livingston
20×102mm Vulcan
AMENDMENT TWO: A LEGAL IMMIGRANT’S CAUTIONARY TALE by Anonymous
A good friend, a long-time American by choice, wrote this excellent essay. I post and propagate it because my friend cannot without dire consequences to self and family from state authorities acting as employers, educators and officious busibodies. It’s sad that speaking freely is fraught with danger even in this country, but the points made in this text must be made and popularized far and wide.
I am a proud American, an unhyphenated American. I am the most fortunate type of American, one who has won life’s lottery by escaping communism. My family endured persecution, physical risk, and constant intimidation by the secret police to legally enter the United States.
I am proudly writing this in English, because mastering English opened opportunities that would have been denied to me had I chosen to limit myself to my native language and culture.
What does this have to do with the Second Amendment? I am telling you about my past because I want you to understand who I am. I want you to understand the source of my passion.
The fruits of tyranny are not an abstract topic for me.
I am going to use words like political correctness, slavery, communism, and dystopia and I want you to understand the full measure of my meaning.
I want you to understand why I take my rights and responsibilities as a gun owner so seriously.
I want you to understand the source of my fears and concerns when I equate all the flavors of communism—progressivism, liberalism, statism, and socialism—with the ultimate evil of soul-destroying tyranny.
This is not hyperbole.
Lenin himself said, “The goal of socialism is communism.”
I believe him because I’ve lived under his ideology. The country I was born in didn’t call itself the “The Communist Republic of Anything.” It called itself a “socialist republic.”
I’ve lived under communism, rather than merely studied its propaganda.
That is why I teach my children how to safely and properly use firearms so that when they come of age, they too will stand proudly as responsible citizens. Not as vassals mired in the illusion of freedom. Not as persons entrenched in the servitude being imposed by the tyranny of political correctness.
To quote Charlton Heston, “Political correctness is tyranny with manners.” Tyranny can be imposed at gunpoint, as it was in Stalinist Russia and Mao’s China, or it can seep into the fabric of the nation under the guise of good intentions. Good intentions like the “price and wage controls” of the 40s and 70s are just one example of how communism has been advanced in the US.
When I started living under the American Constitution, the yoke of tyranny was swept away. I had never known such freedom. Such prosperity. Everything suddenly became possible. Things I’d never dreamt of.
But communism is persistent, relentless, and devious.
The seemingly innocuous language of political correctness provides the soil for the seeds of this ugliness. Historical revisionism and the insidious intent behind rhetoric designed to elicit emotion and shame feed its roots with rich fertilizer.
Let me give you one very important example.
If I were to say to you, “A well-educated population, being necessary to the productivity of a free state, the right of the people to read and write, shall not be infringed,” would you take that to mean that people can only read and write if doing so is in service of the state? Or only because the State desires a well-educated population?
Would you conclude from this statement that the right of the people to read and write is a collective right, not an individual right?
Would you accept restrictions on your ability to read and write because doing so does not serve the State?
Would you insist that only government employees be allowed to read and write?
These are the very fallacies that you are being told to believe about the Second Amendment. Historical revisionists and enemies of freedom like to assert that the Second Amendment is a collective right, not an individual right.
In order to accept this fallacy, you’d have to believe that a group of people who’d just fought a long arduous war, who’d lost family members, who’d suffered and died for their cause, would immediately give up the rights they’d just won. Including the means to defend those rights.
Historical facts like the ownership of warships and artillery by private citizens, has been all but wiped out of memory, all in service to the lie that the Second Amendment only applies to muskets.
Don’t believe these would-be tyrants who hijack the language, corrupt the meaning of, and twist the very fabric of our words in order to advance their statist agenda.
Amendment Two reads:
“A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”
It is very straight forward.
It uses the words, “right of the people” a term that appears several times in the Bill of Rights. These other appearances of “right of the people” in the Bill of Rights are universally interpreted as protecting individual rights.
The phrase “right of the people” appears in the First, Second, Fourth, Ninth, and Tenth Amendments.
Yet we are asked to accept the fallacy that only in the Second Amendment, does this phrase mean something completely different than what it means in the First, Fourth, Ninth and Tenth.
There is only one mention of the rights of the states in the Bill of Rights. In the Tenth Amendment the first Congress specifically distinguished “the states” from “the people.” The first Congress failed to invoke this distinction in the Second Amendment because they did not see the right to keep and bear arms as a collective right. [Reynolds, Glenn Harlan “A critical guide to the second amendment” 62 Tenn. L. Rev. 461-511 (1995)]
So, what does “well regulated” really mean and why was it included?
Just like the right to read and write does not depend on a well-educated population, the right to keep and bear arms does not depend on a well regulated militia.
The first clause is a dependent clause which means that a well regulated militia depends on the right to keep and bear arms just like a well-educated population depends on the right to read and write.
According to Alexander Hamilton, “well regulated” means a state of preparedness. “Well regulated” is an acknowledgement that you need to be trained in the use of arms if you intend to use them, and that having a “well regulated militia” was dependent on the people keeping and bearing arms so that they would be familiar enough with them to use them appropriately.
It did not mean “well regulated” in the current revisionist sense of “subjected to numerous government prohibitions and restrictions.” Furthermore, Hamilton intended for this training and familiarity to be an individual responsibility.
In Federalist 29 he wrote that the State keeping a class of citizens under arms for the purpose of going through military exercises would be a “real grievance to the people and a serious public inconvenience and loss.” This tells us that he most certainly did not consider the Army or the National Guard (an organization that did not exist until 1933) to be the militia.
I continue to be awed by the foresight and genius of the Founding Fathers because it does not take a genius to understand the Bill of Rights. Even someone for whom English is a second language can understand it. Yet millions of Americans are either unwilling or incapable of comprehending it because of the cognitive dissonance created by a progressive, leftist agenda.
In Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the need for safety is second only to physiological needs like breathing. We all believe that we have the right to live and to be safe. Deep down we know that in order to live we may need to defend ourselves.
Maslow includes security of body and property in his definition of safety. Yet the Left has created a cognitive dissonance by telling us that we cannot and should not defend ourselves, and that indeed, any desire or willingness to do so is dysfunctional at best, and so dangerous that we must be persecuted and prosecuted should we dare.
Here’s one troubling example of cognitive dissonance: “Rape lasts for minutes. Death is Forever. You don’t need a gun.”
This is the real war on women. It starts with the idea that rape is not a life-altering trauma and ends with a disregard for women’s lives, because tragically, too many rapes do end in death. Keep in mind now, the death they were concerned about in the tweet was the rapist’s death.
Why? Because to some, ideology trumps everything. Their ideology requires you to think that a woman found dead in an alley, raped and strangled with her own pantyhose is morally superior to a woman explaining how her attacker fell dead from six bullet wounds.
“You don’t need a weapon, I will protect you” is the creed of both individual and institutional domestic abusers. It’s actually a good warning sign and a conclusive litmus test for bad intentions. And should always be viewed as such.
You experience cognitive dissonance when you believe that guns don’t deter crime but see that cops carry them. Apparently cops only carry guns because it makes them look cool, not because guns deter criminals.
You experience cognitive dissonance when you accept that the police need body armor, SWAT teams, fully automatic weapons, rocket-propelled grenades, tear gas, and armored vehicles to protect us from murderers and rapists, but that we should be limited to small capacity magazines, small calibers, and few guns—if any.
More at AMENDMENT TWO: A LEGAL IMMIGRANT’S CAUTIONARY TALE by Anonymous | VolkStudio Blog
A good friend, a long-time American by choice, wrote this excellent essay. I post and propagate it because my friend cannot without dire consequences to self and family from state authorities acting as employers, educators and officious busibodies. It’s sad that speaking freely is fraught with danger even in this country, but the points made in this text must be made and popularized far and wide.
I am a proud American, an unhyphenated American. I am the most fortunate type of American, one who has won life’s lottery by escaping communism. My family endured persecution, physical risk, and constant intimidation by the secret police to legally enter the United States.
I am proudly writing this in English, because mastering English opened opportunities that would have been denied to me had I chosen to limit myself to my native language and culture.
What does this have to do with the Second Amendment? I am telling you about my past because I want you to understand who I am. I want you to understand the source of my passion.
The fruits of tyranny are not an abstract topic for me.
I am going to use words like political correctness, slavery, communism, and dystopia and I want you to understand the full measure of my meaning.
I want you to understand why I take my rights and responsibilities as a gun owner so seriously.
I want you to understand the source of my fears and concerns when I equate all the flavors of communism—progressivism, liberalism, statism, and socialism—with the ultimate evil of soul-destroying tyranny.
This is not hyperbole.
Lenin himself said, “The goal of socialism is communism.”
I believe him because I’ve lived under his ideology. The country I was born in didn’t call itself the “The Communist Republic of Anything.” It called itself a “socialist republic.”
I’ve lived under communism, rather than merely studied its propaganda.
That is why I teach my children how to safely and properly use firearms so that when they come of age, they too will stand proudly as responsible citizens. Not as vassals mired in the illusion of freedom. Not as persons entrenched in the servitude being imposed by the tyranny of political correctness.
To quote Charlton Heston, “Political correctness is tyranny with manners.” Tyranny can be imposed at gunpoint, as it was in Stalinist Russia and Mao’s China, or it can seep into the fabric of the nation under the guise of good intentions. Good intentions like the “price and wage controls” of the 40s and 70s are just one example of how communism has been advanced in the US.
When I started living under the American Constitution, the yoke of tyranny was swept away. I had never known such freedom. Such prosperity. Everything suddenly became possible. Things I’d never dreamt of.
But communism is persistent, relentless, and devious.
The seemingly innocuous language of political correctness provides the soil for the seeds of this ugliness. Historical revisionism and the insidious intent behind rhetoric designed to elicit emotion and shame feed its roots with rich fertilizer.
Let me give you one very important example.
If I were to say to you, “A well-educated population, being necessary to the productivity of a free state, the right of the people to read and write, shall not be infringed,” would you take that to mean that people can only read and write if doing so is in service of the state? Or only because the State desires a well-educated population?
Would you conclude from this statement that the right of the people to read and write is a collective right, not an individual right?
Would you accept restrictions on your ability to read and write because doing so does not serve the State?
Would you insist that only government employees be allowed to read and write?
These are the very fallacies that you are being told to believe about the Second Amendment. Historical revisionists and enemies of freedom like to assert that the Second Amendment is a collective right, not an individual right.
In order to accept this fallacy, you’d have to believe that a group of people who’d just fought a long arduous war, who’d lost family members, who’d suffered and died for their cause, would immediately give up the rights they’d just won. Including the means to defend those rights.
Historical facts like the ownership of warships and artillery by private citizens, has been all but wiped out of memory, all in service to the lie that the Second Amendment only applies to muskets.
Don’t believe these would-be tyrants who hijack the language, corrupt the meaning of, and twist the very fabric of our words in order to advance their statist agenda.
Amendment Two reads:
“A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”
It is very straight forward.
It uses the words, “right of the people” a term that appears several times in the Bill of Rights. These other appearances of “right of the people” in the Bill of Rights are universally interpreted as protecting individual rights.
The phrase “right of the people” appears in the First, Second, Fourth, Ninth, and Tenth Amendments.
Yet we are asked to accept the fallacy that only in the Second Amendment, does this phrase mean something completely different than what it means in the First, Fourth, Ninth and Tenth.
There is only one mention of the rights of the states in the Bill of Rights. In the Tenth Amendment the first Congress specifically distinguished “the states” from “the people.” The first Congress failed to invoke this distinction in the Second Amendment because they did not see the right to keep and bear arms as a collective right. [Reynolds, Glenn Harlan “A critical guide to the second amendment” 62 Tenn. L. Rev. 461-511 (1995)]
So, what does “well regulated” really mean and why was it included?
Just like the right to read and write does not depend on a well-educated population, the right to keep and bear arms does not depend on a well regulated militia.
The first clause is a dependent clause which means that a well regulated militia depends on the right to keep and bear arms just like a well-educated population depends on the right to read and write.
According to Alexander Hamilton, “well regulated” means a state of preparedness. “Well regulated” is an acknowledgement that you need to be trained in the use of arms if you intend to use them, and that having a “well regulated militia” was dependent on the people keeping and bearing arms so that they would be familiar enough with them to use them appropriately.
It did not mean “well regulated” in the current revisionist sense of “subjected to numerous government prohibitions and restrictions.” Furthermore, Hamilton intended for this training and familiarity to be an individual responsibility.
In Federalist 29 he wrote that the State keeping a class of citizens under arms for the purpose of going through military exercises would be a “real grievance to the people and a serious public inconvenience and loss.” This tells us that he most certainly did not consider the Army or the National Guard (an organization that did not exist until 1933) to be the militia.
I continue to be awed by the foresight and genius of the Founding Fathers because it does not take a genius to understand the Bill of Rights. Even someone for whom English is a second language can understand it. Yet millions of Americans are either unwilling or incapable of comprehending it because of the cognitive dissonance created by a progressive, leftist agenda.
In Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the need for safety is second only to physiological needs like breathing. We all believe that we have the right to live and to be safe. Deep down we know that in order to live we may need to defend ourselves.
Maslow includes security of body and property in his definition of safety. Yet the Left has created a cognitive dissonance by telling us that we cannot and should not defend ourselves, and that indeed, any desire or willingness to do so is dysfunctional at best, and so dangerous that we must be persecuted and prosecuted should we dare.
Here’s one troubling example of cognitive dissonance: “Rape lasts for minutes. Death is Forever. You don’t need a gun.”
This is the real war on women. It starts with the idea that rape is not a life-altering trauma and ends with a disregard for women’s lives, because tragically, too many rapes do end in death. Keep in mind now, the death they were concerned about in the tweet was the rapist’s death.
Why? Because to some, ideology trumps everything. Their ideology requires you to think that a woman found dead in an alley, raped and strangled with her own pantyhose is morally superior to a woman explaining how her attacker fell dead from six bullet wounds.
“You don’t need a weapon, I will protect you” is the creed of both individual and institutional domestic abusers. It’s actually a good warning sign and a conclusive litmus test for bad intentions. And should always be viewed as such.
You experience cognitive dissonance when you believe that guns don’t deter crime but see that cops carry them. Apparently cops only carry guns because it makes them look cool, not because guns deter criminals.
You experience cognitive dissonance when you accept that the police need body armor, SWAT teams, fully automatic weapons, rocket-propelled grenades, tear gas, and armored vehicles to protect us from murderers and rapists, but that we should be limited to small capacity magazines, small calibers, and few guns—if any.
More at AMENDMENT TWO: A LEGAL IMMIGRANT’S CAUTIONARY TALE by Anonymous | VolkStudio Blog
