Edwin Vieira May Have a Point

Edwin Vieira's point about the absence of state- and local-based militias in America has made me think about the Second Amendment. I'm swamped but eventually want to read Vieira's book. The Second Amendment says this:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

As Vieira points out, liberal opinion about the Second Amendment since the 1960s has emphasized the individual right to bear arms, but the Second Amendment is not couched in the language of individual rights. Rather, it makes an affirmative statement about militias, namely, that they are necessary to the security of a free state.

As Vieira notes, this reasoning was based on the writings of John Trenchard in "An Argument, Shewing that a Standing Army Is Inconsistent with a Free Government and absolutely destructive to the Constitution of the English Monarchy."

The Second Amendment makes a positive assertion about freedom, which I suspect because of cognitive dissonance, is almost universally overlooked.

The Second Amendment makes this argument: If there is no militia, then there is no freedom. Since Americans largely ended the state militias in the early 20th century, according to the Second Amendment we no longer have a free state--or at least one that is secure.

"Cognitive dissonance" refers to the tendency to avoid accepting contradiction. Since we have been trained to believe that America is a free state and that the Constitution is the document that protects that freedom, we tend to overlook the affirmative claim that without a militia, which we lack except ceremonially, we are not free or that freedom is at risk. Nevertheless, the language is plain.

The lack of interest among liberals in the reconstitution of state-based militias and the institution of universal military training (not necessarily service, but training) is that there is a large inconvenience to being trained and that universal service requires an element of coercion. As well, we tend to confuse individual self-indulgence with freedom.

Freedom does not mean that we are free to be paid without working, and it does not mean that we are free to live in a secure state without contributing to its defense. The voluntary, pay-for-service standing army is coercive because taxes are coercive, and they are necessary to support the standing army.

A citizens' militia is also coercive, but it removes the monopoly on violence currently held in Washington and downloads it to the state, community, and individual levels. That creates a valid resistance point to authoritarian power, and it also enhances the military as a defensive rather than an aggressive institution.

I don't yet have a conclusion to this line of reasoning, but many pathologies of post-World War I America stem from irresponsibility, the breakdown of the family, lack of self-confidence, and de-masculinization that arises from fatherless homes and politically correct indoctrination in female-dominated schools.

A reconstitution of militias may help reinvent freedom in America and may serve as an antidote to a range of politically correct pathologies.
https://www.thedailybell.com/…/anthony-wile-edwin-vieira-o…/ 

NRA Files Brief in McDonald v. City of Chicago

I just received the following e-mail from the National Rifle Association. The NRA "asks the US to apply the Second Amendment to state and local governments". There is a natural right to bear arms. The Second Amendment not only guarantees the right but establishes a responsibility of all Americans to bear arms in order to secure a free state. The Second Amendment says:

"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

The people have the right to bear arms, but they also have an obligation to participate in a well regulated militia in order to do the necessary work of keeping the state free. The people can only do this by owning a gun capable of resisting tyranny by the state and federal governments. All Americans ought to own weapons capable of resisting military attack.

I disagree with the NRA that the Constitution ought to be applied to the states. I understand that they are focusing on the right to bear arms, and God bless them. But centralization and the federal government's threat to state sovereignty equals the government's threat to eliminate citizens' freedom and their ability to resist the federal government's authoritarian state violence. Both federalism and the right to bear arms are important.

>On November 16, the NRA filed its brief with the U.S. Supreme Court as Respondent in Support of Petitioner in McDonald v. City of Chicago. The NRA brief asks the U.S. Supreme Court to hold that the Second Amendment applies to state and local governments through the Fourteenth Amendment.

>The McDonald case is one of several that were filed immediately after last year's decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, in which the Court upheld the Second Amendment as an individual right and struck down Washington, D.C.'s ban on handgun possession, as well as the capital city's ban on keeping loaded, operable firearms for self-defense in the home.

>The follow-up cases were filed by NRA and other organizations against Chicago and several of its suburbs. Each of these suits was aimed at the same goal: establishing that the Second Amendment applies to state and local governments as well as the federal government.

Aristotle and the Second Amendment II

"...when citizens at large administer the state for the common interest, the government is called by the generic name--a constitution. And there is a reason for this use of language. One man or a few may excel in virtue; but as the number increases it becomes more difficult for them to attain perfection in every kind of virtue, though they may be in military virtue, for this is found in the masses. Hence, in a constitutional government the fighting-men have the supreme power, and those who possess arms are the citizens."

--Aristotle, Politics, 1279b-5.

Aristotle on the Right to Bear Arms

In Book II, chapter 8 of Politics Aristotle describes the city of Hippodamus, the son of Euryphon. Aristotle credits Hippodamus with the invention of the art of planning of cities. As well, Aristotle says that he was "the first person not a statesman who made inquiries about the best form of government."

In critiquing the city that Hippodamus proposed, which was to be of 10,000 citizens divided among artisans, farmers and warriors, Aristotle writes:

"The first of these proposals to which objection may be taken is the threefold division of the citizens. The artisans and the husbandmen, and the warriors, all have a share in government. But the husbandmen have no arms, and the artisans neither arms nor land, and therefore they become all but slaves of the warrior class. That they should share in all the offices is an impossibility; for generals and guardians of the citizens, and nearly all the principal magistrates, must be taken from the class of those who carry arms. Yet, if the two other classes have no share in the government, how can they be loyal citizens? It may be said that those who have arms must necessarily be masters of both the other classes, but this is not so easily accomplished unless they are numerous; and if they are, why should the other classes share in government at all..."

The '49rs Didn't Need Gun Control

Among my favorite westerns are the ones about the gold miners in California, the '49ers. There was no law in California in 1848-50 and the small number of US army there found a large percentage deserting to pan for gold. The strike came at a propitious time. The Irish potato famine, the Taiping Rebellion and the European Revolutions in Sicily, France and the rest of Europe all occurred then. Moreover, the Mexican War had just ended and more than a few rowdy young veteran types headed for California. "from a population of about 107,000 near the end of 1849, California grew to more than 260,000 within three years."

There are a number of interesting issues about the emergence of property rights in this lawless bonanza land of ambition, greed and dreams. The absence of property rights and law would seem to have been likely to have encouraged conflict, as would the nature of the miners. Moreover, the number of men was far greater than the number of women, likely adding to the potential for explosive violence.

In their History of the American Economy Gary M. Walton and Hugh Rockoff quote John Umbeck's California Gold Rush: A Study of Emerging Property Rights :

"During 1848,...nearly 10,000 people rushed to mine gold on property to which no one had exclusive rights. Furthermore, although every miner carried a gun, little violence was reported. In July, when Governor Mason visited the mines, he reported that the miners were respecting Sutter's property rights and that 'crime of any kind was very infrequent, and that no thefts or robberies had been committed in the gold district...and it was a matter of surprise, that so peaceful and quiet a state of things should continue to exist."

I guess they didn't need gun control!

Alexander Hamilton on the Second Amendment

Hamilton's Federalist No. 29 is about the issue of regulating militias. On the one hand, it was necessary to form a "well regulated" militia in order to reduce the need for a standing army. Thus, an armed population was necessary in order to form a militia. As well, Hamilton argued that a select corps of militia ought to be formed, and that in order to eliminate the threat that the militia might pose to freedom, it was necessary for the public to be able to stop any attempt of the government to suppress freedom and therefore important that the public at large should hold firearms. This argument is clear in the Federalist 29. Those who argue just one half of the equation, that the arms were necessary to form the militia and deny that they were necessary to defend against the potential for a government assault on freedom are simply uninformed about the history of Federalism and the liberal spirit in which the United States was founded. Arguably the public can and ought to, in the view of the founders, confront attempts to suppress the ownership of firearms. A Supreme Court that adjudicates in favor of the suppression of the right to bear arms has completely lost touch with the Constitution and is no longer a constitutional body.

Hamilton writes in Federalist 29:

"The attention of the government ought particularly to be directed to the formation of a select corps of moderate size, upon such principles as will really fit it for service in case of need. By thus circumscribing the plan, it will be possible to have an excellent body of well-trained militia ready to take the field whenever the defense of the State shall require it. This will not only lessen the call for military establishments, but if circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people while there is a large body of citizens, little if at all inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights and those of their fellow-citizens. This appears to me the only substitute that can be devised for a standing army, and the best possible security against it, if it should exist."

Those historians and political scientists who argue against American exceptionalism would do well to consider that few other major polities have respected the individual sufficiently to consider private ownership of firearms a bulwark against tyranny. In nations like Russia, France, Germany and Italy, guns are routinely regulated. Backward-thinking mercantilists who have cheered Hitler and Stalin, now advocate for a botched interpretation of the Second Amendment that would enhance their own power and the power of government that represents economic elites to suppress freedom.

The Federalist Number 8 and the Second Amendment

The Federalist No. 8, attributed to Hamilton, sheds some light on the Second Amendment debate. As many have pointed out, the Second Amendment refers to the citizens' and the states' ability to resist a federal standing army. As such, it would seem that a robust interpretation as to the right to keep and bear arms is condign. In the Federalist Number 8 Hamilton argues that the threat of a standing army to liberty will not be great since the country, under the Constitution, would not ordinarily need to worry about military threats and so the federal army would not need to be large. He adds that because of the rarity of internal invasions:

"The smallness of the army renders the natural strength of the community an overmatch for it; and the citizens not habituated to look up to the military power for protection, or to submit to its oppressions, neither love nor fear the soldiery; they view them with a spirit of jealous acquiescence in a necessary evil and stand ready to resist a power which they suppose may be exerted to the prejudice of their rights.

"The army under such circumstances may usefully aid the magistrate to suppress a small faction, or an occasional mob, or insurrection; but it will be unable to enforce encroachments against the united efforts of the great body of people."

The Second Amendment reads:

"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

It seems evident that the Second Amendment, like Hamilton, refers to the public's and the states' ability to resist military incursions on liberty. Gun ownership in this light is not only an individual right, but an individual responsibility. Far from limiting the right to bear arms, the phrase "a well regulated militia" suggests that all Americans ought to bear arms as a defense against a standing army and suppression of the citizenry. Would that the European victims of nazism and communism had taken the advice of the Bill of Rights and formed a well-regulated militia.