Whose Rights Are They Anyway?
It’s inevitable in a collapsing civilization that you will observe every sort of ethical and moral inversion conceivable, but there’s also a chance you’ll see something novel. In 2021 America, I think I’ve spotted something happening that ought to cause all Americans a moment of pause. When hate speech legislation began to erupt around the country in the 1990s, many of us thought it a despicable idea, in part because the sort of acts that generally accompany hate speech evince all the hate one need infer from those acts, and because speech does not cause actual harm. Essentially, critics of hate speech legislation adopted the old but true “sticks and stones” argument, and while correct, they also cautioned about the absurd directions a hate speech law could take us as a civilization. Sadly, they were quite right, and now we’re seeing the development of the most sickening notions. Recently, it’s been proposed that government bureaucrats should be safe from hate speech. In simplest translation, and in most recent application, people wish to protect government officials from criticism, particularly criticism that attaches criminal consequences to the government official’s actions. Suggesting, for instance, that Dr. Anthony Fauci should face a war crimes tribunal for his apparent involvement in funding the gain-of-function research in the Wuhan lab that now appears to have been the source of SARS-CoV2, a.k.a., COVID-19. This notion, that public officials must not be criticized, and especially mustn’t be accused of crimes, is anathema to free speech, but it’s a growing symptom of a broader threat. Slowly but surely, the bureaucracy is seeking to protect itself, and to empower itself, by depriving Americans of rights while redistributing those rights to itself.
Consider the subject of the Second Amendment. Here we see every level of government working to restrict the rights of Americans to keep and bear arms. The long train of abuses in this area is not merely horrible, but increasingly, we see the government agents employing weaponry denied to American citizens. In some jurisdictions, certain types of ammunition are prohibited to citizens, while police agencies suffer no such limits. More broadly, it is not unusual for police departments to have at its disposal full-auto select-fire weapons. They may have other destructive devices like grenade launchers, and they’re not restricted to purchasing from the shrinking pool of such weapons legally available to citizens. The Armed Forces maintain many millions of small arms to which you have no entitlement. I was in the Army. I’m no less trained or qualified to handle such weapons responsibly than I had been as a young man in uniform, and indeed, I would argue that in most ways, I’m far more qualified and much more responsible in my conduct some thirty years later than I had been in my youth. I also have a good deal more to lose by being irresponsible. The Second Amendment doesn’t specify any type of weapon. It says “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” It doesn’t say “except for short-barreled shotguns,” or “excluding machineguns.” And yes, such things did exist at the time of its writing and adoption. I don’t wish to have here an argument about the second amendment, but notice the underlying problem: My rights to have a machinegun, for instance, have been stripped from me, while government institutions well beyond the military now legally possess and employ them. My right – your right – has been redistributed to the government or its favored agents.
Consider the matter of religion. What is a religion? A religion is defined variously, but a common description is “an organized system of beliefs, ceremonies, and rules used to worship a god or a group of gods. informal : an interest, a belief, or an activity that is very important to a person or group.” This begs the question: What is a god? They have an answer for this too: “a superhuman being or spirit worshiped as having power over nature or human fortunes; a deity.” In this context, I’ve often argued that for statists, “god” is government. In other contexts, you could argue that they contend “the public interest” (whatever they may claim it it to be at a given time) fits this definition. In our public schools, your children have been prohibited from praying. Teachers are most often prohibited from displaying artifacts or symbols of their faith, such as a cross or crucifix, and in the workplace, similar restrictions apply. Yet in all cases and at all times, public officials claim to tell us what is “in the public interest,” and they do so with a zeal no less ferocious than the most militant religious actors. Somehow, we’ve permitted the worship of the state and state power in the guise of “the public” to be adopted as a national religion, while we’ve seen our individual right to free exercise of religion diminished and slowly eroded. Bureaucrats are permitted to worship at the altar of false science, and they’ve even taken to re-writing the historical evidence that counters their religious observances. Again, rights explicitly guaranteed to the people have been redistributed to the state, its instrumentalities and agents.
The Ninth Amendment provides: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” This is pretty explicit in terms of its reach, and yet we see precisely the opposite taking effect. In virtually all controversies between citizens and the state, judges routinely blow past this amendment to rule with inverted effect. This amendment tells us that simply because a right isn’t specifically listed and defined in the Constitution, this doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, and it doesn’t mean the government has a right to violate it. Of course, one of the reasons the courts may have avoided giving this amendment any effect in law is that depending upon how the concept of “a right” is defined, one could imagine all sorts of rights that don’t fit that definition. Another problem is that Americans, broadly, don’t understand what is a right, nor do they understand that governments have no rights. Governments have only claims to or grants of authority. In effect, governments have powers, but not rights. What has happened is that we’ve permitted governments to steal our rights and smuggle them into the what should have been a narrow set of their powers. Now, governments and their favored grantees enjoy virtually unlimited exercise of rights that are properly held and exercised solely by the people.
We see this in other areas as well. You’re supposed to be secure in your persons, houses, papers, and effects, according to the fourth amendment, but as in other matters, governments have laundered the violation of these things through nominally private actors – corporations and non-governmental organizations – such that in our modern world, your electronic data is subject to snooping by Apple or Google or any other large corporate interest, to be handed-over to government on request or even without having been asked. Meanwhile, if you approach government, demanding access to public records, every form of dishonesty and malfeasance will be employed to obstruct disclosure of any information the actors within government(or its agents and cohorts) have decided you ought not know. Your putative right to open government has been demolished, and your right to private information has been exploded, all by this same process of the redistribution of your rights from the people to public offices and agents.
This applies to more than the “free exercise” clause of the First Amendment. Consider that while you should properly enjoy a guarantee to freedom of speech, your ability to exercise that right is being demolished, or redistributed to government and government’s favor actors. See Dr. Shiva’s detailed explanation on how government now launders censorship through its private cohorts here to understand how your First Amendment has been gutted for the interests of the state. This isn’t limited to the explicit rights guaranteed in the constitution, nor is my outline here exhaustive in detail. It is possible to evaluate many laws, acts, and orders, as well as court rulings to have been a part of this general redistribution of our liberties to entities that do not rightly possess them. It confronts us daily. Why are car manufacturers shifting to electric vehicles? Is it because the market wants them, or is it because government and its co-conspirators are imposing them? Are they the most economical or “green,” or is this simply somebody’s peculiar desire and interest? In every facet of our lives, our rights to choose and act in accordance with our natural endowment has been abridged, either by governments claiming authority it does not have, or exercising power it has seized by guile, legal gymnastics, or outright force.
All of this is despicable, given that ours was to be a constitutional, representative republic. There may be no solution within the context of our existing government, but to take the approach of the framers in the face of the failures of the Articles of Confederation. We may need to dissolve this government in its entirety, by adopting a new constitution that supersedes our current governing document. Do we have the wisdom to actually do so? Can we obtain sufficient broad public support for such a thing? I suspect it will only be possible when our rights are completely redistributed into the hands of increasingly tyrannical state authorities. At that point, it may take force of arms. We are coming to a departure from civil society, because Americans are and have been accustomed to a broad palette of rights and rather tighter limits on government power in all but a few narrow applications, despite peculiar disagreements among us. This current circumstance cannot go on indefinitely, so it won’t. What happens next will be our greatest challenge. We have already answered Franklin’s concern: We have not kept it. Americans are correct in worrying now that we will not get it back.
Hating “Extremism”
Friday, August 24th, 2012One of the terms that has gained favor in popular culture, particularly on the left, but increasingly in the broader political arena in America is the word “extremist.” I find this word to be a shallow, empty word, used as a bludgeon, but carrying no factual, logical impact while delivering an entirely emotionalized blow. I’ve been called an “extremist” depending on the issue at hand, and after a while, the term loses its meaning precisely because “extremist” merely refers to a person who had been “extreme” in some facet of their actions, character, or pronouncements. In this context, the word “extremist” tells us precisely nothing about the matter at hand, but since it’s an ugly-sounding word, it is used by leftists for its emotional impact rather than as the basis for any rational discussion. When I see the term “extreme” or “extremist” hurled around in this fashion, it has generally been a leftist hurling it, but increasingly, I have seen conservatives begin to wield this same weapon, and what this signifies is how intellectually slothful some on the conservative side of the aisle have become in making an argument, or at the very least how thoroughly they disrespect the intellect of their audiences. When some commentator, pundit, or writer uses the term “extremist” or “extremism,” whether from right or left, we ought to demand a fuller explanation than that which had been provided by such an empty taunt.
Rather than pulling out Merriam Webster’s dictionary in demonstration of the misuse of the term, I’d prefer that we restrain ourselves to contextual examples. Knowing that I’ve been labeled an “extremist” myself on a few occasions, it might be instructive to view the context in which such a charge has been leveled. After all, in our culture, the term “extremist” has such negative connotations that one is immediately painted with an easel of colors that suggests a wild-eyed maniac, lurching zealously in pursuit of some particular end. Of course, therein arises the problem, because the term tells us little or nothing about the nature of the “extremism.” Instead, due to the negative connotations associated with this word, the presumptive impact delivered is negative, and yet there is nothing inherent in the meaning of the word to suggest a deleterious implication.
For instance, I have been told I am an “extremist” because I refuse to abandon the logically consistent position that life begins at conception, and that if men are endowed by the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God with certain unalienable rights, they must begin to arise at that moment, such that any excuse for ending that life must still ignore the rights of that individual, no matter how new and as yet, undeveloped it may be. The assertion leveled in my direction is that by remaining inflexible to any other contextual concerns, I have become an “extremist.” The only thing truly “extreme” about my position is that I refuse to concede the argument on the basis of situational ethics, or relativism. My support of a right to life for all human beings is therefore branded as “extreme,” and the connotation attending that label is foisted upon me in the same manner that Timothy McVeigh was called an “extremist” without reference to what it had been about which he was extreme, or to what extremes he was willing to go in furtherance of his twisted world-view. That’s the object being pursued in many instances in which the word “extreme” is so frequently misused: The desire to paint one’s political opponents as being raving lunatics.
I have been called a “Second Amendment Extremist,” because I can read the plain language of that amendment, and because I can see in the construction of the sentence that comprises it everything I need to know about the intentions of its authors. I note that in that amendment, there is a dependent and independent clause, and that if I identify the two, what is plain is exactly opposite of what leftist, statist legal scholars contend. They suggest that the right of the people to keep and bear arms is dependent on their proximity to a “well-regulated militia,” but knowing the construction and grammar of the English language, I know they are lying. The full sentence states:
There are two clauses in this sentence, and you can decide for yourself which is the dependent and the independent. One definition of the distinction would lead you to test them each as sentences. “A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State…” Complete sentence, or fragment? Now try the other: “…the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Clearly, the second clause is independent, while the first clause is dependent on the latter. You could, in point of fact, place any clause whatever in place of the first, and not change the meaning or impact of the second. “Ham and cheese on rye being necessary to the fullness of one’s stomach, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Yes, this seems a preposterous remark, but notice that substituting my dependent clause about ham sandwiches does exactly nothing to the meaning or impact of the independent clause. What we must therefore learn from this is that the author of this Amendment, and those who subsequently adopted and ratified it intended to say “The right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Why put the other clause there? The intention was to demonstrate one cause relative to governance for which the government must sustain that right, but it was not intended to be the exclusive or sole reason for the amendment. Instead, it was simply to explain one interest the federal government should recognize so that it does not infringe upon that right.
Naturally, the fact that I would rely on the actual words of the amendment, and the rules of English to recognize its essential meaning simply implies (according to leftists) that I am some sort of “extremist.” Note, however, that I am only an “extremist” about this subject in the eyes of those who at least contemplate depriving the American people of this right. I might just as easily state that those who would consider such a disparagement of our rights as an “extremist,” and I would contend to you that they are, but I will at least offer you the respect of telling you the nature of their “extremism,” rather than relying upon that word to carry the emotional water I wish to convey.
Of course, this can be applied to many things, well away from the realm of politics. How about human relationships? I am certain that my wife would prefer that I remain an “extremist” with respect to my observance of my wedding vows. I am certain that my friends and neighbors would prefer that I remain an “extremist” when it comes to my honesty in my dealings with them. I am likewise certain that my co-workers would prefer that I maintain my extreme diligence and thoughtfulness with respect to the work I do. Of course, if you prefer to remain in the political realm, you could take it from Barry Goldwater who famously asserted:
Here’s the video, for those who weren’t yet around to witness it:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVNoClu0h9M]
The Republican Party has been running away from that statement with few exceptions since Senator Goldwater uttered it, and yet it reminds us of a central truth about the nature of our political discourse and the infamy of misusing the language in such a way. What Goldwater said as he accepted the Republican Party’s nomination for the office of President was a thing we ought to recognize, because at the time, the Johnson Campaign was painting him with the awful and generic brush of “extremism.” Quite obviously, the most controversial thing about Goldwater’s views at the time lied in the fact that they were perceived as controversial at all. The GOP establishment, even in those days, quickly abandoned Goldwater and left him to fight with an underfunded campaign.
My point in bringing up Goldwater, and the notion of “extremism” as a label of infamy cast about by commentators, reporters, journalists, and even ordinary people like me is that we should question its use, or more properly, its overuse. I have become accustomed, as have most of you, to being smeared with this label of “extremism” in such repetitive fashion by leftists that is very nearly a badge of honor among actual conservatives. I am proud to be what the press might call an “extreme conservative,” or what Mitt Romney might call “severely conservative,” or what John Boehner would simply characterize as a “knuckle-dragger.” The term “extremist” conveys no actual meaning of its own, and left in isolation, it’s impossible to judge with certainty whether the “extreme” under discussion is a bad thing or a good thing. It’s a shoddy method by which to launch an attack with no specificity for its basis, and that should get your attention.
What I am astonished to see in this campaign season is when bloggers, columnists, commentators, journalists, and writers ostensibly on our side resort to this sort of lazy language to attack not only our opponents, but also some of our own. “Extreme” and its derivatives are words we who cover politics should refrain from using without contextualization and definition. It’s a dastardly attack because of its presumptively negative connotations, but absent any context, it loses its meaning. I might posit the notion that “Voters don’t like extremists,” but what information have I conveyed if I provide no context or meaning to the term? What sort of extremists do voters not like? Is there a sort of extremist they might like? Having permitted the reader to define the term for his or her self, I haven’t said anything substantial, and in that case, perhaps I’m better off had I instead refrained from saying anything at all.
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