Most of you don't know the person that is TriedByConscience from a hole in the wall.
An introduction: The federalist papers were written with very specific purposes; that is, with the purposes of 'selling' the constitutional contract to the people of the United States. The states operated, through representatives, in the interests of the people to sign and effect the changes in government, and to preserve the rights that pre-existed the constitution itself.
Your link to the Federalist Papers. The language is archaic, and takes some research, there are specific legal meanings to the terms 'unalienable' and many other things written in both the Declaration of Independence, and the constitution itself.
http://www.foundingfathers.info/federalistpapers/fedi.htm
There are also specific legal limitations upon the government enshrined in that set of documents, definitions of the republican form of government (quite different from democracy) that was laid down within the bedrock of the Constitution.
The federalist 26 was the understanding that there was a legal severance within the Constitution itself, if the rule of law was subjugated by the military force, and the military force was augmented to the point of being dangerous to the people, all powers listed within the constitution were null and void... and the states themselves ceased to exist, and the people had the right, obligation, and duty to reform a republican government, protecting the rights of all, and preventing the alienation and transfer of those rights to other parties.
The federalist 44 speaks of bills of attainder, laws written to attack a target class (including the class of the whole) and to reduce the operation of those rights in any circumstances save the criminal justice system via court, and jury trial with commitant jury nullification. John Jay said, in fact, that there was no jury without the right, duty, and power to try the law of the case, as well as the facts. It is true, in fact, that any law can be written, including making it a death sentence to put butter on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich... it is the purpose of the jury to nullify those high tyrannical powers of law.
The federalist 44 also speaks of the dangers of paper money, and the destruction of confidence of those bills of credit (a dollar 'bill' being a bill of credit), via inflation and other devices. Manufactured booms and busts were common in the states under the Articles of Confederation.
The federalist 51 speaks of the importance of binding the parts of the government against each other, and the fact that no part of the government may delegate its power to another part, to private organizations, or to foreign bodies. It also, however, speaks of blunting the 'democratic' process that would allow rights of one party to be destroyed by the vote of another, knowing that to legislate religious, or secular beliefs upon any class of citizens would cause the right to believe itself to be destroyed. The most important right, the right to question, underlays another vital right, that of self-protection.
The federalist 57 speaks of the dangers inherent within the constitutional republic, and the necessary bindings of the legislature, and what would bind them to the people, including that the legislature itself may make no law which does not bind the whole of the people, the legislature, and the friends of the legislature in equal measure.
From beginning to end, the work was a charter of liberty. Liberty is not something created by government, government is, and has always, engaged in its destruction, but the advantages of government are so great that the risk had to be taken, and the bindings laid down against tyranny, including from the democratic process itself.
There were four major rights laid down in the beginning, and all other rights derive from them. According to those founders, those rights were the right of life, of liberty, of property, and the ability to defend all of the above. The rights themselves, at the time of the foundation of that nation, were considered to be property by their very nature. There could never be rights to property, without having property in your rights, allowing legal recourse to seizure of even the rights, as well as the right to defend them against all takers, including the federal government itself.
I may well be a minority in this, it matters nothing at all to me, but it is my firm belief that the second amendment must apply to all, from felons to bureaucrats, from the poorest to the richest. It is the only protection you have, in the United States. Most do not realize that there is no right to police protection.
". . . a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any particular individual citizen."--Warren v. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d 1 (D.C. App.181)
"Law enforcement agencies and personnel have no duty to protect individuals from the criminal acts of others; instead their duty
is to preserve the peace and arrest law breakers for the protection of the general public." (Lynch v. NC Dept. Justice)
Keane v. City of Chicago, 98 Ill App 2d 460 (1968)
Hartzler v. City of San Jose, App., 120 Cal. Rptr 5 (1975)
South v. Maryland, 59 U.S. (HOW) 396,15 L.Ed., 433 (1856)
Bowers v. DeVito, U.S. Court of Appeals, 7th Circuit, 686F.2d 616 (1882)
Riss v. City of New York, 293 N.Y. 2d 897 (1968)
Reiff v. City of Philadelphia, 477F. Supp. 1262 (E.D.Pa. 1979)
Chapman v. City of Philadelphia, 434 A.2d 753 (Sup. Ct. Penn. 1981)
Warren v. District of Columbia, D.C. App., 444 A.2d 1 (1981)
Calogrides v. City of Mobile, 475 So. 2d 560 (S.Ct. Ala. 1985)
Lynch v. N.C. Dept. of Justice, 376 S.E. 2nd 247 (N.C. App. 1989)
Marshall v. Winston, 389 S.E. 2nd 902 (Va. 1990)
Davidson v. City of Westminster, 32 C.3d 197,185 Cal. Rptr. 252,649
P.2d 894 (S.Ct. Cal. 1982)
Morgan v. District of Columbia, 468 A2d 1306 (D.C. App. 1983)
Morris v. Musser, 478 A.2d 937 (1984)
At this point, one cannot turn to the police for protection, for they have neither duty nor bond to protect. The second amendment, therefore, becomes the only certain protection in a weary world, and to deny any man the right to self-protect is equally to deny them the right to live, the right to property, the right to liberty, and the right to choose and believe as they see fit.
... to prohibit a citizen from wearing or carrying a war arm ... is an unwarranted restriction upon the constitutional right to keep and bear arms. If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege.
WILSON V. STATE, 33 Ark. 557 (1878)
Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any body of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States.WEBSTER, NOAH, An Examination into the Leading Principals of the Federal Constitution Defects, and Abuses, 1774
To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them.
MASON, GEORGE,, during Virginia’'s Convention to Ratify the Constitution, 3 Elliot, Debates at 380
Whereas civil rulers, not having their duty to the people duly before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as military forces, which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the article [the Second Amendment] in their right to keep and bear their private arms.
COXE, TENCH, under pseudonym "A Pennsylvanian," Philadelphia Federal Gazette, June 18, 1789
False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in it; that has no remedy for evils except destruction. The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Can it be supposed that those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity, the most important of the code, will respect the less important and arbitrary ones, which can be violated with ease and impunity, and which, if strictly obeyed, would put an end to personal liberty ——so dear to men, so dear to the enlightened legislator—— and subject innocent persons to all the vexations that the guilty alone ought to suffer? Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man. They ought to be designated as laws not preventive but fearful of crimes, produced by the tumultuous impression of a few isolated facts, and not by thoughtful consideration of the inconveniences and advantages of a universal decree.BECCARIA, CESARE, On Crimes and Punishment, 1764
Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: first, a right to life; secondly, to liberty; thirdly to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can. – Samuel Adams.
If men, through fear, fraud, or mistake, should in terms renounce or give up any natural right, the eternal law of reason and the grand end of society would absolutely vacate such renunciation. The right to freedom being the gift of Almighty God, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave. – Samuel Adams
The second amendment was not merely the right to self-protect, but to protect your home, your family, and your community, and nation. It was the foundation of the protection of rights, as there was, and remains no legitimate police power under the Federal Government, nor can there be police powers with the ability to protect and be everywhere at once without tyranny following it like night into day.
No man could be divested of his rights, and the power and control of those rights transferred to the government, or any other man. If these precepts had been followed, slavery would have ended long before the civil war. Indeed, the rights to keep and bear arms were considered so important that the North interceded against the governments in the south, after the civil war, to maintain those rights for the people.
Ultimately, it comes down to this:
Any single man must judge for himself whether circumstances warrant obedience or resistance to the commands of the civil magistrate; we are all qualified, entitled, and morally obliged to evaluate the conduct of our rulers. This political judgment, moreover, is not simply or primarily a right, but like self-preservation, a duty to God. As such it is a judgment that men cannot part with according to the God of Nature. It is the first and foremost of our inalienable rights without which we can preserve no other.
– John LockeI swore an oath, to protect and uphold the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and to bear true faith and alleigance to the same.
It is in this spirit, and in knowledge of the oath that I have sworn in the service of this country, which cannot be abrogated, cannot be denied, and cannot be turned away from, that I prepared the following article.
No comments:
Post a Comment