Who Killed the Constitution? We did.

Zbigniew Mazurak provides an excellent guide to the way things used to be, and the way things were intended to be by our Constitution in an article yesterday at the American Thinker entitled Executive Orders and Presidential Prerogatives. Would that Mr. Mazurak was correct in what he writes. For instance:

Executive orders and regulations issued by the president are law for no one except federal executive agencies. Only the Congress can make law for anyone else. So any executive orders or regulations are not law for you unless you work for one of these institutions. The same applies to any executive regulations imposed by executive agencies such as the EPA.

So, farmers could just sort of ignore the proposed regulation of spilled milk that will put a baby food on a par with petroleum products in terms of harm to the environment. If only it were true.  Whatever regulations are finally promulgated will be enforced against any farmer who objects, with guns and jail if necessary.  That's part of the problem.  Unfortunately, the President has guns, and the Congress and Courts do not.  So, when those guns are pointed in your direction, are you really willing to tell him "Hey buddy, you can't do that"?

I am not a Constitutional scholar, so do not know when the exact ruling took place that killed the Republic, but if you believe Thomas E. Woods, Jr. and Kevin R. Gutzman, writing in Who Killed the Constitution it was a variety of politicians, judges, and presidents. Some of it was done for expediency, some for power grabs, all of it because of venal desire for personal gain above the common good, and all of it has acted to steal the liberties that ordinary Americans once expected as a birthright.  The nanny state is taking over everywhere, and individual judgement and responsibility has been made virtually illegal.   Wood's and Gutzman's verdict? The Constitution as we know it is dead.

Today, the Curmudgeon Emeritus over at Eternity Road has a post up entitled Enforcers that points out that expecting the Federal Government to enforce the Constitution was a little bit naive of us. The people, through the Second Amendment were intended to enforce the Constitution. We failed.

When the federal government decided to ignore the Constitution's constraints, did you pull the musket down from your mantel? Your Curmudgeon didn't.

Therefore, it's not the Constitution that's failed; it's its enforcement mechanisms.

We thought we could safeguard our freedom by periodically changing scoundrels. At least, enough of us thought so.

We were wrong. Or squeamish. Or cowardly. Take your pick.

Right now, some 49% of the people receive largess from the Federal Government in some form or another. These people have been bought and paid for with our tax dollars. They are not going to be the least bit interested in returning to Constitutional governance.  The courts, and especially the Supreme Court are divided between nominal originalists, and those who believe they can make the law up as they go.  The latter are in the majority.  And why not?  It is more satisfying to right supposed wrongs than to slavishly follow what some legislature has decided, though that is their job.  Congressman Clyburn famously told Andrew Napolitano that most of what they do in Congress had no Constitutional basis, with no apparent irony or embarrassment. The United States faces a deficit said to be $14 trillion, but if you look at the unfunded entitlements, is really so large that there is not enough wealth in the world to pay it. Yet they propose to cut a mere $100 billion.  This is gross incompetence of the worst sort.  Meanwhile the President, as Mazurak indicated above, is on a tear to advance his socialist agenda by any means necessary.  I am sure the Posse Comitatus act will be no impediment if the time comes.  While the outer forms are maintained, we no longer live under the rule of law, but the rule of men.  So what do you do?  How do you obey an unjust law?  How will you explain yourself to the Creator when judgement day arrives?

The truth is, I do not know.  Perhaps, like Washington, our job is not so much to win, but to avoid losing long enough for God to rescue a future generation.  In the meantime, keep your powder dry and your stocks built up.  And pray.

The Case of the Incurious Mr. Grimaldi

Thanks to Dave Hardy of the blog Of Arms and the Law for pointing to the site at the Washington Post White House delays gun reporting along Mexican border. The report is a follow-up to the furor several weeks ago about the ATF seizing power and forcing FFLs to report sales of multiple long guns within a stated period. You can read about the background to the story at Armed and Safe. The thing that all gun writers have noted, time and again, is that what the ATF was doing was blatantly illegal, on both procedural grounds and in attempting to claim authority specifically not granted by the legislation.

The report, by James V. Grimaldi, has all the usual buzz words, and not one mention of the power grab attempted by the ATF, or the dimensions of its unconstitutionality. For example:

The decision delays for at least two months a proposed requirement that gun dealers along the Mexican border report anyone who buys two or more assault weapons in five days. White House officials said the delay will give the public more time - until Feb. 14 - to comment on the proposal.

Did you catch that? He says the ATF power grab was to catch people who buy two or more assault weapons in five days. Actually, nobody in the United States can purchase an "assault weapon" at a gun dealer. Assault weapons are fully automatic sub machine guns. New ones, built since 1986, can only be purchased by governments. Old ones can still be transferred, at huge costs, between fully vetted citizens. But nobody is going to go into a store and buy two or more "assault weapons," at $10,000 and up, only to smuggle them across the Mexican border and use against police.  Be practical.  Most FFLs do not even deal in such things.  What the ATF actually asked to be reported was the purchase of any two or more long guns by the same individual within a 5 day period that were greater than .22 caliber and accepted a detachable magazine.  That covers a pretty wide swath of the gun market.  It covers semiautomatic guns such as AR-15 and variants, but also rather normal .22 cal rifles such as the Ruger 10/22 rifle.   Do you think the ATF might have had something else in mind?  And if the ATF had succeeded, do you think they might have expanded the new regime to the entire United States?

In fact, with all the controversy currently surrounding the ATF and what has become known as Project Gunwalker, isn't it surprising that Grimaldi should take Administration statements at face value? In a previous generation, two Washington Post reporters virtually ended the Presidency Richard Nixon. But that was then, this is now.  So let me suggest some ideas to the incurious Mr. Grimaldi.  The Administration, and the ATF, hoped to use the ongoing turmoil over the Southwest border, which the President as studiously neglected, to expand the law by regulatory and unconstitutional means.  The Administration is probing, using the ATF, the EPA, the FCC, and who knows what other agencies, to see how far it can go in advancing its agenda.  In this case, the Administration has folded for now on this front, but I also suspect that something along these lines will pop up again when we aren't looking.

Stay vigilant, be prepared

Update:  Mike Vanderboegh of the Sipsey Street Irregulars has this post up about the same article.  As usual, Mr. Vanderboegh cuts with a sharper knife.

Either Traitors or Fools

Yesterday, in the American Thinker, there was a short piece entitled Does Gun Control Work? Look South, you fools by Russ Vaughn.

Mr. Vaughn points out that the Mexican Constitution does indeed recognize that people do have the right to keep and bear arms. But the Mexican Federales place so many restrictions on gun ownership, that the average peasant doesn't qualify. Besides, there is only one gun store in all of Mexico. Yet, the country is awash in guns and drugs. And no, the majority of guns do not come from the United States civilian gun market. Crew served machine guns and grenade launchers are not available here on the civilian market. Vaughn's point?

Let's see if we got this right. The simple citizen can't own anything larger than a .22 because of federal gun control laws, while the drug cartels, who could care less about said gun control restraints possess armories which in many cases rival or exceed those of the Mexican police forces and even the national armed forces. The money quote from the Washington Post article is this, "Asked whether Mexico's gun-control laws were working, Mendoza said, 'Ask the criminals.' "

What is it that liberals seem incapable of grasping about the stark truth that if you outlaw guns, only the outlaws will have them? Look south you wishful fools, and see what your gun control has wrought.

Now, "liberals," as Vaughn politely puts it, or more likely Progressives, are anything but fools. Oh, there are the true believers and useful idiots in the crowd. But I think the Progressives know full well that gun control does not work as a crime control scheme. So what is it they really want? Let me suggest, since no one is saying, that one reason could be that the Progressives do not want us to have available that fourth box, the cartridge box (the other three boxes are the soap box, the jury box, and the ballot box.)  So which is it, Progressives.  Are you traitors, or just plain fools.

South Dakota Wants You to Have a Gun-At Your Own Expense

This morning I woke to this presser from the Citizen's Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. I realize that South Dakota is probably not serious. Rather, this proposed bill is intended to show supporters of ObamaCare the ridiculousness of their ideas. If a citizen can be forced to purchase health insurance, why can't he be equally forced to purchase a gun, or for that matter, broccoli:

BELLEVUE, WA – The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms today said a proposal before the South Dakota Legislature that would require all adults in the state to buy a gun “should make perfect sense to anybody who supports Obamacare.”

CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb said legislation sponsored by five South Dakota lawmakers that would require anyone over age 21 to purchase a gun for ordinary self-defense seems reasonable.

“If you can mandate that people must buy health insurance,” Gottlieb observed, “then you can mandate that people must buy a firearm. After all, they both can keep you alive and well.”

The Sioux Falls Argus Leader reported that the requirement, if adopted, would become effective on Jan. 1, 2012. The provision exempts people who are legally prohibited from owning guns.

“Anyone who argues that such a proposal is nonsense should apply the same standard to Obamacare,” Gottlieb said. “That goes double for anyone who thinks mandatory gun ownership is unconstitutional.

“There is no place in the Constitution I can find where it mentions that having health insurance is a protected civil right,” he noted, “but the right to keep and bear arms is right there in the Bill of Rights. We know, thanks to last June’s ruling by the Supreme Court, that the Second Amendment right to have a gun applies to all citizens in every state.

“Anybody who thinks the health care mandate is constitutional, but doesn’t think the Second Amendment is an individual civil right apparently has trouble reading the Constitution and the Supreme Court rulings,” Gottlieb said. “Maybe those individuals want that government-run health care so they can get their eyes checked.”

How much clearer do we need to make it for the Progressives on the Supreme Court?  If a citizen can be mandated to purchase ObamaCare, couldn't a person's income be so filled with mandates that there is nothing left for him to pursue happiness?  It is the ultimate control.

Update:  Selwyn Duke provides the example of where this analogy breaks down today in a short piece on American Thinker entitled That South Dakota Mandate. The exact analog to the SD bill is indeed Massachusetts and RomneyCare. Both are Constitutional under each State Constitution, and both are bad ideas. But since I don't think anyone has a serious intention of actually passing the SD bill, it still makes a good point.

Sikhs Allowed to Wear the Dagger

Why doesn't this decision amount to establishing a religion?

We have a report today, courtesy of Theo Sparks, of a Sikh student who is allowed to wear a religious dagger to school here. It does seem as if the school district is imposing double standards. Christian children have been suspended for praying, holding Bible readings, and wearing crosses to school. The courts have generally found that when Christian children do these things with the schools indulgence, it amounts to an establishment of a religion.  Children have also been suspended for bringing tiny plastic soldiers with tiny plastic guns to school. You know the kind, the little green plastic soldiers we used to play war with.

Now, keep in mind that I do not object to a Sikh wearing a dagger anywhere.  It is his right, and a practice of the Sikh religion. I just want to see the same standard applied to other students.  In other words, Christian students should be allowed to pray and hold bible readings, on their own.  They should be allowed to wear crosses if they so choose.  On the other hand, if the courts want to continue the inanity, then nobody should be allowed to express or practice any religion.    Half measures where the schools allow this, but not that, strike everyone as being unfair, and un-American.

What Do We Mean by Limited Government

We Constitutionalists often talk about the need for limited government.  We often cite Thomas Jefferson's famous saying that "A government big enough to supply you with everything you need, is a government big enough to take everything you have..."  Indeed, unlimited government is most obvious every April 15th, and with the mounting debt burden.  Such a debt places us all in jeopardy of becoming slaves to those foreigners who hold our debt.  It is assumed that a government acting solely within the scope of duties delegated to the Federal Government by the States in the Constitution will therefore necessarily be limited, and the problems we currently have with debt will be more manageable.  While such is not guaranteed, it is more likely.  But there is another aspect of limited government that I think nags at nearly everyone, be they conservative, libertarian, or liberal.  That is the number of laws with which we don't necessarily agree, or find violate our own principles, that are being executed in our name.

Right now, I have a so-called "Representative" who is a committed Progressive, and who votes for things that I find repugnant to my principles as a Constitutionalists.  Oh, I write to him to express my opinions, and on occasion he writes back.  Not in so many words of course, but reading the meaning, what he usually says is that when he wants my opinion, he'll send some goons to beat it out of me.  He and Mr. Obama see eye to eye apparently.  Now, for the "But Bush (fill in the blank)" crowd, I found much of the stuff he did equally anti-Constitutional and repugnant to my principles. Indeed, if you followed Sunday's post, you will discover that this has been going on since before I was born, and getting more pronounced with each passing year.  But this is not merely a problem for us Constitutionalists.  In the next district over, they have elected a Tea Party candidate.  All of the liberals and the Progressives who live in that district have the same problem as I do; a Representative who doesn't represent them.

The solution, for everyone, is limited government; fewer laws and less regulations that deal only with those things delegated by the States to the Federal Government.  In the American Thinker today, Tom Roberson has an article entitled Overachievers with Low Self Esteem. It is a somewhat tongue-in-cheek look at some of the recent attempts to impose other's ideas of how we ought to be living on all of us.  An example:

Michelle Obama's weight problem and lack of self-control is channeled into a childhood obesity campaign to rid us of high-calorie foods she can't resist. The reasoning that if they don't exist, Mrs. Obama won't be tempted. Sorry, Michelle, but you'll just find something else to eat...so get over it and embrace the salad bar

Now, Mrs. Obama is free to yammer on all she likes about eating healthily, but when it is enacted into law, or policy, that is when I object. It is clearly outside the scope of the Constitution. Wouldn't it be better to leave menu choices to private individuals? The so-called "experts" certainly don't have a great track record when it comes to deciding for us. I remember when low fat was the thing. Then Atkins came along and showed that low carbohydrates were more effective. Who knows what will come next? It is better, I think, to let everyone decide for himself. But Tom Roberson says it quite well:

Now we've got a government that forces us to use detergents that won't clean, low-flow toilets that won't flush, pesticides and herbicides that don't kill, food with no taste, and light bulbs with bad light. They also want us to use unreliable and expensive energy such as solar, wind, and ethanol, while pretending that our vast coal, oil, and natural gas reserves don't really exist or are too dangerous for the environment. We're supposed to trust these idiots? "Green" has become a codeword for "useless" on product labels, warning consumers to look elsewhere if they need an effective product.

and:

Personally, I'm sick of the government trying to keep me safe and do my thinking for me. I like a little danger and excitement every once in a while to let me know I'm still alive. I want to ignore the label warnings and use a product in a manner inconsistent with the directions. I want to rip the tag off my mattress and ride my bicycle without a helmet. These trifling brushes with danger are made exciting by the fact that the elitist power set have sucked all the fun out of life with their endless rules and regulations.

Of course, there are more serious issues over which the philosophical divide is so great as to never be resolved.  Some people believe the TSA keeps us safe at airports, and are therefore willing to undergo massive intrusions upon their persons.  I do not share that belief, and instead would rather take my chances with a terrorist.  How to resolve it?  I would suggest getting rid of the one size fits all TSA and instead return to having the individual airlines perform such security as the market will bear.  The airlines will find solutions that do not involve groping at the risk of going to jail, I assure you.  Guns are another issue, that the framers had solved with the Second Amendment.  Those who believed guns were efficacious were free to own such guns as they desired without infringement.  Those who equally believed guns were evil were free to not own them, or to have them in their homes.  The framers wisely recognized that everyone took risks whenever one went abroad in public.  Problem solved until the Government began acting outside the scope of Constitutional powers.

That is what we mean by the term "limited government."

Thanks to Mike Vanderboegh

The scandals over at the ATF, the prospect of the House of Representatives actually holding hearings on it, were the topics of discussion on every one's tongue at the Raleigh Gun Show the other week. Mike Vanderboegh of the Sipsey Street Irregulars reports that Congressional hearings are now a near certainty. Mr. V and David Codrea have largely brought this about, and I thank them for their yeoman work.  Whether changes to the law will result from these hearings, or whether the Congress will chose to grandstand, and then business will go on as usual remains to be seen.  Please also take the time to read the two letters, posted at Sipsey Street Irregulars, from Charles Grassley to Ken Melson.