For all you logic/linguistic buffs, The Embarassing Second Amendment

[goju]

Too long to quote, fairly interesting read though.

http://hematite.com/dragon/embarassing_2nd.html

[library_max]

1. Well, I don't know who Sanford Levinson is,

but a quick look around the hematite site tells me that, surprise, it's a right wing nut site, complete with a how-to page on impeaching President Clinton and links to many right-wing gun sites and a hoax site on the dangers of water (dihydrogen monoxide).

[MrBenchley]

2. How is it our "pro gun democrats"

are always wading in right wing cesspools, do you suppose?

[Van23]

24. PS., Mr. Benchley

You never answered my question. How do you justify denying me the right to carry a weapon to defend my life, when I have actually been in fear of it? Have you ever been a victim of violent crime? Somehow I doubt it.

BTW: I wasn't distancing myself from Larry Pratt. He's crazy on most issues, but he's a veritable GOD of the Second Amendment and I'm proud to be a member of GOA.

[MrBenchley]

26. Ask me next

if I care what your fantasies about me are....

"BTW: I wasn't distancing myself from Larry Pratt. He's crazy on most issues, but he's a veritable GOD of the Second Amendment"
Well, you're welcome to his odious company.....and when it comes to the Second Amendment, he's a lying piece of shit.

[Van23]

27. Well, then....

enlighten me. Have you ever been a victim of a violent crime? Has your life ever been in danger? You still haven't explained to me or anyone else who carries a gun because they have been victimized your justification for taking them away from us.

[MrBenchley]

29. So much for "the conservatives' worst nightmare"

Tee hee hee....

[Van23]

31. I have

absolutely no idea what you're talking about. I guess I'm not going to get an answer to my question.

[CarinKaryn]

4. He's a gun nut of the variety

who thinks there should be "minimal" restrictions on the RKBBAMG (right to keep and bear big ass machine guns).

Google him. He get's around.

[OpSomBlood]

7. The "big ass machine guns" banned by the Assault Weapons Ban?

n/t

[Van23]

23. Well..

maybe all you anti-gun types should find out. He's one of the country's leading constitutional scholars who teaches law at UT Austin, a self-described "liberal Democrat and card-carrying member of the ACLU who has never owned a gun." He was one of the first scholars to seriously look at the Second Amendment in light of all the propaganda put out by anti-gun statists masquerading as "liberals". He found that, indeed, the Founding Fathers meant to allow ALL citizens the right to keep and bear arms. It was not simply a right allotted to state militias...which didn't exist back in those days as we understand them. Since Levinson published his article, his view on the subject has been overwhelmingly accepted by legal scholars--including liberals like Alan Dershowitz and John Hart Ely.

[iverglas]

30. "liberals like Alan Dershowitz"

That would be the Alan Dershowitz of "not necessarily torture, but torture if necessary", right?

What's all this touting of liberals? I hadn't understood you to be one.

(Don't get me wrong. I don't call myself a liberal, either. Dershowitz and his ilk are the very reason.)

[Endangered Specie]

3. Very interesting, if not consice.

Proof positive that this is not a simple black and white issue.

[goju]

5. Its disingenuous how...

the "constitutional control" crowd discounts ANYTHING that has ANY affiliation with a conservative site or source. Hint, just because a site links to something, doesnt necessarily imply the source is "in cahoots".

Thats like discounting the Washington Post because they mention George Will, or Democratic Underground because they link to MANY right wing sites. You have to put things in perspective and try to keep your bearings.

I have no dog in this fight, believe him and his analysis if you want or not. But keep in mind, he is a Harvard Law professor and very well respected.

[MrBenchley]

6. Say, what was the name of this place...

"ANYTHING that has ANY affiliation with a conservative site or source"
When will the RKBA crowd EVER have a single fucking thing that DOESN'T?

"You have to put things in perspective....I have no dog in this fight"
Funniest thing you've said yet!

[library_max]

8. You want to be careful

about using the word "disingenuous" and the phrase "I have no dog in this fight" together in the same post. Too much irony can rust out your credibility.

[iverglas]

9. eh?

But keep in mind, he is a Harvard Law professor and very well respected.

I'm seeing (emphasis added):

"The Embarrassing Second Amendment"

by Professor Sanford Levinson of the University of Texas at Austin - School of Law
Reprinted from the Yale Law Journal, Volume 99, pp. 637-659

He does describe himself as a Democrat:
http://judiciary.senate.gov/testimony.cfm?id=1022&wit_id=2919

This article looks interesting from the abstract:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=397140

If I dig around in my boxes, I might find these ones:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/article-preview?article_id=1720

For a good liberal, he seems to have the odd ... odd ... view:
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/menutest/articles/su03/weisberg.htm

So today comes Sanford Levinson, a liberal constitutional lawyer of impeccable credentials, to help us "debate" torture. Although the practice violates all of our traditions, Levinson and others are starting to "pull a Vichy" on their community. Instead of clearly and simply opposing what they know violates our best traditions and laws, they cave. Before the fact, before anyone knows whether torture has already or will ever become a widespread American technique of interrogation, those who might be the architects of protest instead produce a road map for the unacceptable. As Eyal Press wrote in the Nation (March 31, 2003), "the taboo on torture has been broken." And a so-called "legal realist" like Levinson is among the first to breach the barricades.

Well, we all know what Phil Ochs said about liberals. I'm generally with Phil, and with what the author of the above had to say:

Well, let me step in and try to emulate Jacques Maury by reminding these fellow travelers that when right(s)-thinking people start to equivocate, they bring about the practice that their better nature abhors. It is not "realistic" to lead (or join) the equivocation chorus. History proves that countries and their legal systems emerge much the worse when the urge to "get real" overwhelms the instinct to protest.

Let us continue to be alert to what governments may be doing. And, if there is evidence of torture, let us begin the "debate" by protesting the practice. Let us not lead, in the name of some misguided and ahistorical "realism," with our collective, liberal chins.

Here's the original from Levinson:
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/menutest/articles/su03/levinson.htm
and some more of the discussion, for anyone interested:
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/menutest/articles/su03/tocsu03.htm

Levinson reminds me of our own Irwin Cotler, formerly a civil-libertiarian legal scholar ... who defended anti-terrorism legislation and is now our Minister of Justice:
http://canada.justice.gc.ca/en/mag/
... and of the fact that when they have axes to grind, even (especially?) "liberals" gang oft awry.

[MrBenchley]

10. Maybe it's the "Harvard of the Panhandle"

It's nice to see that our trigger-happy friends have found a guy who thinks torture is swell, too....

[JayS]

11. I won't have time until later today to go through your links...

...so all I'll say is that I am aware of papers that Levinson has written discussing the legal implications of torture to gain information from "state-less" groups but none that actually recommend it. One of the articles of his that I read was very thought-provoking on the subject in the context of today's world climate but did not say we need to use torture.

[MrBenchley]

12. The embarassing Professor Levinson

From the Dissent essay...

"There is at least cause to believe that the ban on torture and, even more so, on "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment," is just one more example of the legal realist insight that one should look to law-in-action rather than law-on-the-books to determine the actual legal order....If we cannot use torture ourselves as a method of self-defense, then "we" (that is, the government of the United States, acting in the name of "We the People") might simply pass on or, in the language of the trade, "render" the hapless suspects to our less fastidious allies...How, then, should we, whether lawyers or simply citizens, try to synthesize these two realities: first, the absolute prohibition against torture and other inhuman and degrading acts and, second, the obvious fact that not only is it occurring, but also, just as significantly, serious and thoughtful people appear to justify it? A variety of responses to what has suddenly been recognized as a potentially costly, rather than merely symbolic, prohibition are possible."

[JayS]

13. Yes, he is discussing the issue. Is there something wrong...

...with that?

[library_max]

14. He's not just discussing it.

He's clearly implying that it's necessary - also, that the only actual choice is between using torture ourselves and outsourcing the task to our "less fastidious allies."

[JayS]

17. It sounds like a discussion to me, from what I have had a chance...

...to read. I withhold judgment until I have read it all.



http://www.dissentmagazine.org/menutest/articles/su03/levinson.htm

Note, though, that even the Economist fudges by endorsing "vigorous questioning short of torture." This clearly requires that we must confront head-on exactly where the line is to be drawn. We must be as attentive, intellectually and emotionally, to "inhuman and degrading" acts as to "torture," lest we fall victim to what I have termed the X minus a phenomenon. In any event, anyone who accepts the necessity of linedrawing-and that must mean anyone who thinks seriously about this topic-must be willing to defend awful conduct that comes right up to the line. There is no way to avoid the moral difficulties generated by the possibility of torture. We are staring into an abyss, and no one can escape the necessity of a response.

[iverglas]

18. I'm not sure that he's going that far

But what he's doing, as the discussant I quoted pointed out, is legitimizing the discourse of torture-as-necessary. That is, even framing the concept of "the debate on torture" is to admit of the possibility that there is another side to the "debate".

I googled for Levinson's name in combo with Maher Arar. Arar is the Canadian citizen who was detained while transitting the US and shipped, by the US govt, completely illegally and also completely without any basis in reality for the reasons it might have cited, to Syria -- where he was imprisoned and tortured for a long time: the very case-in-point when it comes to that "outsourcing".

This is a discussion of the issues, in which he was took part:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week725/cover.html
The only reference to Levinson is to the article I cited earlier. I'd hoped that maybe Levinson had weighed in on the issues in the case.

This -- outsourcing of torture by the US -- *is* being done, systematically:
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030331&s=press

This is the other response to Levinson's venture into the subject area, from that set I referenced; I rather like it:
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/menutest/articles/su03/shue.htm

[JayS]

20. I'm sorry about our treatment of a Canadian citizen. I wish I could...

...say that it won't happen again but that would be a lie. We would be minus an airport if an alert Canadian border guard had not stopped that explosive-laden tourist; we sure have a way of rewarding good work, don't we...

I remember when "torture, okay/not okay" got its fifteen minutes of fame and the last I heard we still export the job so we can maintain out moral purity.....

[MrBenchley]

15. He sure seems to be licking his chops over the prospect....

You tell US, jay...what's wrong with torture?

[NorthernSpy]

19. torture is wicked and unthinkable

And the legal scholars who are trying to coax us down that road are obviously NOT doing so because of their (varying) opinions on the subject of guns or the Second Amendment.

Those people are not like us. Their interests lie decidedly elsewhere.


Mary

[iverglas]

21. the reason for raising the issue here, though

-- is that Levinson is generally represented as the liberal's liberal, from what I've now seen in my brief crash course in him. This certainly seems to have been the idea behind citing him in support of "second amendment rights". So questioning his authoritativeness when it comes to adherence to, and the application of, "liberal" values is certainly legitimate.

Is he speaking as a "liberal"?

The answer might be different, depending on what one regards "liberal" as meaning. And from what I see, he really does seem to embody the concept of "liberal" that I share with good old dead Phil; see below for my indulgence in quoting one of my favourites of Phil Ochs's songs.

Civil libertarians / liberals are not always the good guys. In my experience, they are very often corrupt, or corruptible, and quite able to argue in favour of things that are in their own interests and don't quite coincide with their stated values, and too eager to protect those interests at someone else's expense.

http://www.stlyrics.com/songs/o/ochsphil15543/lovemeimaliberal418461.html

I cried when they shot Medgar Evers
Tears ran down my spine
And I cried when they shot Mr. Kennedy
As though I'd lost a father of mine
But Malcolm X got what was coming
He got what he asked for this time
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

I go to the civil rights rallies
And I put down the old D.A.R.
I love Harry and Sidney and Sammy
I hope every colored boy becomes a star
But don't talk about revolution
That's going a little bit too far
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

I cheered when Humphrey was chosen
My faith in the system restored
And I'm glad that the commies were thrown out
From the A.F.L. C.I.O. board
And I love Puerto Ricans and Negros
As long as they don't move next door
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

Ah, the people of old Mississippi
Should all hang their heads in shame
Now I can't understand how their minds work
What's the matter don't they watch Les Crain?
But if you ask me to bus my children
I hope the cops take down your name
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

Yes, I read New Republic and Nation
I've learned to take every view
You know, I've memorized Lerner and Golden
I feel like I'm almost a Jew
But when it comes to times like Korea
There's no one more red, white and blue
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

I vote for the democratic party
They want the U.N. to be strong
I attend all the Pete Seeger concerts
He sure gets me singing those songs
And I'll send all the money you ask for
But don't ask me to come on along
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

Sure, once I was young and impulsive
I wore every conceivable pin
Even went to socialist meetings
Learned all the old union hymns
Ah, but I've grown older and wiser
And that's why I'm turning you in
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

[MrBenchley]

22. Sure seems thinkable to Sandy Levinson...

"The legal scholars who are trying to coax us down that road are obviously NOT doing so because of their (varying) opinions on the subject of guns or the Second Amendment."
Yeah? Let's see you prove first that any of them do have a varying opinion. Ted "Arkansas Project" Olsen, who commissioned some of the "let's torture 'em" memos while Solicitor General, certainly pushed gun rights during his disgraceful career.... And NRA life member AshKKKroft may not be any sort of legal scholar, but the idiot IS the attorney general who actually got torture to occur...

"Those people are not like us"
Which us? The trigger happy "us" that puts up post after post trying to justify plugging their fellow Americans? The ones that gloat about people taking a "dirt nap"?

[NorthernSpy]

16. he was a visiting professor at the law school for a while

... and his doctorate is from the GSAS. That's the Harvard connection.

Mary

[gatlingforme]

28. Keep in mind Bush went to YALE... yeah, okay, so what. I agree

with your first two paragraphs though. I think many things must be kept into perspective. This article was written in 1989 too.

[MrSandman]

25. I've been looking for an online copy of that for sometime...n/t