Posted by
The Hermit Crab on Tuesday, July 01, 2008 7:46:05 AM
Pundits across the board are reading the meaning of (and occasionally reading their own opinions into) the Heller verdict, which declared the obvious fact that the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution guarantees the individual's right to keep and bear arms. With all of the learned and not-so-learned commentary we've received so far that I've read, none of it has addressed the most worrisome fact of the decision to a good freedom-loving conservative like me. What concerns me is the 5-4 margin.
The 2nd Amendment reads "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." To borrow from a Solar Pons mystery story by August Derleth I read in a Alfred Hitchcock collection many years ago (thanks to my sister Judi, who bought it for me), the meaning of the amendment "is as plain as a pikestaff to anyone not seeking riddles in it". Since the debates on the Amendment established that the militia consisted of "the whole people, minus some public officials" (I quote from memory here; if I have the wording wrong I'd appreciate hearing about it), the right to keep and bear arms is guaranteed to the population, not just to those enrolled in an organized militia. Liberal law professor Lawrence Tribe is just one of many lefty law professors who admit that no other interpretation of the 2nd Amendment is possible.
Yet the Heller case which affirmed this self-evident truth only produced a 5-4 margin in favor. What this tells me is that the four liberal block(head) justices are ever-ready to vote to deny our Constitutional rights, no matter how plainly stated in the wording of Constitution itself, any time it is counter to their own leftist principles. They will assassinate your freedoms whenever their purposes will be served. It was only the vote of the court weathercock, Justice Anthony Kennedy, whose votes can only be predicted by astrology, that kept the court from, in essence, declaring the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution unconstitutional!
To this pass, then, we have come. Our Supreme Court now consists of four admirable justices (Chief Justice Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, and Alito), four leftist assassins (Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer), and a weathercock (Kennedy). On these our liberties depend.
Do you find that reassuring?