http://www.uexpress.com/ups/opinion/column/js/
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>
THE UNITED STATES OF
AMNESIA
WASHINGTON -- The battle over gun control
has exposed our political culture of amnesia.
Most of us have forgotten how our own
ancestors thought about politics.
The debate rages over the merits of gun
ownership. Opponents of gun control cite the
Second Amendment; while proponents argue that the
amendment allows only state militias, and that gun ownership
isn't an individual right.
Both sides have it wrong. The Second Amendment, like the
rest of the Bill of Rights, was meant to inhibit only the federal
government, not the states. The framers, as The Federalist
Papers attest (see No. 28), saw the state militias as forces that
might be summoned into action against the federal government
itself, if it became tyrannical.
But since 1925, the U.S. Supreme Court has increasingly held
that the 14th Amendment requires the "incorporation" of the Bill
of Rights by the states. So the states must now respect the
freedoms of religion, speech and press, among other things.
Yet the court has never held that the states must respect the
right to keep and bear arms. It has permitted gun control --
federal, state and local. (The Second Amendment somehow
lacks the expansive "penumbras" and "emanations" the court
has found in other amendments.)
So the old distinction between federal and state government --
somewhat like the difference between a family and a private
club -- has been lost. The premise of the Constitution is that
there is something deeply and essentially different between a
state and a mere federation, to which only a few specific
powers are "delegated."
Originally, the states were self-contained -- 13 "free and
independent states," as the Declaration of Independence put it.
This required 13 separate peace treaties with Great Britain at
the end of the Revolutionary War.
After that war, the states formed an association codified in the
Articles of Confederation, which stipulated that "each state
retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every
power, jurisdiction and right which is not by this confederation
expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress
assembled." When the Constitution was ratified, the right of
each state to withdraw from the Union was asserted by three
states and challenged by none. The "confederation" was a
voluntary association among the states.
A generation later, with the rise of American nationalism, the
right of withdrawal was denied. The voluntary federation
became an iron cage. When Lincoln equated secession with
"treason," what had been a right became a capital crime. There
could be no right to secede, Lincoln implied, no matter how
tyrannical the federal government might become.
The Civil War left the federal government a potentially
totalitarian power, which it was vain for the states to resist.
Three postwar amendments gave the federal government new
powers over the internal affairs of the states. Since then, federal
courts have expanded the meanings of these amendments to
repeal, in effect, the powers reserved to the states under the
10th Amendment.
This process has created lasting confusion about the very
nature of federalism. We no longer ask ourselves the obvious
questions: How is a state different from a federation of states?
What kind of laws may be appropriate to a state, but not to a
federation? Why might gun control, for example, be left to the
states, but not entrusted to the federal government?
The result is that Americans now think of the individual states
as mere subdivisions -- administrative units, so to speak -- of a
single, monolithic, yet allegedly "federal" system. It follows that
state laws should be generally uniform, modeled on federal law.
The federal courts look on idiosyncrasies of individual states
with suspicion and hostility.
Gone is the idea, enunciated by James Madison, that the
powers of the federation should be "few and defined," leaving
all others -- "numerous and indefinite," as he called them -- to
the states. Americans today rarely think of the states as prior to
the federal government; we are puzzled by a Robert E. Lee's
conviction that he owed his first loyalty to his home state, not to
the federation.
In the long run, Lincoln's "Union" -- which, adopting the idiom
of 19th-century nationalism, he called "the nation" -- has almost
entirely supplanted the "free and independent states." As so
often happens, we have been induced to change our minds
without realizing it.
COPYRIGHT 1999 UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE [/quote]
------------------
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes" RKBA!
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>
THE UNITED STATES OF
AMNESIA
WASHINGTON -- The battle over gun control
has exposed our political culture of amnesia.
Most of us have forgotten how our own
ancestors thought about politics.
The debate rages over the merits of gun
ownership. Opponents of gun control cite the
Second Amendment; while proponents argue that the
amendment allows only state militias, and that gun ownership
isn't an individual right.
Both sides have it wrong. The Second Amendment, like the
rest of the Bill of Rights, was meant to inhibit only the federal
government, not the states. The framers, as The Federalist
Papers attest (see No. 28), saw the state militias as forces that
might be summoned into action against the federal government
itself, if it became tyrannical.
But since 1925, the U.S. Supreme Court has increasingly held
that the 14th Amendment requires the "incorporation" of the Bill
of Rights by the states. So the states must now respect the
freedoms of religion, speech and press, among other things.
Yet the court has never held that the states must respect the
right to keep and bear arms. It has permitted gun control --
federal, state and local. (The Second Amendment somehow
lacks the expansive "penumbras" and "emanations" the court
has found in other amendments.)
So the old distinction between federal and state government --
somewhat like the difference between a family and a private
club -- has been lost. The premise of the Constitution is that
there is something deeply and essentially different between a
state and a mere federation, to which only a few specific
powers are "delegated."
Originally, the states were self-contained -- 13 "free and
independent states," as the Declaration of Independence put it.
This required 13 separate peace treaties with Great Britain at
the end of the Revolutionary War.
After that war, the states formed an association codified in the
Articles of Confederation, which stipulated that "each state
retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every
power, jurisdiction and right which is not by this confederation
expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress
assembled." When the Constitution was ratified, the right of
each state to withdraw from the Union was asserted by three
states and challenged by none. The "confederation" was a
voluntary association among the states.
A generation later, with the rise of American nationalism, the
right of withdrawal was denied. The voluntary federation
became an iron cage. When Lincoln equated secession with
"treason," what had been a right became a capital crime. There
could be no right to secede, Lincoln implied, no matter how
tyrannical the federal government might become.
The Civil War left the federal government a potentially
totalitarian power, which it was vain for the states to resist.
Three postwar amendments gave the federal government new
powers over the internal affairs of the states. Since then, federal
courts have expanded the meanings of these amendments to
repeal, in effect, the powers reserved to the states under the
10th Amendment.
This process has created lasting confusion about the very
nature of federalism. We no longer ask ourselves the obvious
questions: How is a state different from a federation of states?
What kind of laws may be appropriate to a state, but not to a
federation? Why might gun control, for example, be left to the
states, but not entrusted to the federal government?
The result is that Americans now think of the individual states
as mere subdivisions -- administrative units, so to speak -- of a
single, monolithic, yet allegedly "federal" system. It follows that
state laws should be generally uniform, modeled on federal law.
The federal courts look on idiosyncrasies of individual states
with suspicion and hostility.
Gone is the idea, enunciated by James Madison, that the
powers of the federation should be "few and defined," leaving
all others -- "numerous and indefinite," as he called them -- to
the states. Americans today rarely think of the states as prior to
the federal government; we are puzzled by a Robert E. Lee's
conviction that he owed his first loyalty to his home state, not to
the federation.
In the long run, Lincoln's "Union" -- which, adopting the idiom
of 19th-century nationalism, he called "the nation" -- has almost
entirely supplanted the "free and independent states." As so
often happens, we have been induced to change our minds
without realizing it.
COPYRIGHT 1999 UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE [/quote]
------------------
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes" RKBA!
