…The bearing of arms is a sign of citizenship, which is to say, of being a full participant in government who acts through it, as opposed to subjectship, the state of being a passive being who does not act through government but who is acted upon. In that sense, it is like the ability to vote or to be eligible for service in government. Frederick Douglass understood this linkage perfectly, inasmuch as these ideas were much better understood in those more literate days. “A man’s rights rest in three boxes,” he said.
“The ballot box, jury box, and the cartridge box. Let no man be kept from the ballot box because of his color. Let no woman be kept from the ballot box because of her sex.” The militias contemplated by the Second Amendment were armed citizen volunteers who could act to use the force of arms to keep the peace in an emergency; they are entitled to act in the peacekeeping role generally reserved for the state because, being the citizens of a republic, they are the state, the very seat of its sovereignty. The formal government is a provisional arrangement (hence regular elections) constituted as a convenience. While the Second Amendment may not codify a “right of revolution,” [but we do here in NH – Article 10 of the NH Constitution -Skip] as some put it, the idea of armed citizens pushing out a government that had become inconvenient, a burden on their liberties rather than a guarantor of them, could hardly have been alien to a group of men who had just risked their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor doing just that.
…The Democrats demand that Americans be stripped of their Second Amendment rights with no attention paid to the Fifth Amendment, to due process. They propose that Americans be stripped of their legal protections under the Bill of Rights even when they have not been charged with, much less convicted of, a crime. They propose that this be done on the basis of a series of secret government lists, whose contents, criteria, and keepers are treated as state secrets. You cannot call yourself a “liberal” and endorse that. You cannot call yourself a “liberal” and endure that.The Democratic party in 2016 is not a liberal party. It is a party that is working diligently to rescind free-speech rights on one front and to undermine due-process protections on another. It has abandoned the notion of procedural justice in pursuit of substantive outcomes demanded by its supporters, the rule of law be damned. There is a term for the armed pursuit of justice, real or perceived, outside the rule of law, and that term is “lynching.” The Democrats have lynching in their political DNA, and they seem to be unable to evolve past it. Ironically, their abandonment of due process and their flirtation with tyranny are reminders of one of the reasons why the Founders believed it necessary to have an armed citizenry. That is an unpleasant thing to contemplate. Better that all of us, conservatives and the genuinely liberal alike, should demand the rule of law, due process and all, even for our political opponents, even when we do not like the outcome.
