Just thought I’d opine on something that Grokster Ed had already brought up (had problems the ‘Net going up and down during the storm earlier in the week, so I’ve been rather silent last few days). One of my Samsphere buddies, WTH, had an opinion that he had sent along via email as well:
The money quote from a so-called Republican in the state:
“I honestly thought from my own standpoint that the vast majority would register,” Sen. Guglielmo said. “If you pass laws that people have no respect for and they don’t follow them, then you have a real problem.“
That would be Republican Guglielmo, state senator who just seems perplexed – why are they not obeying the law that we have put over them? As Ed saw it, Connecticut’s top law enforcer, Lawlor, believes it is the now illegal gun owners are in the wrong big time and is certainly willing to do something about it. I saw the above line, too, that WTH singled out agreed that was the money line. Problem for Guglielmo and Lawlor is that I think both are seeing it from the wrong direction:
“Why aren’t they listening and obeying us???”
The right slant should have been “I guess we didn’t listen to our citizens – and have forgotten our Constitutional boundaries“.
The default position of legislators is that they are right and proper, that ordinary citizens are duty bound to obey. What they have wrong is the “duty bound” part – it is more that a strong traditional American value is respecting the Rule of Law. What I think is happening is not recognizing that it isn’t the PEOPLE that are wrong, but the LAWMAKERS that are wrong. When that many people are refusing to follow the law, there is a problem in the law. We may be hitting that tipping moment in our history when our government has assumed too much legitimacy by itself and denigrated the role that people have (that old “consent by the governed” thing, dontcha know”).
As regular readers of the ‘Grok know, I’ve been collecting some of what our Democrat House Reps here in NH have been saying that fits his outlook to a T:
- NH State Rep Kris Roberts (D): “Government has to protect us from our own stupidity.”
- NH State Rep Leigh Webb (D): “The role of government is to legislate behavior“
- NH State Rep John Mann (D): “liberty” is either an ideology or a gross misrepresentation and oversimplification (accidental or otherwise) of what government is for.”
- NH State Rep Laura Pantelakos (D): “I don’t care about protecting peoples’ Liberty“
- NH State Rep Cynthia Chase (D): One way is to pass measures that will restrict freedoms that they think they will find here.
That last one requires the full quote, in the context that this transplant from the Socialist State of Rhode Island said she’d do to stop the Free State Project members (who generally are for limited government, anathema to a uber-Progressive as she) from migrating here:
“What we can do is make the environment here so unwelcoming that some will choose not to come, and some may actually leave. One way is to pass measures that will restrict freedoms that they think they will find here.”
It is this condescending attitude of “the governors” towards we the governed that has been seeping downward for the last few decades as the Progressive movement has become more and more out front as the socialist and communist radicals of the 60’s wormed their way into our institutions all around our Civil Society and Government. People can feel it and are nervous – and may well be reacting against this overreach (perhaps an incipient reaction similar to the TEA Party explosion countering the dense pack Progressive policies of Obama and the Democrats starting in 2008?)? Americans are generally a gentle people and slow to anger – this passive aggression against the State government may be the first signs of that anger.
I pass this testimony of Ian Underwood concerning the now failed NH HB1589 along for your enjoyment again – it is STILL specTACULAR and goes to the heart of why this CT lawmaker is so spun around (emphasis mine):
“Article 2A of the NH Constitution clearly states that:
All persons have the right to keep and bear arms in defense of themselves, their families, their property and the state.
It doesn’t say ‘some‘ persons. It doesn’t say ‘approved‘ persons. It doesn’t say ‘persons who don’t scare us’. It says ‘all persons’.
A right for which you have to ask permission isn’t a right at all. So the first point, I think, that has to be made regarding this bill is that it takes the wrong approach towards the goal sought by its sponsors.
The right approach would be to amend the NH Constitution: to declare that NOT all persons have the right to defend themselves, or that self-defense is not a right but a privilege, or perhaps to change the definition of ‘persons‘ to something like ‘persons we like’. But until such a change has been made, any 5th grader can see that this bill conflicts with the NH Constitution. It takes a constitutional scholar to miss that.
Now, clearly the sponsors of this bill don’t feel that they need to go to the trouble of amending the constitution, and that’s partly because, as we all know, many judges would be happy to tap-dance around any constitutional challenge by changing the meanings of words like ‘all’ ,by creating ‘balancing tests’ out of thin air, and so on.
But I urge the committee to consider a couple of deeper, less obvious consequences, not just of passing a bill like this, but of even bringing it up for consideration.
The first is that a bill like this undermines respect for the very rule of law itself. After all, if the legislature isn’t going to respect the limits placed on it by the NH Constitution, then why should individuals respect the limits placed on them by that legislature — whether regarding guns, or schools, or traffic laws, or anything else?
If we’re going to disregard the big rules, why pay any attention to the smaller ones? For that matter, if words like ‘all’ and ‘person’ no longer mean what they’ve meant for centuries, then why should we pretend that laws, which are made of words, mean anything at all? In other words, if you can behave as if ‘all’ doesn’t mean ‘all’, why can’t I behave as if ‘not’ doesn’t mean ‘not’?
The second is that one of the things that all persons have the right to defend themselves against is their own government. When (in the words of Article 10) ‘the ends of government are perverted’, the people have not just the right, but the duty, to reform or replace that government, something that might require the use of force. It’s for this reason that an explicit Right of Revolution is recognized by the NH Constitution. And it’s for this reason that it is absurd to give a government you may someday have to fight any say at all over what arms you have.
And this bill does pervert the ends of government, by seeking to force people to make this choice: You can be free, or you can obey the law, but not both.
So the great irony here is that the very existence of this bill, and others like it, is the strongest argument for why, even if passed, they should simply be ignored — thus making felons out of people who are harming no one, but who simply decline to let the fears of a few undermine the freedom of all.”
Connecticut has done just that – made felons of its citizens that are just as horrified at the tragedy at Newtown. Citizens that are law abiding and respectful of their laws. But lawmakers can take the law into their own hands and either forget that they, too, have boundaries – or willfully decide to ignore them. They believe that they are above the law even as they expect us to live under it. But what many lawmakers are not recognizing is that many of us are going back to the foundational Law – the Constitutions that were written plainly enough that the citizens at the time of the Revolutionary War (and the decades past it until Ratification) so it is plainly understood by us today. They are becoming re-acquainted with their Rights – not the faux rights that everybody and their brother seems to claim for just about anything, but our real Rights that are ours by virtue of our birthright, and not those merely handed out by political whim.
These citizens know the difference and are no longer willing to give their “consent” to a law they believe to meddle with Rights that the lawmakers have no right to infringe. The lawmakers should honor that and retract a law that makes citizens felons – for doing nothing at all.
