The American Restriction of Civil Liberties Union
To quote the ACLU itself:
ACLU POLICY “The ACLU agrees with the Supreme Court’s long-standing interpretation of the Second Amendment [as set forth in the 1939 case, U.S. v. Miller] that the individual’s right to bear arms applies only to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia. Except for lawful police and military purposes, the possession of weapons by individuals is not constitutionally protected. Therefore, there is no constitutional impediment to the regulation of firearms.”
So they want to strip us of our right to bear arms as specifically stated in the Bill of Rights, but they believe that the following, which are found nowhere in any of our founding documents are actually implicitly protected by the Constitution:
1- Homosexual marriage. Back when our Founding Fathers were alive sodomy was a crime everywhere in the US. If anyone would have stood up against this for violating the constitution it is the men who wrote it. They didn’t because the Constitution does not protect homosexuality or homosexual “rights”.
2- Abortion. Once again, not mentioned in any of our founding documents. However, several of our founders did write letters and article damning the practice of murdering unborn infants.
3- Euthanasia. So the ACLU is all for murdering sick people. This in spite of the fact that the Constitution does not protect euthanasia in any way, and once again, this act was condemned by many of our founders. You know, the guys who wrote the Constitution.
4- Removing all references to God, Christianity, and the Ten commandments from all public places and government institutions. This in spite of the fact that our founders all signed a certain document called the Declaration of Independence, which itself refers to God. Also despite the fact that religious expression is protected under the First amendment. Also in spite of the fact that the actions of our founders were to start the first session of Congress by appointing a CHRISTIAN CHAPLAIN. Also despite the many references made to God by our founders throughout much of their writings. And finally, by perverting the idea of separation of church and state by taking Thomas Jefferson’s letter to A CHRISTIAN MINISTER that the court would not do anything to oppress his Church.
What a bunch of amoral, perverted, bigoted phonies! They call their far left wing activist agenda a crusade for protecting Constitutional liberties, but explicitly ignore the Constitution and history in favor of arguing for the protection of all manner of perversion and immorality they can think of. Creeps.
Thanks toStop the ACLU for bringing this to my attention.
ACLU POLICY “The ACLU agrees with the Supreme Court’s long-standing interpretation of the Second Amendment [as set forth in the 1939 case, U.S. v. Miller] that the individual’s right to bear arms applies only to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia. Except for lawful police and military purposes, the possession of weapons by individuals is not constitutionally protected. Therefore, there is no constitutional impediment to the regulation of firearms.”
So they want to strip us of our right to bear arms as specifically stated in the Bill of Rights, but they believe that the following, which are found nowhere in any of our founding documents are actually implicitly protected by the Constitution:
1- Homosexual marriage. Back when our Founding Fathers were alive sodomy was a crime everywhere in the US. If anyone would have stood up against this for violating the constitution it is the men who wrote it. They didn’t because the Constitution does not protect homosexuality or homosexual “rights”.
2- Abortion. Once again, not mentioned in any of our founding documents. However, several of our founders did write letters and article damning the practice of murdering unborn infants.
3- Euthanasia. So the ACLU is all for murdering sick people. This in spite of the fact that the Constitution does not protect euthanasia in any way, and once again, this act was condemned by many of our founders. You know, the guys who wrote the Constitution.
4- Removing all references to God, Christianity, and the Ten commandments from all public places and government institutions. This in spite of the fact that our founders all signed a certain document called the Declaration of Independence, which itself refers to God. Also despite the fact that religious expression is protected under the First amendment. Also in spite of the fact that the actions of our founders were to start the first session of Congress by appointing a CHRISTIAN CHAPLAIN. Also despite the many references made to God by our founders throughout much of their writings. And finally, by perverting the idea of separation of church and state by taking Thomas Jefferson’s letter to A CHRISTIAN MINISTER that the court would not do anything to oppress his Church.
What a bunch of amoral, perverted, bigoted phonies! They call their far left wing activist agenda a crusade for protecting Constitutional liberties, but explicitly ignore the Constitution and history in favor of arguing for the protection of all manner of perversion and immorality they can think of. Creeps.
Thanks to
posted by Daniel Levesque at
11:41 AM
21 Comments:
But wouldn't a strict literalist view of the constitution/bill of rights disallow arms, because as the aclu rightly points out, that is literally what the 2nd amendment says:
"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."
For what it's worth, I'm not opposed to sane people having sane weapons. Just pointing out the difficulties of having "strict constructionists" on the court, as some of your friends on the right keep asking for.
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Dan Trabue, at 12:46 PM
"We believe that the constitutional right to bear arms is primarily a collective one, intended mainly to protect the right of the states to maintain militias to assure their own freedom and security against the central government."
The page goes on to make the standard argument about how bazookas and nukes are "arms" too. My question is, do you read the Second Amendment as protecting the state's rights against the federal government, or the individual's? This is a legitimate point of debate, IMO. And, by the way, their official position on gun control is "neutral" -- a long way from wanting "to strip us of our right to bear arms."
1 -- I hope we can at least agree that colonial-era laws imposing capital punishment for sodomy were insane and not in keeping with the sort of federal government envisioned by the founding fathers.
2 -- A legitimate point of view. Even so, the framers chose not to identify a fetus as a person imbued with civil rights, and the common law didn't do so either. Since the practice existed in those days, a remedy might well have been sought in the formulation of the national law, but that didn't happen.
3 -- Suicide is not murder; withholding medical treatment by request is not murder -- some people call it religious freedom. Assisted suicide is less cruel than leaving a debilitated person to do the job themselves, and euthanasia is more humane than allowing somebody to linger and die slowly after life support is removed.
4 -- Nonsense. Equal access and equal time is the precedent, and it's what the ACLU pursues. The Supreme Clown Posse has depictions of Moses and the 10 Commandments on its own building -- together with other historical and cultural lawgivers. It's when people start trying to give primacy to religious codes which aren't enshrined in our founding documents -- and the founders sure could have included the 10 Commandments if they were so insistent on founding a nation on their faith. They could have included the Beatitudes, as well, which might have done us some good, but that didn't happen.
I don't understand the need to demonize the ACLU. I don't agree with every idea they support, but that's the whole idea. Rights are rights, even when we don't agree with them.
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catastrophile, at 1:02 PM
I believe that the idea of euthanasia is to humanely put people who are terminally ill to death, so as to bring them the least amount of suffering possible.
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Anonymous, at 4:24 PM
This is really quite fascinating, the way all of this becomes "common knowledge."
I was curious to know more about the alleged War on Christmas, specifically MMR's assertion that ACLU members "work overtime at eliminating nativity scenes and Christmas trees."
So I googled. The first result (from Stop the ACLU, coincidentally) offered no illumination, only the statement that "We all know how the ACLU hates nativity scenes" -- which I don't know, so I kept looking.
The second result was from conservative news site WorldNetDaily, a story titled Officials remove Nativity to avoid ACLU.
"Well," thought I, "that was easy. Now I can see what arguments the ACLU is employing to eliminate nativity scenes."
Here is the horrible unAmerican argument that forced county officials to make the baby Jesus cry, according to Pennsylvania ACLU legal director Vic Walczak:
"Walczak said it would meet constitutional requirements if the park entrance allowed all groups to display religious messages on a first-come, first-served basis."
HORROR!!! TRAUMA!!! PLAINTITUDE!!!
Equal access? HOW COULD THEY!?!
Am I going to find that all the "common knowledge" about the ACLU's lunatic agenda is this, uh, shocking?
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catastrophile, at 3:13 AM
My uncle believes that the second amendment means that not only may individuals bear arms, we may bear the same arms as our government: nukes, fighter jets, tanks, etc.
Regarding your argument against homosexual marriage by arguing that our Founding Fathers had different laws then, don't forget slavery was legal then, and they all owned slaves. Right to vote? The argument must work across the spectrum, and not only in isolated circumstances.
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Anonymous, at 7:56 AM
good discussion...
Oh and Daniel:
TAG- You're it!
*grin*
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Peakah, at 11:18 AM
Yeah. This is quite an interesting point, from the same ACLU page:
"If indeed the Second Amendment provides an absolute, constitutional protection for the right to bear arms in order to preserve the power of the people to resist government tyranny, then it must allow individuals to possess bazookas, torpedoes, SCUD missiles and even nuclear warheads, for they, like handguns, rifles and M-16s, are arms. Moreover, it is hard to imagine any serious resistance to the military without such arms."
This is a very interesting argument. If 2.Am is intended to allow us individually to defend ourselves against the government, for it to be functional against our present government it will have to be quite inclusive, indeed.
Mines? Grenades? Anti-aircraft weapons? ICBMs? What would it take to defend ourselves, if some fine lunatic at the helm of the nation decided to turn the power of the military against us? And are you prepared to make such things available for unregulated purpose?
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catastrophile, at 12:45 PM
*purchase?
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catastrophile, at 12:46 PM
Here is one of those cases hwere the founders did not realize the reality of the future. The idea of ANYONE having a nuke, private citezen or government, would probobly have horrified them
In their day guns were top of the line, knowing this it can safely be said that they thought guns should be unregulated. ICBMs, nukes, nerve gas, and the liek could not have been logicaly intended to be covered because they did not exist. So the WMD argument for gun control is irrelevant and distracts from the real issue.
Of course, that just makes too much sense for some people.
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Daniel Levesque, at 1:01 PM
yes, very interesting discussion. i don't like much of what the ACLU defends now, however, i really agree with their stand on euthanasia...i would much rather be able to decide when my life is over, than having to live in a 'vegetative state', which is something i personally have to worry about, having ms!
LibbY!
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Libby, at 1:04 PM
I don't think it's irrelevant at all. It goes back to the purpose -- the stated purpose -- of 2.Am. To allow the people and the states to defend themselves against excesses of the federal government, correct? My question is, what would that require? By ruling out anything bigger than a gun, you've already crippled the hypothetical patriotic resistance. You can't have a war without high aexplosives!
But okay, let's say just guns. Machine guns? Sniper rifles? Semiautomatic weapons -- since such things were unheard-of in colonial times? Sawed-off shotguns? Old-fashioned cannons? Antiaircraft guns? Tasers?
I happen to think we're better off without strict gun controls. But it's very difficult to argue that "the right to keep and bear arms" is as clear as people say it is. There's room for honest disagreement as to what was and wasn't contemplated when the founders envisioned the arms people might one day be capable of keeping and bearing.
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catastrophile, at 2:08 PM
While we depend on the Constitution to provide us with a foundation upon which to base the laws governing our society, we must as a people be able to be flexible and to adapt. We are not the same country we were when our Constitution was first drawn up. Thus the need for ammendments.
Adultry was also illegal during the time when our forefathers were writing the Constitution. Women (as well as some men) were hanged for commiting adultry. Yet today it's seen as simply being part of life. Of all the things that threaten the sanctity of marriage, I believe adultry is at the top of the list. Along with the lack of respect given to the union itself. When you have a society where people marry , divorce (or annul), remarry, and redivorce as if it were a game, you clearly have a society that has lost respect for the sanctity of marriage. No matter who's doing the marrying. I could care less if men marry men or women marry women. It seems very few people take marriage seriouly any more. Even in the 'Christian' sector.
I abhor abortion. But, based on the right to privacy, I respect every individuals right to make that decision for him/herself. How would you like it if your daughter had to live her life according to how I felt on any particular issue?
Now, the issue of religion and government is a difficult one. First of all you are absolutely right. Our forefathers did use God and religion very liberally in their process of setting up the documents that would be our guides for government. Yet they also firmly stipulated that the government would have no power in establishing a religion. Even though that is basically what they had already done. By involking God's name in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence they were establishing him as the ultimate judge and his word as the ultimate guide. So, while they may have said the government would not establish or support a particular religion, in reality they had already done so. In reading these documents there can be little doubt that the writers held "God's word" to be their guiding force.
I guess it all comes down to a question of do we do as they said or do we do as they did? Kinda like the quandry that children face when deciding whether to obey their parents word or following in their footsteps.
By the way, Daniel, could you please contact me via email?
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wanda, at 2:16 PM
[Daniel] Here is one of those cases hwere the founders did not realize the reality of the future.
Exactly, Daniel; now if only you could take that astute observation to its logical conclusion. Of course they couldn’t take the future into account so you can’t rely on a centuries old document as being the last word in anything. You have to rely on the courts constantly updating the law to keep pace with the changing reality.
The same can be said for your dogged adherence to the Bible. The writers of the Bible knew nothing of science and have been proven wrong in so many ways. It’s time for you to let go of the past and start living in today’s reality.
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Anonymous, at 2:23 PM
"now if only you could take that astute observation to its logical conclusion. Of course they couldn’t take the future into account so you can’t rely on a centuries old document as being the last word in anything."
Uterly false and fully illogical. What you have stipulated is that the entire Constitution is invalid simply because there are som TEHNOLOGICAL advances our forefathers did not forsee. In SOCIETY there hasn't been anything new in the world for thousands of years, so every societal freedom, restriction, and development could very easily have been forseen, and probably was.
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Daniel Levesque, at 2:31 PM
[Daniel] Uterly false and fully illogical. What you have stipulated is that the entire Constitution is invalid…
Actually, you are the one being illogical, Daniel. Your argument is a straw man. You are distorting what I said into an extreme and then attacking that extreme as though it was my argument. This is a logical fallacy.
I didn’t say the entire Constitution is invalid; I said that it wasn’t the last word. I think the Constitution was a damn good start, but more needed to be said on the subject. That is why there were amendments. It is also why there is constant interpretation and tuning by the courts.
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Anonymous, at 2:55 PM
Well Daniel, this will come as no surprise to anyone here: I agree with your entire post! Excellent!
MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU AND TO ALL OF YOUR READERS AS WELL! :)
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Gayle, at 4:52 PM
But you have to follow the logical conclusion just a little bit farther...
The founders KNEW that they could not possibly forsee every situation that might arise in the future and so they included in the Constitution a way to change it.
Amendment.
The Constitution wasn't written with the power of judicial review in mind, it was a power that Supreme Court assumed for itself. I don't have a problem with judicial review, but people just up and deciding that Constitution says something that it clearly does not is a sloppy way to govern. There is a procedure in place and it should be followed.
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Anonymous, at 3:57 AM
Actually, Dan, saying that the issue of WMD distracts from the real issue is absolutely wrong. The Brady Bill and such are based on what is considered a fair arm to possess. You can't even have chemicals in your own home to mix bombs, terrorist or not. That is a direct implication of the second amendment.
Again, the problem with strict constitutionalists is that they so limit themselves they get tangled and lost in their own arguments by putting so many limitations and stipulations on others' arguments. "The founding fathers couldn't have foreseen nukes," or "It was a different time period then regarding women/minorities."
Shortsighted and oversimplistic, I'd say. Otherwise our Founding Fathers would have placed an expiration date on the constitution.
I have too much faith in our constitution to make any argument that even vaguely refers to its being too outdated to apply now.
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Anonymous, at 4:22 AM
Putting aside the specifics stated in the document -- organization of the government, terms of service, lines of succession and the like -- the Constitution is a document of principles. As Daniel points out, principles are not rendered obsolete by advances in technology, though the application of a principle stated two-hundred-odd years ago to a case arising out of unforseen circumstances might lead to unexpected consequences -- hence the "living Constitution" that so many people rage against.
The framers might not have foreseen that people would one day communicate through wires or radio waves, but they recognized a right of people to be secure against the government inserting itself into their daily lives, and so they included a prohibition against arbitrary searches and seizure of property. Is it unreasonable to say that the framers would have intended that prohibition to extend to the arbitrary monitoring of private telecommunications? As in the case of 2.Am -- certainly, advances in technology have brought us to a point where allowing unregulated trade of anything identifiable as bearable arms would be sheer folly. So a line must be drawn, but where? Daniel says "guns." Was it Pat Buchanan who said, essentially, that anything that doesn't need its own trailer to be transported should be unregulated? Both of these are arbitrary lines, but arbitrary lines are all we can hope for.
This statement puzzles me: "The Constitution wasn't written with the power of judicial review in mind, it was a power that Supreme Court assumed for itself."
Now, I realize that the Supreme Court did indeed declare itself to have this power, but I don't know how you can say that the Constitution wasn't written with this in mind.
The whole purpose of a court is to interpret the law and apply it when a controversy arises. The Constitution identifies itself as the highest law of the land, and also establishes the Supreme Court as the highest court of the land. If the Supreme Court lacks the power to declare an act of government contrary to the highest law of the land and therefore invalid, how is the Constitution to be enforced?
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catastrophile, at 4:48 AM
CJB,
"I didn’t say the entire Constitution is invalid; I said that it wasn’t the last word."
You left out the last 2 words of your statement, "on anything".
Our entire government, the way our laws are structured, the rights and privileges we enjoy, are all
regulated by this 225 year-old document. The AMENDMENT PROCESS is the only aspect of a "living document" the Constitution has. This allows the nation, by a supermajority to change the document in order to fit the will of the people. All else is set in stone. By saying that "the Constitution cannot be the last word on anything" you make a blanket statement that invalidates the authority of the Constitution. Without authority the Constitution becomes meaningless, and therefore invalid. This is the train of logic that makes your statement no staw-man, but a danger to the American way of life.
Question: Am I the only one who actually took civics?
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Daniel Levesque, at 10:54 AM
Daniel,
I agree with you on the amendment process and I didn’t mean that SCOTUS changes the Constitution, only that they interpret it to keep pace with new technologies such as gender reassignment, surrogate motherhood and human cloning. So I have no argument with you there.
However, if you look really closely, you will see that I didn’t say ‘on anything’, but ‘in anything’. This was in the context of ‘you can’t rely on a centuries old document as being the last word in anything’, which was a veiled reference to the anachronism of the Bible. I’m sorry for the misunderstanding, but I can’t resist a dig at your Biblical literalism.
By
Anonymous, at 11:47 PM
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