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To: GatekeeperBookman
LOL! well, we differ on those legalisms.

IMO, the law of the land is primarily secular. It is, based of Christian/Judeo principles of long standing however. But that does not mean that those principles are the law.

I have a slightly different read on that subject.

A good analogy is the english language. Based in latin in part, but latin plays a limited role.

58 posted on 06/28/2003 5:46:08 AM PDT by Cold Heat (Negotiate!! .............(((Blam!.)))........... "Now who else wants to negotiate?")
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To: wirestripper
We differ in that you seem too hurried to think & may be unread. I am amazed at just how far you know & that you allege things which are clearly untrue. I am no scholar, but I have chosen to at least peruse a few texts. I am quite serious when I reccomend you read. Frederic Bastiat is very brief. The Bible is somewhat longer. The Constitutional history of the U. S. is a normal course of study, even in undergraduate colleges & is usually the reading & analysis of cases adjudicated before the Supreme Court.

The best source for Mr. Bastiat is free, at, http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html
For example:
Life Is a Gift from God
We hold from God the gift which includes all others. This gift is life — physical, intellectual, and moral life.

But life cannot maintain itself alone. The Creator of life has entrusted us with the responsibility of preserving, developing, and perfecting it. In order that we may accomplish this, He has provided us with a collection of marvelous faculties. And He has put us in the midst of a variety of natural resources. By the application of our faculties to these natural resources we convert them into products, and use them. This process is necessary in order that life may run its appointed course.

Life, faculties, production — in other words, individuality, liberty, property — this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it. Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.

What Is Law?
What, then, is law? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense.

Each of us has a natural right — from God — to defend his person, his liberty, and his property. These are the three basic requirements of life, and the preservation of any one of them is completely dependent upon the preservation of the other two. For what are our faculties but the extension of our individuality? And what is property but an extension of our faculties? If every person has the right to defend even by force — his person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly. Thus the principle of collective right — its reason for existing, its lawfulness — is based on individual right. And the common force that protects this collective right cannot logically have any other purpose or any other mission than that for which it acts as a substitute. Thus, since an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then the common force — for the same reason — cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individuals or groups.

Such a perversion of force would be, in both cases, contrary to our premise. Force has been given to us to defend our own individual rights. Who will dare to say that force has been given to us to destroy the equal rights of our brothers? Since no individual acting separately can lawfully use force to destroy the rights of others, does it not logically follow that the same principle also applies to the common force that is nothing more than the organized combination of the individual forces?

If this is true, then nothing can be more evident than this: The law is the organization of the natural right of lawful defense. It is the substitution of a common force for individual forces. And this common force is to do only what the individual forces have a natural and lawful right to do: to protect persons, liberties, and properties; to maintain the right of each, and to cause justice to reign over us all."

I ( IMHO ) think that neither gun control nor the commerce clause can contradict logic & God. You may chose to use the word legalism to attempt to ignore these things-but I am again grateful to post these thoughts.



75 posted on 06/28/2003 6:25:06 AM PDT by GatekeeperBookman
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