If you believe in individualism, you believe you won yesterday. If you believe in personal sanctity, you believe you won yesterday. If you believe in freedom, you believe you won yesterday. If you believe in the right to bear arms, you are certain that you won in court yesterday. Indeed, you, rather we, did win, but the victory is near Pyrrhic, and indeed might well fray further the tattered cord that restrains the Damoclean Sword of Tyranny.
This may seem counter-intuitive, but first you must ask just how the case came to the Court in the first Place? By that I don't mean the specifics of Heller v. D.C., but the longer term incremental loss of respect for individual sanctity, and the rise of a Court that recognizes few limits upon its power.
Libertarians, and indeed sane people country-wide, cheered the Court's Habeas decision, and many of the same people will cheer Heller. I've no wish to toss a wet blanket on the party, but I'm struck not with joy, but with fear, not so much by the decision, but by the nearness of the vote-five to four-and that such a heinous view of law, and justice, would have been permitted by a Free people, ever.
Would the primogenitors of the very idea of Freedom and popular government, the Hoplites of Ancient Greece, the armed citizen-defenders of the infant West, accepted the notion that the thought, and edict, of one old man(Justice Kennedy) could turn them from free soldiers to serfs? I think rather not. That tradition has been scorned across the West, but for here where there is still a spark.
Would the Saxons, who gained their name from the weapon Freemen carried, the Seaxe, have blanched, and meekly turned over their arms, and with them their freedom, to an arrogant Lord? That sort of thought greatly reduced the population of arrogant Lords in the early middle ages. These are the direct ancestors to our system of Law and Government, the barbaric muses of Locke and the violators of Hobbes contract.
What Lord, even if he could, would have risked losing the citizen army, or Fyrd ,that would defend their lands, with their own weapons, and the Lord's mighty hide in the process, by confiscating freeman's weapons? This is the thing, besides the Oceans, that has ensured the invincibility of this nation to invasion, but for the Revolution, War of 1812, and the minor invasion of the Aleutians, for all of these years. Free people with arms, not the government and its pointless wars, defend the population.
But now, in the Land of the Free, we are willing to accept,with a few slightly off-beat exceptions, that nine employees, and indeed really only one old man-Anthony Kennedy-have business in determining what the rights of We The People, the supposed directors of our government, are. I don't mean just guns here, either, popular apathy and widespread misunderstanding of the nature of our system of government, have permitted the obscenity that the Supreme Court is the "Final Arbiter" and need follow no council but its own, when the true "Final Arbiter" is supposed to be you, or me, the Court is simply our servant. Anything else is tyrannical.
That "free" men and women who owned guns, feared the Court's decision, tells one all one needs to know about the state of the Republic. To paraphrase Franklin, we have not kept it.
The right to bear arms is not dependent on the 2nd amendment, or on the Constitution at all, it is inalienable.
The History of the Twentieth Century shows the brutal hazard in meek acquiescence to Power.
And, of course, the Constitution is nothing but a "Goddamn piece of paper!" to our Glorious Leader.
It was a victory, to be sure, but a better victory would have been avoiding the need of such a decision, due to Free people not permitting such an onerous Law in the first place. A silly dream perhaps, but ultimately crucial to retaining Freedom. Indeed, those not willing to stand for Freedom in their own localities, I dare say, hardly deserve it.
And that is, sadly, most of us.
Our "Victory" is but a respite.
Thank You, Justice Kennedy, I'm still partially free because of you, is there another honorific you would prefer, Lord perhaps? Or simply Master?
©2008 Michael Stahl, all rights reserved. You must have written permission from the author in order to republish this work.
Published: Thursday, June 26, 2008
Last modified: Friday, June 27, 2008
The views expressed in this article are those of Michael Stahl only and do not represent the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates. Michael Stahl is solely responsible for the contents of this article and is not an employee or otherwise affiliated with Nolan Chart, LLC in his/her role as a columnist.
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Reader Comments:
Posted By: Josh
Date: 2008-06-27 01:46:04
I hate to say it, but you're right. What would have happened if one vote had swung the other way, for instance?
Something terribly wrong is going on.
Posted By: Mike Stahl
Date: 2008-06-27 02:59:11
Josh,
I would that I were a cynic, and I'd be found a "doomsayer". I'd wear the mantle proudly, and, indeed, join in my own jest, and find old age.
But, alas, I suspect that they will look for my sort rather sooner, and the jests will be tending to the more harsh, and most certainly in Absentia. History tells us this, if nothing else.
But I've a fey mood of late.
You recognize the danger, but will you act on it?
Posted By: Josh
Date: 2008-06-27 12:45:02
I am, as much as I can. I'm getting to the point where I'm reaching the limit of my own involvement. One can do many things, but not everything.
Posted By: George Dance
Date: 2008-06-27 17:17:44
Murray Rothbard makes a similar point in FANL: the idea that the SCOTUS, and even the constitution itself, is the arbiter of our rights, sanctions the idea that government can limit and restrict rights.
I think we can reject that very idea, while still welcoming the Heller decision, by focussing on the fact that the decision, SCOTUS, and the Constitution itself, are limitations on government power; and in this case they're limitations that worked.
IOW, Americans don't have an individual right to bear arms because of how the Heller decision interpreted the Second Amendmet; rather, the Second Amendment and the Heller decision are welcome because Americans have an individual right to bear arms.
I don't see the Constitution (or SCOTUS) as an authority over someone like you; you've never agreed to it, and are under no obligation to obey its terms. OTOH, they are an authority over the government - everyone in the federal government has agreed to obey it - and they are obligated to follow it.