Small Thoughts On The Second Amendment

“A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

Often people will talk about the original intent of those who assembled and approved of the US Constitution. There is value in doing that to be sure, but the real place we should look as to original intent is to the ratifying State Constitutional conventions. It was those who ratified the Constitution, state by state, who need to be consulted as to what they understood the intent of the Constitution was as they voted for ratification.

On the issue of the 2nd amendment we have some insight into the original intent of those who ratified the US Constitution. This is important to note because there remains yet a species of thought that suggests that the 2nd amendment only refers to the state militias as state militias. Upon this reading the 2nd amendment insures that state militias have the right to keep and bear arms. This understanding insists that the 2nd amendment was never intended to speak to whether or not individual citizens, unattached from state militias, had a right to keep and bear arms.

However, that such a reading is specious can be seen by the ratifying State conventions. To summarize the state ratification process, three states, New York, New Hampshire, and Virginia, ratified the Constitution while expressing their understanding that the people had a right to bear arms and that Congress would never disarm law abiding citizens. Two states, North Carolina and Rhode Island, refused to ratify until individual rights, including the people’s right to keep and bear arms, were recognized by amendments. In Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, an effort was made to amend or condition ratification on amendment to include, among others, the right to keep and bear arms. Efforts to amend were defeated but not on the merits. There is no evidence from any state convention that any speaker suggested that the proposed Constitution would permit disarming the public.

Eventually, the Federalists agreed to pacify Anti-federalists concerns regarding the Constitution by agreeing to add a “Bill of Rights” immediate upon ratification of the US Constitution. What is interesting to note is that there was some concern regarding adding a “Bill of Rights.” Some of the ratifiers were concerned that as there were many more God given rights then could possibly be enumerated in a document, what could be implied is that those Rights which were not enumerated would not be seen as Rights. This concern was satisfied with the 9th amendment. Second, there was concern that such a Bill of Rights would be redundant since the Constitution was already a negative document that gave very prescribed and limited powers to the Federal Government. Why say again what the Federal Government could not do when it has already been detailed as to what alone the Government could do? Also, there was concern articulated that in passing a Bill of Rights it could be perceived that the Government was the one giving these Rights as opposed to merely affirming that the Rights were God given (inalienable) and could not be touched by any Government.

And this brings us back to the 2nd amendment. The 2nd amendment is a reflection of a long history of the rights of Englishmen and at the time was but the latest instantiation of a equally long history of English law and tradition on the matter. Englishmen had, for centuries, the God given Right to armed self defense. The idea that the original intent of the ratifiers of the Bill of Rights was only to protect State militias as State militias is laughable.

The Federal Government can do all they like to eviscerate the 2nd amendment but whatever they do in that regard is meaningless and would, at best, yield up a illegal legality. The Federal Government did not create the inalienable Right to keep and bear arms and so the Federal Government can not take away, diminish, or void, the inalienable Right for individual citizens to keep and bear arms.

It should be a sobering fact that throughout history the prelude to the successful usurpations of Dictators and Tyrants has often been the seizing from the citizenry of their only hope of successful defense against eventual enslavement. Wise people have always known that the confiscation of their arms is the confiscation of their liberty.

God created all men equal. Sam Colt kept them that way.

Public Opinion Polls, Historicism and Psychological Warriors

“Bernard Berelson was trained as a librarian but by the late 40’s was considered an expert in public relations and the manipulation of public opinion. One year after the publication of Blanshard’s book on Catholic power, Berelson co-edited ‘Public Opinion and Communication’ with Morris Jankowitz, one of the seminal works of communications theory, and a good indication of how the psychological warfare techniques refined during World War II were now going to be turned on the American public as a way of controlling them through the manipulation of the new media, i.e., radio and TV. Berelson establishes the book’s major premise in his introduction:

‘Growing secularization has meant that more and more areas of life are open to opinion rather than to divine law and to communication rather than to revelation. Growing industrialization has not only extended literacy; in addition, it has provided the technical facilities for mass communication.’

The goal of secularization was the reduction of all of life’s imperatives to ‘opinions,’ which is to say not the expression of moral absolutes or divine law. Once this ‘secularization’ occurred, the people who controlled ‘opinions’ controlled the country. Berelson is equally frank about where the new science of public opinion originated:

‘Research in the field was accelerated during WW II by demands for studies on the effect of communications upon military personnel, adjustment to army life and attitudes toward military leaders, enemy propaganda, and civilian morale. After the war this growing interest led to the establishment of additional university centers for the study of public opinion and communication by the methods of social science. Together with the continuing activities of industry and government, they now represent a large scale research enterprise.’

…. Berleson wrote also in 1950 that,

‘ there is a virtual pro-religious monopoly on communication available to large audiences in America today.”

Religious belief meant ipso facto the opposite of opinion, and therefore ideas not subject to the manipulation of the people who controlled the communications media. What needed to be done then was to move large areas of thought from the realm of religion to the realm of opinion if any significant breakthroughs in political control through manipulation of the media were to take place. Sexual morality was the most important area of religious thinking that needed to be moved into the realm of ‘opinion’ where it would be then under the control of psychological warriors like Berelson and those who paid his salary, namely, the Rockefellers.

And this is precisely what happened…

E. Michael Jones
Libido Dominadi

Notice that there was a designed and concerted effort, funded by the huge tax free Foundations (Ford, Rockefeller, Carnegie, etc.) to drag public thinking away from the residual remains of Christianity in the public square to a thinking that was called “secular.” The problem, of course, is that this was not a case where the public square was being unclothed of religious presuppositions, (secularization) but rather it was a case where the public square was being stripped of what remained of Christian presuppositions in favor of presuppositions consistent with Religious Leftist humanism.

This is seen in Berelson’s drive to get rid of religious absolutes in favor of “opinion.” However, clearly the problem here is that directed and manipulated opinion would now be the new absolute. The new absolute exchanged for the idea of Christian absolutes was the absolute of no absolutes. Any humanist absolute (masquerading as “opinion”) would be accepted in the secularized public square over and above a religious absolute.

Note also in the quote above the ascendancy of public opinion. Public opinion is to moral guidance what Historicism is to Historiography. In both cases, the absolute being evacuated, the only place a transcendent constant can be found is in the immanent subjective realm of space and time. If there is no transcendent constant then in order to shape public policy is to create public opinion through putative scientific public opinion polls and then to reify those subjective numbers into objective transcendent constants so that direction can be given to public policy. This is the same thing that happens in Historicism. As Historicism allows for no fixed transcendent constant by which history can be known and evaluated, therefore History itself must become its own fixed transcendent constant. Public opinion polls serve as absolutes for the immediate just as Historicism serves as absolute in interpreting the past as a guide for the future.

However, in both cases of Public Opinion polls and Historicism the results they yield are only as good as the manipulator the psychological warriors operating them.

Without the God of the Bible, who alone can give us a fixed transcendent constant as well as the certainty that the transcendent has become immanent, (thus assuring that the transcendent isn’t so transcendent that it loses touch with our sitz-im-leben), we only have a word and world of flux where man is a being manipulated and controlled by the Psychological warriors named Ford, Rockefeller, and Carnegie.

Addendum

R2K plays right into this agenda quoted from Jones. R2K allows the public square to be cleansed of what Berelson called religious belief in favor of the manipulations coming from the cultural elites.

Who said this version of Jesus + Nothing = Everything?

“Nothing is demanded of you — no idea of God and no goodness in yourselves, not your being religious, not your being Christian, not your being wise, and not your being moral. But what is demanded is only your being open and willing to accept what is given to you, the new Being, the Being of love and justice and truth, as it is manifest in Him whose yoke is easy and Whose burden is light.”

A.) Tullian Tchividjian — PCA Pastor
B.) Jack Miller — Sonship Guru
C.) Paul Tillich — Process Theologian
D.) David Van Drunen — R2K Theologian
E.) All of the Above

Cortez & R2K

“They brought to us 8 Indian girls, all daughters of chiefs, in order to cement our friendship…

The girls, Cortes added, must become Christian before we could accept them, and the people must give up sodomy, for they had boys dressed as women who practised that accursed vice for profit. Moreover every day they sacrificed before our eyes three, four, or five Indians, whose hearts were offered to those idols and whose blood was plastered on the walls. The feet, arms and legs of their victims were cut of and eaten, just as we eat beef from the butcher’s in our country. I even believe that they sold it in the tinaguez or markets. Cortes told them that if they gave up these wicked practices, not only would we be their friends, but we would vie them other provinces to rule. The Caciques, papas and the dignitaries all replied that it would be wrong for them to give up their idols and sacrifices, for these gods of theirs brought them health and good harvests and all that they needed; but as for sodomy, measures would be taken to see that the practice was stopped.

This insolent reply was more than Cortes or any of us who had seen all their cruelties and obscenities could stand. Reminding us of the doctrines of our holy faith, Cortes asked us “If we do not pay God so much honour as to stop them from making sacrifices to their idols, how can we ever accomplish anything worth doing?”

He told us that we must overthrow their idols that very day, and be absolutely prepared to fight if they tried to prevent us. We, as usual, were all armed and ready…

Bernal Diaz
The Conquest of New Spain

Let’s pretend that Cortez was R2K.

They brought to us 8 Indian girls, all daughters of chiefs, in order to cement our friendship…

The girls, Cortes added, could not be accepted because in order to accept them they must become Christian but that requirement would violate our pledge not to pollute the pluralistic public square by requiring of you, as a pagan, that which you do not want to do. Now, in terms of sodomy, we observed how their boys dressed as women who practice that accursed vice for profit but, well, while personally and individually we are opposed to it we understand how pluralism works. Now we noticed that every day they sacrificed before our eyes three, four, or five Indians, whose hearts were offered to those idols and whose blood was plastered on the walls. The feet, arms and legs of their victims were cut off and eaten, just as we eat beef from the butcher’s in our country. I even believe that they sold it in the tinaguez or markets. Cortez told them that he understood the common realm was, well … common and that he knew that if he and his Spaniards wanted to worship on Sundays Cortez’s Spanish troops had to give the Caciques room for their varying forms of worship, however untoward they may seem to the Spaniard. Cortez appealed to the precepts of Natural law as a reason to stop human sacrifice, but they said they had not heard of any god named Natural law and that surely any god named Natural law who was not powerful enough to stop their sacrifices wasn’t much of a god to be worried about. The Caciques, papas and the dignitaries continued by replying that it would be wrong for them to give up their idols and sacrifices, for these gods of theirs brought them health and good harvests and all that they needed; but as for sodomy, measures would be taken to see that the practice was stopped.

This insolent reply prompted Cortez to say that he understood and that it was ok because his eschatology informed him that “evil would alway grow together with good.” Cortez told us, “If we do not pay God so much honor as to not allow a pluralistic social order where human sacrifice to false gods can occur, how can we ever tell them about Jesus?”

Cortez told us that we must be polite to their idols and show deference that very day, and be absolutely prepared to fight to protect pluralism if any neo-calvinists tried to prevent public square religious pluralism among the Caciques. We, as troops from Westminster SC, as usual, were all armed and ready…

Nicolosi Analyzes Sodomite Origins & Behavior

Joseph Nicolosi, in his book Reparative Therapy of Male Homosexuality, sees homosexuality as essentially a “male deficit,” which results from family problems, specifically an estrangement between father and son at a crucial stage of the son’s psychic development. As a result of this failure to receive the father’s approval, the homosexual seeks that sense of masculinity from sexual contact with men who seem to embody what the homosexual feels he lacks. “After years of secrecy, isolation and alienation,” Nicolosi writes, describing the psychic odyssey of one of his patients but describing Isherwood’s odyssey from Victorian England to decadent Berlin as well, “most young men find the gay world powerfully alluring, with its romantic, sensual, outrageous, and embracing qualities.” This psychological need for the father’s approval becomes, generally, through seduction by an older man, attached to sexual behavior which quickly becomes compulsive and self-destructive. The homosexual, according to Nicolosi, is attracted to “Mysterious men… those who possess enigmatic masculine qualities that both perplex and allure the client. Such men are overvalued and even idealized, for they are the embodiment of qualities that the client wishes he had attained for himself.”

Women, on the other hand, represent neither beauty nor pleasure, as they do to normal men, but a strange sense of heteronomous duty. Women become a challenge to which the homosexual does not feel adequate, and, with that, comes the sense that liking women and going out with them and having sex with them or marry them are duties imposed from without by forces alien to the “real self….”

Since sex for the homosexual is essentially an attempt to appropriate the masculinity that he feels lacking in himself from someone who seems to embody it, sex with girls has no purpose, since girls do not have what he lacks. Once it gets construed in this way, sex becomes an essentially vampiric act. It is either sucking the desired object to obtain its male essence, to being sucked for the same purpose. Isherwood makes this vampiric character clear, but in a slightly veiled manner, when he talks about Bubi, the first object of his homosexual attentions in Berlin: “Christopher wanted to keep Bubi all to himself, forever, to possess him utterly, and he knew that this was impossible and absurd. If he had been a savage, he might have solved the problem by eating Bubi — for magical, not gastronomic, reasons.”

Again, Isherwood refers to magic, this time to a magic form of cannibalism that will allow him to keep “to Bubi all to himself forever, to possess him utterly, “in other words, to appropriate forever from Bubi what Isherwood himself lacks Cannibalism, as the case of Jeffery Dahmer showed, is nothing more than an extreme form of homosexuality. Both actions involved a “magical” ingestion of the desired characteristics of the other. In this regard, cannibalism is but one term in a series of psychic linkages that radiate out from the vampire, the prime representative of the Weimar Republic culture. With the breakdown of the family, the son does no get the needed affirmation of his own masculinity from the father. As a result, sex becomes an attempt to alleviate this male deficit. It becomes an exercise in feedon on another person, which gets fantasized sometimes as cannibalism but, more often than not, as a sucking off the liquid essence from the desire object in the actual act of felatio or in th symbolic act of vampirism. (Magnus Hirschfield, by the way, in his magnum opus listing all the sexual variants, lists vampirism as one and cites the specific case of a man who could not reach orgasm without first ingesting the blood of his spouse. The Marquis de Sade lists a similar instance in “Justine.”

In either case, the point of the act is to assuage the hunger-like feeling that is the physical manifestation of the deficit nature of homosexuality, but also of lust. As one of Nicolosi’s clients explains about his sexual involvement with a male he admired: “that power and control — I’ve always wanted to draw off of that, to be so together.”

Like a vampire, the homosexual “draws off” that power of sucking, by draining the desired object of its life-force and absorbing it into himself in some ritualistic “magical” banquet. Of course, this magic never works; in fact, it only exacerbates the loneliness and inadequacy which drove the homosexual to this form of sexual activity in the first place, and so, what arises in place of the “magic” is a compulsive, addiction like, vicious circle, in which the homosexual tries to compensate for a sense of masculine inadequacy by engaging in homosexual activity, which, once it’s over, only makes the sense of inadequacy seem even worse.

“Immediately after every homosexual experience,” one of Nicolosi’s clients explains, “it feels like something is missing. The closeness I wanted with another man just didn’t happen. I’m left with the feeling that sex is just not what I wanted.”

And once again, the vampire provides the best explanation of the cyclic nature of this pseudo-sexual activity. There is the depletion of death, the craving, the hunger for what the vampire lacks, which is temporarily alleviated by the sucking of fresh blood, but the transformation is eternally temporary, forcing the vampire, or, in this case, the homosexual, to engage in a never ending search for new partners / victims so that he can draw off from them a momentary escape from his feeling of isolation and inadequacy. “Considering the habit forming nature of sexual behavior,” Nicolosi writes, “the more homosexuality active the client is, the more difficult the course of treatment.”

Dr. E. Michael Jones
Libido Dominandi — pg. 246-248