grabs–nothing less than the entire federal court system, with scores of vacancies created by a politicized confirmation process designed to kill the nomination of any “strict constructionist.”

To see how important this issue truly is, let’s look at the damage just one U.S. district court judge can do. Many of the most outrageous abuses of the federal judicial process have been before Brooklyn federal judge Jack B. Weinstein. Anti-gun to the core, Weinstein has even gone so far as to ban the use of the words “Second Amendment” and “National Rifle Association” during court proceedings.

Many of these cases are based on an abusive, Orwellian legal claim that the federally licensed firearm industry is somehow responsible for the violent acts of armed criminals in New York City. Anti-gun groups have tailored their cases and abused court procedures to get into Judge Weinstein’s courtroom.

Judge Weinstein has provided endless opportunity for this serial abuse of the judicial process with punitive, crackpot legal action piled upon legal action. And in case after case, his rulings have been reversed.

But what if, in the future, appeals court judges appointed by Obama or Clinton were to uphold one of Weinstein’s wacky decisions? Further, suppose that decision is supported by a Supreme Court majority appointed by Obama or Clinton.

Such a scenario could spell the end of lawful commerce in firearms in America, and it could mean the end of federalism as we know it.

The latest case before Judge Weinstein involves New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s vigilante action to control the lives of innocent firearm dealers in every state in the nation from his Manhattan office. Billionaire Bloomberg wants to be a self-appointed dictator ruling over gun owners’ lives, no matter where they live. And Weinstein has granted him that authority.

“The basic premise … that American law should conform to the laws of the rest of the world, ought to be rejected out of hand.”

–Justice Antonin Scalia

So if Obama or Clinton were elected, and endowed with the ability to appoint even more activist judges in the Weinstein mold, everything we believe in, and everything we practice under the Second Amendment, could be destroyed.

As consumers, we are already paying for such judicial travesties–Judge Weinstein’s inquisitions have already cost the firearm industry over $100 million in legal fees. Several companies have even gone belly-up because of the legal costs.

Imagine an Obama or Clinton administration–supported by a rubber-stamp progressive U.S. Senate–with 10 more, 20 more, even 50 more judges like Weinstein. For that reason alone, gun owners and others who believe in the Constitution cannot afford to sit out this election.

In McCain’s Wake Forest speech, among the activist directions of the Supreme Court that he attacked was the notion–expressed by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Anthony Kennedy and Steven G. Breyer–that international law takes precedence over American law, or even the Constitution.

In a 2005 death penalty case, for example, Justice Kennedy wrote for the majority:

“It is proper that we acknowledge the overwhelming weight of international opinion . . . The opinion of the world community, while not controlling our outcome, does provide respected and significant confirmation for our own conclusions.”

In his scathing dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia countered:

“‘Acknowledgment’ of foreign approval has no place in the legal opinion of this Court . . . the basic premise . . . that American law should conform to the laws of the rest of the world, ought to be rejected out of hand.”

Yet conforming to the laws of the world–for example, laws to disarm all civilians–is the very goal of the likes of globalist gun-banner George Soros and his international political hand-maiden Rebecca Peters. In their view, world opinion demands total civil disarmament on a global scale, including free citizens of the United States of America. Peters heads the powerful International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA), which is bankrolled by billionaire Soros and deep-pocketed governments that have forcefully disarmed their own citizens.

When Peters and I debated before a crowd at Kings College London in 2004, she stated:

“I think American citizens should not be exempt from the rules that apply to the rest of the world . . . this is the irony that the gun lobby . . . should be obstructing a global process . . .”

This global process Peters champions brings me to another huge stake that American firearm owners have in this election, yet might not have carefully considered: the United Nations.

And in the case of an Obama or Clinton administration, U.N. supremacy over American sovereignty would be a clear danger.

During President Bush’s tenure, no better service to the cause of American freedom has been rendered than that of United States Representative to the United Nations John Bolton, who was honored as banquet speaker at the 2007 nra Annual Meetings & Exhibits in St. Louis. From the first months of the Bush administration, as undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security, Bolton stunned the gun-ban world, telling the U.N. international gun control conference in July 2001:

“The United States will not join consensus on a final document that contains measures contrary to our constitutional Right to Keep and Bear Arms.” Bolton consistently held that line against an unrelenting effort by the U.N. to create a treaty that would jeopardize our national sovereignty and trump the Second Amendment.

You can be certain, however, that under an Obama or Clinton administration, there will be no John Bolton in the halls of the United Nations to protect the interests of American sovereignty and our rights under the Constitution. Consequently, upcoming U.N. disarmament efforts could prove far more devastating to our way of life than anything we’ve so far witnessed.

Stop and consider a gun hater representing the United States in the U.N. gun-ban process, and you can see just how real this threat could be.

An Obama or Clinton administration, appointing anti-gun Supreme Court justices along with U.N. representatives friendly to Soros’ and Peters’ gun-ban plans, would create a well-oiled anti-gun machine–both within and outside the country–bent on destroying the Second Amendment.

Once in place, that machine could pursue its desired endgame–a total U.S. gun ban–unfettered by those gun owners who chose to “sit this one out.”

We simply can’t let that happen.

***

Update: Support the NRA’s Castle-Doctrine initiatives.

Updated: Against Anarchism

Classical Liberalism, Constitution, Founding Fathers, Justice, Law, libertarianism, Political Philosophy, The State, The West

At the beginning of 2004, David J. Heinrich’s responded on the Mises.org Blog to the article titled “The Criminal’s Theoretical Enabler” (WorldNetDaily, January 9). In reply, I penned the comments posted below. The links to our exchange have since expired. But readers will glean from my reply the gist of my difficulties with anarchism. Anarchism is sexy. I used to think of myself as an anarchist. But after careful consideration, I forfeited sexy for the solid position of classical liberalism.

Read “The Criminal’s Theoretical Enabler” first, and then my reply to David:

David wrote that: “What proportional restitution and punishment are would have to be up to the victim to decide, and his or her decisions would be binding…” [End quote]

I have no objections to leaving it up to the victim to forfeit—or choose his own form of—redress for certain misdemeanors. Many legal solutions are a result of mediation and other perfectly private solutions to non-violent offenses.

I object to leaving punishment for violent crime to the vicissitudes of the victim or his proxies. The possibility that a victim or her proxies choose to let a rapist/murderer go free in favor of financial restitution, for instance, is a reality David concedes (although he says it will be rare, which is not the point. It should never happen, not under the state and not under anarchy). Does the forfeiture of just retribution (which is what this arrangement amounts to, in my opinion) not imply, in the case of murder, that the right to life is a right that the victim’s proxies can choose to alienate or relinquish at will? How else does one construe this position?

The danger of reducing justice in cases of such crimes to a negotiated deal strikes me as moral relativism if not a recipe for nihilism. Again: A belief in the immutability of natural justice has prompted me to rethink the wisdom of the private production of defense.

Also ignored, as I say in the column, it that a violent offender presents a clear and present danger to others, and so his fate, at least in a civilized society, is not only the prerogative of the victim.

Libertarian anarchists, and David makes this point, will rightly argue that under a minimal state and certainly under the state today, criminals could and do get away with murder. This is because the justice system is badly broken.

This fact doesn’t strike me as a sufficient reason to support a state of affairs where, as a matter of principle, proportional, moral retribution will not necessarily be the goal of justice. (The kind of justice sought would depend on the victim, right? It is indeed unlikely that she will support unconditional love as an antidote to violent crime, but if she’s of the Left, then it’s a possibility.)

David writes: “If a woman was raped, she could demand proportional restitution (e.g., whatever fines on the criminal necessary for the emotional harm caused her, castration, and the unexpected forced rape of the criminal)”… The criminal would simply be enslaved to the victim (or her punishment agency, more likely, if she didn’t want to deal with him) until repayment had been met…if a court deems that for restitution, the rapist is to pay the victim $1million and be violently raped, and then as punishment is to be executed…” [End quote]

What if the offender dies due to the castration or the forced rape? Is that proportional justice? I don’t conceal my preference for western tradition, nor the positive view I have of the accretive genius of the common law. What David describes here is primitive victim vigilantism. Indeed personalized retaliatory ‘justice’ can and will take the form of vendetta, not justice. Civilized moral retribution should aim to avoid such barbarism. Under anarchism, David’s proposals can be adopted as a matter of principle rather than as an aberration to be rectified.

David says that “The criminal would simply be enslaved to the victim or her punishment agency…” [End quote]

Well, again 1) victims could demand disproportionate punishment, and the enforcement agency would comply. 2) Some victims will not be covered by a “punishment agency.” Who sees to it that justice is achieved in the case of those who cannot afford or don’t want to contract with a private firm? There is no incentive for an agency to pursue a dangerous offender who has not harmed a client. Do we rely on a bunch of good neighbors who will take up arms and hunt the man/woman down? Or do we as a society, through the law, make a public declaration of the few abiding and immutable values we wish to uphold (i.e., he must be brought to justice and tried in a court of law).

To the extent possible, there must be a commitment, however imperfect, to justice for all and not only for those who’ve contracted with an agency.

That’s why, while David and I agree entirely that the criminal justice system is egregious in its attitude to victims, his definition of the private production of defense as “victim-centered” is, I think, misleading.

On David’s comment about (his) anarchy vs. (my) minarchy. I started out as an anarchist. But I had certain doubts about the private production of justice. To date, they have not been addressed. The main issue, and I spoke of it first in a talk I gave to a Libertarian Party convention last year, is that fundamentally different and competing views of justice (right and wrong) will arise in anarchy. It’s inevitable. How does one reconcile this with a view of the immutability of the natural law and the emphasis on the search for truth as the ultimate value of justice? Since my understanding of justice is based on such a view (applied realistically, of course, to facts and context), I can’t accept this.

Again, that we suffer these pitfalls under the state is not a sufficient argument for making this a perfectly appropriate, ‘principled’ option, which would be the case under anarchy.

David alludes to the gap between his position and mine and puts it down to the anarchy/minarchy divide. As I look at it, better to distinguish good from bad arguments than to separate anarchist from minarchist positions. The goal should be to advance just, rights-based positions. If reality is twisted into pretzels so as to fulfill the requirement for theoretical virginity, then, while clever, the argument isn’t necessarily good. (And sometimes maybe the theory itself needs to be questioned.)

—Written by Ilana Mercer, January 10, 2004

Update (May 2, 2008): Are competition and so-called natural co-operation sufficient to keep human venality and evil in check? My experience in the world—and in a community of relatively elevated people, libertarians—would indicate not. While some anarchists are and were profound thinkers, like Murray Rothbard, Lysander Spooner, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, the Tannehills, the contemporary garden variety anarchist is not a serious thinker. In anarchy, many have simply adopted a rah-rah, fist-in-the-air, I’m-so-sexy stance.

Speaking of profound thinkers I’m privileged to know: Can I neglect what economist George Reisman has observed about anarchy? About “competing governments,’ or the purchase and sale of such government services as police, courts, and military in a free market,” Reisman says this:

“As the result of Ayn Rand’s criticisms, I came to the conclusion that the case was untenable, if for no other reason than that it abandoned the distinction between private action and government action and implicitly urged unregulated, uncontrolled government action, i.e., the uncontrolled, unregulated use of physical force. This was the logical implication of treating government as a free business enterprise. I had to conclude that government in the form of a highly regulated, tightly controlled legal monopoly on the use of force, was necessary after all, in order to provide an essential foundation for unregulated, uncontrolled private markets in all goods and services, which would then function totally free of the threat of physical force. This indeed represented nothing more than a return to my starting point. It was what the government established by the United States’ Constitution had represented, and which I had so much admired.”

CONSIDER 9/11. When libertarian anarchists declare that, and I quote, “the proper authority to exercise a right of self defense against an aggressor is the individual whose rights have been violated, or a designated agent,” however charitably one interprets this, the realistic translation is that innocent victims have no rights against terrorists.

Coming from libertarians, most of whom have adopted anarchism, suggestions such as these translate, in reality, as follows: In essence, the aggressor has all the rights because he places himself outside natural and positive, national and international law. The victim, being law-abiding, has no rights, because his only recourse to justice is through the state. Since the state is illegitimate, or rather, since libertarian anarchists see anything the state does as illegitimate (a logical flaw), the realistic application of this cynical sleight of hand is to wave the victim’s right to have any protection or restitution, however inefficient and insufficient. These are the implications of their words. There is no other interpretation.

Against such abstruseness, one cannot avoid wondering how over 2000 people, whose right to life was sundered, go about nominating a proxy to act on their behalf in a manner that will satisfy libertarian legalities. AND IN THIS DYSTOPIAN WORLD, NOT IN UTOPIA. Remember Ayn Rand’s warning about the “sin of abstraction.” About her beliefs, Chris Sciabarra has written: “No human value can be separated from the conditions that make its achievement possible.”

Once again, in practice, the anarchist libertarian ideas of a just war, which I would agree with in theory, ruled out any action against al Qaida after 9/11. Roy A. Childs Jr. came to the same conclusion as I have come and recanted anarchism in his last years. “It has led too many libertarians away from reality,” he wrote, “and, indeed, seen them on a collision course with it.”

This nation has the proudest of histories. America hails from classical liberalism. We need to distance the current Third-Way social democracy from the long-lost republic and, in that way, revive classical liberalism. As a strategy for going forward, I suggest we draw on this history. Right now, with the influence of anarchists, there is a kind of destructive, infantile anti-authoritarian attitude toward this history.

Many anarchists like to say that there’s nothing libertarian about the U.S. Constitution. I’ll admit to preferring the Articles of Confederation, which were usurped in favor of the Constitution at the Philadelphia convention. But I prefer to say this: To the extent that the Constitution is compatible with the natural law, it’s good; to the extent it isn’t, it’s not. There is a lot wrong with the Constitution, as Rand, a minarchist, also conceded.

Still, disparaging the greatest revolutionaries—politically and philosophically—ever, the American Revolutionaries, is yet another element of a stark, ahistoric worldview rife among many libertarians. Our hope for restoring liberty in the US rests not on obscure references to anarchy and utopia, but on the great tradition from which this nation has sprung.

Anarchists currently make their case with wacky references to examples of anarcho-capitalism in small homogeneous societies—Medieval Viking Age Iceland. Or, even less convincingly among some murderous tribes in Africa. For some loopy reason, they prefer this no-man’s la-la land to the followers of John Locke. This tendency to go off the deep end is precisely what I mean when I equate anarchism with the triumph of sexy and showy.