

The Noble Train of Artillery by Tom Lovell

When an American talks with pride and reverence about his constitutional rights, he thinks back to a collection of Virginia planters and radical minds, scribbling their truths upon a piece of parchment in Independence Hall. We see Henry Knox, hauling the cannons of Fort Ticonderoga in the dead of winter to help defend the Port of Boston. The general picture is that of unity against an imperial crown. Five years after the fighting was done in 1788 our second constitution was ratified, the former known as the Articles of Confederation, dismissed as inadequate and temporary, needing to be scrapped. Then your typical textbook will move on, only briefly mentioning an obscure term ‘Anti-Federalism’. Who were these Anti-Federalists? What did they believe? They were more than dissidents of our constitution, in fact, they gave us our most cherished part, The Bill of Rights.

James Madison, 4th President of the Republic, Father of the Constitution, and Author of 29 out of the 85 Federalist Papers.

Any American who has heard of the Pamphlet Debate, knows of the Federalist Papers, many of us in fact are familiar with them, but as with any debate there are opposing opinions, reading only the Federalist Papers, you get only half of the story. So when it comes down to your constitutional rights, where should we be looking for understanding, at the Federalists or the Anti-Federalists? The clear answer is the Anti-Federalists, for what followed the Pamphlet Debate, was the Great Compromise, one in which the Federalists got their centralized government and the Anti-Federalists a Bill protecting the cherished rights won in the Revolution.

By far the most controversial and known by heart by many patriots is 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.

Many arguments by (Digressing: ‘Liberals’, which by all means is in total contradiction to the axioms of Liberalism; the modern term being a mix of radical identitarianism, mass immigration, interventionism, and statism: control of economic and social policy. so here I will refer to them as simply Statists, as they are wholly unworthy of attaching themselves to Enlightenment Liberalism; just the same the Democrat Party is still the party of segregation and slavery, muh party switch never happened, a topic for another day.) Statists will focus solely on the wording of the Second Amendment, clasping to the world’s most controversial operative clause “…the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Claiming that it has nothing to do with the Militia and that the National Guard is its inheritor. Others will claim the law is antiquated and unnecessary now that the united states has one of the largest and most powerful standing armies to grace this planet:

“But such a provision makes no sense today, given that the United States military, despite recent claims to the contrary, is the best equipped and best trained in the history of the world. Nor do proposals of laissez-faire gun ownership of any and all kinds to almost anyone contribute to a rational or civil society.

What was vital to America in the eighteenth century may have little relevance to twenty-first-century America.”

…

But why didn’t James Madison, brilliant author of the Second Amendment, spell out more details and definitions? These would have shut down today’s debates about meaning and intention in the amendment. Indeed, why is the Second Amendment a skimpy twenty-seven words?

Bernard Star, Huffington Post

Had President Madison and company gotten stoned on good ol’ rye whiskey, penned the Second and woke the next morning to gaze upon his work “Zounds! Who wrought this!”, then I would believe such bunk. However, as we shall see, it took second place for very good reasons.

Poor Mr. Madison

(Federalist No. 46)

The only refuge left for those who prophesy the downfall of the State governments is the visionary supposition that the federal government may previously accumulate a military force for the projects of ambition. The reasonings contained in these papers must have been employed to little purpose indeed, if it could be necessary now to disprove the reality of this danger. That the people and the States should, for a sufficient period of time, elect an uninterrupted succession of men ready to betray both; that the traitors should, throughout this period, uniformly and systematically pursue some fixed plan for the extension of the military establishment; that the governments and the people of the States should silently and patiently behold the gathering storm, and continue to supply the materials, until it should be prepared to burst on their own heads, must appear to every one more like the incoherent dreams of a delirious jealousy, or the misjudged exaggerations of a counterfeit zeal, than like the sober apprehensions of genuine patriotism.

Madison quite clearly saw the emergence of a for profit military, serving the private interests of those who control congress as farfetched, but today we call it the MICC (military industrial congressional complex) and nobody denies today the arms market and multinational corporations nefarious role in getting us into the Cold War arms race, Vietnam, Iraq, Kuwait, and Afghanistan. This was a key part in President Eisenhower’s farewell address, the unlimited power and resources our military had acquired would be used to serve the interests other than the people’s. I’m sorry to say Mr. Madison, but the reasonings of your paper were completely forgotten and nowadays and are dismissed as conspiracy by the MSM.

Extravagant as the supposition is, let it however be made. Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger. The highest number to which, according to the best computation, a standing army can be carried in any country, does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number of souls; or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms. This proportion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence. It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops. Those who are best acquainted with the last successful resistance of this country against the British arms, will be most inclined to deny the possibility of it. Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of.

So now we can regard the opinions of the Huffington Post as completely false. The Second Amendment was not just a provision for the national defense, but a check against our own government, a ‘subordinate government’, By the people, of the people, for the people. The Statists that run the MSM think us insane for questioning the authority of government and fearing the power it has acquired. This of course comes from the Statist concept of government, of aided economies and welfare nets, acting as arbitrators of morality; in essence a new church. If you doubt this comparison, maybe a bit of Soviet art will refresh your memory.

Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. And it is not certain, that with this aid alone they would not be able to shake off their yokes. But were the people to possess the additional advantages of local governments chosen by themselves, who could collect the national will and direct the national force, and of officers appointed out of the militia, by these governments, and attached both to them and to the militia, it may be affirmed with the greatest assurance, that the throne of every tyranny in Europe would be speedily overturned in spite of the legions which surround it. Let us not insult the free and gallant citizens of America with the suspicion, that they would be less able to defend the rights of which they would be in actual possession, than the debased subjects of arbitrary power would be to rescue theirs from the hands of their oppressors. Let us rather no longer insult them with the supposition that they can ever reduce themselves to the necessity of making the experiment, by a blind and tame submission to the long train of insidious measures which must precede and produce it.

And here we stand at that junction yet again, after over a century of blind and tame submission, without any semblance of a militia and the inability to acquire even the infantryman’s weapon, without acquiring a FFL (Federal Firearms License) and at least $20,000 in pocket. This law was not drafted exclusively for self-defense as the NRA would have you believe, as they serve the corporate interests of gun makers, nor for hunting and antiquated methods of national defense, as the Huffington post and Statists will tell you; it was all these things, but above all it was for defense against tyranny.

The argument under the present head may be put into a very concise form, which appears altogether conclusive. Either the mode in which the federal government is to be constructed will render it sufficiently dependent on the people, or it will not. On the first supposition, it will be restrained by that dependence from forming schemes obnoxious to their constituents. On the other supposition, it will not possess the confidence of the people, and its schemes of usurpation will be easily defeated by the State governments, who will be supported by the people.

Where are the state governments now? States’ rights mean little in a nation ruled almost entirely from Washington, the largest of the states being the only ones with authority and the tenacity to question federal law while the rest crumble under the duress and threats of retraction of federal funding. Such was the case with the National Minimum Drinking Age Act, which ironically was passed by Congress in 1984. This was an indirect result of the Federal Government’s decision to tax its citizens directly, referred to as a ‘direct tax’, which had been restricted by the Supreme Court case Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan & Trust Co. in 1895 and was effectively invalidated by the Passage of the 16th Amendment. Congress could now tax its citizens directly, while at the same time not being obligated to return that money through investments and projects to each state, which per the constitution was decided by that state’s population. This effectively, as of recent, has made it impossible for state governments to run their own affairs independent of the federal government with such high federal income and corporate taxes, the highest at the state level, in the highest bracket being 9.9%. Altogether 7 states have decided to have no income tax because of the federal overburden.

Article I, Section 2, Clause 3:

Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers…

16th Amendment:

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

Returning to the passage of the drinking age act, this bill required all states to raise the minimum drinking age to 21. This was effectively done by threatening all states with a 10% reduction in federal highway funds. Effectively federal domination of tax revenue, the only real source of power a government has, was wielded as a weapon, cutting through the 10th Amendment like a hot knife through butter.

The MSM and the federal government have not played well with state assemblies who have regarded federal law as void and unconstitutional by nullification. This right however was clearly protected and established after the Alien and Sedition Acts, signed by Federalist President John Adams, that among other things made criticism of the government a punishable offense. This was challenged through the Arguments put forward secretly by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions. Nullification was not only a right of the states, but a duty when it came to unconstitutional laws.

One recent example of this was Kansas’ Second Amendment Protection Act, which nullified the National Firearms act of 1934:

Sec. 6. (a) Any act, law, treaty, order, rule or regulation of the

government of the United States which violates the second amendment to

the constitution of the United States is null, void and unenforceable in the

state of Kansas.

http://kslegislature.org/li_2014/b2013_14/measures/documents/hb2199_00_0000.pdf

This was promptly attacked by Attorney General Eric Holder the following day, landing two Kansas citizens in hot water with federal authorities, who refuse to recognize the doctrine of nullification, established by Jefferson and Madison’s interpretation of the 10th Amendment. Such was the case of the Firearms Freedom Act as well, passed in Montana. Nullification has been shot down by the supreme court before, who also refuses to recognize the authority of the 10th Amendment, United States v. Peters 1809, Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee 1816, Cohens v. Virginia 1821 are some of the first Supreme court cases to have shot down nullification, just to name a few.

At this point you may be eager to hear what the Anti-Federalists had to say about this matter. Unlike the Federalists, they were far more to the point about their concerns about what a centralized government would bring and to them the Second Amendment was of paramount importance in protecting us from tyranny (Don’t forget, tyrants are not monarchs, they are elected and are a result of mob rule, think of Caesar, mastermind of bread and circuses).

To Be Continued…