The Second Amendment as an Expression of First Principles

[Garufa]

This month's Imprimis features an interesting adaptation from a California professor's lecture regarding the 2nd A.

 

http://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis.asp

[Guest 6.8 AR]

That's a good one! A lot of food for thought.

[Guest Cami]

That is very thought provoking.

[leroy]

Thank you for posting this great analysis..

 

leroy

[npgunner]

Good article. Lots of things to chew on.

[RED333]

2 of the best of MANY good parts.

 

The Second Amendment is unique among the amendments in the Bill of Rights, in that it contains a preface explaining the reason for the right protected: Militias are necessary for the security of a free state. We cannot read the words “free State” here as a reference to the several states that make up the Union. The frequent use of the phrase “free State” in the founding era makes it abundantly clear that it means a non-tyrannical or non-despotic state. Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority in the case of District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), rightly remarked that the term and its “close variations” were “terms of art in 18th-century political discourse, meaning a free country or free polity.”

 

 

The Declaration also contains an important prudential lesson with respect to the right to revolution: “Prudence . . . will dictate,” it cautions, “that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes.” It is only after “a long train of abuses and usurpations pursuing invariably the same Object,” and when that object “evinces a design to reduce [the People] to absolute Despotism,” that “it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.” Here the Declaration identifies the right of revolution, not only as a right of the people, but as a duty as well—indeed, it is the only duty mentioned in the Declaration

 

THANKS MUCH FOR POSTING THIS!!!

Edited April 1, 2013 by RED333