THE ROAD TO SOCIALISM IN AMERICA—PAVED WITH NOT-SO-GOOD INTENTIONS
WHEN DO AMERICANS BEGIN TO REALIZE THEIR COUNTRY NO LONGER BELONGS TO THEM?
PART FIVE
Take a moment to ponder a portion of President Donald Trump’s last State of the Union Address. Consider his most important remarks to the Nation, as reported on, and poignantly elucidated by Rebecca Walser of Fox News Business, on February 19, 2020, eleven months before the corrupt, senile store-window manikin, Joseph Biden, was sworn in as the 46th President of the United States:“Who would have ever thought that any president of these United States of America would have to stand before Congress—and before the American people—and publicly declare that the United States is a free country, standing for liberty.In his State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Trump made an unequivocal pronouncement against the multiplying cries for socialism in America.‘Here, in the United States, we are alarmed by new calls to adopt socialism in our country,’ the president said. ‘America was founded on liberty and independence—not government coercion, domination and control. We are born free, and we will stay free. Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will NEVER be a socialist country.’ [Emphasis added.]Unsurprisingly, many on the Democratic side of the chamber did not stand in unison to agree, nor did they even clap. No, no, they have the wheels of the socialism freight train started now, and they will give not an inch to stop it in its tracks.Free lunch? Yes please, that sounds nice. Hmm, how about a free education with a side of free health care? Why don’t we even throw in student loan forgiveness, free housing, a guaranteed job, or forget the job, and let’s just give – you guessed it – free universal basic income while we are at it.America’s unique origin in escaping an overbearing, oppressive and overly-taxing government is likely the reason we have historically supported more freedoms, including economic freedoms, than our European cousins. But that is undeniably changing now.The shifting political winds are reflective of an underlying new positive attitude toward socialism in America. A recent Reuters poll found that 70 percent of Americans support Medicare-for-all, which includes a majority of Republicans. (A new poll released by the Kaiser Family Foundation found support drops, however, when participants were told the plan could lead to higher taxes.) . . . .This is our failure America, in not holding our government accountable. They have been allowed for too long to fake it, to spend money that we do not have to pay for services we cannot afford on a sustainable basis.For the last three decades, we have spent significantly more than we have collected in tax revenues resulting in a federal debt of $22 trillion.This has been carried out for the last 30-plus years such that the American people have been lulled into believing that we can spend without end, without the pain of an European tax scheme (40 percent to more than 60-plus percent). So why shouldn’t we add Medicare-for-all, free college education and even UBI – universal basic income?But it is all an illusion. . . .Others say that you can just print more money, but inflating our way out of this economic hole is a non starter, since both Social Security and Medicare make inflation-adjusted payments. This means that if we try to inflate our way out, the costs of our biggest social programs just go up proportionally—solving nothing.Economic equality comes at the heavy price of freedom (yours). People logically act in their own self-interest even if it is to their long-term detriment, like a bug sucking its host dry. Most will take advantage of the government’s offer for "free" anything – thus the reason the road to America is packed while the road to Venezuela is empty.But let’s be clear – ‘free’ is not free to our country. The great Roman empire imploded and collapsed under the weight of their own debt and extreme taxation. Are we determined to go down that same road?Let us have renewed hope today that President Trump stands to say no.”Unfortunately, eleven months after this story and analysis broke, Trump is no longer President. The Neoliberal Globalist “elites” along with their sidekick, the Neo-Marxists, that together share achieving their common goal of a one-world, uniform Super-State governmental scheme, with the U.S. to be unceremoniously merged into it and consumed by it, made sure that Donald Trump would never serve a second term in Office, and, more to the point, would never be permitted to serve a second term in Office, which might also explain why powerful Neoliberal Globalists have continued to attack him and to attack over a third of the Nation that had voted for him in the 2020 General Election. And the prognostications of Rebecca Walser as laid out in her 2019 Fox Business Report, have eerily, and uncannily, and no less dishearteningly, come to fruition.The American people are disillusioned and disenchanted. And the U.S. is well on its way to becoming a Socialist Country, despite Trump’s remarks to the contrary.So, then, was Trump wrong in his assertion—at once a sacred promise to Americans and a pronouncement of defiance to the Neo-Marxists of all stripes among the Democrats—even as Pelosi in a choreographed fit of pique, rips up her copy of the President’s address, thereby demonstrating her utter contempt for the U.S. President, the Country, the American people, and the Constitution.No, Trump wasn’t wrong. Yet, there is an unintended, unplanned, unforeseen irony in Trump’s assertion “that America will never be a socialist Country,” insofar as the Country is headed in that direction under a Neoliberal Globalist and Marxist-Controlled Congress and a Neoliberal Globalist controlled Executive Branch. The U.S. is in fact turning inexorably, and possibly inevitably and irrevocably toward Socialism. But if that should happen, if that would befall our Country, then the COUNTRY WILL NO LONGER BE AMERICA, for our Country will no longer be a free Constitutional Republic, and so THE COUNTRY WILL CEASE TO BE.Indeed, the Neoliberal Globalists and Neo-Marxists don’t even refer to our Nation as a free Constitutional Republic; never did. Back in 2018, Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, did say, of course, that:“We’re capitalists, and that’s just the way it is” which makes the Neoliberal Globalist “capitalist” monopolists happy to hear, who, for all that, eschew true competitive capitalism.But, has Pelosi ever been heard to reaffirm our Country as a “free Constitutional Republic?” In fact, has the infirm, corrupt, senile Joe Biden or the vacuous, opportunist Kamala Harris ever reaffirmed our Country as a “free Constitutional Republic? Has anyone in Biden’s Cabinet or Administration affirmed our Nation as a “free Constitutional Republic?”It stands to reason that the current crop of Neoliberal Globalists and Neo-Marxists in control of two Branches of Government have little if any regard for the Constitution. At best they give lip service to it, as they go about operating in the denigration of it. And no one in the legacy Press calls them to account for their abject failure to heed to the dictates of it. And we, Americans, are all the worse for it.________________________________________
HOW MANY AMERICANS APPREHEND THAT THE U.S. CONSTITUTION IS THE SUPREME LAW OF THE LAND?
PART SIX
It may be remarked—nay, must be proclaimed loudly, passionately, continuously as all too many Americans lose sight of the fact—that the Supreme Law of the Land is the U.S. Constitution. This isn’t mere supposition. It is fact.Neoliberal Globalist “elites” know this to be true, but they have no use for the Constitution as it intrudes upon their ability to consolidate economic power for themselves across the globe, at the expense of the economic well-being of the American people and at the expense of the well-being of the Country.And the sworn enemies of the U.S. Constitution and of a sovereign American people, America’s transnational Neo-Marxists, know this to be true as well because the U.S. Constitution is grounded on the tenets of Individualism, embracing the core notions of personal freedom and liberty—tenets and precepts and principles antithetical and anathema to those of Collectivism, upon which classic Marxism, and the spawn and shades of Marxism spring from. But they all come from one cloth, and they are all vehemently opposed to Individualism.For the tenets, precepts, and principles of Individualism, alone form the foundation of the U.S. Constitution, and they are inconsistent with and in clear contradistinction to those of Collectivism that insist on the subordination of the human will, soul, and spirit to and that demand obsequious devotion to and subservience of the individual to the State. That explains why the callous, caustic, fabulously wealthy Neoliberal Globalists and the idiosyncratic, cold-hearted Neo-Marxists are both of one mind in their stated objective to rid themselves of it.And so, with Trump out of the way, and as the Neoliberal Globalists and as America’s Neo-Marxists have brazenly, audaciously taken over the institutions of Government and of the Press and of much of society, they have begun in earnest to consolidate their power over the Nation and over the citizenry, in defiance of the plain import of the Constitution.And now they feel that the political and social and economic climate of the Country has changed to such an extent in their favor, that they feel no reticence in openly questioning the continued need for it. They have even gone further than that, questioning the very legality of it, and withal, cloaking their anathema to it and animosity for it, rebelling vociferously against it—the academia especially expounding through more and more rhetorical flourish and through sophistry, posing as a sound erudite argument, their naked abhorrence of it.See, e.g., the 2013 Article, in Harper’s Magazine, titled, “Constitution in Crisis;” and an article in The Atlantic, titled, “The U.S. Needs a New Constitution—Here’s How to Write It.” And, in a lengthy New York Times’ Op-Ed, the paper has tacked together several essays by various legal scholars who propose amending the Constitution’s Bill of Rights and Articles. A simple web search keying in the words, “do we need a constitution,” brings up a plethora of articles challenging the continued need for the U.S. Constitution—the blueprint of a free Republic that ceases to exist the moment the Constitution ceases to be.The reader should note that all or virtually all these articles arose in the most recent decade of the 21st Century, and several of them within the last few weeks or months.But what explains this flurry of articles, and essays coming to the fore now? This cannot be accidental. Indeed, it isn’t.If the Neoliberal Globalists and Neo-Marxists thought the Constitution was simply irrelevant, they likely would have given little thought to it, would simply ignore it, and in the actions of the Harris-Biden Administration, the American people have witnessed just that: the blatant failure of Biden to faithfully execute the laws of the United States as required of him, spurning his Presidential duty under the “take care clause” of Article 1, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution. This failure goes beyond an arguable difference of opinion as to the President’s duty, or to incompetence of which Biden has more than an ample supply. It is much more than that.Biden’s actions amount to outright subversion and sedition. And the Neoliberal Globalists and International Neo-Marxists are perfectly content with this. They have expected it of Biden. More, they have demanded it of him. And, he has delivered, doing all that his handlers expect of him, even as he makes a fool of himself during the few times his handlers allow him, albeit reluctantly, to appear before the public, hewing to script—at least to the extent that a person suffering from dementia can.Perfunctorily dismissing Congressional enactments such as the Nation’s immigration law, in direct defiance of the Legislature’s Article 1 authority, see irli.org, and dismissing out-of-hand U.S. Supreme Court rulings on evictions, demonstrating his contempt of High Court Article 3 authority on questions of law, if he ever thought about it, to the extent he is capable of coherent thought at all. See article in christianaction.org and article in theweek.com. Biden has not only defied the authority of two other co-equal Branches of Government, he has also spurned his own duties under the “take care clause” of Article 2, Section 3 of the Constitution.But there’s more to the Constitution than the Articles demarcating and limiting the authority and powers of the three co-equal Branches of the Federal Government, critical as those Articles are to the foundation of a free Constitutional Republic.Even as few give little thought to it, there is one set of laws that preside even over that of the Supreme Law of the Land, the U.S. Constitution. It is Law bestowed on man by the Divine Creator. It is the Law of Natural Rights, and there is no inconsistency in averring the authority of and the awesome power of natural law above even the U.S. Constitution. The framers of that great document, the Constitution of the United States, conceded as much, through the codification of Ten Amendments to it thereby embracing and enshrining Divine Law within it, an integrated part of it, inextricably bound to it, so there is no inconsistency between the import of Divine Law and ofthe U.S. Constitution’s deference to Divine Law.
THE PARAMOUNT IMPORTANCE OF THE BILL OF RIGHTS TO THE U.S. CONSTITUTION
The Bill of Rights is of paramount importance to, and a singularly critical component of the U.S. Constitution, both shaping the nature of a free Republic, and establishing the role of Government vis a vis the American people, subordinating Government to the people.It is the Bill of Rights, especially, that has provided the U.S. Constitution with its true staying power; and that has allowed the Country to survive and thrive as a free Republic. The Bill of Rights is one feature of the U.S. Constitution that cannot be readily ignored or dismissed out of hand by the Neoliberal Globalists and the Neo-Marxists, much as they wish to do; much as they try to do.The Nation, as a free Constitutional Republic can, truth to tell, continue to exist, at least for a time, even where a corrupt Executive Branch and a corrupt Legislative Branch give little heed to limitations built into their own authority and duties under the Constitution. And, that is true of the Third Branch of Government, the Judiciary, as well.The Bill of Rights, though, exists and operates on another plane; another order of magnitude; well beyond even the Articles, a human construct, and well beyond such man-made procedural Amendments that came thereafter. For, the Bill of Rights codifies Divine Law.The contents of the Bill of Rights isn’t a human construct because it isn’t a mere compilation of man-made law even though some there are who might perceive it to be such, namely the Neoliberal Globalist corporatist “elites,” and the transnational Neo-Marxists, and other Collectivists who, all of them, deny this, of course. Even to describe the Ten Amendments of the Bill of Rights as little more than an elucidation of and edification of man’s greater potential fails to hit the mark as to their true significance and purpose. For, it is only by the grace of Divine Providence that man can, a priori, recognize the Creator’s gifts to him, bestowed on man by the Creator as the supernal omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and morally perfect Being. These God-given Rights and Liberties, Natural Law, preexist within man, exist, then, prior to the creation of Government by man.It is not given to man, by mere experience, a posteriori, through man’s five sense organs, that man comes to know of his true Nature made in God’s own image but, through man’s non-physical Spirit that the fact of and nature of the fundamental, immutable, illimitable, unalienable Rights come to be apparent to man. How, then, can man’s nature be lawfully subordinated and subjugated to State control and dominance, since Government is a man-made construct, and such manmade device offends and subverts the will of the Supreme Creator, where man’s will, and soul, and spirit are quelled and suppressed?Such a Government transgresses God’s will and such Government that dares to subvert the integrity and sanctity of man’s spirit and soul is heresy, and this heresy is the goal of this new, obscene non-American Governmental scheme that has begun to take root in the Country, and it is growing apace, to be merged into a new world order, to bring man low. Americans must fight the attempt with all the power they can muster. The way they can do this is to insist that their fundamental rights are not subject to negotiation or compromise. That which is given to man by the Divine Creator cannot lawfully be revoked by the State, and cannot be contracted or purloined away.______________________________________
AS LONG AS AMERICANS ARE ABLE TO EXERCISE THEIR FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS, SOCIALISM CANNOT TAKE ROOT.
PART SEVEN
Only through exercise of the peoples’ fundamental rights can the citizenry hope to withstand the onslaught from those disparate evil forces consisting, inter alia, of a heterogenous assortment of Neoliberal Globalists, Corporatist Monopolists, Internationalist Neo-Marxists, Government Neoconservatives, liberal Progressive and Marxist members of Congress and of the Federal Bureaucracy, the seditious legacy Press, and Marxist elements in academia, all hell-bent on disassembling the United States, transforming the Country from its root structure as a free Constitutional Republic and independent sovereign Nation-State into an autocratic lackey of a larger autocratic super-structure, embracing the entire world.On some level the combined power of these terrible, ruthless, amoral and immoral forces operating both inside the United States and outside it, Neoliberal Globalists and Neo-Marxists alike, adopting a common Collectivist ideology, an ideology incompatible with the tenets, precepts, and principles of Individualism upon which the U.S. Constitution is grounded, driven by a singular lust for amassing wealth and power—of benefit to themselves at the expense of the American polity—continue to plot, connive, conspire, and machinate toward realization of a similar goal: the creation of a one-world transnational super State; a mammoth transformative political, social, economic, and juridical construct; a global totalitarian regime embracing and subsuming all present western nation-states; erasing all geographical boundaries; eliminating and eventually erasing from the memory of the polity any sense of a once-shared national identity, a once-shared history and heritage, a once-shared civic culture, a once-shared Christian ethos and a once-shared Judeo-Christian ethic. It would all cease to exist. Yet, for the U.S. to become merged into this transnational one-world, totalitarian Super-State, it is essential that the U.S. Constitution first be abrogated, and that means abrogation of the citizens’ Fundamental Rights and Liberties. All of it must go. But there is a tenaciousness to the Constitution, especially that part of it that speaks to the fundamental, unalienable Rights and Liberties of the citizenry: the Nation’s Bill of Rights.Even with vast sums of money spent behind a massive propaganda campaign to denigrate the Nation’s revered history, heritage, and culture, and to challenge the inviolability of God-bestowed Rights and Liberties, set in stone in Nation's the Bill of Rights, most Americans maintain and exhibit a deep attachment to and devotion to their Country and to their fundamental Rights and Liberties upon which the sovereignty of the American people over Government is preserved. And, on some level all American citizens understand that God-given Rights and Liberties cannot be simply ignored and dismissed out-of-hand, if the Nation is to survive as a free Constitutional Republic; and the American people will not long abide usurpers in Government who betray their Oath to the United States Constitution, whether it be the President of the United States who betrays the Oath of Office he is required to take, pursuant to Article 2, Section 1, Clause 8 of the Constitution, to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States;”whether it be those in Congress who betray the Oath they are required to take, pursuant to Article 6, Clause 3 of the Constitution, to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States; or whether it be those in the Civil Service or uniformed services of Government who betray the Oath they are required to take, to “defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic;” pursuant to 5 U.S.C.S. § 3331. The solemnity of the Oaths of those sworn to protect and defend the U.S. Constitution are not to be taken lightly. And, if these betrayers of their Oath think there will be no accounting for an act of betrayal to the Constitution of the United States, the American people shall demand an accounting, as they are the sovereign rulers of the Nation as established by the U.S. Constitution. Those who serve in Government are the servants, not the masters of the American people, and the ultimate enforcement power that the American people wield over Government is made abundantly clear not in the electoral system through which the American people have a say only in the vote they cast for this or that servant of the citizenry, but in one especial fundamental, immutable, illimitable, unalienable Right: the inviolate Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms.______________________________________________
THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS CANNOT BE LAWFULLY APPROPRIATED OR COMMANDEERED BY THE STATE; AND IT ISN’T FOR SALE!
PART EIGHT
The Bill of Rights cannot be easily supplanted, ignored, dismissed out-of-hand, as the fundamental rights and liberties are engrained deep in the psyche of most American citizens and they are loathed to surrender their sacred God-bestowed Rights and Liberties, knowing that, to do so, means the loss not only of their Country but of their own Soul.One natural, God-given right, in particular, the Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms, as Divine Law, codified in the Bill of Rights as “the Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms,” is Divine Law that happens to have been codified into law by man. More to the point, this Divine Law is written into man's Spirit. That is what makes the Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms, Divine Law, and not mere man-made law. This Divine Law serves to prevent the takeover of the Nation’s Country by tyrants. The Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms, as Divine Law, isn't for sale!The Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms, as Divine Law, is subsumed in a more elemental Divine law: The Right of Personal Self-Defense, against a predatory animal, whether that predatory animal hops on two legs or runs on four, and against a predatory, tyrannical Government. Further, the Natural God-bestowed Right of Personal Self-Defense is itself subsumed in the God-bestowed Right of Personal Autonomy, for it is through Self-Defense that man is able to preserve and has the solemn duty and cardinal responsibility to preserve and secure from harm not only his physical well-being but his psychological and spiritual well-being; his individuality; the sanctity of Self-hood; the inviolability of his Soul, sanctified by the Divine Creator.If unable to exercise the God-bestowed Right of Self-Defense, of which the firearm is the most efficient means of Self-Defense, man cannot effectively persevere against those forces that would dare crush his will and spirit into submission; would not be able to effectively defend against those forces at work in society today that compel uniformity and conformity in all thought and conduct; would not be able to resist evil forces that insist on transforming a Nation of individual Souls into a collection of mindless, senseless drones, an obsequious, obedient, formless glob—a monstrosity, a thing created by evil forces in clear defiance to the Creator's will. For the Creator intended for man to be noble, that he might, through his individual Soul, be a demi-Creator in his own right, set out on his own path, realize his full potential as an independent creative Spirit; for he is made in God's Image.Yet, it is a thing strange that, given the plain meaning of the Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms, codified in clear, precise, concise words in the U.S. Constitution, it would come to pass that an American citizen would find it necessary to petition the Judiciary to secure for him a God-given Right that Government or private enterprise interests—artificial constructs of man—would dare deny him. Yet for decades, before the seminal Second Amendment Heller case was heard, ignoble forces were at work to subvert the plain meaning of the Divine Law, arguing that the Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms was not an Individual Right at all, and certainly was not to be perceived as a Natural Right, but one bound up in service to a collective, a militia. This idea is false on its face, and, when one realizes that the Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms, codified in the Second Amendment, isn't a man-made law at all, but Natural Law, of Divine Origin, pertaining to the Individual Self, to the Individual Soul, to one’s personal autonomy, then any notion that the Right is to be understood as, to be taken as, something that applies to and has meaning only in the context of groups, to a collective, falls apart of its own weight as a matter of logic, as well as of law. One comes to realize that the mistake of law and logic that arises from the conclusion that the Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms has meaning and purport in the context of one's service in a militia, in the context, then, of one's service in a group, is due to problematic, false assumptions. The mistake of law and logic that some academic scholars as well as the lay public fall prey to commences from an assumption, taken as axiomatic, as self-evident, that the Bill of Rights, is simply a creation of man, an artificial construction of the government, an arbitrary formulation by State actors in Government, not unlike the Articles of the Constitution, or later procedural amendments to it, and not unlike other man-made common or codified law. In that case, grounded on acceptance of false assumption and illogical reasoning, one draws the illogical conclusion that fundamental rights are no more than privileges to be bestowed onto this one or that one, or to this group or to that group by the grace of the State, and, just as readily, rescinded by the State, as the sole creator of the Right. Through acceptance of the false assumption that the Bill of Rights is really a set of State created privileges, all sorts of inanities arise therefrom, such as the idea that the Ten Amendments that comprise the Bill of Rights can readily be amended no less so than the Articles of the Constitution or the procedural amendments subsequently ratified and added to the Constitution or just as readily repealed. But, the Bill of Rights is no mere collection of Rights and Liberties, for they were not created by man. They are codifications of Divine Law. As such, they existed prior to any artificial governmental construct of man. As Divine Law, not man-made law the Bill of Rights cannot be lawfully amended, modified, abrogated, or ignored. The Rights codified in the Bill of Rights exist internally in and eternal in man. They aren't creations of the State, of Government, of man. This fact, the Neoliberal Globalist and Neo-Marxist Counterrevolutionaries both inside Government and outside it, will not accept—indeed cannot accept—for the idea that some Rights exist beyond the lawful power of the Government to whittle away at, to reinterpret the import and purport of, or to nullify outright, frustrates these evil forces to no end, as that idea makes impossible the realization of their goal of a one-world transnational governmental regime in which man is subjugated to the dictates of Government, as the State, alone, to these Neoliberal Globalists and Neo-Marxists, is to be perceived as god, having power of life or death over the men they rule.__________________________________________
LOOKING BACKWARD TO HELLER AND MCDONALD AND FORWARD TO THE UPCOMING BRUEN (CORLETT) CASE
PART NINE
The late, eminent Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority, announced in Heller, what was always patently clear, but often denied: that the right of the people to keep and bear arms is an individual right. The clear language of the Right should have been enough to evince the Omni-expansiveness of it; the elemental inalienability, immutability, and illimitability implicit in it. Yet, from the inception of Heller, there was hesitancy and arrogance among many academicians and Government functionaries that compelled them to disavow the plain import and purport of the Right, grounded most likely on jealousy to concede the obvious import of the Right, having no desire to admit that sovereignty over Government is not a shared power or one that belongs only to those who serve in Government, but is sovereignty that rests solely with the American people. The servants of Government exercise such limited authority that the Constitution provides for and that authority is exercised only with the consent of the citizenry. That consent can be withdrawn. And the servants of Government well aware of the limitations inherent in their power constantly seek to constrain the sovereignty of the American people and they have been at work, enacting countless laws, rules, codes, regulations, and ordinances to constrict and restrict the right of the people to keep and bear arms notwithstanding the reaffirmation of the import of the right as categorically stated in Heller.And Anti-Second Amendment State Governments, as well as the Federal Government, are always looking for a way to avoid the import of Heller to affirm the legality and Constitutionality of State Action infringing the core of the Right protected. The first major attack against Heller took shape in the Anti-Second Amendment jurisdiction of Chicago, Illinois, with the City pointedly arguing that the Heller rulings pertaining to the right of Americans to utilize handguns for self-defense in their own homes, only operates as a constraint on the Federal Government, not on the States. Justice Alito who penned the majority opinion in the second major Second Amendment case, McDonald vs. City of Chicago, set forth at the outset of his remarks, the nature of and extent of Chicago’s defiant stance on the matter:“Two years ago, in District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637, this Court held that the Second Amendment protects the right to keep and bear arms for the purpose of self-defense and struck down a District of Columbia law that banned the possession of handguns in the home. Chicago (hereinafter City) and the village of Oak Park, a Chicago suburb, have laws effectively banning handgun possession by almost all private citizens. After Heller, petitioners filed this federal suit against the City. . . . They sought a declaration that the ban and several related City ordinances violate the Second and Fourteenth Amendments. Rejecting petitioners' argument that the ordinances are unconstitutional, the court noted that the Seventh Circuit previously had upheld the constitutionality of a handgun ban, that Heller had explicitly refrained from opining on whether the Second Amendment applied to the States, and that the court had a duty to follow established Circuit precedent.”The McDonald case made clear the rulings in Heller applied to the States too. In pertinent part, Justice Alito, wrote:“. . . we must decide whether the right to keep and bear arms is fundamental to our scheme of ordered liberty. . . .Our decision in Heller points unmistakably to the answer. Self-defense is a basic right, recognized by many legal systems from ancient times to the present day, and in Heller, we held that individual self-defense is ‘the central component’ of the Second Amendment right. Explaining that ‘the need for defense of self, family, and property is most acute in the home . . . we found that this right applies to handguns because they are 'the most preferred firearm in the nation to 'keep' and use for protection of one's home and family. . . . ‘[T]he American people have considered the handgun to be the quintessential self-defense weapon’). Thus, we concluded, citizens must be permitted ‘to use [handguns] for the core lawful purpose of self-defense.”Heller makes it clear that this right is ‘deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition. . . . Heller explored the right's origins, noting that the 1689 English Bill of Rights explicitly protected a right to keep arms for self-defense, and that by 1765, Blackstone was able to assert that the right to keep and bear arms was “one of the fundamental rights of Englishmen.’Blackstone's assessment was shared by the American colonists. As we noted in Heller, King George III's attempt to disarm the colonists in the 1760's and 1770's ‘provoked polemical reactions by Americans invoking their rights as Englishmen to keep arms.’The right to keep and bear arms was considered no less fundamental by those who drafted and ratified the Bill of Rights.In Heller, we held that the protects the right to possess a handgun in the home for the purpose of self-defense. Unless considerations of stare decisis counsel otherwise, a provision of the Bill of Rights that protects a right that is fundamental from an American perspective applies equally to the Federal Government and the States. We therefore hold that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment incorporates the Second Amendment right recognized in Heller. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings.”Yet, the apparatus of Anti-Second Amendment forces in Government remained undeterred. These forces continued their efforts to find ways around Heller and McDonald through more and more comprehensive and Government licensing schemes.State and local Government firearms’ licensing schemes became progressively bloated through time, and with that bloat the language of them became increasingly vague and ambiguous; and, in the worst instances, became convoluted, inconsistent, and incoherent. Anti-Second Amendment Courts continually, blatantly misinterpreted the rulings of Heller and McDonald, setting down their imprimatur on unconstitutional Government actions.Perhaps the most voluminous Anti-Second Amendment regime to be constructed and one of the earliest, and one of the most insidious; a regime that was continually expanded and revised through time, is that one emanating from New York.Not surprisingly, the first major case the U.S. Supreme Court accepted for review, almost a decade after the seminal Heller case, was New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, et.al. v. The City Of New York And The New York City Police Department-License Division, commonly and colloquially referred to as the “New York City Gun Transport Case.”The case held a lot of promise for Americans who cherish their right of self-defense and the right of personal autonomy, for having granted Petitioners’ writ of certiorari, these Americans expected quite reasonably that the U.S. Supreme Court would apply its precedents in Heller and McDonald to affirm the unconstitutionality of the constraint on one’s right to keep and bear arms for self-defense, outside the home, at least for the purpose of transporting a handgun to a locale outside the environs of New York City. New York’s Courts had hitherto placed burdensome constraints on transportation of handguns outside the home for those New York residents who held valid but restricted handgun premise licenses.Although some Americans might see the New York Gun Transport case as a win for those who cherish the right of the people to keep and bear arms, it wasn’t. Rather, it was a lost opportunity. Consideration of and a decision on the merits of the case were sidestepped. Now Americans who cherish their Second Amendment right are looking to a second New York case, NYSRPA vs. Corlett (now captioned, NYSRPA vs. Bruen*) on which to pin their hopes for reaffirmation of the significance of the Heller imperative. The case will be heard in November 2021 and decided probably at some point in early summer, 2022.Our concern is whether and to what extent—even with a complement of three new Justices, all Trump nominees, who would seem to adhere to the methodology of the late eminent Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, when analyzing and deciding cases—the Bruen case will be decided in a manner that will reinvigorate and clarify the rulings and holdings and reasoning of Heller and McDonald.To get a good handle on the New York Bruen case, and to assess various outcome scenarios, it is necessary to understand what transpired in the earlier New York Gun Transport case, along with a few major post-Heller D.C. gun cases and others.Our focus going forward will be directed to the elucidation of four matters:
- THE IMPORT OF GOVERNMENT FIREARMS’ LICENSING SCHEMES GENERALLY AND THOSE OF NEW YORK PARTICULARLY
- THE FRAMING OF THE SPECIFIC LEGAL ISSUE BY THE U.S. SUPREME COURT IN THE BRUEN CASE
- STANDARDS OF REVIEW EMPLOYED BY THE FEDERAL CIRCUIT COURTS AFTER HELLER
- A PERSPECTIVE ON THE JURISPRUDENTIAL APPROACHES OF THE JUSTICES
As for the first bullet point, firearms licensing schemes are a fact, and Heller’s position on them isn’t crystal clear. The mere fact of them and the propensity of Courts to align themselves with Government to stamp their imprimatur upon them are inherently in tension with the import and purport of the Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms, a tension that Heller did little rectify.As for the second bullet point, the Court has recast the issue for review. This recasting of the issue is critical to the decision to be reached and we will speculate on why the Court recast the issue and analyze what that may portend.As for the third bullet point, many lower Courts have routinely fallen back on judicial standards of review that majority opinion in Heller considered and rejected. The High Court may wish to clarify the standard that should be employed in Second Amendment cases where the Government actions impact the core of the right.As for the fourth bullet point, while the legacy Press constantly refers to the High Court as comprising 6 Conservative-wing Justices and 3 Liberal-wing Justices. That is an incorrect statement by the legacy Press and it is one constantly projected by the Press to express the need, as the Legacy Press sees it, for a contingent of new Justices, in the mold of the late Associate Justice, Ruth Bader-Ginsberg, and in the mold of the three remaining liberal Justices, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan. These liberal-wing Justices, as often described by the Press, all ascribe to the view of the U.S. Constitution as a “Living Constitution,” (See, e.g. Acton Institute Article), which really calls for the death of the U.S. Constitution. These liberal-wing Justices' utilize a methodology for deciding cases that looks beyond the original text of the Constitution. These Justices believe in an expansive view of Constitutional analysis that routinely interjects ever-changing international law and international norms into their juridical pronouncements. This analysis is antithetical to and anathema to the methodology employed by the late Justice Antonin Scalia who realized that to interject international law and normative views of foreign countries into judicial decision-making is to denigrate the U.S. Constitution, subordinating the Supremacy of the Constitution and the Sovereignty of the United States to that of a Global initiative and Global objectives, at odds with the preservation of the U.S. Constitution in the manner the framers of it intended. Thus, these liberal-wing Justices find a strict reading of the Bill of Rights, for example, to be inconsistent with international law and norms and, so, rather than reject international law and international norms and standards, they would reject the language of the Constitution. This is most blatantly illustrated in their desire to reduce the fundamental Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms as codified in the Second Amendment, to a nullity. Thus, they seek to undercut the seminal Second Amendment Heller and McDonald case rulings and holdings, and their opinions demonstrate their clear animosity to the methodology employed by the late Justice Scalia in deciding cases: originalism and textualism. Associate Justices Thomas and Alito also adhere to the methodology of originalism and textualism, which demands strict adherence to the plain meaning of the Constitution and especially of that critical component of it: the Bill of Rights.Chief Justice, John Roberts, who wields considerable power as the Chief Justice, is not to be seen as an avid proponent of the Second Amendment, and, apart from Associate Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, whose commitment to the defense of exercise of the Right embodied in the Second Amendment is established beyond doubt through a large body of Supreme Court Opinions, the commitment of the newest members of the Court—Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett—to the sanctity of the Second Amendment and to the other Nine Bill of Rights is not firmly established. And, as for Justice Kavanaugh, along with Chief Justice John Roberts, their dubious commitment to the preservation of the Second Amendment is manifest from a perusal of their handling of the New York Gun transport case. These latter two Justices demonstrate significantly less commitment to and decidedly less ardor toward the Second Amendment than do Associate Justices Thomas and Alito and as did the late esteemed Associate Justice Scalia. This is expressed in their failure to adhere unerringly to the methodology of originalism and textualism that serves to preserve the Constitution as written, upon which the continued existence of the Nation, as a free Constitutional Republic, necessarily depends.Chief Justice Roberts and Associate Justice Kavanaugh do not employ—with the same devotion as do Justices Thomas and Alito, at any rate—the juridical methodologies of textualism and originalism, heralded by the late Justice Scalia; nor do they apply Supreme Court legal doctrines, uniformly and evenhandedly. This is apparent from their handling of the legal doctrine of “mootness,” which led to a less than optimum result in their handling of the New York Gun Transport case as a consideration of and decision on the substantive merits of the case were dispensed with.We discuss these matters in-depth in our upcoming articles._________________________________*When the Corlett case first wended its way up through New York’s Court, the Defendant, Keith M. Corlett, happened to be serving as the Superintendent of the New York State Police, the 16th Superintendent. But at some point, after the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to take up the “Corlett” case for review, Kevin P. Bruen replaced Corlett as the New York State Police Superintendent: the 17th Superintendent of the New York State Police. The case now reflects Bruen as the proper Defendant-Respondent and properly the case should be referred to as the Bruen case even though many journalists who discuss the case continue to refer to the case as originally captioned. See New York State Police website.____________________________________________Copyright © 2021 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.