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Another
Oath-breaking Band of Legal Buffoons by
Nicki Fellenzer December
9, 2002 « Le
Droit collectif a donc son principe, sa raison d'être, sa légitimité dans le
Droit individuel; et la Force commune ne peut avoir rationnellement d'autre but,
d'autre mission que les forces isolées auxquelles elle se substitue. » KeepAndBearArms.com -- It
looks like yet another oath-breaking band of legal buffoons, who possess about
as much common sense as stray cats in heat and about as much legal acumen as
rabid ferrets with Tourette’s Syndrome
(no offense intended to people who actually suffer from this disorder), have
once again chosen to try and dismantle the Constitution in favor of tyranny. Yes, I’m talking about the so-called 9th US
Circuit Court of Appeals – that hapless lot of judicially inept “judges,”
who obviously have little understanding of the English language as well as low
comprehension of what it means to be true to the Constitution. In
upholding California's most recent assault weapons ban, the appeals court --
based not surprisingly, in San Francisco -- turned the Law of the Land on its
ear, and concluded that the founding fathers crafted the Second Amendment solely
to enable state militias to protect themselves if the federal government grew
too powerful. “The
historical record makes it equally plain that the amendment was not adopted in
order to afford rights to individuals with respect to private gun ownership,''
Judge Stephen Reinhardt wrote for a three-judge panel.
Well, Gosh! Is it such a
shock that socialists would try and force the “collective-rights” view down
the throats of individuals by unilaterally rewriting the Constitution?
To give a modicum of credit to the third judge on that panel – he did
dissent from the Second Amendment portion of the written opinion. If
I sound angry, I damn well am! As
one who was born in the USSR, I’ve had the “collective” shoved down my
gullet since birth. I’ve faced
assaults on my individualism from the beginning of my life.
I was taught there were no individual rights, and that every portion of
your existence was subjugated to the collective – the common good.
It never made sense to me then, and it certainly sounds like so much
inflated, nonsensical crap today. When
I came here, I thought that part of my existence was safe in the United States
of America, but that was not to be… …It
wasn’t to be, because a robed band of socialist vomit sacs decided that “The
historical record makes it equally plain that the amendment was not adopted in
order to afford rights to individuals with respect to private gun ownership.”
Oh really? Well,
why don’t we take a look at that historical record – a record, which
Reinhardt, a 1980 Carter appointee, and his pernicious twit of a colleague
Raymond Fisher, who somehow stroked Billy Clinton hard enough to get himself
appointed to the bench, seem to either misunderstand, or intentionally ignore.
If the “dynamic duo” actually read historical records or any writings
by our Founding Fathers and somehow needled out the intent that only a
collective group, such as a militia, was allowed firearms ownership, their
comprehension skills are highly suspect. If
they read any “historical record” and intentionally ignored it in order to
further their own agenda, they should be disrobed and sent packing.
Maybe
Reinhardt and Fisher are too obtuse
to comprehend the meaning of "No free man shall ever be debarred the use
of arms,” written by Thomas Jefferson in 1776.
Although, even those of us for whom English is a second language can
understand the meaning of those words, maybe Reinhardt’s and Fisher’s blind
collectivist indoctrination has damaged their comprehension skills. George Mason uttered
these famous words in 1788: “I ask, who are the militia? They consist now
of the whole people, except a few public officers.” Maybe
these “astute” legal scholars simply misunderstand the meaning of Mason’s
utterances. Maybe to them, “the
whole of the people” implies a bizarre group dynamic of subjects, controlled
by the state, instead of “each and every person.”
However, those of us possessing even a modicum of common sense couldn’t
possibly misinterpret this particular quote. Mason also wrote
that same year "That the People have a right to keep and bear Arms; that
a well regulated Militia, composed of the Body of the People, trained to arms,
is the proper, natural, and safe Defence of a free state.” Again, English is only my third language, Russian and
French being my first and second respectively.
However, when someone writes that the militia is composed of the Body of
the People, I find it difficult to proscribe collective rights to that
particular quote. Samuel Adams made
the issue even clearer when he wrote, "The said Constitution [shall] be
never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press,
or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who
are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms.”
I believe there’s no way in God and Goddess’ green earth that anyone
can misinterpret Adams’ claim that peaceable citizens must be allowed to own their
own arms, but then again, Reinhardt and Fisher don’t sound too
bright. There are quotes on
“historical record” of Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, who stated "A
militia when properly formed are in fact the people themselves . . . and include
all men capable of bearing arms. . . To preserve liberty it is essential that
the whole body of people always possess arms... The mind that aims at a select
militia, must be influenced by a truly anti-republican principle.” Could it be possible
that judges appointed to the federal bench have never read the Federalist
Papers? Had they done so, how could they miss James Madison’s
admonition that the Constitution preserves "the advantage of being armed
which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation. . .
(where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.” Tenche Coxe wrote in
the Federal Gazette in 1789 that "As the military forces which must
occasionally be raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the
injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the next article
(of amendment) in their right to keep and bear their private arms.” But I don’t suppose that’s the “historical record” to
which Reinhardt and Fisher refer. Or
maybe they believed that the phrase, “private arms” in the 1700’s meant
the complete opposite of what it means today. What
“historical record” could they possibly have consulted that gave these two
pseudo-intellectual gasbags the idea that a group, comprised of individuals, can
somehow possess a right, while the individuals themselves cannot? In the 1800’s Frederic Bastiat, a French
economist and statesman authored an essay entitled, The Law. "Each of us has a natural right-from
God-to defend his person, his liberty, and his property,” Bastiat stated. “These
are the three basic requirements of life, and the preservation of any one of
them is completely dependent upon the preservation of the other two." "If every person has the right to
defend even by force-his person, his liberty, and his property,” Bastiat
continued, “then it follows that a group of men have the right to organize
and support a common force to protect these rights constantly. Thus the
principle of collective right-its reason for existing, its lawfulness-is based
on individual right. And the common force that protects this collective right
cannot logically have any other purpose or any other mission than that for which
it acts as a substitute.” This
is the translation of the French quote I provided at the beginning of this
column. And now you understand why
I’ve included it. Bastiat, like many great
thinkers, understood that a collective – no matter how you define it –
consists of individuals, and ergo the idea of a “collective right” is based
on a false premise. A collective
right does not exist, because without individuals, the collective does not
exist. Individual rights are the basis – the root – the
foundation of any just society, because the individual is the basis, the root
and the foundation of any society. Individuals
create society, and consequently government.
Their rights exist apart from governments and aren’t granted by other
individuals. Individual rights
exist because individuals exist – not vice versa.
Bastiat understood this simple concept.
Our Founding Fathers understood it even better.
It’s only when ignorant, bed-wetting, socialist dullards, who are
deathly afraid of an armed populace threatening their seat of power, get a hold
of these sacred ideals, that the individual right gets mired in vacuous
invective and subjugated to the great whole! Therefore, for any
pseudo-intellectual hacks with pretensions to being a body of justice to noisily
squawk their “interpretation” of the “collective rights” theory, and
worse yet, ascribe that type of idiotic thought to those who founded this great
country is ignorant, disrespectful and deceitful. The “Body of the People”
referred to by George Mason are individuals. The “free man” of
whom Thomas Jefferson spoke is an individual. “The people themselves”
of whom Richard Henry Lee spoke are individuals. “The people who are
peaceable citizens” are also individuals, as clearly intended by Samuel
Adams. Any attempt to ascribe group
dynamics to individual rights is an obscene attempt to force the individual to
conform to a set of standards that negate his own existence as a human being. I doubt Stephen Reinhardt and
Raymond Fisher are so illiterate that they actually misunderstand the words of
our founding fathers. If they were,
neither one of them would have ever graduated law school.
I do, however, believe that these two judges, who have sworn to uphold
the law of the land, are, in fact, trying to change said law to suit their own
warped purposes. What are those purposes? To subjugate the individual
to a collective, weakening him and making him into a subject.
To take away an inalienable right. To
force the individual to depend on the state for his protection. To perpetuate the lie that the government “affords”
rights to the people, instead of the people themselves creating that government
to protect already existing rights. And
ultimately, to rule over a society of enslaved automatons whose individual
identity means nothing in light of group tyranny. Let’s hope the Supreme
Court of the United States overturns these pathetic revisionist oath-breakers
and once and for all tells them what they can do with their “collective
rights.” |
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