Freedom! Liberty! And Being For the Little Guy. As Brought to You By the Conservative Movement.
Update appended below. (Second indented quote format also corrected.)
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In the Comments thread to Dan Crawford’s post below titled “Kalamazoo County Michigan…People and Offices to Write to Protest the Stealing of a Home,” I wrote:
Dan, you don’t understand. This is freedom, see. I mean, it’s not like it’s the FEDERAL government that’s doing this. It’s a local government that is doing it, so how could this be anything other than freedom! liberty!??
A huge part of the Conservative Movement has been to simply shift the funding of government from progressive taxation to exorbitant fines and fees for traffic violations, parking tickets, misdemeanors of other sorts, property forfeitures of large amounts of money or homes or cars, home foreclosures and forfeiture of the entire proceeds from the sale of the home for failure to pay a small property tax bill (including if you didn’t know that it was due or was not paid).
This is all part of freedom! Liberty! The private contractors for government services and operations, and the police and judges whose conflict of interest ensures the more-than-adequacy of this method of government funding, have to be paid, y’know.
In the last two weeks, the Washington Post has run a slew of articles on all this. Links to some of the articles are:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/09/06/stop-and-seize/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/09/08/they-fought-the-law-who-won/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/09/08/they-fought-the-law-who-won/
In that thread, Dan linked to an Alternet article by David Morris about two Kentucky officeholders, a town mayor and a state senator, cousins both with the last name Girder, who are on opposing sides of the “Government is the problem, not the solution” slogan = policy thing. The article explains:
On July 19, after years of complaints about local gasoline prices being higher than those in surrounding communities, the city of Somerset decided to take matters into its own hands and began selling gasoline directly to the public. Two-term state senator Chris Girdler immediately declared, “socialism is alive and well in Somerset.” Two-term mayor Eddie Girdler, a distant cousin, responded, “If government doesn’t do it to protect the public, then who does it?”
In an interview, Girdler, paraphrasing Ronald Reagan’s famous dictum insisted, “the government is not the answer—government’s the problem.” Regrettably the interviewer did not remind the readers that government laid the very foundation of Somerset’s economy. In 1950 the Army Corps of Engineers completed construction of one of the largest man-made lakes in the world. A little over 100 miles in length with an average depth of 85 feet, Lake Cumberland “transformed Somerset from a sleepy rural community into one of the largest recreation centers in Kentucky, drawing more than 1.7 million visitors annually.” It would have been instructive to discover whether Sen. Girdler would describe Lake Cumberland as a “socialist enterprise.”
Girdler wants to protect us from big government. Senator Girdler approvingly cites Ronald Reagan’s famous dictum, “You can’t be for big government, big taxes and big bureaucracy and still be for the little guy.” Mayor Girdler wants to protect us from the predations of big giant corporation and he views government as a proper vehicle for doing so. “It’s the role of government to protect us from big business,” he maintains.
So there you have it: You can’t be for big government, big taxes and big bureaucracy and still be for the little guy. Uh-uh. No, Sir. No way. The way to be for the little guy is to remove all government protections vis-à-vis private corporations and state and local police forces and courts. It means privatizing traditional government operations and services, and funding government operations and services (whether already privatized, or instead still directly operated by state, local, or the federal government) entirely by huge, spiraling fines and fees for trivia, and by confiscating cash and homes and cars to resell.
Being for the little guy also means allowing banks to do whatever they please, including making billions of dollars a year in fees for tiny overdrafts—something that the Democratic-controlled House and Senate, and Obama, banned via statute in 2010—and including allowing mortgage companies to misrepresent mortgage terms. And it means allowing monopolistic credit card companies to charge small businesses outrageous rates for small credit card purchases by their customers. So in order to be for the little guy, we damn well better repeal the several laws that prohibit these things, enacted by Congress and signed into law by Obama in the two years before the Dems lost control of the House and lost their filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.
Yes, Sir. We’re talkin’ being for the little guy, here!
Being for the little guy also means, of course, removing Big Government—or any government—from direct involvement in, or regulation of, college-student loan programs. Access to higher education is not an appropriate function of government. I know this for a fact, because this was an official policy of the Reagan administration, expressly stated by a member of Reagan’s cabinet. Which explains not just the dramatic reduction of reasonable-interest-rate student loans since, y’know, 1981, but also the extreme reduction in direct state and indirect federal funding for state public universities and colleges—since, y’know, 1981.
Uh-huh. The Conservative Movement, and certainly the Conservative Legal Movement, are all about sleight-of-hand redefinitions of common terms, and rely in the extreme on the idea of government-by-slogan, government-by-cliché.
The Koch brothers are little guys. Who knew?
This continues to work well for them so often, politically, because the Democrats have allowed it to, by failing—refusing—to address it, in particulars, head-on.
To wit: The witless campaign that Alison Lundergan Grimes, the Kentucky Dem nominee for Senate, is running in her effort to dethrone Mitch McConnell. Hey, Ms. Grimes: How’s that I’m-a-tough-Kentucky-woman-so-Kentucky-women-will-vote-for-me campaign goin’ for ya? Might it now be time to try somethin’ different? Like, addressing specifics of Dem public policy and recent Dem legislative achievements—and Repub votes on such things? Nah. You’re a tough Kentucky woman! So policy won’t matter in the outcome of the election.
Which it won’t, you can be absolutely sure, as long as you don’t deign to mention any of it. Are you really gonna allow election day to come without, like, informing the electorate that, uh, Kynect is—OMG!—Obamacare, and that McConnell has promised to defund it if the Repubs gain control of the Senate? I mean … really?
This woman’s campaign, more than any other this year, just dismays me. Then again, I myelf don’t give a damn that she’s a tough Kentucky woman. (Or, for that matter, that she’s a woman.) And apparently, either do all that many Kentucky women. She may well be tough. But tough, it turns out, is not the same thing as gutsy.
I’m so, so, so, so, so, so tired of watching this kind of campaign—this flaccid, craven, I’m-embarrassed-that-I’m-a-Democrat genre—from Democrats.
Especially since IT DOESN’T WORK. Really; it doesn’t work.
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UPDATE: Well, well. Our newest wingy troller, Jack, wasted only 16 minutes after I posted this post before commenting:
The standard false dichotomy fallacy — if you’re against Big Government, you must be against ALL government.
The Powers of the U.S. government is clearly spelled out in its Constitution, and the States and the people retain the rest. If you say that those who want the U.S. government to not exceed the Powers given to it by the States in the Constitution, want no U.S. government at all, then you must believe that the States, in that Constitution, ceded no Powers at all to the central government.
I, in turn, wasted only 18 minutes—I’m just not as quick as he is; I’m a liberal, after all—before replying:
Ah. That’s right, Jack. The issue isn’t what powers the Constitution–the original document, the Bill of Rights, the succeeding amendments (including the reconstruction amendments) give to the federal government vis-a-vis the states. No, the issue is cliches referencing the enumerated powers, but of course only generically.
I do understand that your brand of constitutional interpretation holds that Freedom! Liberty! means he freedom of state and local governments to violate even the most fundamental of constitutional and human rights of individuals–as long as those rights don’t involve, y’know, gun-ownership rights or one of the other select few rights that you folk hold dear.
I also understand that you and your ilk conflate laisse faire economic and fiscal policy with “the enumerated powers”. You’re Rorschach interpretation of the Constitution is tiresome and ridiculous, albeit widely recited, mantra-like, by the far right.
Ideology is not the same as fact. Nor is it the same as the enumerated powers. Except, that is, when, as now, there is an aggressive hijacking of constitutional law by five members of the Supreme Court and Federalist Society lower-level federal appellate judges.
Enough said? No. But that’ll have to do, for now.
The standard false dichotomy fallacy — if you’re against Big Government, you must be against ALL government.
The Powers of the U.S. government is clearly spelled out in its Constitution, and the States and the people retain the rest. If you say that those who want the U.S. government to not exceed the Powers given to it by the States in the Constitution, want no U.S. government at all, then you must believe that the States, in that Constitution, ceded no Powers at all to the central government.
Ah. That’s right, Jack. The issue isn’t what powers the Constitution–the original document, the Bill of Rights, the succeeding amendments (including the reconstruction amendments) give to the federal government vis-a-vis the states. No, the issue is cliches referencing the enumerated powers, but of course only generically.
I do understand that your brand of constitutional interpretation holds that Freedom! Liberty! means he freedom of state and local governments to violate even the most fundamental of constitutional and human rights of individuals–as long as those rights don’t involve, y’know, gun-owenership rights or one of the other select few rights that you folk hold dear.
I also understand that you and your ilk conflate laisse faire economic and fiscal policy with “the enumerated powers”. You’re Rorschach interpretation of the Consitution is tiresome and ridiculous, albeit widely recited, mantra-like, by the far right.
Ideology is not the same as fact. Nor is it the same as the enumerated powers. Except, that is, when, as now, there is an aggressive hijacking of constitutional law by five members of the Supreme Court and Federalist Society lower-level federal appellate judges.
Exacty — we get the General Welface cliche, with the rest of the clause completely ignored. Your side is very good at the half-truths.
Oh, stop. I do understand that you folks think you’re entitled to define and determine what the general welfare is. By which you mean, mainly, the Koch brothers’ welfare, oil-and-gas-industry welfare, wealthyfarmers’ welfare, and such. That, after all, is what’s behind the Voter ID laws and extreme, bizarre gerrymandering, isn’t it?
But actually, what serves the welfare of those folks isn’t all that general.
And you folks think you have the right to what others have worked for.
The General Welfare is thgat of the States, united, not individuals. The central government was not given the Power to pay your personal debts or provide for your personal defense, so why do you think the States would cede it the Power to provide for your personal welfare?
What’s behind the voter ID laws is tryi g to keep you folks from rounding up homeless people, putting a piece of tape ontheir arms so they can read off the name and address they are supposed to tell the pollworkers, and busing them around to vote your party line for a few dollars.
Or are you really saying that poor people, especially Blacks, are too stupid to get an ID? If you need an ID to buy a gun, why do you object to needing an ID to vote?
The General Welfare is that of the States? Really?
I thought the first words of the Constitution were “We the People” not “We the States.”
Must have misread that part….
Oh, for heaven’s sake, John. States are people, my friend. Just like corporations.
Indeed you did, John. The Preamble is the WHY, not the WHAT, of the Constitution. The Preamble gives no Powers to the central government. The ratification process, for the Constitution itself and for any amendments, requires a supermajority of States, not of People.
Isn’t that what your side tried to argue — that in the Second Amendment, PEOPLE really meant STATES, not individuals?
“And you folks think you have the right to what others have worked for”
That’s right Jack trot one of the most banal truisms of the Libertarian, it’s all and only about me movement.
Yes, Jack you worked for something while benefitting from common infrastructure. You worked for something and you got to keep a great deal of it because of rule of law and because property rights are protected by the very government you so disdain. Your arguments are sophmoric and lack any logical substance.
It sounds like you read the Constitution and come away with a , “how does that effect me”. You probably find comfort in isolated and misinterpreted statements in the Federalist papers as well. Madison, Hamilton, Jay, and the other primary drafters of the Constitution were practical men writing a practical document. They clearly understood they weren’t bringing stone tablets down from Sinai.
Read their work in any sort of context, like the fact that they were devising a system for a country of four million spread out along the Atlantic seaboard and then try and tell us with a straight face they would insist on limited and narrow meanings for a country of 315 million spread out over half a continent. Let’s throw in the industrial revolution and huge changes in the way capital is distributed in this society. Read the founders with any honesty and not a narrow sense of self-interest and it’s more than clear that they saw a necessary and proper role for active government.
Jack, the meme “taxes are theft” is only valid in some sort of Libertarian fantasy unicorn land. You sound very much like black lab, Sarah, who firmly believes that all the toys and treats are hers. And as long as she can bully all the other dogs in the house they are, at least until the bloody tooth gnashing revolution. Fortunately there’s a government in my house, me, who enforces property rights, equal opportunity, and a bit of redistribution.
Read Madison again and replace the words interests and faction with the word faction and maybe you’ll get a clearer understanding. Read the history of pre-industrial economics and tell me that the kind of economy folks like Madison and Jefferson anticipated included large concentrations of capital and monopoly power.
Look, if you want to subscribe to some childish Roth bardian fantasy that believes in a night watchman utopia you are free to do that but please don’t delude yourself into thinking there’s anything realistic or practical about that and for goodness sake don’t try and claim that’s what the Constitution endorses.
Thanks Mr. Postman
Jack to take you seriously I would need answers to two questions.
One. What gave the original Thirteen ‘States’ the Right to regulate Private Contract in ways that would allow them to regulate such things as wages under powers ‘Reserved’ to States by the Tenth Amendment but deny them to the Federal Government? That it under a pure Libertarian reading you cannot ‘reserve’ Rights that do not exist. Moreover you could argue that any authority to regulate Private Contracts were reserved to the People under the Ninth Amendment and absent some Enumerated Powers Clause not granted to the newly established ‘States’ (from entities organized under the Articles of Confederation themselves in origin various forms of Crown Colonies).
That is Tenthers rely a whole lot on an Enumerated Powers doctrine not explicitly called out as such in the Constitution or the (subsequent) Bill of Rights even as they implicitly privilege the Tenth to the Ninth Amendment.
What is Good for the Goose is Good for the Gander. Give me the argument that any of the original governmental entries that became the original Thirteen States actually had powers over Contract that they could reserve from their creature the United States?
And how did that pre-existing power simply get extended to the subsequent 37 States created by action of the Congress of the United States? Did the Colonies turned States of Virginia, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts somehow beget the State of Nevada by Immaculate Conception without the actual patrimony of Congress? Do you have an authority not named David Barton or Skousand (sp) to back this up?
Fox News this AM had a thing prattling on that there is no “penalty for busting across the US borders”, aliens are merely sent away. The idea is the prison industry complex needs to take them in and keep them on the US’ tab forever at a good profit!
For Jack:
The Preamble is the scope [contract] clause of the social contract with the people (who would run the states if it were not for the fasicst putsches going on). Regardless that the people has evolved from slave/landowners to former slave and bondspeople.
Scope includes delivering: “domestic tranquility”, as well as “general welfare” and “common defense” (federalized militiae of the individual states) against native Americans wanting their land back and colonizing powers.
For the post:
The role of government has become to provide for safety ( FD Roosevelt’s Freedom from Fear), the only one of the Four Freedoms the neo-con artists recognize.
And that freedom from fear involves profit for the military industry complex (“national security” a scam for securing the imperial holdings of corporate America). the burgeon homeland (fatherland) security industry complex and the prison industry complex.
All these complexes are ripping off the rest of the scope of the US’ social contract as prescribed by the preamble.
The articles and clauses of the US constituition are specifics on how the organization of the government are to deliver the scope in the preamble.
The Bill of Rights established limits on the power to misimplement the preamble by describing rights and prerogatives of individuals many of whom were not legally “people” in 1789.
Isn’t it a fool’s errand to argue the meaning of various constitutional provisions when the meaning that is enforced is the meaning preferred by the political faction in the majority of the court at any given time? I mean I certainly have no problem with trying to develop arguments that will help “our” faction argue its position, I think the energy will be better spent in getting out the vote to make sure the right faction controls the court.
JackD
Thank goodness for the “D.”
“the meaning that is enforced is the meaning preferred by the political faction in the majority of the court at any given time?”
which is what I have explained to the other brand – X Jack.
Isn’t that what my side tried to argue — that in the Second Amendment, PEOPLE really meant STATES, not individuals? Uh … no, Jack. My side’s argument has to do with that pesky “well regulated Militia” clause in the Second Amendment. Y’know, as in, well-regulated by a government, not by the NRA; and, as in “Militia,” not just anyone, and certainly not just a single anyone acting alone.
Seems that all the way back in 1876, and then again in 1939, the Supreme Court agreed with my side. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
JackD’s comment reminds me that I should respond to your claims about rampant, or even just some, voter ID fraud as justification for a requirement that, say, elderly blacks born in Mississippi who were born not at a hospital but at a rural home, and those for whom a $50 fee to obtain a certified copy of their birth certificate is a financial imposition, should be denied the franchise. Rampant, or even just some, voter-impersonation fraud turns out to be exactly 31 out of more than 1 billion ballots cast beginning in 2000 to last month. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/08/06/a-comprehensive-investigation-of-voter-impersonation-finds-31-credible-incidents-out-of-one-billion-ballots-cast/
What used to surprise me, but no longer does—I expect it now—is the bald gullibility of so many wingers. You folks believe everything that Limbaugh, et al, tell you, doncha?
Doncha?
Bev:
You were picked up here: http://www.eschatonblog.com/2014/09/bear-thread.html Eschaton Blog
Now YOU’RE doing it. Object to an over-reach by the U.S. government, and you say I oppose ALL government. That is the classic false-dichotomy argument that Beverly used in the post.
And now, the straw-man argument — a favorite of Mr. Cobery’s. Since I never said “taxes are theft,” you can turn to building some other straw-man to knock down.
The States reserved Powers. (PEOPLE have rights. Governments have POWERS. Such Powers come only “rightly” 🙂 from the consent of the governed.)
The State constitutions are generally written prohibitively — they say what the State government CANNOT do, and what is not forbidden is allowed. The U.S. constitution is the opposite — it states what the U.S. government CAN do, and all else is forbidden (“reserved to the States respectively, or to the People”).
Congress did not create those States, per se. They were territories which had their own governments, established by the people of that region. Texas and Hawai’i were both separate nations. Congress accepted them as States.
Did the Colonies turned States of Virginia, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts somehow beget the State of Nevada by Immaculate Conception without the actual patrimony of Congress?
Sorry — that very last paragraph is from Bruce, not me.
What’s behind the voter ID laws is tryi g to keep you folks from rounding up homeless people, putting a piece of tape ontheir arms so they can read off the name and address they are supposed to tell the pollworkers, and busing them around to vote your party line for a few dollars.
Meanwhile, out here in the real world, this never happens. Voting fraud is less likely than being struck by lightning.
And “I never said “taxes are theft,”” versus “you folks think you have the right to what others have worked for” is just playing word games.
Perhaps. But I do like to think that facts, logic, and reason might convince some to come over to our side, however much they do seem to be immune to such.
facts, logic, and reason
I’ll be over here waiting for any of the above.
Pardon me if I don’t hold my breath.
.. the right to own a gun?
You see, it works in both. Would you allow such people to buy a gun with no ID? Then why would you let them vote?
Indeed, I would be happy to simply require the “electoral ink”.
You see, it works in both. Would you allow such people to buy a gun with no ID? Then why would you let them vote?
Something about suffrage and gun ownership being totally different things?
You could formulate the argument this way as well: if we require everyone who drives a car to register it, why not do the same with firearms?
First, there was no ruling in 1876.
Second, the Miller decision went against Miller not because he was not in any “well-regulated militia,” but because, “The Court cannot take judicial notice that a shotgun having a barrel less than 18 inches long has today any reasonable relation to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, and therefore cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees to the citizen the right to keep and bear such a weapon.”
In short, MIller implies that the Second Amendment DOES guarantee to citizens the right to keep and bear weapon that DOES have a “reasonable relation to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia” (such as an infantry weapon in current use by our military).
(The NRA was also the first “civil rights organization” — in that it was the first organization to accept, as it always has, Blacks and Whites as equal members with equal rights as members, and fought against attempts to keep the newly freed Blacks disarmed.)
First, I apologize for not being able to type worth a hoot on the IPad.
Jack, “and your folks think you have the right to what other folks worked for” is exactly the taxes are theft meme. No one here has argued for taking your hard earned money for themselves, the argument is for taxation as a means for funding a government that takes seriously the concept of the General Welfare.
And no it’s not overreach to imply you oppose all government. The things you write indicate exactly that. You seem to want not the Union of the Constitution but the Confederacy of the Articles. Sovereignty rests with the United States by a grant of the people through the action of the States. I wonder, if your State offends your sensibilities do you bargain for some “natural right”? Or perhaps you make, as many Tea Party folks do, the nebulous claim that “it’s against the Constitution” which seems to be a placeholder for “I don’t like that”.
After Bush-Gore, the VRA, and PPACA decisions it’s pretty hard to argue that the SCOTUS majority stands for anything other than political convenience.
As for the original post, local governments have increasingly fallen under the idea that they aren’t really government but some sort of general service providers. Combine that trend with the trend towards outsourcing and privatizing things like prisons and other public responsibilities and you fall into one of Madison’s greatest fears, the ability for small jurisdictions to manipulate by and for interest.
What we have, as much as anything, is the corruption of the word efficient as a means of undermining the concept of public goods and the commons (no Jack, all property did not start out being private as a result of some sort of natural occurrence or Godly preference – people, in the form of social groups made rules, rules that can be modified, even while being faithful to the spirit -actually because of the spirit- of the Constitution), We are told that government ought to be more businesslike with the clear implication that businesslike and efficient are synonymous. They are not. Business is efficient at making a profit (someone like Veblen might argue too efficient since business success often comes at the detriment of craftsmanship and by creating negative externalities). Being efficient at making a profit does not translate into the efficient delivery of public goods, it does not translate into an “efficient” approach to the ideals and responsibilities of citizenship.
Maybe this became more concrete with Friedman’s fetishism for stockholders rather than stakeholders. A corporation is a public construct and as such we can construct a whole range of responsibilities, to customers, to employees, to the public as well as the stockholders. Instead many folks have grabbed Friedman’s misguided ideal and tried to apply it across the breadth of society. So instead of citizens we have stockholders who demand service, not a social compact, for their taxes. Citizens are not customers, they are not stockholders, they are not purchasing the protective services of police or courts or prisons. Yes, some of the “goods” government provides in the interests of a just and orderly society come to look like services and we should strive for some sort of efficiency but the ideal we are following at the moment treats various government functions as profit centers or revenue generating entities.
We shouldn’t be writing tickets to generate revenue. Police, courts, and prisons aren’t there to pay for themselves or generate revenue and placing them in that position perverts the concept of Justice. People who think that their taxes are merely buying a menu of services have abandoned the concept and abdicated the responsibilities of citizenship.
They are not free by any traditional sense of the word. Freedom is not license, at base freedom is inextricably tied to responsibility. Freedom is not escape from all social strictures in pursuit of atavistic individualism. True freedom comes with an acceptance of limits, a respect for justice, and the recognition of responsibility to community.
Mark:
edited by me.
United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542 (1876):
“The right to bear arms is not granted by the Constitution; neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. The Second Amendments means no more than that it shall not be infringed by Congress, and has no other effect than to restrict the powers of the National Government. ”
What, Jack? They didn’t tell you about that in Federalist Society class?
I recognize that this begs the question of what that right is, and whom or what it belongs to, and that whatever the right is, it later was “incorporated” by the Supreme Court via the Fourteenth Amendment. But the right was never defined as a right of individuals rather than as a right to have a well-regulated militia, until 2008.
Your claim about Miller makes the point. You write:
” ‘The Court cannot take judicial notice that a shotgun having a barrel less than 18 inches long has today any reasonable relation to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, and therefore cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees to the citizen the right to keep and bear such a weapon.’
“In short, MIller implies that the Second Amendment DOES guarantee to citizens the right to keep and bear weapon that DOES have a “reasonable relation to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia” (such as an infantry weapon in current use by our military).”
Precisely.
Colfax massacre
The very strict constructionists forget that the most significant amendment to the constitution was passed in a little episode from 1861 to 1865 that killed 4% of the US population at the time. Recall before 1861 it was these United States, after 1865 it is the United States.
There is also an argument about whether the continental congress came before the states or vice versa. or vice versa. It is pointed out that the continental congress called for states to adopt constitutions before they did so.
Also it should be pointed out that the ratification of the 1787 constitution was illegal under the terms of the Articles of Confederation. i.e. not all states ratified it. Washington had to force Rhode Island to ratify by threatening to impose tariffs on exports from Rhode Island. (1792).
Recall that the continental congress was not authorized by the existing governments of the colonies, but a revolutionary body also.
Actually, that is exactly what it is. They don’t want to pay for their own retirement, they don’t want to support their parents in their old age, they don’t want to actually give their own money to the poor, so they take it from someone else. (Well, they are too cowardly to do it themselves — they hire government thugs to do it for them.)
But those taxes that are used “to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States” — no problem.
Agreed.
By the way, Jack, if a purpose of voter ID laws is to keep homeless citizens from voting, that purpose, and that effect, are unconstitutional. Homeless citizens do live in the state, the congressional distict, the town where they are.
Your comment is interestingly revealing.
The Cruikshank ruling clearly states that the right to keep and bears arms predated the Constitution.
To whom do rights belong, if not to individuals? The Cruikshank ruling clearly states that the right to keep and bears arms predated the Constitution.
As for MIller (1939), are we in agreement that individuals’ right to own militia weapons (by which I mean those currently in use by our general infantry) is protected by the Second Amendment?
No — only from being bused around the city by political operatives and voting under multiple names.
I’d be happy with the ink on the finger.
Yes, the right to keep and bear arms is guaranteed by the Constitution, and suffrage is not:
Minor v. Happersett, 88 US 162 – Supreme Court 1875
“As for MIller (1939), are we in agreement that individuals’ right to own militia weapons (by which I mean those currently in use by our general infantry) is protected by the Second Amendment?”
Huh??
Ah. I guess I should have realized that you said what you said about Miller because you thought a ruling using the type of gun as evidence of its intended use actually was a ruling that individuals have a constitutional right to own guns of the sort that militias use.
I gave you credit for, like, understanding what the Court was saying. Silly me.
As for homeless people being driven around from polling place to polling place, there’s no evidence whatsoever, after extensive searches by wingers defending against constitutional challenges to these voter ID laws, and searches by others (e.g., academics) as well, that this has happened, anywhere.
But I’m not sure why that would be more likely to happen anyway, than, say, Koch Indutries employees going from polling place to polling place and faking their identity. Or just using falsified absentee ballots to accomplish their purpose.
The Court said that Miller’s ownership of that shotgun was not protected by the Second Amendment because such weapons had no militia use.
And if there is no such issue with the homeless’ voting, would you object to ink on the index fingers?
Yeah, Lyle, exactly. Funny how these folks strickly construct the Reconstruction amendments out of the Constitution on an as-necessary basis. Roberts actually invoked the Dred Scott opinion, albeit without actually citing to if, of course, in the Voting Rights Act opinion, Shelby County v. Holder, last year.
Odd how this strict-constuction things works, isn’t it?
Not at all, Jack. Ink on the index fingers on Koch Industries’ employees’ absentee ballots sounds like a plan!
SCOTUS has never ruled on the 2nd Amendment. In each case before it, SCOTUS has used other rulings. In any case you have introduced a new topic to the thread.
Beverly Mann
September 21, 2014 12:13 am
“As for MIller (1939), are we in agreement that individuals’ right to own militia weapons (by which I mean those currently in use by our general infantry) is protected by the Second Amendment?”
Huh??
Ah. I guess I should have realized that you said what you said about Miller because you thought a ruling using the type of gun as evidence of its intended use actually was a ruling that individuals have a constitutional right to own guns of the sort that militias use.”
Bev,
The correct spelling is AH, no Ah.
I hate to criticize spelling and/or grammar on blogs, but in this case the actual meaning of the comment is totally changed.
“Thanks Mr. Postman” run
run, was confused by the above. As I was thinking of The Postman movie that gave reason for citizens need for arms. Which is a position that I support and differ greatly with many democrats.
beene:
He writes about the USPS
The trouble ain’t that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain’t distributed right.
Mark Twain
Beverly,
Have you forgotten which members of SCOTUS were in the Kelo majority and which comprised the dissent?
BTW, even the wackiest of the Individual Right deniers have run away from the States Right interpretation of Hickman and the Collective Rights interpretation of Silveira. And anyone with a shred of intellectual honesty long ago dropped that selective quote from Cruikshank.
From Cruickshank:
The second and tenth counts are equally defective. The right there specified is that of ‘bearing arms for a lawful purpose.’ This is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. The second amendment declares that it shall not be infringed; but this, as has been seen, means no more than that it shall not be infringed by Congress. This is one of the amendments that has no other effect than to restrict the powers of the national government, leaving the people to look for their protection against any violation by their fellow-citizens of the rights it recognizes, to what is called, in The City of New York v. Miln, 11 Pet. 139, the ‘powers which relate to merely municipal legislation, or what was, perhaps, more properly called internal police,’ ‘not surrendered or restrained’ by the Constitution of the United States. (end quote)
The Cruikshank court on one hand saw the right protected in the second amendment as a right to keep and bear arms for a law purpose (much to the chagrin of modern day gun grabbers, so much so that they feign ignorance of the meaning of “it” in the above quote) and on the other practiced the sort of deference to State abrogation of rights that you claim to be against.
My gawd, was the Cruikshank court the start of Conservative Movement?
“No — only from being bused around the city by political operatives and voting under multiple names.”
We’ll be right back with more insane stuff conservatives believe and more on Jack’s Fantasies after these messages.
Now AS, let’s be fair.
Just because did not pose any proof to his statement does not change you obligation to prove the comment is not true.
Though for the life of me I cannot imagine why that is true
Yes, Cruikshank was appalling—and profoundly dishonest—in its utter nullification of the 14th Amendment’s privileges-and-immunities clause; no doubt about that, Hansberry.
And, yes, Cruikshank was the start of the post-Reconstruction Amendments Conservative Movement. Along with the Slaughter-House Cases three years earlier.
Yeah, Amateur Socialist, I’ve long wondered why these utterly fabricated claims of fact by wingers, such as statements that people are being bused around the city by political operatives and voting under multiple names, aren’t tagged for what they are: Literally, delusions; a form of mental illness.
If Jack, or anyone else who makes claims of this sort, knows of actual evidence to support their claim of fact, they need to disclose it. If they know of none, they are either liars or mentally ill.
Beverly Mann wrote: “To wit: The witless campaign that Alison Lundergan Grimes, the Kentucky Dem nominee for Senate, is running in her effort to dethrone Mitch McConnell.”
I can see why it would be aggravating to watch the Kentucky US Senate campaign.
Kentucky is split between the Democratic and Republican parties. (and Tea party Republicans as a sub faction.)
Currently, running for any Kentucky statewide office is an exercise in personal appeal. Exude confidence and trust and get the right endorsements. Be positive in your attitude about coal, gun rights, pro life, and the University of Kentucky. Then wait for the opposing candidate to irritate one of those factions, even slightly.
Senator Mitch McConnell is the ultimate political candidate. He gets elected to six year terms and proceeds to run for the next election. Elections never seem to be far from his mind. And Kentuckians are not likely to forget that he holds powerful positions in the US Senate. But he has not been and can not be silent and he must cast Senate votes.
If Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes ran as a New England Democrat she would lose. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. She is a conservative southern Democrat, who happens to be a woman. (She wouldn’t be Kentucky’s first female Governor.) If national Democrats are wise they will give her money and watch quietly. She has an uphill battle. She is plugging away, getting her name out there in positive ways and making Senator McConnell look like a mere mortal.
I don’t know if she has enough time but this campaign is not over. There will be a statewide debate televised by Kentucky Education Television on Monday October 13th. That should be very interesting. Secretary of State Grimes signed on in June and I think Senator McConnell signed on in August.
Beverly,
Wow, your reply at 11:48 puts you in the same camp as myself and Justice Thomas regarding reconstruction era courts’ utter nullification of the 14th P&I clause, who knew?
So who are these Conservative Movement judges?
Would they be the majority in Kelo?
Would they be the dissenters in MacDonald?
Both of those groups denied or tried to deny individual rights in the face of state and/or local power.
It would be a wonderful thing if all the enemies of individual liberty lined up neatly on one side of the political spectrum, unfortunately things are not so simple.
Buses seems so last century. I’m a little surprised he didn’t bring up the black helicopters flown by ACORN operatives and paid for by Agenda 21.
Well,what to say? First, be aware that Purple Jack is not the Jack that has been commenting here at AB for a few years now. I call him Purple Jack because his name appears that way and links to another site, http://novatownhall.com/, though there is no clear connection of that Jack to that site. My point is only that I am Jack and don’t want to give up that identity here at AB, but also don’t want to be confused with a troll who has been baiting commentary away from the central ideas of several posts during the past several weeks.
Jack:
It is you!
Bev
I agree with you about the cynical use of “Freedom! Liberty!” by those who would steal both…
but suddenly i was afraid that we could end up sounding like we don’t care about Freedom and Liberty…. which is what they already say about us.
not sure what the answer is. rely on the intelligence of the reader?
Jack, the real Jack
glad you’re back to defend your name.
but i really don’t buy the “thread hijacking” meme.
I think purplejack did hijack Maggies thread… but probably by a legitimate process.. responding to comments, including mine. the “hijack” took place in that by the end of the day Maggies subject was completely forgotten about.
Here, not so much… it seems to me. the topid is “freedom and liberty” as defined by the right wing people trying to steal it, or use it as an emotional cry to confuse people into voting for them…
in other words, it was all about purplejack from the start.
the “thread hijack” meme has been used by people who ought to know better to mean “disagrees with me.”
But that is exactly the purpose of the trolls that show up from time to time. It’s a carom shot in ideological dress. Find a topic the premise of which you disagree with and veer off to the edges of the idea in a way that is so confrontational with facts that others follow you in order to focus on the abuse of reality. The right wing trolls have the technique down to a near science. As you say Beverly’s post topic is pretty much lost in the effort to show this creep of a lying interloper who is right. Unfortunately the right of the argument has nothing to do with the initial thread topic. A straw army has been deployed and grows more in strength by putting distance between the original topic and the effort to address the “forces” of the troll. That’s a hijack. It’s supported by the replies, but initiated by clever trolls who have no other intention for their initial comments.
The real Jack. No purple. No irrelevant links attached to the name. Not the troll identified as Purple Jack.
Jack:
You appear to understand the strategy. There was a time when we would “shun” such posters. Each answer we made to their comments would serve as fuel for their next comment and prolong the string of pseudo-on-topic ideology.
And yes coberly, you are good at feeding the monster with comments which is exactly what they want to keep going. In your case, you went as far as defending a troll. 138 comments on Maggie’s thread and at times in multiples. Come-on . . . Whatever happened to nesting comments? It was a run away troll-train.
Run
Not sure if you’re confusing me, Jack, with who I call Purple Jack. we are not the same. He is a troll. We all need to stop responding to Purple Jack.
He is becoming ubiquitous on this site. Too much encouragement from well meaning regulars to accommodate forum duplicity and think we are correcting a misguided fool. Fool yes, misguided not at all.
Jack:
I know who you are. I looked to make sure.
real Jack,
and Run
thanks Jack. I think you have almost convinced me. or purple jack has by his own efforts. i need to reinterpret “hijack” to mean not “changes the subject” but “drives out the good with the bad.”
that would be easier for me if I was not accused of hijacking threads myself by those who don’t like the fact that i don’t agree with them.
i am not a troll and certainly have no intention of dominating the conversation to the point where people can’t hear themselves think.
but i can’t deny that it might look that way sometimes. i don’t have an easy answer… except that i get tired of arguing almost as fast as you get tired of hearing it.
as for “defending” purplejack… that is part of what i mean. some comments by the people on MY side are so devoid of logic and showing evidence of passionate commitment to the political slogans of their side that i think it is reasonable to point it out. only to find of course, that it is not wise to try to point out to a mob… of even your own friends… when they are getting that “hate the other” mentality.
well, good luck with that. i will still point it out from time to time and try to “defend” even the purplejacks against flagrant illogic, but i’ll try to restrict my comments to fewer… especiall since i see they do no good at all.
well, maybe i’ll run this hijack a little further.
first, to some extent people like purplejack are their own strawman… they present arguments that are easy to refute and give us a chance to practice refuting them. good for us… straighten our thinking… and good for any audience that might be wavering between the bogus arguments and the correct arguments (ours).
but this has a limit… when you have refuted them several times and all their “reasonable” corollaries and counterarguments and they still won’t shut up. that’s where some kind of “time limit” may need to be invoked.
but those who object to the hijack are free to ignore it and continue the discussion they think is important. sophisticated readers will learn to ignore the hijack and skip to what they want to read.
and finally, mostly, what i hate to see is “my” side acting like “their side” and invoking a censorhip that looks very much, to me, more like “i don’t agree with you so shut up” than it does like “but you have said this already and we have disagreed. now have some manners and let someone else talk.”
because even “my” side is often enough “wrong” and as much in danger as the other side of becoming arrogant and intolerant and and close minded. you should watch yourself and resist the temptation to shut off the other guy’s mike…. allowing for the “fact” that sometimes such would be justified. life is not easy.
Coberly, besides its education for many when people debate from strictly partisan positions. Especially when its not the issues the leadership of the parties oppose, only how to achieve those goals.
Both parties have lead the nation into poverty for the majority.
Beene
think i mostly agree.
but here is a little tidbit from purple Jack i can’t let go
“Actually, that is exactly what it is. They don’t want to pay for their own retirement, they don’t want to support their parents in their old age, they don’t want to actually give their own money to the poor, so they take it from someone else. (Well, they are too cowardly to do it themselves — they hire government thugs to do it for them.)”
This is monstrous and it is stupid, but it is Jack’s abiding neurosis. I don’t know how to cure him. But the facts are that with SS people pay for their own retirement. They also pay for their parents in their old age. Funny how you can do this with pay as you go. But Jack will never understand it. And I am afraid we have to hire government thugs to explain “taxes” to some people who think they are at a carnival and only have to pay for what they understand… or think they understand.
Jack… how about you pay for Defense and I’ll pay for Social Security. That way neither of us has to pay for what the other guy wants.
Coberly, their is no cure for those who are libertarian, they sincerely believe the only thing government should do is protect the nation and property rights. The market is between individuals and the government should stay out.
They make no allowance for ignorance.
Actually, it turns out that if you are against big government, you ARE against all government. I’m surprised that conservatives who spout the “enumerated powers” argument have not been forced to respond to the historical facts that 1) President George Washington rejected their argument, and lined up with his Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, in supporting Hamilton’s argument for implied powers; 2) first Chief Justice John Marshall, decided in favor of Hamilton’s arguments and rejected the argument used by today’s conservatives and libertarians; 3) Associate Justice Joseph Story, in his Commentaries on the Constitution, argues Hamilton is correct; 4) the Supreme Court has decided a number of times in lesser cases that Hamilton is correct.
But. our immediate concern is the argument that to be against big government is to be against all government. In the landmark case McCulloch v. Maryland: lawyer, William Pinkney, argued before the Supreme Court,
The decision in the case was unanimous, and it was written by Chief Justice Marshall:
Marshall was not content to merely render the decision. He felt it necessary to directly discuss and dismiss the arguments in favor of the enumerated powers interpretation, noting “the baneful influence of this narrow construction” which would render “the Government incompetent to its great objects…” In other words, the case indeed, Marshall holds, is that if the national government were encumbered by the enumerated powers argument, it would effectively be powerless to govern, which is, so far as I can see, pretty much the state of things when you have no government at all.
It just amazes me that conservatives and libertarians are allowed to get away with their completely false interpretation of U.S. history in this matter.
Thanks for this comment, Tony. I just reposted it as a separate post, at http://angrybearblog.strategydemo.com/2014/09/enumerating-the-silliness-of-the-wingers-enumerated-powers-schtik.html.
That same Chief Justice Marshall who gave us Barron v Baltimore?
Was he also a Conservative Movement guy?
The big government v. no government meme just shows how silly the proponents of big government have become. Leviathan or bust?
To be sure the Framers wanted a federal government stronger than that that existed under the Articles of Confederation, but to argue that they wanted an all powerful central government unrestrained by the what Jefferson referred to as the chains of the constitution able to trample the rights of persons and subordinate governments is silly.
Bev, why has some lawyer not filed a class action suite against states and federal government on seizing private property? Is there not law about being safe and secure in person and possessions? Winning a case like this would secure the lawyer’s retirement funds.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/09/06/stop-and-seize/