A common question to both sides...

[ellisonz]

69. Done.

Madison clearly argues against a standing army unless necessary to repel a foreign invader and that a Militia should be formed in case of either that scenario or insurrection. He affirms the reasonable nature of checks and balances in relation to Federal authority over the states and notes the flaws inherent in allowing the states to grow too far apart in their laws and regulations. Madison's argument is in defense of the Constitution and against the notion that the people are not adequately represented by the republican model. He's explaining why the Articles of Confederacy have been insufficient in providing for a national defense of the federated states. He's portending the Civil War or a likewise insurrection and wishfully hoping that it should not come to that because it would be so destructive because the Militias will be contained. He hopes that if insurrection or invasion were to occur and a State were to be compromised that once the insurrection/invader was put down that there would be no permanent occupation.

As it was, and as you've seen in 1792 the Militias were placed under the direct authority of the President of the United States, and the expectation was that in event of war that this would be the protocol such as to provide for a united defense rather than individual states defending only their own. He is against a permanent large standing army.

The only refuge left for those who prophesy the downfall of the State governments is the visionary supposition that the federal government may previously accumulate a military force for the projects of ambition. The reasonings contained in these papers must have been employed to little purpose indeed, if it could be necessary now to disprove the reality of this danger. That the people and the States should, for a sufficient period of time, elect an uninterupted succession of men ready to betray both; that the traitors should, throughout this period, uniformly and systematically pursue some fixed plan for the extension of the military establishment; that the governments and the people of the States should silently and patiently behold the gathering storm, and continue to supply the materials, until it should be prepared to burst on their own heads, must appear to every one more like the incoherent dreams of a delirious jealousy, or the misjudged exaggerations of a counterfeit zeal, than like the sober apprehensions of genuine patriotism. Extravagant as the supposition is, let it however be made. Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger.

If you are suggesting we seriously reduce the Defense Department budget, fund the National Guard better, and institute stricter gun control to prevent an internal uprising and to "insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity," I am all for it. But this current situation, which President William Jefferson Clinton described as "madness," is unacceptable not consistent with an tea leaves reading of the Federalist Papers or the Constitution. It was for this reason that Antonin Scalia and his fellow Justices turned to this nebulous concept:

The prefatory clause comports with the Court’s interpretation of the operative clause. The “militia” comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense. The Antifederalists feared that the Federal Government would disarm the people in order to disable this citizens’ militia, enabling a politicized standing army or a select militia to rule. The response was to deny Congress power to abridge the ancient right of individuals to keep and bear arms, so that the ideal of a citizens’ militia would be preserved. Pp. 22–28.

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Why do we care about what "the Antifederalists feared"when the real issue is what the practical balance of the Second Amendment constitutes? I don't think it means unlimited ownership of arms of whatever type one may please by any measure of the law. Scalia is engaging in mystification from this point on out; there is no "individual right" to the keeping or beating of arms and because this proclamation is so inconsistent with the actual text of the Second Amendment, much less the principles of Liberty, he has to caution:

2) Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose: For example, concealed weapons prohibitions have been upheld under the Amendment or state analogues. The Court’s opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms. Miller’s holding that the sorts of weapons protected are those “in common use at the time” finds support in the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons. Pp. 54–56.

This is chickenshit justice; this is right-wing Supreme Court judges throwing an ideological bone to the NRA and friends by engaging in statements not previously made and not pertinent to the case through the very judicial activism that he decries. Fuck Antonin Scalia.


California National Guardsmen - Los Angeles, 1992.