PA Bill Number: HB2311
Title: Establishing the School Mental Health Screening Grant and Development Program.
Description: Establishing the School Mental Health Screening Grant and Development Program. ...
Last Action: Laid on the table
Last Action Date: Sep 23, 2024
Implementing The Logic Of The Second Amendment: It's Not Just a Right, Its a Plan :: 12/11/2015
A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined, to which end a uniform and well-digested plan is requisite… (George Washington, First State of the Union Message)
By Alan Keyes
In a recently published article I refer to the terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California as an indication that we have arrived at “the penultimate stage of the general offensive under way against the United States.” That offense aims to overthrow America’s government of by and for the people. As I wrote that sentence, I was thinking of an account Montaigne gives in the essay entitled “Should the commander of a place under siege come out to parley.” (On the Spirit of the Laws, Book I, Chapter 5) He tells the story of Henry De Vaux, the French commander of the Château de Commercy when it was besieged by the English. Montaigne relates that the English commander,
…having undermined most of the Castle, so that nothing remained but to light the fuse in order to bury the besieged forces under its ruins, invited the said Henry to come out to parley, for his own good; which he did, accompanied by three others. And after his evident ruin was brought before his eyes, he felt, on that account, singularly obliged to his foe, at whose command, after he surrendered himself and his forces, the Château was razed to the ground.
In this story, the parley was not an occasion for discussion, much less negotiation. It was simply the opportunity for a demonstration which, as it turned out, had an immediate effect. Properly understood, the story ought to bring to mind President Truman’s decision to devastate Hiroshima and Nagasaki, using the atomic bomb. However, when he acted, Truman had to take account of the kamikaze mentality engendered by the Samurai ethic of Japan’s rulers at the time. So, given the vulnerability of his means of delivering the decisive stroke, he did not inform his enemy in advance of the devastation he had the power to unleash.
What has this to do with the terrorist attack in California? Well, it may help to explain why, though the terrorist dogs were obviously willing to run for their ferocious masters, they did not bark. There was no clearly identifying battle cry, no exultant “Allahu Akbar!” to bless the ritual slaughter of their victims. Their silence forestalled the irresistible rush of righteous indignation that was likely to be released had the assailants immediately confirmed that their violence was part of the Jihadist war against the American people.
Instead, Americans had to endure the pretense of uncertainty, which Barack Obama upheld, however idiotic it seemed to his critics. As if in with conscious knowledge of its purpose, he gambled on the semblance of doubt the attackers’ silence made possible. And the gamble paid off. The outrage that should have galvanized the nation’s moral will, was held in check.
On that account, Barack Obama’s dithering about the identity of the attackers could be made to seem merely ridiculous, rather than infuriating. The wave of moral energy that might have forced an offensive response to the offense committed against us, broke instead against a levy of hesitant, defensive speculation that abated its force. This was enough to turn natural perception of the episode from an outrage, deeply felt as such, into something not unlike the action dramas Americans are used to watching on TV. They rouse strong emotions, but they are held in check by the sense that what they depict is not what it appears to be.
This double mindedness is exactly suited to produce a “demonstration effect”. The terrorist episode rouses fear and indignation, yet without the sense of urgency that calls for an immediate response. But unlike the dramas played out in the movies and on TV, the lurking sense that there is no real danger is shattered by images and accounts that make it plain that danger has in reality struck home. But the energy that should therefore be channeled into action against the enemy, is focused instead on the emotional perception of power the enemy has demonstrated. So it nourishes fear rather than indignation.
Thus, as passive spectators, Americans are led to consider the appraised attack against them as though it were evidence at a trial, rather than an episode in the trial by combat already under way. It takes on the aspect of an event to processed by our intellect and imagination, rather than by the instinctive emotions that urgently call for action. Perceived thus objectively, there is room for speculation. How many more are there like this, living in our midst as seeming co-workers, colleagues and even friends? In what office or theater, what mall or grocery store will they next appear to threaten and take our lives? Such questions tend to dispel the deep sense of security that, in so many places in America, our people take we take for granted as we carry out the normal tasks of daily living.
As we consider the dimension of thought in which this speculation occurs, we should realize that it is like the shadow cast by objects in the sun. Depending on its height, they can seem so much larger than, in fact, they really are.
But the shadows cast by terrorist attacks are armed, and dangerous to our lives — a proven fact we cannot mitigate by any suspension of belief. It can happen here. It is happening. What recourse do we have? Must we simply find a place to hide, a way to flee? Like the passengers in a diving jet, must we wait on someone else to bring the situation under control?
The language of the Second Amendment has a logic to it which makes clear that the Constitutional answer to these questions is emphatically NO! In my column for the Daily Caller, forthcoming later this week, I will discuss that logic, and the plan it implies for securing America’s free state.
In the first part of this essay (published earlier this week at Barbwire.com) I revisited the logic of the 2nd Amendment, in light of the terrorist attack in Sen Bernardino, Ca. What I wrote there may lead you to feel gloom and despair. But I hope it also leads you to protest. Your protest will bear witness to the American heart within you, which despises the mentality of helpless passivity and victimization some of our so-called “leaders” mean to impose upon us. It will bear witness against the assumption that, when enemies strike against our families, friends and neighbors, our own readiness, will and courage have no role to play in defending them.
Frederick Douglass famously proclaimed “Those who would be free, themselves must strike the blow.” Truly in our time we are called upon to remember that those who would have safety must prepare themselves to secure it.
But instead of anything that seriously focuses on this preparation, we have leaders like Barack Obama, who pretend that our innocent lives will be made more secure once we are disarmed, by laws that will reassure would-be attackers of the fact that we are “soft targets,” universally vulnerable. During the reportage on the recent attack, I heard one commentator speculate that when Syed Farook first visited what was to be the scene of his terrorist atrocities, part of his purpose was to make sure that it was, in fact, a soft target, where people could be slaughtered without fear of armed opposition. What kind of dullness or stupidity leads American to believe we will be more secure when laws to deprive us of the means of self-defense have been successfully imposed by national dictatorship?
But we should ask, as well, what kind of thoughtless folly it takes to presume that simply assuring that more guns remain in the hands of our individual citizens (as the Constitution provides) will, by itself, be an effective defense? People who mean to speak accurately of the Second Amendment’s will stop ignoring the logical context it provides: “a well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state.” Well-regulated means well ruled. So, when it goes on to speak of “the right of the people to keep and bear arms” the Second Amendment invokes the God-endowed unalienable right to life, which logically must include the means to do all that the laws of nature and of nature’s God allow to preserve it.
Such an exercise of right is freedom well ruled, meaning constrained by the commitment to do right as God gives us to understand it. It is unalienable right, endowed by God. It has nothing to do with licentious freedom, i.e., the specious right to wield weapons according to morally ambidextrous human whims and passions. Unlike too many of our present “leaders,” the representatives of the people during the founding era did not put their faith in weapons of war. They put their faith in God. They took to heart Christ’s warning that “those who take the sword, by the sword they will be utterly destroyed,” while he who lives by the Lord “though he has died, yet shall he live.”
The discipline of life that results from God’s rule gives rise to the courage to face death. But it does so by inculcating the understanding required to do right by the living, not by destroying or discouraging that understanding. The key to that understanding is the example of Christ, who exalted God’s will above his own, even in the face of death. His sacrifice in this respect appeared to involve surrendering to the power of death, but Christ’s subsequent resurrection proclaims that the surrender to God’s will is itself the true meaning of life, over which death has no power. In light of this proclamation, the defense of life is first of all a matter of respecting God’s will, as Christ did. No one really falls prey to death unless he fails to do so.
This respect for God’s will; this reliance upon His understanding, is the premise of all God-endowed right, including liberty. It is the rule or regulation required to sustain God’s permission to act, which every such right entails, including the right to keep and bear arms. The Second Amendment forbids the government from interfering with the activity by which the people implement their respect for life, which logically includes access to the means of doing so. But as it does so with a view to securing the freedom of action derived from God’s permission, the rule or regulation that sustains it must be established and maintained. Hence the connection with “a well-regulated militia.”
As I have said before, I say here again — the answer to terrorism is not the suspension of individual rights, and/or the consolidation of arms and power in the hands of tyrannical government. Instead, we need to return this nation to the acknowledgment of God endowed right that is the root of the moral self-discipline, by which alone self-government can be sustained. In light of that restored moral discipline, we must then restore and adapt the militia system, well-regulated and trained at the local (village, town, neighborhood) level, so that every able bodied person capable of bearing arms knows what they can and should do when their neighborhood, work place or any other public venue they frequent, faces a violent assault, by terrorists or any other violent predators.
To do right by the Second Amendment, we need more than individuals armed with guns. We need local communities armed with a plan to assure that every part of the militia will know exactly what to do with their arms wherever and whenever unlawful violence threatens the communities in which they live.
http://dailycaller.com/2015/12/10/implementing-the-logic-of-the-second-amendment/
