Tag Archives: freedom

A Second Amendment Case

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The Wall Street Journal‘s editors opined on the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v Bruen, a gun rights vs gun control case currently before the Supreme Court. That case centers on whether New York State gets to allow or not allow a citizen of New York (and so a citizen of the United States) to carry a firearm outside his home based on a bureaucrat’s personal view of the “need” for the citizen to carry.

In the course of that piece, the Editors exposed their own misunderstanding.

Regular citizens in New York face an almost insuperable bar if they want to bear a firearm for personal defense.

There’s nothing in the 2nd Amendment that authorizes Government to specify any purpose, personal defense or other, for an American to keep and bear Arms:

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.

On top of that, the 9th and 10th Amendments bar Government from making one up.

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

And

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

(The courts already have made clear the relationship between this individual right and a Militia.)

Backwards

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Maine is voting today on an amendment to its State Constitution that would declare the right to food to be a fundamental right. The specific phrasing is this:

Constitution, Art. I, §25 is enacted to read:
Section 25.  Right to food.  All individuals have a natural, inherent and unalienable right to food, including the right to save and exchange seeds and the right to grow, raise, harvest, produce and consume the food of their own choosing for their own nourishment, sustenance, bodily health and well-being, as long as an individual does not commit trespassing, theft, poaching or other abuses of private property rights, public lands or natural resources in the harvesting, production or acquisition of food.

The problem here, though, is not with the proposed amendment, which may or may not be a good idea. The problem is with the response to the proposal by folks who apparently slept through their grade school American history lessons and their junior high Civics classes. Typical is this response, from Katie Hansberry, Maine State Director of The Humane Society of the United States:

We do not think it is the intent of this proposal to allow food producers and and/or hunters, trappers, and fisherman be exempt from animal welfare and cruelty laws, but as currently written that would likely be the case as the current list of limitations fails to include any reference to such laws.

Constitutions are not subordinate to laws; laws are subordinate to Constitutions. Maine’s laws must fit within Maine’s Constitution, and when its Constitution changes, those laws must be changed accordingly; the laws are not immutable. Nor is there any requirement to enumerate subordinate matters into a governing document.

More than that, it’s foolish to expect the Constitution to be malleable by whatever later lawmakers decide with their new laws.

Still worse, if a Constitution is changeable by any collection of politicians, it will be vulnerable to willy-nilly changes according to the whims of the day, and from that it will soon cease to be a governing document. It will merely be a reflection of what men in government from time to time see as their own benefit, and it will no longer stand as a long-lasting and stable document that represents the will of the citizenry and that restrains those elastic politicians and their inconstant desires.

Because Shut Up

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A surgeon in Minnesota—and actual, licensed doctor, one who practices and not a government bureaucrat who happens to have a medical degree—spoke in favor of individual choice and especially of parental choice regarding their children on the matter of Wuhan Virus restrictions.

He did so publicly, too. Worse, he said it to a school board, one of those fonts of Know Better wisdom.

Dr Jeffrey Horak, a surgeon in Minnesota, told the Fergus Falls school board on October 11 that parents should make the decision about whether or not their children wear masks.

And he was fired for being so impudent. After all, the received wisdom from those bureaucrats who got a medical degree some while back held otherwise and that wisdom must be accepted by the unwashed masses, including those ignorant parents.

The Lake Region Healthcare hospital, his ex-employer, insisted he was fired because his views were no longer congruent with the hospital’s.

In other words, because shut up.

The hospital managers expounded on that. From their spokesman:

To be clear, this was a decision that was made by Dr Horak’s peers who serve on the Medical Group Board, not by Lake Region Healthcare[.]

Finger-pointing and blame-shifting regarding who did the canceling.

In this fashion, too, because shut up.

Pay No Attention to the Woman Behind the Curtain

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That’s the mantra of Progressive-Democrats, who are enthusiastically supportive of President Joe Biden’s (D) nominee for Comptroller of the Currency, Saule Omarova.

Ms Omarova wants to put an “‘end to banking’ as we know it”—again, her words—and transfer private banking functions to the Federal Reserve, where accounts would “fully replace” private bank deposits. The Fed would control “systemically important prices” for fuel, food, raw materials, metals, natural resources, home prices and wages.

And, she says

the Fed should be remade into what she calls “The People’s Ledger.”

And

She calls for “reimagining” the role of central banks “as the ultimate public platform for generating, modulating, and allocating financial resources in a modern economy.”

But ignore those calls for Soviet finance controls. She’s the lady the Progressive-Democrats want to inflict on us.

Shut up about that flapping curtain; vote her up.

Zeroing In

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That’s what the Biden-Harris administration claims is all it wants to do with its “new and improved” personal bank account monitoring scheme.

…banks, credit unions, and other financial institutions would be required to report annually on accounts with deposits and withdrawals worth more than $10,000….

Here’s Biden-Harris’ Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen:

Today’s new proposal reflects the administration’s strong belief that we should zero in on those at the top of the income scale who don’t pay the taxes they owe, while protecting American workers by setting the bank account threshold at $10,000 and providing an exemption for wage earners like teachers and firefighters

Because some American workers are more equal than others of us, and so more deserving of protection from this government spying.

On top of that is the Biden-Harris/Yellen disingenuousness and that of their Progressive-Democratic Party syndicate that this is solely about tracking down those Evil Rich Tax Dodgers. Even at $10,000, though, those Evil Ones would need hundreds, if not thousands, of bank accounts to get down to sizes even approaching that $10k threshold. No, this move remains centered on the prurient interest those peopling our government have in the private doings of us common citizens.

After all, rather than spying on those of us average Americans of whom this administration disapproves (remember how narrow the “exemption” really is), the government could simply audit those Evil Rich individuals. No peeking in windows necessary that way.

Besides, I have it on good authority that the men and women in our government already know what income has gone unreported and how much tax is owed. From that, those worthies also already know where that missing income is and who owes it. If anyone.