Judges, Ideologues, Dogmatics, and Bad Decisions
by Ken Melvin
Judges, Ideologues, Dogmatics, and Bad Decisions
A judge should be wise enough to look to the possible consequences of his or her decisions. A judge should be wise enough to change his or her mind. A judge should generally accord these qualities to the decisions of his or her predecessors. And, given that judges pass judgment on others, a judge should be law-abiding, of good moral character, … above reproach.
At the present time we have three, maybe four or five, supreme court justices: Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch*, and perhaps Kavanaugh*, and Roberts, who feel that they, more than anyone before them or now on the court, know how the constitution should be interpreted; would impose their interpretation on the nation no matter the consequences. Some consequences of this sort of thinking of late include: District of Columbia v. Heller, McDonald v. City of Chicago, Shelby County v. Holder, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, and, most recently, Rucho v. Common Cause; all decisions with horrendous consequences.
Columbia v. Heller:
The Second Amendment to the Constitution:
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.
In 2008, in the Heller decision, the Supreme Court, by a 5 to 4 margin, affirmed a Court of Appeals ruling that a citizen had the constitutional right to possess a firearm separate the militia clause.
The Supreme Court held:
(a) The Amendment’s prefatory clause announces a purpose, but does not limit or expand the scope of the second part, the operative clause. The operative clause’s text and history demonstrate that it connotes an individual right to keep and bear arms.
(1) The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.
In writing the majority decision, Justice Scalia invoked his theory of original intent based on his review of colonial history and the early years of the republic and concluded that the Constitution’s Second Amendment meant, not what others before had said it meant, but whatever he said it meant some 230 years later. Scalia said that the second part, not the first part, was the operative clause. Scalia, not the second amendment, said, “ … to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.” Scalia was joined in the majority by Justices Roberts, Kennedy, Thomas and Alito. Justice Stevens, who wrote the dissent, recently called Heller, “… the worst decision of my tenure.”
McDonald v. City of Chicago:
In the 2010 McDonald decision, the Supreme Court, by a 5 to 4 majority, held that the second amendment right recognized in Heller is fully applicable to the states through the due process clause of the fourteenth amendment. In so holding, the Court reiterated that”the Second Amendment protects the right to keep and bear arms for the purpose of self-defense”
Writing for the majority, Justice Alito held that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment incorporates the Second Amendment right recognized in Heller. Justice Alito describes himself as a practical originalist.
14th Amendment:
Section1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
While also joining the majority decision, Justice Thomas, in his concurrence, reached the same conclusion regarding the incorporation issue on alternative grounds, through the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the same Section 1. Thomas is often described as an originalist, or textualist, and a member of the conservative wing of the Supreme Court.
Both Justices Alito and Thomas are known to hold their own interpretation of the constitution to be above those of others before them.
The majority decision also reaffirmed that certain firearms restrictions mentioned in District of Columbia v. Heller are assumed permissible and not directly dealt with in this case. Such restrictions include those to “prohibit … the possession of firearms by felons or mentally ill” and “laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.”
Consequent Heller and McDonald, today, in 2019, guns kill some 40,000 Americans annually; on average, guns kill 7 American children a day; and 35 times as many Americans die from gun violence as do in comparable countries. The right of some 5 million to own an assault weapon has come at a very dear price indeed.
How did we get such justices? The NRA was the major player in their appointment. Since the 1990’s, 337 million Americans have been tyrannized by 5 million paranoid half-wits led by a head case controlling who got elected to the US House and Senate; and thus controlling who was appointed to federal judge ships including to the US Supreme Court.
Shelby County v. Holder:
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 secured the right to vote for racial minorities; a right long much denied, in southern states. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the Voting Rights Act is considered to be the most effective piece of federal civil rights legislation ever enacted in the country.
— On June 25, 2013, the Court ruled by a 5-to-4 vote that Section 4(b) is unconstitutional because the coverage formula is based on data over 40 years old, making it no longer responsive to current needs and therefore an impermissible burden on the constitutional principles of federalism and equal sovereignty of the states. The Court did not strike down Section 5, but without Section 4(b), no jurisdiction will be subject to Section 5 preclearance unless Congress enacts a new coverage formula. —Wikipedia.
4(b) The provisions of subsection (a) shall apply in any State or in any political subdivision of a state which (1) the Attorney General determines maintained on November 1, 1964, any test or device, and with respect to when (2) the Director of the Census determines that less than 50 per centum of the persons of voting age residing therein were registered on November 1, 1964, or that less than 50 per centum of such persons voted in the presidential election of November 1964. A determination or certification of the Attorney General or of the Director of the Census under this section or under section 6 or section 13 shall not be reviewable in any court and shall be effective upon publication in the Federal Register.
The majority was delivered by Chief Justice John Roberts joined by Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, and Sam Alito. Four of these five: Scalia, Roberts, Thomas, and Alito were members of the Federalists Society.
— “The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies, most frequently called the Federalist Society, is an organization of conservatives and libertarians seeking reform of the current legal system of the United States in accordance with a textualist or originalist interpretation of the U.S. Constitution.” — Wikipedia:
Today’s Federalist Society, founded in 1982, bears slight resemblance to The Federalist Party of the late18th – early 19thcentury that,
—“… appealed to business and to conservatives who favored banks, national over state government, manufacturing, and (in world affairs) preferred Britain and opposed the French Revolution.”, —Wikipedia.
That Federalist Party came into being between 1792 and 1794 as a national coalition of bankers and businessmen in support of Alexander Hamilton’s fiscal policies . These supporters developed into the organized Federalist Party, which was committed to a fiscally sound and nationalistic government. The only Federalist President was John Adams.”
Hamilton’s Federalists promoted an interpretation of the Constitution, but, contrary to what Chief Justice John Roberts said in his ruling, Federalism was never a ‘principle of the Constitution’. Federalism is not even a part of the Constitution (The US Constitution was ratified in June of 1788 and became effective in March, 1789). The Federalist Party had vanished by 1815, but the Federalists’ philosophy decisively shaped Supreme Court policy for another three decades through the personage of Chief Justice John Marshall (1801 to 1835).
Today’s Federalist Society promises a lasting legacy through Chief Justice John Roberts and Associates Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch*, and Kavanaugh*; a legacy not of wisdom and respect for the original nor for what has worked well but one of ideology and dogma; ideology and dogma premised on current conservative and libertarian political thinking. A Court majority that knows best what the original framers intended and what the outcome should be well before the case is heard; few if any of whom are smart enough to change their minds. And, ironically, a majority that is inclined to favor States Rights just as did segregationists: Stennis, Wallace, Byrd, Eastland, Maddox, Faubus, Talmadge, Thurmond, … A majority that shows no interest in protecting the voting rights of Americans. Hamilton, too, not big on democracy, felt the nation should be ruled by people of means.
The dissent; written by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, joined by Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan; held the opinion that Congress had sufficient evidence before it to determine that the coverage formula remained responsive to current needs. The dissent acknowledged that discrimination in voting has decreased in the covered jurisdictions since the Voting Rights Act’s enactment, but it attributed much of that decrease to the Act itself, noting that ” … throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.” (presaging Justice Robert’s circular reasoning we shall see in Rucho v. Common Cause).
In a real democracy, with as few exceptions as possible, every citizen over a certain age would have a vote, all these would vote, and all of their votes would be equal.
The Consequences of Shelby County v. Holder?
—“Five years after the ruling, nearly 1,000 polling places had been closed in the U.S., with many of the closed polling places in predominantly African-American counties. Research shows that the changing of voter locations and reduction in voting locations can reduce voter turnout. There were also cuts to early voting, purges of voter rolls and imposition of strict voter ID laws. Virtually all restrictions on voting subsequent to the ruling were by Republicans.” — Wikipedia.
Since Shelby County v. Holder, Alabama, Arizona, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Texas, Wisconsin, … have enacted laws restricting or otherwise making it more difficult for some people to vote.
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission:
— The case arose after Citizens United, a conservative non-profit organization, sought to air and advertise a film critical of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton shortly before the 2008 Democratic primary elections. This violated the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, which prohibited any corporation or labor union from making an “electioneering communication” within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of an election, or making any expenditure advocating the election or defeat of a candidate at any time. — Wikipedia:
—In a majority opinion joined by four other justices (Roberts; Scalia; Alito; Thomas), Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy held that the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act’s prohibition of all independent expenditures by corporations and unions violated the First Amendment’s protection of free speech. The Court overruled Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce (1990), which had allowed different restrictions on speech-related spending based on corporate identity, as well as a portion of McConnell v. FEC (2003) that had restricted corporate spending on electioneering communications. The ruling effectively freed corporations to spend money on electioneering communications and to directly advocate for the election or defeat of candidates. In his dissenting opinion, Associate Justice John Paul Stevens argued that Court’s ruling represented “a rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining self-government.“—Wikipedia
While the conservative majority could not find for the right of the voter to vote in Shelby, it did find for the right of corporations to influence the vote with unlimited election spending in this case.
Consequences of the Citizen’s United decision: Allowing for unlimited election spending by corporations and fueled the rise of Super Pacs and gave inordinate political power to a minority, those who could most easily afford it, while denying due political clout to the average voter majority; thus serving the conservative and libertarian interests of the Federalist Society and those of Republican conservatives.
Rucho v. Common Cause:
From our Nation’s earliest days, Gerrymandering has been a favorite scheme for making some votes worth more than others. By redistricting so that Party A’s voters are divided into several districts wherein Party B’s voters hold an insurmountable majority ensuring that Party B’s voters votes count and Party A’s voters votes don’t, Party B can make it so that only their votes count and Party A may come to understand that their voting is not even worthwhile. Today, as in 1780, Gerrymandering, a consequence of the US Constitution allowing state legislatures to draw district boundaries, jiggers elections from the local to the presidential.
Today, legislative majorities from the former slave states, republican since the Civil Rights Legislation of the 1960s led to Reagan in the 1980s, never too keen on democracy, seek to limit those counted for purposes of representation in states like California, Illinois, New York, … while using such as the Gerrymander and voter restriction to limit political opposition in their own states while, again, retaining those disenfranchised for purposes of representation.
These same legislators have been most instrumental in stacking the US Supreme Court with privileged white male ideologues opposed to the provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act meant to make the vote more democratic. Today, the venal Mitch McConnell, born and raised until 14 in Alabama then Georgia, now representing the small, backward state of Kentucky with 8 electoral votes, member of the Federalist Society, controls all appointments to the Federal Bench.
June 27, 2019, The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4, with the five conservative federalist justices {including McConnell and Don McGahn (who, along with McConnell, is also a member of the Federalist Society) shepherded Gorsuch* and Kavanaugh*} constituting the majority,
that while partisan gerrymandering may be “incompatible with democratic principles”, the federal courts cannot review such allegations, as they present nonjusticiable political questions outside the remit of these courts.
Chief Justice John Roberts delivered the majority opinion. Circularly, they found it to be a political problem that needed be solved politically. These in the majority are those who can always find a way to find for business interests, religious interest, … but can never find a way to find for democracy or the working class. Could the Chief Justice please tell us why ‘federalist principles’ are so much more important than ‘democratic principles’ ?
Chief Justice Roberts: Heller, McDonald, Shelby, Citizen’s, and Rucho were momentously bad decisions that other courts must and someday will overturn. History will not be kind. Yours is not a majority of wise judges; but one of ideologues and dogmatics. With history now being writ by this stuffing of the courts, how can democracy survive going forth with a majority of its federal judges and justices so ideologically conservative, so opposed to democratic principals, … so unrepresentative? Andrew Jackson asked as to the Supreme Court’s army; Justice Stevens asked to what the Supreme Court would be without the respect of the people.
* Both nominated by Trump, who did not win the popular vote, and confirmed under the ‘nuclear option’ invoked by Senator McConnell to allow for nomination with a simple majority.
Lol, the federalist society doesn’t support states rights nonsense, they support global plutocratic dictatorship.
The state is everything to them, because without it, they don’t exist. Statism builds in property and monied rights, when that is gone, the property no longer exists, the money, worthless.
And we have lots more to look forward to. If trump wins in November the Supreme Court will be locked in for the next two generations.
Thanks, Susan Sarandon
worthwhile essay spoiled:
keep your eye on the prize
“old white males” may play well among your friends but it costs you elections because you alienate people who should be your allies in seeking economic justice..which is what matters.
that would include laws against gerrymandering… but if you make gerrymandering “that which saves us from becoming a minority” you will lose the election you need to win in order to promote economic justice… which is what it will take to end pernicious racism and pernicious sexism if there is such a thing anymore,
you fool yourself if you think there has EVER been a Supreme Court, or Justice, who couldn’t find a way to convince himself his ideological preferences were “constitutional.” what you need to do is win elections so you can appoint justices whose ideology conforms to yours.
you don’t seem to recognize that losing the popular vote while winning the electoral vote IS constitutional: it is exactly what the constitution was written to make possible in order to protect the country from enthusiasms of the mob. back then the slave states were the big states, so the electoral college was not a racist idea. similarly the 3/5th provision for counting slaves did not make slaves 3/5th of a person… slaves were “no” person at all. but without counting them the “agrarian” South would not have agreed to the constitution… so that far at least, “3/5ths” WAS most definitely constitutional. the 13 amendment abolished all that (by rendering it moot) and the fourteenth sealed the deal… until the masters of the universe began to find ways around all civil rights whatsoever, in which they were aided by the overreaching of the civil rights enthusiasts (I was a civil rights enthusiast myself back in the day, but even then i could see that overreaching was going to kill us.)
etc. etc.
oh, i forgot
mass shootings is a police problem, not a constitutional problem.
your natural desire to protect civil rights seems to stop when it comes to the civil rights of people you don’t agree with. whatever any particular Court or Justice says about the ambiguous wording of the 2nd amendment the fact is that America evolved as / is a country of gun owners who would feel deprived and endangered if you took their guns away. it’s stupid to lose elections over this issue. i don’t like guns any more than you do. nor do i like mass shootings. but you are not going to solve these problems by making the huge numbers of people who disagree with you vote against the politicians who might move us toward economic justice. which is what matters.
The majority of Americans endorse banning assault rifles and automatic weapons.
Been true since they were first asked.
Ken:
I am going to reference two articles on what weapons are considered to be common amongst household ownership. Scalia had said this in Heller:
“We also recognize another important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms. ‘Miller’ said, as we have explained, that the sorts of weapons protected were those ‘in common use at the time.’ 307 U.S., at 179, 59 S.Ct. 816. We think that limitation is fairly supported by the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of ‘dangerous and unusual weapons.’”
Justice Scalia also wrote:
“It may be objected that if weapons that are most useful in military service — M-16 rifles and the like — may be banned, then the Second Amendment right is completely detached from the prefatory clause. But as we have said, the conception of the militia at the time of the Second Amendment’s ratification was the body of all citizens capable of military service, who would bring the sorts of lawful weapons that they possessed at home to militia duty. It may well be true today that a militia, to be as effective as militias in the 18th century, would require sophisticated arms that are highly unusual in society at large. Indeed, it may be true that no amount of small arms could be useful against modern-day bombers and tanks. But the fact that modern developments have limited the degree of fit between the prefatory clause and the protected right cannot change our interpretation of the right.”
COA, most notably 7th and 2nd districts, have ruled in favor of bans on assault type weapons and in particular M16 look-alikes.
“Justice Scalia’s Gun-Control Argument”
“Does the Second Amendment really protect assault weapons? Four courts have said no.”
EMichael,
but the minority is still big enough to cost us elections. and the constitution was written to protect minorities.
i don’t believe in killing people to win elections, but at the risk of sounding like a white ring liar, if you really want to save people’s lives, take away their cars. or even better, impose a huge tax on carbon, or limit gas production by law.
Run
all true, but i have to admit i think a minuteman militia would be important in discouraging a tyranny that might develop in this country (most like from the right, but at some point even the NRA types would catch on and become the resistance) and also make it a little harder for a foreign enemy to keep control after a conquest by tanks and bombers.
that said, i don’t think people should own tanks or bombers, but an assault type weapon is a reasonable modern equivalent of what was standard household defense when the constitution was written.
or as some legal scholars like to say… if you don’t like the damn Court decision, Amend the Constitution.
I am by no means “logically consistent” in my views on these things, at lest not according to those who disagree with me.
coberly:
We are not going on equivalents as to what was carried in the 18th century. In any case, I do not know of any repeating semi-automatic or automatic smooth bore muskets or smooth bore pistols.
We are going on what Scalia defined in his Heller decision and what the COAs have decided already. If you read the articles, you will know that if it looks like an M16 and acts like an M16 or 14 for that matter, it is an assault weapon and laws can be made to limit their possession.
Look those guys would pee their pants. Lot of bravado there. These guys are right leaners too.
Coberly
The constitution addresses tyranny by a majority but failed to address tyranny by a minority such as that imposed on the nation by the NRA and the Tea Party these past few years.
Run
Do you think that he didn’t realize the import. foresee the consequences?
ken:
What I am initially telling you and if you read the two articles; you can see Scalia left an out for communities. Communities can ban assault type weapons and they have banned assault type weapons. 7th District COA upheld Highland Park’s laws and 2nd District COA did the same using Scalia’s interpretation of the 2md Amendment in Heller.
Scalia understood what he was doing by all means.
I have no memory of the first ~170 yrs of the second but do remember from around 1951 when most families I knew had a gun or two around somewhere for hunting or for protection. Me, I had a single shot 22. Be damned if I can figure out why anyone in America would need an assault weapon.
What would have happened if the Governor of Michigan had called out the National Guard?
Ken:
The Governor can have them removed by the State and Capitol Police. What are they going to do, fight back? If they do not move or resist, they can be ticketed/cited and forced to come to court, or they can be jailed and released on bail once it is decided )if it is). If they win in court, ok so what . . . it is a pita to go to court.
run
what the minutemen had was a gun much better than stardoms army issue.
an assault weapon today is pretty much standard army issue.
that’s what i meant by equivalent.
you don’t have to convince me. you have to convince them.
Ken
i don’t like tyranny much either way you skin it. those idiots with guns are not going to give them up. and your majority doesn’t seem to be able to do much about it. So why not try to win a few elections, and see what you can do then.
It wasn’t so very long ago when I heard progressives laughing about soon America was going to be a minority majority country.. (watch what we do then!). So can we blame them if they try to seize the high ground before we get there?
Frankly I’d like the Left much better if they actually showed the “tolerance” they are always calling for.
Ken
” Be damned if I can figure out why anyone in America would need an assault weapon.”
same reason they need a big, fast, expensive car… or better: Pickup.
Coberly
When I see them with their vest, ammo, camo, and more than a few beer bellies bullying the populace and elected officials; I see adolescent boy bullies who never outgrew sword fights, cops and robbers, playing soldiers, …; and I think of arrested development.
I’d be glad to see them arrested myself.
damn fools were lucky the national guard wasn’t called out. probably the city police could have handled it.
but we don’t want another ruby ridge or waco.
now we get the fiasco in carney county.
but you see, there’s a difference between minutemen and brown shirts.
standard issue, not stardom issue… that one’s on spell check.
Harney County, not carney, although…
I saw it as CYA for Scalia. To me, Scalia felt that the law said whatever he said it meant, and, I always felt that he was a bully with both his intellect and force of will. I heard Justice Stevens in a TV interview say that Scalia bullied the entire court.
ken:
You could be right. He is a federalist and he is strategic in his thinking.
Ken,
” A judge should be wise enough to look to the possible consequences of his or…”
A judge should be wise enough to not let himself be bullied.
I think the Dems made a huge mistake having a public hearing of Anita Hill. Thomas should have been rejected for his ideology or general incompetence or… as emerged in the hearing… his lack of judicial temperament and self pitying “lynching.”
Dragging in his personal obnoxiousness with Hill was irrelevant to his fitness to be a Justice. Worse, it opened up politics to endless accusations of sexual misbehavior against men aspiring for high office.
At the time, I thought Clinton’s creepiness wa irrelevant to his performance in office. I haven’t changed that opinion, but I have changed my opinion about some of his performance.
I think (us) liberals would do well to keep our eyes on the prize.
I don’t think CYA can possibly apply to a Supreme Court Justice.
this is me whining:
i can’t help noticing that i have had zero effect on this conversation.
when i say something that does not fit strictly within the logical frame of the person I am addressing they tell me (essentially) i am not being logical. it does not seem to occur to them that i am suggesting their “logic” is leaving out relevant facts. which is the problem with ALL “logic” even Supreme Court logic.
got into a conversation the other day with my neighbor about Social Security. Big mistake. I think i know something about SS. But then so does he (think he knows something). So nothing I said could cause him to deviate or reconsider what he “knew.” I don’t mind fighting with such people on line… though it never does them any good… but it is not wise to fight with your neighbors or relatives about stuff that their or your opinion doesn’t matter about with respect to the relationship you need and should maintain with them.
End of whine. For some reason I thought it was relevant here, in a meta-relevant sort of way.
coberly:
For a moment, I thought you were whining at us. It always help to have a name at the beginning . . .
To your point, conversing about Trump with his knaves results in returned anger regardless of your solid points or reasoning. One reply directed at me was; “we have a president who has done everything he said he would do.” I am stymied as to how to reply to this without creating an argument. They are adamant he is doing the right things without any wherewithal of what his actions will do or precipitate. Here I can answer you, ken, and others directly without malice and be on target with little to worry about in return. If you do not like it , oh well . . .
I have seen the same in people who are trump-oriented, lack the intellect, and are what Oliver Wight would call cement-heads. I can assure you most of my neighbors do not appreciate my comments, neither do politicians, news reporters, and silly relatives. My wife and kids understand my beliefs and me. Democrats mostly appreciate my comments.
You do know more than most people on Social Security. Your logic is sound on solutions for it. Your patience is far greater than mine. If your neighbor is young, I can see why he would not understand. If they are older, they probably had their brains addled.
Thanks, Run.
I wasn’t whining AT anyone (except maybe myself); I was whining about something… the extreme difficulty of breaking through other people’s theory of everything in order to tell them they might not have thought of something…. without hurting their feelings, or making them mad..
People on Angry Bear are mostly smarter and more willing to think about something, and certainly a lot nicer about it.
My neighbor is probably as old as I am. My grandson is a bit younger. And my number one daughter thinks she agrees with me. But I can’t tell any of them anything they don’t already know, or won’t forget as soon as they are done agreeing with me.
And of course I am the same way. Mostly.
The Trumpistas are the worst, but it’s hard even to disagree with friends without if going bad on you… to some extent probably due to my lack of diplomatic skills. [for example, I say “you” when I mean “me.”
One problem with the second amendment discussion is that the fake militiamen don’t understand shit about the practical application of firearms, pretty much the same as liberals. Assault weapons were designed to be effective in both urban and jungle warfare assuming the counter insurgency force is larger than the insurgency, i.e., conditions where the counter insurgency force is free to engage in open hunting of their enemy. When the counter insurgency force is smaller, such as with Afghanistan versus Russia, then the enemy is engaged by the counter insurgency at safe distances by snipers making a bolt action high velocity round long barrel gun with a scope the first natural weapon of choice. Of course and RPG is better if available. Want to defend your home? Just keep your pump shotgun loaded for birds secure in your bedroom during the day, but unlock at bedtime with Fido as your security alarm system. Hand guns are for shooting snakes, the other kind that have no legs. There is no practical use for private automatic weapons other than wasting rounds under any even remotely feasible circumstances.
This is the sort of argument that the fake militiamen would never accede to if offered by a liberal weenie, but might accept if given by a big man in outdoor garb hold his high caliber bolt action rifle in hand. Unlike liberal weenies, those fake militiamen do actually know this stuff, but they have no desire to practice it. To most of them their guns are really status symbols and toys to them, and the rest is just an act. They love to make others uncomfortable and a bit scared to build their own egos.
Ron:
I am not the 6 foot 3 inch overweight bear of a guy which would convince the idiots they should put away their toys and machismo attitudes. I am not intimidated by them either as I chased many similar to them to Disbursing, the PX and then the Brig and picked them up for their court martials. Just a skinny 140# kid in high school at 6′ 1″ who never weighed more than 170# in the Corp (or the crotch as many called it). I left a Sergeant at the end of my enlistment. For some reason, I was able to date the pretty young women through high school and ended up with a beautiful woman as a wife (what my female cousins called her as they lived nxt door to her on either side. She never had a chance.).
I am not imposing in size although I still do wing chun do. I am not bearded with long hair or a beard. I am quiet and knowledgeable. That in itself scares them.
My Scoutmaster taught me how to shoot with a T-511 with metal sights. In the Corp I used an M-14. One day at Edson Range, I qualified shooting just 40 of 50 rounds and scoring a 191 out of 200. I did not think it to be unusual. The DI waved it in front of the others faces. I took my time. I could hold black at 500 yards with 10 rounds using a stock M-14 and metal sights. Just plinging. I liked the M-14 and lobbing those rounds in to the target. It was lethal. At greater range, I would use a 300 Winchester Magnum. I learned on 30-06 M!s to shoot long range.
My former scoutmaster won a match grade M1 chambered for 308 which he did not like. I bought it off of his widow.
I get little respect from these assholes and I really do not care. They did not do as much as this geeky kid who could out run and out shoot them. 🙂
Ron
you know more about guns than I do, and i probably agree with your argument up to a point. but the fact that you overlook is that these guys don’t want a gun for hunting or home protection. they want a gun in case they have to be insurrectionists when the evil government comes to take away their sons and daughters.
they may not know what they are doing, but as long as they think that is what they are doing your arguments fall on deaf ears… except the ears of the people who are just so upset by mass shootings that the only thing they can think of is taking everyone’s guns away.
and just to be sure you understand about me: i would be glad if no one had a gun. i hate them. i sure hate the people who run around with them in public… who think “this” government is the one that’s coming for their precious right to infect themselves and others in an epidemic.
i just don’t think the liberals should be losing elections over this issue.
i’m going to be out for the day, so if i don’t reply to your reply if any, it’s not because i don’t care.
Coberly,
I agree with you on all this leaving a narrow margin for some exceptions. I have three guns, stored in my basement that I never use, which I inherited from my dad. I have not hunted since I was a kid in the woods with my dad unless you count Viet Nam or nailing some squirrels, jays, and grackles at my bird feeders with my pump pellet gun.
OTOH, I have better luck talking with militia crazies than most because of my life and upbringing. My dad’s parents were Hubert Silas Weakly and Neva Nicholson (see blog at link below). Neva was half Cherokee. I grew up a redneck’s redneck, but also was a social activist because of my religion and unusually good at math.
i have never ha anything against rednecks. Some of them seem to have someting against me, but I try to avoid saying things to offend them. My pump guy is a hunter and probably what you would call a redneck; he is also a very sweet and generous man.
i’d be interested in your better luck talking with militia crazies. If I could talk to them, I would try to find a way to get them serious about militia.. i.e. knowing about military strategy and tactics, especially in a guerrilla setting. But I’d also try to get them interested in thinking through their politics…. they are voting for the wrong people. I’d wonder if they have any ideas about protecting their gun rights at the same time as finding a way to ease people’s fear of gun ownership.
On the other hand, some of them do seem to be crazy.
Coberly,
If you want to ease your way into socializing with the gun toting crowd then join the Isaac Walton League. Not too many militiamen there, but these environmentally conscious family outdoorsmen know the landscape well. Stay away from the NRA.
Run,
At 71 then I am long past my badass days. Besides my tact was never that we should put away our guns and machismo, but rather approach it responsibly. Automatics are for sissies. Wife beaters are punks.
Hubert Silas Weakley (my grandad) killed several Revenue agents before his land on Old Rag Mountain was stolen by FDR’s eminent domain takeover to build Skyline Drive, but he did so humanely with single shot kills to the head, not a damned machine gun. My dad had run away from home at age 13 because his dad was such a brutal man, particularly after my grandmother Neva Nicholson had died. Silas had feared Neva’s family while she still lived.
My dad went to work in FDR’s CCC Camps building Skyline Drive right past my dad’s childhood home. FDR was his only political hero. I was raised on New Deal politics and still hold them dear. I was also raised on more than enough irony, which builds strong bones necessary for hard work.
Coberly,
Also I am not saying that “they want a gun in case they have to be insurrectionists when the evil government comes” is a bad idea, but rather that I much prefer high-powered rifles with a scope for that way far over assault rifles. Like my grandad, if I am taking on the government then I am doing it concealed from a great distance rather than up close and soon dead. It worked for the Afghanis. My grandad was cruel and evil man, but not entirely stupid.
Motives are usually complicated things intertwined within each personality and life experience, but methods either work well or they don’t. The first law of engineering is KISS and it works just as well for social engineering as it does for mechanical engineering.
Coberly,
In answer to “i’d be interested in your better luck talking with militia crazies” then we must put a pin in that for now. Besides, I completely agree with you about not losing elections over this. Gun violence is insanely complicated and just banning the sale of new automatics will not affect that one bit. We already have a surplus of them and no one will seriously consider confiscation of the existing privately held inventory.
OTOH, I just want to change the conversation and that must happen by working both ends towards the middle. Losing elections to 2nd Amendment extremism is nuts. So, we agree. Getting more of the working class together on politics is the goal. Marginal majorities yield marginal results.
I will hopefully become more politically active again late in life after finishing some of my own business readying my household for my wife to retire in five years. With luck by then Covid-19 will be less of a worry. We will join the Isaac Walton League and the YMCA and travel a lot.
I always talk to a lot of people wherever I go and that where is always on the water, usually salt water, when traveling away from home. Social networking over the Internet may work fine for the socially challenged, but it has never been my thing. Skills and knowledge do give me a leg up here, but here is nowhere that I want to be once past my morning rituals that are presently more delimited by my 62 year old work at home wife than even by the weather.
Face to face works best for me and it also works best for the ones that I hope to reach although they do thrive in the echo chambers of the Internet, but they do not grow and change there.
Run,
I am jealous. I always dated the plainer looking girls. I was handsome enough myself, but I was raised with a serious aversion to personal vanity. Also, I was over thirty before I actually knew that I was considered handsome by women and by then behavior was already well established. I was married twice and divorced by age 25 and just had cohabiting relationships off and on for the next thirty years including one that lasted 12 years while we raised the three daughters of a Viet Nam vet that died of cancer, presumably due to exposure to Agent Orange.
I learned to shoot with metal sights but my vision began to fail as soon as I learned to read in the dark because my illiterate father resented my growing book knowledge. Yet I got most of my practical knowledge from him and always respected him and his skills. My dad was probably so insecure because of all the beatings that he got from his dad before he ran away from home at age 13. Thankfully, I got less beatings growing up than my dad. I never took a beating from anyone else, ever.
Being of modest income my dad was somewhat of a commie sympathizer as well as an avid New Dealer, yet was quite racist in his political views. Still he had no problem making black friends when he was again living among rural blacks later in life. When we lived among urban blacks during my pre-school years this was not the case.
[If I did want to lock and load on some militiamen then the “heroic” tales at the link below are the kind of ammo that I would use in my opening salvo. I also excerpted my fav.]
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-11-11-vw-192-story.html
‘Heroes’ Made Films, Not War : Veterans Day: Some of America’s great patriotic icons–John Wayne, for one–never set foot on a battlefield.
By MILES CORWIN
Nov. 11, 1992|12 AM
TIMES STAFF WRITER
“…Stallone spent several years during the Vietnam War as a girls’ athletic coach at an American school in Switzerland. He did not serve in the military because of a student deferment and later a medical deferment…”
[Hoorah!]
Ron
first, you did not miss much re pretty girls. pretty only lasts a few minutes. even intelligence is unreliable. character lasts.
as for the rest of the story, i feel we could all learn from you. i wasn’t asking you to teach me to talk to the crazies. i am interested in how you do it and what they say.
mostly, what you say to this crazy sounds like what i think i learned from experience with mostly city folk… that is to say, how much they are prisoners of their own experience whether experienced or just read-about.
but i don’t change anybody’s minds much.
i never would have thought of long guns / tactics on my own. i always thought guns in war were not so much to kill people as to keep them at a distance, until, of course, they thought they had enough to keep you at your distance.
theoretically, i think, Custer had enough long guns to keep the indians at a distance, but he struck a hornets nest, panicked,(lost formation) and the indians used cover white men couldn’t even see to close that distance to where a long gun was relatively useless. i think someone above said a pistol was useless. i was told the six gun changed the war against the Comanche, but I dunno.
Actually the first step towards gaining anyone’s respect is giving them respect first. You seem to know this already as does Coberly.
Custer’s full speed ahead military style was more suited to battling an outnumbered and ill-equipped Rebel army than it was a large force of clever natives. He really pissed them off and they suckered him in return.
Hand guns back them made better hammers than weapons, although the large bore slugs were deadly at close enough range to hit their target if they did not misfire. Today’s revolvers are fine for rats and snakes as long as they are not shooting back at you. Large bore revolvers are great as a backup weapon when hunting large game.
If I really want to persuade someone, then I invite them to my home and fix them dinner or better yet take them game fishing on the Chesapeake Bay, neither of which would go with Covid-19 and for a while after than since I have just begun renovating my home and have not even begun restoring my two fishing boats. I do have the budget in hand though, but a lot of the early work is best done with my own two hands. To infiltrate a larger group one must first establish themselves with the group’s alpha. I do not have time for that kind of thing now.
People already know what they need to know, but most of them are just afraid of something. First give respect, then reduce the obstacles of fear. If one wants to obtain agreement then begin by being aggregable.
Of course sometimes doing nothing works best. When Unite the Right came to Richmond, VA, then I did not even bother to show. The police presence and some unexpected humility kept them from being killed. White supremacists do not fair well in a black majority community noted with one of the highest per capita murder rates in the country.
Actually that last comment from me was in response to Coberly, but I had thought that I was answering Run. Oh, well. Sorry I had to step away for a bit to fix lunch for my wife and myself. Besides, I needed some time to organize my experiences into a cogent response to the following –
“… i am interested in how you do it and what they say…”
So, I began to answer the how. I have not been a part of any activist group on guns or any activist group at all since the mid-70’s. So, my experience has been more intimate and personal with coworkers, friends, and in-laws.
What I have found is scratch a 2nd Amendment advocate and what one finds is someone disgruntled over various aspects of liberal policy that would appear less civil to oppose. Men are pissed because their cheating wives can get custody and child support from them when they leave for a wealthier man. Upper income DINKS are opposed to liberal taxes on people like them. Christians are pissed because of school prayer and corporal punishment being taken from public schools only to be replaced by hotbeds of undisciplined juvenile delinquents. Sexual and violent crime and drug use among children are all blamed on liberals coddling criminals. Maybe these are just problems of perception, but then perception is everything. The 2nd Amendment rights are so galvanizing because they provide a coherent complaint about liberalism that make people appear far less like cads than their deeper resentments if truly expressed. Our politics are dominated by adversarial strategies and candid honesty has become a costly luxury. The dialectic process of representative government has been outsourced to predatory elites.
Talking past what we see as reactionary is a non-productive gambit. It is easy to blame it all on racism despite that black athletes have made many white southerners proud. My state, VA, never had a college athletic contender before integration, now we have had champions in every sport. Wanting people to get educated and work for their livelihood is not racist. Unwed pregnancy is not a birthright. We cannot solve these problem because they cannot be openly discussed. But we can always talk about gun ownership rights.
I have also encountered a couple of real gun crazies, the militia nuts and they were nuts and incorrigible, but I only encountered them at an NRA range that I went to with my best friend (R.I.P.) who had a collection of black powder rifles that he liked to shoot occasionally. He did Revolutionary War reenactments. He was nuts too, but a different kind.
[This puzzled me for a while, then it came to me.]
“…i was told the six gun changed the war against the Comanche…”
[Perhaps, maybe. The Comanche warrior was a fearsome adversary. Handguns had long been issued to officers as a side arm for the purpose of shooting deserters before they could get away. The cartridge load revolver was a step up from the cap and ball revolver, but both six guns were adequately effective for this purpose. This is to say that desertion was probably a bigger than usual problem in the Comanche Indian Wars.]
ron
https://www.texasmonthly.com/the-culture/two-sams-and-their-six-shooter/
not the same article i read before which suggested wider use of the Colt against the Comanche, but suggests why the Colt might have become the weapon of choice. on the other hand I don’t know much.
ron
still in general agreement but need to emphasize i have no plans to infiltrate anything. i don’t have the talent. just wondered to what extent someone like you could get a rational conversation going..
Coberly,
Granted that when battling in close combat against an enemy armed with essentially just sticks and stones then a repeating hand gun was much better than a single shot rifle. After the Trail of Tears native Americans knew where they stood with the white man, but had no means to do much about it. However, thanks to the white man’s endless wars then later after their big war with themselves, the Uncivil War, then there were more and more dead soldiers from which arms and ammo could be taken. I have never understood the white man’s pride in their achievement of domination over stone age natives. In any case, the Indian Wars after 1865 were a tougher climb despite the natives still being massively outgunned. It took repeating rifles to win those wars because the natives were no longer just fighting in close combat with sticks and stones against guns any more. By then hand guns were mostly used by officers to shoot deserters in the back.
Coberly,
I did learn something from this Indian Wars exchange that I never before realized though. Despite their contemporary representation as great warriors, the Comanches were entirely pacified before the Uncivil War. They did not last long enough to gain any significant arms from dead white soldiers. The Sioux and Apache were a much different matter.
Depends upon what one means by “rational.” If one thinks ““they want a gun in case they have to be insurrectionists when the evil government comes” is irrational, then good luck with that. OTOH, if one thinks “they want a gun in case they have to be insurrectionists when the evil government comes” is entirely rational as I do, then there is just the matter of which guns work best for such purpose and which guns pose more general risk to public safety than they offer usefulness for such rational purposes as personal defense, hunting, and a backup plan if the nation is either invaded or lost to tyrants.
Fighting fire with fire only works in certain circumstances, while fire smothering is more generally effective. The gun crowd can get that. Just because the state has assault weapon taking the state head on with assault weapons is not a play with a future. Now, can the Left get that if we can fear Donald Trump instituting an authoritative military state, then we must admit that fear of an evil state is rational.
Ron
you and I agree on many things, but without any realistic plan to do something…find a way to talk to the people who disagree with us.. it’s all arm waving. Interesting, but not getting us anywhere.
I was thinking of writing another article about Social Security. A few years ago “it’s the math” were the words du jour of the journalists who repeat the lies about Social Security… without doing the math, or in fact ever having done any math in their lives (math is not the same as arithmetic).
So I tried to look up where the buzzwords had originated. Ran into two columns, one in the Washington Post, and one in Forbes, where “the math” was featured…math so bonehead wrong it was embarassing to read.
I despaired, what hope is there when “respected” economics writers can get away with being so stupid… not “immoral” or just disagreeing with me about politics… but just so stupid…. they took a bunch of numbers, completely ignored what they meant, and what they left out, jumbled them together and announced “See! It’s just the math!”
So how can I hope anyone will believe my math? or does it even matter.
Back in the day, a famous pilot and writer (StExupery) joined the French airforce in the battle against Hitler. He was asked why when the end was inevitable. His answer was essentially, we need to oppose evil even if it is certain we will be killed. He was in fact killed. But I agree with him.
Organizing in the time of Covid-19 has limitations, but it is only organizing people in a common cause that can accomplish ends that are in opposition to the status quo, the starting situation. Organizing is the only strategic choice. There are lots of tactics that may be employed along the way. The tactical objective is to organize more support for the advocated common goals than we mobilize opposition against our goals. This is as much a communications problem as it is a policy objectives problem. Demonizing others along the way is not helpful. There have been and I am sure there truly are evil people in the world, but not every dumb ass is essentially evil despite the awful effects of their stupidity. If we make enemies of all the timid people and all the selfish people then we will be hopelessly outnumbered. Tolerance begins with acceptance of others as worthy despite their flaws. There are not enough angels in heaven to change world alone.
The power of the written word is often overestimate by those that write words. Sure, we can point to ideas that were written and came to pass, but how many more ideas that were written did not come to pass? Just about anything that one could imagine has already been thought of and written down. Mostly just those things that happen are referenced back to their “original” authors. The better reason to write our ideas is that others may know us by our words and ideas. If we are to organize a movement then it will need leaders and people that are trusted, that the movement can believe and believe in. We will move the opposition by our numbers rather than our words. Another reason to choose our words carefully is to shrink the size of that opposition and to increase our own size.
OTOH, the Third Reich was indeed an evil social movement with six million dead Jews and millions of Slavs and Gypsies and such as witnesses. That this is so often mentioned in the present context is evidence of just how out of touch with reality that we have allowed ourselves to become.
There are other marginal applications of the written word towards the ends of social change. Recruitment, which is essentially a matter of capturing minds young enough to be influenced, and stimulating the dialectic in both the evolution of thinking and in the refinement of semantics are two of the other most important reasons to write about our ideas.
Hopefully these will be my closing words on this.
The proof is in the voting booth.
Although for now it will hopefully be the absentee ballots, but there is no rhyme albeit much reason there.
[Oh, oh. Back again. In the end this bothered me the most because it was so true.]
“…but without any realistic plan to do something…find a way to talk to the people who disagree with us.. it’s all arm waving. Interesting, but not getting us anywhere…”
[I don’t have the resources to host a Progressive Nextdoor political organizing Internet social networking platform, but in our present situation that is exactly what we need. A plan is easy, but funding takes money.]
[Finally I got good weather on a week day while my wife works at the corner nook on her business PC. So, rather than waste my time writing myself I leave a link from one of my preferred sources.]
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/03/super-tuesday-liberalism-political-revolution-sanders
03.04.2020
When Liberals Lose, They Blame the Voters. Leftists Can’t.
By Paul Heideman
Bernie Sanders struggled last night not because voters are stupid, but because he’s proposing a way of doing politics that’s different from anything they’ve ever seen. Convincing them of that alternative is extremely difficult — but it’s not impossible…
a little dated. but mostly true. and it’s going to be a lot harder than he thinks.
i have been trying to tell my leftist friends that “socialism” will not win elections in this country. when i started this i thought that i personally had nothing against “socialism”, certainly not what the Right calls “socialism.”
but aside from being personally treated badly by “socialists,” i have come to be afraid of what the Left would do if they had the power to do it…. when you call yourself Jacobin you kind of alert people to the dangers of power-to-the-people.
and when you talk to people… Left or Right… you begin to see why Leftism might not work out in practice any better than Rightism.
Coberly,
I don’t concern myself with tyranny of the majority because there is no foreseeable future where people with my political afflictions will ever be more than a tiny, maybe 1% or so, of the electorate. Nonetheless, representative government is a contact sport. For it to be played well then participation must be broader and better informed and more unified among the electorate, otherwise it is a sport of elites that have all the natural biases that are endogenous to elitism and a unity of class interests.
“…when you call yourself Jacobin you kind of alert people to the dangers of power-to-the-people…”
[A wolf in wolf’s clothing? The traditional commie leaders have all been tyrants in cheap clothing. The closest label for my political affliction is anarcho-syndicalism, same as Chomsky whom I regard with considerable trepidation. So, more than any specific ideology I am a democrat, no capitalization required.]
My guess is that a democratic government would never have let industries consolidate and offshore or private pensions be replaced by individuals playing the DJIA. Tyranny indeed – hell Left indeed! The majority of people are (essentially by definition) not extremists. They are moderates, just not all crooks and liars and thieves.
ron, re tyranny
i agree. reason i am a Democrat, sort of. but to the extent we have a democracy… and i don’t think trump would have won without that extent, i hate to see us throwing away votes we should have. and the excesses and lapses of the Left do cost us votes.
i am left of the left, but i hate being associated with some of their more imbecile rhetoric.
i was watching Chomsky “Requiem” and nodding along until he said Social Security was all about people looking after each other… which it is not.
it looks from here like it is all about FDR looking after us with a program whereby we take care of ourselves with the help of government.
I must totally concur with you on tyranny and Chomsky. On the starting situation, Social Security, then I do believe it should be expanded. If Social Security replaces about 1/3 of ordinary people’s normal work life income then I would like it to replace 2/3 of ordinary people’s normal work life income. I am not a fan of IRA, 401, 457 style accounts for the four lower income quintiles since they will rarely be able to save enough to make them work out for retirement.
There are far too many structural economic changes that I believe we need to even get into out of respect for AB’s control of its own agenda, but more immediately because I have three acres of gas to cut with a 61″ riding mower this afternoon. If we have a lot of snow next winter then I may become less respectful.
Ron:
One of the prerequisites of commenting here is not being able to agree totally on anything. You must have some little issue, etc. you can pick apart with Coberly?
oops – three acres of grass – which means I will need to refill the gas tank before I finish
Run,
Sorry. No more being agreeable. Got it!
Ron
I agree.
Let us then agree to be disagreeable.
I think Run might just hve been suggesting, yawn, gosh, look at the time! We have to get up in the morning. Here’s your hat and what’s your hurry?