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Stumbling From the Path of Liberty: The Fallacy of the ‘No One Needs a [FILL IN THE BLANK]’ Demagoguery
The essence of American Liberty is to assure men the secured right to every activity which does not trespass the rights of others. Regulation as to what men may not do must not be confused with regimentation of men into platoons under a government corporal. That is the whole distinction between men possessing rights which cannot be transgressed by the state, and men merely as pawns of the state. – Herbert Hoover, The Challenge to Liberty (1935), Pages 160-161
A gun nut I am not. But I will admit to being a purist when it comes to the Constitution…and, obviously, that includes the Second Amendment. As such, I acknowledge that there are no provisions in that document, the one that stipulates the inalienable rights guaranteed by an authority ranked well above our governing elites, for said elites to infringe upon the right to keep and bear arms. Words mean things…and here, as long as a citizen in good standing does not step beyond “keeping” and “bearing” and into a well-defined zone of illegality by an authorized governing body, then that right should be absolute. Keeping and bearing a legally obtained and fully functional M1 Abrams, A-10 Warthog, and/or AR-15 super-duper-mean-as-hell-looking-assault-rifle shall not be infringed…but do something constitutionally deemed illegal with such a thing and the full force of the proper authorized governing body should come down on you like a ton of bricks.
Given that as my governing mindset, it is also important to note that I similarly suffer no muddleheadedness with respect to the true nature of American Liberty. While you may not agree with my purist attitude above as applied specifically to the Second Amendment, I do hope that you can agree that there is absolutely no requirement for the assertion of any of one’s Constitutional rights to be justified by a “need” for it. All that matters is that a US citizen in good standing wants to exercise that right. If there were a Constitutional right to an abortion…anyone who wanted one could purchase one legally with no justification of need. Clearly, no one needs to justify anything beyond wanting to say something to assert their right to free speech. And, by the exact same logic, anyone wanting to keep and bear arms must also maintain that want-only threshold in order to exercise that Constitutional right.
That is why this bit of demagogic hackery being floated across brain-dead Progressive media should be repeatedly exposed (and trumpeted) as the un-American twaddle that it is:
But, of course, if you agree with me on that much, then intellectual consistency and honesty necessitate that you agree with my purist attitude as applied specifically to the Second Amendment in my opening statement above. And I do appreciate your intellectual consistency and honesty here at Ricochet. Thank you.
If you made it this far, I am pleased to leave you with some more decades-old wisdom about what we face today:
In our blind groping we have stumbled into philosophies which lead to the surrender of freedom. The proposals before our country do not necessarily lead to the European forms of Fascism, of Socialism, or of Communism, but they certainly lead definitely from the path of liberty. The danger lies in the tested human experience, that a step away from liberty itself impels a second step, a second compels a third. The appetite for power grows with every opportunity to assume it, and power over the rights of men leads not to humility but to arrogance, and arrogance incessantly demand more power. A few steps so dislocate social forces that some form of despotism becomes inevitable and Liberty dies. – Herbert Hoover, The Challenge to Liberty (1935), Pages 197-198
Mr. Hoover understood the essence of Joe, Hillary, Chuck, Nancy, and the rest very well. Unfortunately, We the People of the early 21st century seem to understand very little of the “tested human experience” and the true dangers of the artificial hyper-emotionalism enabled by the well-honed mass delusion machine that is progressive American in these 2020s.
Into the abyss…
___ ___ ___
A PHILO PSA
Please don’t mistake my derogatory “progressive America” above to mean exclusively the Left. As I said before, history tells us there is always at least one moron like Bob Corker in the crowd. I’m keeping my eye on a true Texas moron: John Cornyn.
Also, don’t miss last week’s outrage du jour: The Silence of the Intellectually Dishonest: The Logan Act Edition
Published in General
Philo,
Thanks.
I confess, with you, that I had the right to hear that even if I hadn’t the need.
Even so, I needed to hear that. We all do, whether we’re among those who remember it, or those who forgot it , or those who never learned it.
Dead right and pretty simple and the reason for wanting to end that right is also simple. Some elites want to run the whole show, and running the whole show is pretty simple, but requires coordination among a variety of folks at the top. What too many don’t understand is that the top runs matters for their own interests and the bottom, middle and layers in between are irrelevant to them primarily because they are unknowable to them. That is why bottom up transformed the world, created the modern economy, and even science. If the top takes over even more than it already has it doesn’t mean things will narrow and the top will get richer at the expense of everyone else, it includes that, but we have all human history to view exactly what will happen, so far no exceptions. It narrows, restricts, and shrinks and rots until it can’t manage any more and it rots or gets conquered. We’re too big as a single top down nation so it will be worse than most places, the collapse and rot will be faster and deeper even without China to end us fundamentally and quickly, there will be no coming back.
Or those who willfully ignore it because it suits their momentary comfort, their fear, their lust for power or their pocketbook
I have some concern that a generation may be rising for which the appeal to the analogy of free speech and the first amendment may not hold sway. More and more people seem to believe that people should not be allowed to say something just because they want to.
To be honest, I agree with what more and more people say, if that is what they are saying. I agree that
[A:] The mere fact that I want to do something is not a sufficient condition for my being allowed to do it.
But I also strongly agree with what philo said, which is completely different from that:
In other words, I believe that a person giving an acceptable reason for wanting to do something is NOT a necessary condition for others permitting him to do it.
Perhaps the explanation for the bizarre development that after just a brief span of American history, people commonly think that [A] represents our constitutional belief, when it perfectly violates that belief, is that they confound [A] and [B]?
It is better to have something and not need it, than to need something than not have it.
Yep, way.
Under our system, you will have everything you might need, unless it is among the well-known and infinitesimally small proportion of things that have been named and forbidden. So whatever you need that’s new, you have without asking.
Under the other system you have nothing except a few things that have been named. The infinitude of other things that you might need, you will not have.
I often hear, “No one needs a 30-round clip.”
First of all, it’s a magazine you twit. Second, who are you to decide how large a magazine I want? That’s my decision, not yours . . .
Tell me about it. Every time the children visit now, after they leave I find copies of the large ARPA magazine, you know with the big print? I just throw them away. I will decide when the time comes.
Funny, I haven’t gotten an AARP thing in the mail for ages. Seems like the last time was around when I turned 50 . . .
The first impulse of totalitarians is to limit the “choices” of the law-abiding — for the “greater good.” This will not end well.
I didn’t know I wanted an AR-15 until I shot one at Hillsdale’s shooting sports camp. But, now I do.
If you review the garbage flowing from the World Economic Forum (WEF) you can see that the goal of the Davos crowd is the antithesis of the idea expressed in the Herbert Hoover quote in the OP.
You didn’t need to say that.
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(Somewhere along the line it seems we – or I – stopped getting notifications about promotions. For what it’s worth, that is/was an important feature to at least one of us.)
I think that Republicans that don’t study gun policy and then have a big opinion about it are a menace.
I can assure you there isn’t one gun grabber in Minnesota that knows anything about gun policy. Some years, they get a ton of money from Bloomberg and it doesn’t matter. They always sound like idiots.
Yup.
Better hurry. I see one Dem is asking for a 1000% tax on “assault rifles” . . .
In many cases, I admit that hours or days after posting something, I sometimes cannot and often don’t even try to find the unattributed edits. But this one – more properly noted below – is different:
Completely unnecessary.
I would humbly consider elevating that “concern” to a “fear.” Note the language used here:
Note that the reflex of this know-nothing budding totalitarian is not to go with “discouraged” or “frowned upon” but not “allowed.” The undesirable words (and ideas) themselves, no matter how serious or not, must not see the light of day. I suspect she didn’t feel the same way about things she twitted just because she wanted to.
It appears her and millions like her are our future. See you in the GULAG.
More (H/T):
If you don’t think this extends well beyond (and above) WaPo then you just aren’t paying attention.
The the faces of coming abyss probably won’t look like you might have imagined but, trust me, there will not be an ounce of self-critical introspection among them:
Remember when I posted this:
Well…
Unwell indeed.
U N W E L L:
Finally: BYE FELICIA
I sure hope she is off to get the professional help she needs.
At this point, my mind brings together this thread with the thread by @victortangokilo ” Where Do We Get Such Men?” because somewhere in her relatively young life Ms. Sonmez apparently became convinced that she was entitled to a life without difficulties or challenges, and should not have to figure out how to navigate a path containing difficulties and challenges. We (the culture in general) seem to be producing a disturbingly large number of such people.
June 22 Update:
Well, guess who?:
Not really a very impressive figure but has he reached moron status yet? I don’t know. I haven’t bothered to dig into what rubbish is packed into the bill. But this from another Powerline post does tell me a little something:
If the deal was worth a s#!t the party management (flush that effing “leadership” crap down the toilet) wouldn’t pull stunts like this. Without proper legislative order for something of this magnitude and this importance, the only respectable thing for anyone deserving of the title “Senator” to do is vote “Nay” until that order is delivered. Fourteen Republicans who currently soil that title failed that simple test quite miserably. What a pathetic lot.