Posted on 11/22/2008 9:11:13 PM PST by nickcarraway
Edited on 11/24/2008 9:11:50 AM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
Of conservatives' few victories this year, the most cherished came when the Supreme Court, in District of Columbia v. Heller, held for the first time that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms. Now, however, a distinguished conservative jurist argues that the court's ruling was mistaken and had the principal flaws of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 abortion ruling that conservatives execrate as judicial overreaching. Both rulings, says J. Harvie Wilkinson, suddenly recognized a judicially enforceable right grounded in "an ambiguous constitutional text."
Wilkinson was actually mentioned a lot as a potential replacement for Rehnquist. Thank god he wasn’t taken.
Could you read the damn thing before posting?
George Will is pretty much a moron.
Bump for later Sunday reading
I’m beginning to suspect Will and the other Washington RINOS were amoung the 900 FBI files Hillary and her Bar Bouncer aide peeked into and found all sorts of Blackmail goodies.
I’d say Wiill’s cardal sin was a photograph hobby and a weakness for young asian boys.
1) we know what it means, 2) we know who wants to strip us of our RKBA, and 3) anyone with an above room temperature IQ knows there's a fight coming.
So George Will, quit trying to pretend you're Paul Revere already...we're way ahead of you.
Assclown.
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
Im not sure whether Im more disturbed by Wilkinsons position or the sudden drop in the forums average reading comprehension skills...
Will’s logic is so thin, I’m too tired to address it. However, I will say....
...This is what conservatives can enjoy for the next four years when reading (if you must) the WAPO, NYT etc, etc. I can’t believe the day would come when I would long for the musings of Bill Kristol.
Will has said some strange things over the years, but at least he was a staple conservative voice on a Sunday morning broadcast news shows. I am so disheartened and disgusted by the bias and heard-mentality in the MSM, I’m not sure what if anything can be done.
When a “pillar” of the conservative intelligentsia can’t even get a decision as simple as Heller right, it doesn’t bode well for the coming months. I fear as long as the libs have a death grip on the major media outlets, It’s going to be a long time in the desert for conservatives.
George Will is a putz.
File under “Too Cute by Half.”
Dinstinctions outweighing the similarities.
I wonder if this wasn’t in response to the ENORMOUS jump in the number of folks buying guns and ammo? It does seem to be making some of the “less well grounded” among us very edgy.
And Will is the guy many Mainstream driveby shows keep around for a token conservative presence in a decidedly liberal media. And then they wonder why people say the mainstream press is a far left wing hyperbolic moonbat feverswamp in their opinions and propaganda they try to sell as “objective”...
Amazing.
Everywhere else in the Constitution, “the people” refers unambiguously to all the people. Hence, the language of the Second Amendment, “the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed” means that all of the people have a right to bear arms.
Would it help if there was a comma between the militia clause and the right to bear arms clause, George. Oh, and would it help if you realized what constituted a “militia” at the time of the Constitution’s adoption. ‘Cause I’ll tell you, “well regulated” or not, they weren’t talking about the National Guard.
I weep for conservatism’s future.
George Will wrote that? When?
That's actually worse than Kathleen Parker's vitriolic fulmination against Christian conservatives the other day, that "Howard Dean was right".
“But the majority and minority justices demonstrated that there are powerful, detailed, historically grounded ‘originalist’ arguments for opposite understandings of what the Framers intended with that right to ‘keep and bear arms.’”
Why is Will bending over backwards like this? What an illogical sentence. As far as I know, the historical evidence overwhelmingly concurs that the Second Amendment was understood to provide such a right at the time of its ratification. What arguments could he possibly be talking about?
As for the leaving it up to the legislature thing, phooey! We allow state lawmakers to regulate pornography and incitements to violence, just like we will continue to allow them to regulate the gun ownership felons and the use and production of fissionable materials (which could be made into “arms” by private individuals). However, we will not sit idly while political speech is legislated against any more than we will allow guns to be banned for the general public simply because they are guns.
There are abundant sources of historical information about Original Intent with regard to the Constitution's clauses dealing with the Militia, and the Second Amendment as well, to elucidate what Hamilton and Madison had in mind for the Militia. There are also two iterations of the early Federal Period legislation on the Militia that show clearly the will of the Congress, and they also show that the papers in The Federalist are in fact expository and authoritative on the subject of private ownership of firearms.
The Militia was composed of the Organized Militia, and the Unorganized Militia (everybody else).
Illinois's limitation of the Militia to 8600 politically-connected "reliable men" of the National Guard (a faction, in other words) that gave rise to the Presser vs. Illinois decision that Miller rested on, was unconstitutional.
SCOTUS in Presser rubber-stamped Illinois's repealer of 2A rights at the State level (which repealer was forbidden already by 14A's Privileges and Immunities clause when Illinois's boss-dominated legislature wrote their law).
Presser and Illinois's state gun-grabber laws are no more valid than the D.C. gun laws, and Presser and the host of oppressive state gun laws that rely on its authority need to be revisited and taken down in accordance with Original Intent.
People like George Will just don't want to get it.
During the oral arguments over Heller, Justice Ginzburg showed the liberals' hand with her questions.
Their theory is that the Militia clause means that 2A only applies to the States, that the People as States have the right to keep Militia.
And oh by the way, "people" as "people" do not have the right to own firearms. They are rightless as regards the ownership of firearms. So somehow we arrive at this magickal wonderland, in which the People as States man up and arm themselves to the teeth, but the people as merely "people" are simultaneously disarmed, and nobody has a right even to possess a weapon in the teeth of State and federal law.
And references to the Militia, and the Militia Acts, and their overflowing language about militiamen bringing their weapons with them (from whence? surely not from home?) are just ..... history. As in, Marxism's "dustbin" -- which George Orwell made immortal as the infamous "memory hole".
So Ginzburg reasoned, if the People do not have the right to own firearms, then D.C.'s law injured no right, did it? Since the right did not exist. Therefore, D.C.'s law was perfectly constitutional, as it injured no right.
Slick, huh? "This is not a screw job. You are screwed, but it is not a screw job because I say it is not a screw job. Twenty years, next case."
Ginzburg's resting point is that the government owns all the guns, all the rights and powers, and the People, none. The "government" becomes the People and displaces the People from sovereignty and the possession of sovereign rights, and the People become just ants for the government to step on, as it invincibly exercises all power and all right.
George Will has worked for Kitty Graham and the Washington Post so long, his tongue is on autolick.
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