Posted on 06/26/2008 8:21:35 AM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
In the First Amendment, no words define the class of individuals entitled to speak, to publish, or to worship; in that Amendment it is only the right peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances, that is described as a right of “the people.” These rights contemplate collective action. While the right peaceably to assemble protects the individual rights of those persons participating in the assembly, its concern is with action engaged in by members of a group, rather than any single individual. Likewise, although the act of petitioning the Government is a right that can be exercised by individuals, it is primarily collective in nature. For if they are to be effective, petitions must involve groups of individuals acting in concert.
Similarly, the words “the people” in the Second Amendment refer back to the object announced in the Amendment’s preamble. They remind us that it is the collective action of individuals having a duty to serve in the militia that the text directly protects and, perhaps more importantly, that the ultimate purpose of the Amendment was to protect the States’ share of the divided sovereignty created by the Constitution.
As used in the Fourth Amendment, “the people” describes the class of persons protected from unreasonable searches and seizures by Government officials. It is true that the Fourth Amendment describes a right that need not be exercised in any collective sense. But that observation does not settle the meaning of the phrase “the people” when used in the Second Amendment. For, as we have seen, the phrase means something quite different in the Petition and Assembly Clauses of the First Amendment. Although the abstract definition of the phrase “the people” could carry the same meaning in the Second Amendment as in the Fourth Amendment, the preamble of the Second Amendment suggests that the uses of the phrase in the First and Second Amendments are the same in referring to a collective activity. By way of contrast, the Fourth Amendment describes a right against governmental interference rather than an affirmative right to engage in protected conduct, and so refers to a right to protect a purely individual interest. As used in the Second Amendment, the words “the people” do not enlarge the right to keep and bear arms to encompass use or ownership of weapons outside the context of service in a well regulated militia.
No and no, and I am sad that that is my thought out answer.
I will caveat that by saying without a govt house cleaning by we the people.
...should be required watching for all inside the beltway 'constitutional scholars'.
“Does anyone think that an appointee as conservative and sensible as Scalia or Thomas will EVER be confirmed by the Senate in the future?
Or that John McCain would even attempt to appoint such a man.....”
Hey...we made Bush drop Miers and appoint Alito....whether or not we get John McCain a Republican congress...depends how hard we work the local congressional and Senatorial opportunities.
If that's the case, then it's time to rip it up, dumb it down so it's unambiguous, and we can all understand its meaning.
Law that is incomprehensible to the masses is not law.
I'm not McCain's biggest fan but I'd say such pressure on McCain is likely to p*** him off and he has a lot in him to off.
5 JUSTICE STEVENS is of course correct, post, at 10, that the right to assemble cannot be exercised alone, but it is still an individual right,and not one conditioned upon membership in some defined “assembly,”as he contends the right to bear arms is conditioned upon membership in a defined militia. And JUSTICE STEVENS is dead wrong to think thatthe right to petition is “primarily collective in nature.” Ibid. See McDonald v. Smith, 472 U. S. 479, 482–484 (1985) (describing historical origins of right to petition).
Two can play that game. Here's what I think the "preamble" to the 2nd Amendment means...
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,...""Because the state has to form an armed body of men to provide for security of the state, (and we all know how dangerous armed bodies under control of the state are to individual liberty and freedom, having just kicked British butt and risked it all because of it,)..."
Isn't it obvious, Mr. Wordplay, that the Founders were giving a reason that individuals should be armed? The reason being that the state can't be trusted but, nonetheless, must be allowed to wield organized firepower for the protection of the whole.
It makes more sense than saying one person cannot petition the government for redress of grievances. (ever hear of a civil suit?)
It makes more sense than saying an individual has no right to stand alone with a placard and a bullhorn and protest. (an assembly of one? for all practical purposes)
Or are we to also believe that the freedom of the press applies only to groups? Does that mean that every article published must have multiple authors? It might be logical to say that one person cannot establish a religion by himself but is it reasonable to say one person can't exercise religious freedom individually? Does that mean a person must belong to a church or other group to pray and believe?
I suppose only a black-robed semantic genius like you can make the proper distinctions as to which rights are collective and which are individual. Once you've clarified that for us tell us; if defined as an "individual" right does that preclude a group from exercising the same right as you have suggested that a "collective" right can't be exercised by an individual?
I spit on your Sovietsky collectivist garbage-speak.
Regime change in the courts. Impeach activist justices!
"Ultimately, a civilized society must disarm its citizenry if it is to have a modicum of domestic tranquility of the kind enjoyed by sister democracies such as Canada and Britain. Given the frontier history and individualist ideology of the United States, however, this will not come easily. It certainly cannot be done radically. It will probably take one, maybe two generations. It might be 50 years before the United States gets to where Britain is today. Passing a law like the assault weapons ban is a symbolic - purely symbolic - move in that direction. Its only real justification is not to reduce crime but to desensitize the public to the regulation of weapons in preparation for their ultimate confiscation."
- Charles Krauthammer
I wish more people would openly acknowledge that the Constitution is the Supreme Law of the Land; government actions which are clearly and unambiguously contrary to the Constitution are illegitimate, regardless of what Men in Black Robes say. While there may not be any higher court in the U.S. to appeal to when the Men in Black Robes issue a clearly-unconstitutional ruling, there is no requirement that government personnel acknowledge the legitimacy of such rulings. Indeed, such personnel are duty-bound not to.
More to the point, the freedom of assembly is not restricted to government-recognized groupings. Even if the Second Amendment recognized only the same sort of 'collective' right as the first, any two or more people could get together and keep and bear arms among themselves, without any requirement for prior government recognition as a "group".
The only way I can see abortion being recognized as generally unconstitutional would be if an amendment were ratified that explicitly made it unconstitutional after a specific date, and recognized that it was constitutional prior to that. To do anything else would open up some really huge cans of worms (e.g. since there's no statute of limitations on murder, to acknowledge that abortion was never legitimate would be to open up the legal floodgates on abortionists. Perhaps they deserve it, but it would cause great harm to the fabric of lawful society; better to solve the issue in a way that would let the past be the past.
Another difference, I would suggest, is that liberals seek to "do something" about problems. Conservatives may work to solve or ameliorate problems, or may perform research or other preparatory work toward solution or amelioration, but I would suggest that conservatives would be less likely to "do something".
Depends on the problem.
If it's a national security problem, the liberals are likely to do nothing. But conservatives will act.
If it's an economic problem, though, the liberals will make it worse -- while conservatives are likely to do nothing and let the market handle it.
Will conservatives "do something", or will they act to solve or ameliorate the problem, or to make preparations to do so?
One trait of liberal thinking is that it is better to "do something" about a problem than to ignore it. Even if the "something" will make the problem worse, the fact that one is "doing something" about the problem is what counts.
I see where you're going with this. And I agree.
Indeed, I'll go one step further. While it is important for liberals to seen "doing something" about a problem, it is generally not in their interest to actually solve said problem. Consequently, their "doing something" is specifically contrived so as to not solve the problem.
Where would liberals politicians be without the unresolved grievances of all their constituent groups?
In some cases specifically contrived, no doubt, but in many cases the chosen methods of "doing something" are those which are the simplest and most obvious, and would likely have been chosen even if the implementors were indifferent toward their effects.
BTW, as a recovered sufferer of Liberal Mind Fog Disorder, one aspect which conservatives don't fully appreciate is a fatalistic detachment of cause and effect. If someone insists upon spending a month researching a problem and modeling possible approaches before spending a day implementing a fix that works brilliantly first time, they will see the person as having wasted a month on a problem that could have been solved in a day--they are totally oblivious to the fact that it was the month of preparation that made the one-day fix possible. Conversely, if someone else attacks such a problem and immediately starts implementing fixes that never quite work, and is still going at it two months later, the inability to solve the problem is a result of unforeseeable difficulties. The notion that such difficulties could in fact have been foreseen completely escapes them.
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