No Common Ground

This is a fairly basic principle, and it's hard to see how you can work around the disagreement.
During an National Rifle Association event in Iowa in 2012, state Sen. Joni Ernst, now the Republican nominee for Senate in the state, said she carries a 9-millimeter gun around everywhere and believes in the right to use it even if it’s against the government if they disregard her rights.

“I have a beautiful little Smith & Wesson, 9 millimeter, and it goes with me virtually everywhere,” Ernst said during a speech at the NRA’s Iowa Firearms Coalition Second Amendment Rally in Searsboro, Iowa, as flagged by The Huffington Post on Thursday. “But I do believe in the right to carry, and I believe in the right to defend myself and my family — whether it’s from an intruder, or whether it’s from the government, should they decide that my rights are no longer important.”

As opposed to what exactly? The opposite of this statement is the following:

“I do not believe in the right to carry, and I do not believe in the right to defend myself and my family — whether it’s from an intruder, or whether it’s from the government, should they decide that my rights are no longer important.”

Is there any free person anywhere that doesn’t reserve the right to defend himself against a person who would do him harm, or who believes that, should the government turn, he would be better off going quietly into the night?
The alternative positions are pretty hostile. Really, some of the ones linked by Memeorandum are so hostile and vile that I won't link to them. But here's Ed Kilgore, at least:
Now this is a guaranteed applause line among Con Con audiences, for reasons that have relatively little to do with gun regulation. The idea here is to intimidate liberals, and “looters” and secular socialists, and those people, that there are limits to what the good virtuous folk of the country will put up with in the way of interference with their property rights and their religious convictions and their sense of how the world ought to work. If push comes to shove, they’re heavily armed, and bullets outweigh ballots. It’s a reminder that if politics fails in protecting their very broad notion of their “rights,” then revolutionary violence—which after all, made this great country possible in the first place—is always an option. And if that sounds “anti-democratic,” well, as the John Birch Society has always maintained, this is a Republic, not a democracy.
I can understand not appreciating what you are reading as an attempt to intimidate you, personally. Still, the principle sounds reasonable to me. In fact, if I were going to articulate it, I'd not focus as she does on a right to defend. The right -- the one the Founders asserted -- is not limited to defense from the government's depredations. It is a right "to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

Is there any American who doesn't believe that? Is it possible to be an American, in the spiritual sense, without believing it? The 14th Amendment makes citizens of everyone born here, but perhaps that isn't wise: perhaps it isn't birth but faith that makes Americans.

5 comments:

MikeD said...

"Is there any free person anywhere that doesn't reserve the right to defend himself against a person who would do him harm, or who believes that, should the government turn, he would be better off going quietly into the night?"

Quite literally, yes. There are people who honestly believe that if you are confronted with someone who would do you harm, you have an obligation to retreat from them while attempting to call the police for help. And as for the government turn on them, well... better to live a slave than die free is a principle that has been more practiced than rejected throughout human history. But at a certain level, we run afoul of the "No True Scotsman" fallacy. After all, "anyone who would rather live as a slave than die free is no free person." But it is my contention that there are hordes of people currently free who would rather live as a slave than die free. Many of whom are absolutely aching to surrender their current freedom for security. You and I may not want to call such people "free", but currently they are.

E Hines said...

The idea here is to intimidate liberals, and "looters" and secular socialists, and those people....

If Kilgore and his ilk really feel intimidated, I'm down with that.

And while he paraphrases accurately enough (which after all, made this great country possible in the first place), he plainly doesn't understand it or its underpinning, or he rejects the inalienableness of that right.

Is there any American who doesn't believe that?

You bet: Progressives, beginning with Herb Croly and TRoosevelt, continuing through WWilson and FDR, and today with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. The modern Liberal, who holds that the Constitution isn't binding on anything, and anyway, it's hard to understand because it was written more than 100 years ago. And the Democrats in today's governments who keep on keepin' on voting away our rights and acceding to Executive Branch "regulation." And judges and Justices who rule such abominations as Wickard, Berman, Midkiff, Kelo, NFIB, and just lately True the Vote.

What Mike said, except for this: Many of whom are absolutely aching to surrender their current freedom for security. You and I may not want to call such people "free", but currently they are.

No, they're not at all free. They just aren't, yet, wearing the chains. They've constrained themselves, awaiting their formal masters.

Eric Hines

Anonymous said...

The Fourtennth Amendment needs to be repealed, ASAP.

... about as likely as the survival of the proverbial snowflake in the nether regions.

Ymar Sakar said...

So easily intimidated by the moderate Americans.

Wait until they meet face to face with the "crazies".

Want to see the look on their faces then?

Ymar Sakar said...

TRoosevelt was a very different person from Wilson and FDR.

The Left corrupts all things in time, whether it is Progress or Science. Mortality merely speeds it along.