Statists Use Twisted Logic To Attack The Bill Of Rights
PHOTOS.COM
In the war for the continued existence of our Nation’s
Constitutional principles, I had long wondered whether statists were
simply confounded by the Bill of Rights and ignorant of its function or
whether they were maliciously inclined, knowing exactly what it means
but seeking its destruction anyway. In recent years, I have decided it
is a combination of both faults.
Statists are people who view every aspect of society through the lens
of government power. If you want to know the primary difference between
Constitutionalists and anti-Constitutionalists, you have to understand
that some people in this world only want control over their own lives,
while other people desperately clamor for control over other people’s
lives. Why do they do this? Usually, it’s fear.
Fear of the persistent
unknowns in life. Fear that they do not have the intelligence or the
will to take responsibility for their own futures. Fear that they will
be forced to take care of themselves. Fear that their ideologies will be
found lacking. Fear that if others are allowed freedom, they will one
day indirectly suffer for it.
This fear makes statists easy to manipulate by the establishment and
easy to use as a tool for the expansion of government dominance. Because
statists are so weak-minded and fainthearted, they become very
comfortable with the idea of other people making their decisions for
them; and they will always attempt to answer every perceived problem
with more government control.
When confronted with a proponent of liberty, the statist typically
reels in horror. He has so invested himself in bureaucracy that he sees
himself as a part of it. To attack the bureaucracy is to attack him.
To
deny the validity of the bureaucracy is to deny the validity of his
existence. His very personality and ego are tied to the machine, so he
will spit and rage against anyone who refuses to conform. This is why it
is not uncommon at all to find a wild collection of logical fallacies
within the tirades of the average statist. Statists act as though they
are driven by reason; but in reality, they are driven by seething bias.
A perfect example of this insanity is the article “There Are No Absolute Rights,” published by
The Daily Beast.
Let’s first be clear about the kind of rag we are dealing with.
The Daily Beast was launched by Tina Brown, a former editor of
Vanity Fair and
The New Yorker
who was also a British citizen until 2005.
I would say she’s a kind of
female Piers Morgan. For anyone who might take that as a compliment,
trust me; it isn’t. Brown and Morgan are European collectivists who
immigrated to America just to tell us how our Constitutionally
conservative heritage of independence is outdated; meanwhile, the EU is
in the shambles of failed socialism. We used to drive such people into
the ocean, and now they breathe our oxygen while telling us what is
politically “fashionable.”
In 2010,
The Daily Beast merged with
Newsweek, a magazine notorious for its statist crush on the Federal government (and now out of print). To say that
The Daily Beast
is a socialist platform and a mouthpiece for the Administration of
President Barack Obama is an understatement, but I would point out that
the website also tends to agree with politicians and judges on the right
that also promote a “living document” interpretation of the
Constitution. Whether right or left, if you believe that the Bill of
Rights is up for constant interpretation and revision or outright
destruction, then you are the bee’s knees in the eyes of
The Beast.
The article focuses on gun rights and how silly conservatives
foolishly cling to the idea that some lines in the sand should never be
crossed in terms of personal freedom. In a rather mediocre and rambling
analysis,
The Beast uses two primary arguments to qualify this stance, essentially asserting that:
- Compromises have already been made to the Bill of Rights; therefore, nothing is sacred.
- Even some Republicans agree with compromises to the Bill of Rights
when it comes to other Amendments, so why are we being so childish about
“reinterpreting” the 2nd Amendment?
First, the revisionist methodology of the Bill of Rights consistently
ignores the history of its writing.
The colonists and Founding Fathers
of our Nation, having successfully triumphed in a bloody revolution
against what many then considered the most advanced elitist military
empire on Earth, had absolutely no trust whatsoever in the concept of
centralized government. Many of the colonials were anti-Federalists who
believed that an overly powerful central government was a threat to
future liberty. They felt that an immovable and unchangeable legal
shield had to be created in order to ensure that a tyrannical system
never prevailed again.
Thomas Jefferson said: “[A] bill of rights is what the people are
entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular,
and what no just government should refuse.”
This statement includes modern governments as well. Technological
advancement does not change the rules surrounding timeless inherent
moral principles, as much as statists would like to argue otherwise.
The colonials
demanded the inclusion of the Bill of Rights in
the Constitution as a prerequisite for the establishment of the Federal
government. This means that the Federal government owes its entire
existence to a very strict agreement made on the Bill of Rights. By
extension, if the Bill of Rights is politically diluted or denied, then
the legitimacy of the Federal government must also be denied, for it has
violated the very charter that gave it life.
The writer of the article, Michael Tomasky, lists numerous
transgressions against our Constitutional protections; but he does not
do so in the spirit of activism. Rather, he lists them as examples of
how “compromise” on our freedoms is necessary (or somehow inevitable) in
the name of the collective good. He claims Republicans are perfectly
willing to sacrifice certain liberties, like freedom of speech, privacy
or even Miranda rights, in the name of political expediency.
I wholeheartedly agree that our civil liberties have been whittled
away by the establishment. I also agree that many so-called Republicans
have betrayed the founding values of our culture and even voted to
diminish or destroy the 2
nd Amendment. But let’s think hard
about the faulty logic behind Tomansky’s position. Do two wrongs or
hundreds of wrongs really make a right? Tomansky is saying that because
we have failed as a society to fully protect our freedoms and because
our government has been successful in criminally neglecting them, we
should simply give in and relinquish all freedom.
He would respond to this accusation by claiming that he is not
calling for the relinquishment of all liberties, only the liberties he
thinks are dangerous to society. The problem is, that is not how the
Constitution was designed. Amendments can be made, yes. But amendments
contrary to the Bill of Rights are not Constitutional as per the
original agreement made after the revolution. The Bill of Rights was
meant to be sacrosanct, untouchable — period. No Federal law, no State
law and no Amendment can be enforced that violates those protections.
The Bill of Rights was not created as a rule book for what the people
can do; it was created as a rule book for what government
cannot
do. Once you remove hard fast restrictions like the Bill of Rights from
the picture, you give the government license to make its own rules.
That is how tyranny is born.
As far as Republican attacks on the Constitution are concerned,
Tomasky has obviously never heard of the false/left right paradigm. He
finds solace in the totalitarian actions of neocons because neocons are
not conservative; they are statists. Ultimately, there is no right or
left. Only freedom and decentralization, or slavery and collectivism
exist. There are those who revel in control and those who rebel against
control. The rest of the debate is nonsense and distraction.
Tomsky opines: “Imagine what conservatives would think of a group of
liberals who insisted, while threatening an insurrection, on a pure and
absolute interpretation of the Fourth or Sixth Amendment–and imagine how
ridiculous they would look to average Americans.”
Actually, any true conservative would be standing right beside those
liberals, as many of us in the liberty movement have done in the past in
activism against the transgressions of fake conservatives like George
W. Bush or Mitt Romney, with his dismal anti-Constitution voting record.
Frankly, who cares what “average Americans” think about our battle for
what is right? Does Tomasky base all of his personal convictions on what
happens to be popular at the moment? I think so.
What statists also don’t seem to comprehend is that there is a factor
in the fight over Constitutional law that goes far beyond the
Constitution itself.
The Constitution, as a document, is not what we as Americans and
human beings obtain our rights from. The Constitution is only a written
representation of the inborn freedoms derived from natural law and
inherent conscience. We are
born with a sense of liberty and that
includes a right to self-defense from any enemy, foreign or domestic.
No amount of political gaming, twisted rationalizations or intellectual
idiocy is ever going to change these pre-existing rights.
Tomasky insists that: “[T]he idea that any right is unrestricted is totally at odds with history, the law, and reality.”
He uses the tired argument that some restrictions on personal
liberty, including restrictions on gun rights, are “reasonable” given
the circumstances of the times. And, it only follows that he and other
statists should be the ones to decide what is reasonable.
I disagree, along with millions of other Americans; and believe me, this is a serious problem for statists. If Tomasky and
The Daily Beast
want to impose their collective worldview on the rest of us and
dismantle our individual freedoms guaranteed in natural law and the Bill
of Rights, then I’m afraid they’ll have to fight us for them. In the
end, legal precedence is irrelevant. Political precedence is irrelevant.
Political party is irrelevant. Historical precedence is irrelevant. The
theater of words is irrelevant. Statists need to understand that there
is no alternative. There is no “silver bullet” argument that will make
us forget what is fundamentally true. There is no juxtaposition of logic
that will muddle our resolve or confuse our principles. Some rights are
indeed absolute; and we will not yield them, ever. The statist
“reality” is a far cry from what actually is; and soon, I’m afraid, they
will learn this lesson the hard way.