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.

Only A Divided House Will Stand

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis has a good discussion of Marc Faber's prediction of economic collapse in 2012. I don't think you can pinpoint it, and don't underestimate the United States. But the current American system is unsustainable and collapse is ahead. Whether the government counterfeiters can continue to make things work for another 20 or 30 years or maybe even longer, no one knows. It took the Roman Empire nearly three centuries following the death of the last of the five good emperors, Marcus Aurelius, to finally collapse. There was lots of corruption, inflation and coin clipping in the ensuing three centuries. However, the Roman system was somewhat more stable in that it did not depend on market coordination to the degree that the United States does. As the Federal Reserve Bank and the government have increasingly distorted market signals, ever worsening misallocation leads to more extreme abuses, which will in turn lead to shortages and crises. Information and resources move much more quickly now than 1500 years ago so comparisons are difficult to draw.

Americans a century from now will be much poorer than we were, not because of any resource shortage but because of the Federal Reserve Bank and the US government. In the nineteenth century Abraham Lincoln fought to preserve the union. He is remembered for abolishing slavery, but that was not his purpose. Rather, he aimed to prevent the southern states from exercising sovereignty. The Civil War was the beginning of Progressivism. The side-effects of the Civil War concerning slavery and race relations usually get the attention, but the Civil War's longer term effects are now being seen. For the manipulation of the federal government by organized special interests, the so-called military-industrial complex, which is first and foremost a financial complex, is a direct outcome of the assertion of centralized power that began in 1860.

The problem is how to save the United States. A centralized federal power facilitates special interest brokerage. If you review the ideas of Mancur Olson in "Rise and Decline of Nations", there are specific criteria for the effectiveness of economic lobbies. A centralized government reduces lobbying costs. Fifty states require fifty times the lobbying costs, likely more. Moreover, opposition interests can concentrate in a few states.

To save the United States, there will need to be radical decentralization. A framing of radical decentralization needs to begin with pragmatism and choice. In a nation that is failing, new ideas become imperative. The popular imagination can awakened by the hope that a renewed, smaller scale America can offer. The big-state liberalism of the twentieth century has devolved into a government-enforced wealth transfer to the incompetent rich. The system has failed and needs to be reinvented.

Notes on KR Constantine Gutzman's "Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions Reconsidered"

KR Constantine Gutzman, "The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions Reconsidered: 'An Appeal to the Real Laws of Our Country'". Journal of Southern History 66:3, Aug. 2000. 473-96

Professor Gutzman wrote an excellent article in the Journal of Southern History. He shows the development of the Virgina and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, which Jefferson (Kentucky) and Madison (Virginia) authored in light of Virginia's historical and philosophical ideas about states' rights and the compact nature of the Constitution that go back to the Richmond Ratification Convention. John Taylor, who oversaw the adoption of the Virginia Resolution, was a former anti-Federalist and fascinating states' rights advocate who deserves attention.

Gutzman starts out by noting that Edmund Randolph argued in a debate with Patrick Henry in the Richmond Ratification Convention (ratification of the US Constitution) that "the Constitution's 'necessary and proper' and 'general welfare' clauses would not grant new powers to the federal government because 'all rights are therein declared to be completely vested in the people unless expressly given away. Can there be a more pointed or positive reservation?' Randolph's explanation reduced the proposed constitution from a national charter--as it was conceived to be by the most nationalist Federalists--to the latest in a long line of compacts, stretching back to the early seventeenth century between Virginia and what Virginians understood to be 'federal' authority.

"Later on the same day, George Nicholas, one of Randolph's fellow members of the committee to draft the ratification instrument, assured the convention that the Constitution would be a contract and that Virginia was to be one of thirteen parties to it.

"As early as 1789 Richard Henry Lee counseled 'the friends of liberty to guard with perfect vigilance every right that belongs to the states, and to protest against every invasion of them, taking care always to procure as many protesting states as possible...'

In 1790 the Virginia General Assembly passed a resolution calling "Hamilton's act for federal assumption of all state debts 'repugnant to the Constitution...as it goes to the exercise of a power not expressly granted to the General Government.'"

"As in the Imperial Crisis and the Confederation period, Virginians continued to conceive of their interstate union as precisely a federal union, a union among parties that were somehow on equal footing. Virginia, not America, remained the primary unit of government; the United States government a convenience."

"...John Taylor of Caroline. An Anti-Federalist in 1787, Taylor was committed by his reading of history to a posture of hyper-vigilance in the new government's first years. If the fledgling government were allowed to lay down precedents antithetical to the contractual reading of the Constitution that Federalists had promised at Richmond, greater arrogations of the states' power would follow inevitably. If a new government be allowed to stray uninterruptedly, he wrote, 'it will soon become too strong for correction, and instead of being a blessing it will turn out a curse to its parents.'"

"(Taylor's) pamphlets of the 1790s were masterpieces of sometimes inspired, sometimes befuddled opposition to Federalism. In them, he laid out the case for the notion that federal officeholders were using their control of the government to milk other Americans of money."

Taylor argued that the states should have the power to override federal legislation. In his argument for repeal of the carriage tax in 1795 Taylor stated:

"If only 'those designed to be restrained,' for example, federal judges, could enforce the federal Constitution, 'America possess only the effigy of a Constitution.'"

Smart guy.

"In his earlier pamphlet, "An Enquiry into the Principles and Tendency of Certain Public Measures" Taylor claimed that Article V of the federal constitution recognized state legislatures' status as 'state conventions,' because it granted them a share of the amendment power. For state legislatures to protest--'to make known the public will'--could not possibly be unconstitutional. They should protest by expositing 'explanations of the constitution according with its spirit--its construction when adopted--its unstrained construction now--and with republican principles." In short, state legislatures should act as Americans have now come to think it is normal for the United State Supreme Court to act."

"To Taylor's suggestion that Virginia and North Carolina should contemplate a separate existence, Jefferson responded with his famous idea that since human nature insured there must always be parties in any free government, Virginia and North Carolina would soon be fighting each other, and even Virginia would be rent by division if it were independent. Jefferson preferred to retain the tie to New England, thus reserving Virginians' ire for Yankees...

"The flaw in the system flowed, Taylor held, from the Hamiltonian fiscal structure. The bank and the assumption of state debts had generated a large pool of money controlled by only a few--he said 5,000 of the United States' 5,000,000, and those few controlled the federal government via corruption. Political power had been transferred from the nation to a paper fabrick 'yielding a government of paper.' His solution was an amendment banning holders of federal debt and of bank stock from positions in Congress, along with another reducing senators' and presidents terms in office to three years.

"For Taylor, the most perfect embodiment of the people was the state legislature. Unlike the Congress, the Virginia General Assembly was in effect an annual convention of the people, its members chosen from small districts to short terms, thus sharing in their constituents' travails. Constitutional issues were properly decided by the state legislatures, Taylor told Jefferson in the wake of the Virginia Resolutions' adoption...He would prefer that power be left in the people, not offset against other power."

"In 1786 Jefferson had written to Madison that the general government of the United States should have power only 'as to foreign concerns' and should 'keep us distinct in Domestic ones...'...his first inaugural address as president included a call for 'the support of the state governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrators for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against anti-republican tendencies.

Unlike Taylor, Jefferson favored the general government system that the constitution created. Jefferson was not an anti-Federalist.

The Kentucky Resolutions, which were not known to be authored by Jefferson until a decade after the fact, says that "'the States retain as complete authority as possible over their own citizens.'" The Constitution was limited to "special purposes". "When the federal government exceeded its mandate, its acts were 'unauthoritative, void and of no force..."

In the Second Resolution Jefferson argued that the Sedition Act was unconstitutional hence void. The Third Resolution applied the language of the Tenth Amendment and the First Amendment to the Sedition Act.

The Fourth resolution held that the Alien Friends Act was void on Tenth Amendment grounds. The Fifth and Sixth Resolutions applied the tenth amendment and Article V of the Constitution as well as Article III of the federal Constitution to the Alien and Sedition Acts.

In the Seventh Resolution Jefferson wrote that there was a danger of "the general government" construing the "general welfare" and "necessary and proper" clauses in such a way as to bring about the destruction of all limits prescribed to their power by the Constitution."

Gutzman notes that Jefferson argued that "those two clauses were meant to be subsidiary only to the execution of limited powers" and he claimed not to wipe out the balance of the Constitution by themselves granting unlimited powers. Jefferson looked forward to revisal and correction of the General Government's tendency in this regard when the time was propitious."

Interestingly, Jefferson did the reverse by purchasing Louisiana. Perhaps there is something about power that leads to an expansive definition of authority.

The eighth resolution was the longest and most important. A committee should be appointed to correspond with other states and Kentucky viewed union "for specified national purposes and particularly...those specified in the late federal compact, and it would uphold the constitution establishing such a union according to the plain intent and meaning in which it was understood and acceded to by the several parties. "Consolidation of the states' powers in one general government 'is not for the peace, happiness or prosperity of these States and 'therefore this commonwealth is determined...to submit to undelegated and consequently unlimited powers in no man or body of men on earth".

"Where delegated powers were abused, he said, elections were the remedy, but where undelegated powers were arrogated, a 'nullification of the act is the rightful remedy' and every state had a right to nullify all such acts."

A comparable resolution wasn't passed in the North because there were fewer Republicans and more Federalists.

The two resolutions were passed in 1798.

States are by definition more democratic than the federal government. Today, many counties have populations equal to or greater than the entire population of the United States in 1787, such as Queens, Los Angeles and Cook counties. Perhaps we should be thinking of county or even township rights. A single neighborhood in New York City might have the population of an entire state in the days of Jefferson and Taylor.

Have Congressmen become so much smarter that the elected representatives are equally capable of representing millions rather than thousands of representatives?

President Andrew Jackson on The Limits of Federal Power

Woe is me. We need another president like Andrew Jackson. Although President Jackson favored states' rights, he opposed nullification, i.e., the idea that South Carolina tried to abrogate the tariffs of 1828 and 1832. Although there were things about Jackson that I don't like, such as his disregard for Indian rights, he was the best president in American history. The following excerpt from his 1837 farewell address is quoted in Harry L. Watson, Andrew Jackson vs. Henry Clay: Democracy and Development in Antebellum America*:

"In the legislation of Congress also, and in every measure of the General Government, justice to every portion of the United States should be faithfully observed. No free government can stand without virtue in the people and a lofty spirit of patriotism, and if the sordid feelings of mere selfishness shall usurp the place which ought to be filled by public spirit, the legislation of Congress will soon be converted into a scramble for personal and sectional advantages...Justice--full and ample justice--to every portion of the United States should be the ruling principle of every freeman, and should guide the deliberations of every public body, whether it be State or national.

"It is well known that there have always been those amongst us who wish to enlarge the powers of the General Government, and experience would seem to indicate that there is a tendency on the part of this Government to overstep the boundaries marked out for it by the Constitution. Its legitimate authority is abundantly sufficient for all the purposes for which it was created, and its powers being expressly enumerated, there can be no justification for claiming anything beyond them...From the extent of our country, its diversified interests, different pursuits and different habits, it is too obvious for argument that a single coordinated government would be wholly inadequate to watch over and protect its interests; and every friend of our free institutions should be always prepared to maintain unimpaired and in full vigor the rights and sovereignty of the States and to confine the action of the General Government strictly to the sphere of its appropriate duties.

"There is, perhaps, no one of the powers conferred on the Federal Government so liable to abuse as the taxing power. The most productive and convenient sources of revenue were necessarily given to it, that it might be able to perform the important duties imposed upon it...But...Congress has no right under the Constitution to take money from the people unless it is required to execute some one of the specific powers intrusted to the Government; and if they raise more than is necessary for such purposes, it is an abuse of the power of taxation, and unjust and oppressive...

"Plain as these principles appear to be, you will yet find there is a constant effort to induce the General Government to go beyond the limits of its taxing power and to impose unnecessary burdens upon the people. Many powerful interests are continually at work to procure heavy duties on commerce and to swell the revenue beyond the real necessities of the public service, and the country has already felt the injurious effects of their combined influence. They succeeded in obtaining a tariff of duties bearing most oppressively on the agricultural and laboring classes of society and producing a revenue that could not be usefully employed within the range of the powers conferred upon Congress, and in order to fasten upon the people this unjust and unequal system of taxation extravagant schemes of internal improvement were set up in various quarters to squander the money and to purchase support. Thus one unconstitutional measure was intended to be upheld by another, and the abuse of the power of taxation was to be maintained by usurping the power of expending the money in internal improvements. You can not have forgotten the severe and doubtful struggle through which we passed when the executive department of the Government by its veto endeavored to arrest this prodigal scheme of injustice and to bring back the legislation of Congress to the boundaries prescribed by the Constitution. The good sense and practical judgment of the people when the subject was brought before them sustained the course of the Executives, and this plan of unconstitutional expenditures for the purpose of corrupt influence is, I trust, finally overthrown.

*Boston: Bedford St. Martin, 1998, pp. 243-4.

The Coming American Civil War

Bob Robbins just forwarded this post at World Net Daily. According to WND lawmakers in eight states have proposed bills declaring state sovereignty due to "a rebellion against the growing dominance of federal control.

"...The various sovereignty measures moving through state legislatures are designed to reassert state authority through a rollback of federal authority under the powers enumerated in the Constitution, with the states assuming the governance of the non-enumerated powers, as required by the Tenth Amendment.

"The state sovereignty measures, aimed largely at the perceived fiscal irresponsibility of Congress in the administrations of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, have gained momentum with the $1 trillion deficit-spending economic stimulus package the Obama administration is currently pushing through Congress."

These are exciting developments. The devolution of power to the states could throw a major wrench into the plans of the liberal establishment.