[117211] in Cypherpunks
Re: Case Could Shape Future
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Secret Squirrel)
Sat Aug 28 12:28:11 1999
Date: 28 Aug 1999 15:58:09 -0000
From: Secret Squirrel <secret_squirrel@nym.alias.net>
Message-ID: <c55f771a3c10340eb34eaaca4f85369d@anonymous>
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Reply-To: Secret Squirrel <secret_squirrel@nym.alias.net>
On 27 Aug 99, at 12:14, Mark Atwood wrote:
> Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com> writes:
> > "That's the logic of (Oklahoma City bomber) Timothy
> > McVeigh," Henigan says. The framers of the Constitution
> > "couldn't have intended to bestow a right to armed
> > insurrection. That would have destroyed what they were
> > trying to build."
>
> Um. That is exactly the right they meant to bestow.
Excuse me, but there are _no_ rights _bestowed_ by the
Bill of Rights.
First, the political foundation of the Constitution, found
in the Declaration of Independence, is that rights do not
come from Man but from the Creator. The Constitution does
little in the way of pretending to create or bestow what
can honestly be called rights. Unlike the constitutions of
most other countries, which are stipulations by a presumed
absolute authority to recognize some rights of the people
while agreeing to be bound by legislative and judicial
bodies, the U.S. Constitution is the whole of the delegation
of the only legitimate authority the federal government can
claim. It is a limited grant of _powers_ to a central
government, not a grant of rights by a government to its
subjects.
The only rights created by the Constitution are a few
unnatural ones such as Patent and Copyright, which do
not exist in nature.
Second, the Bill of Rights, a set of amendments on which
the acceptance of the entire Constitution hinged at the
time, is merely a set of prohibitions of exercises of
federal power deemed by the Founders to be clearly
incompatible with the natural, "unalienable" rights of
individuals, as well as some clarification that there
shall be no question that the infinity of powers and
rights not specifically granted to the federal government
are retained by the States or the People. Consistent with
the Declaration, the Bill of Rights does not attempt to
"bestow" or "grant" any rights. It prohibits the government
from doing a number of things that this government has no
legitimate power to do. Its only reason for existence was
a fear on the part of many that without such an explicit
specification as the Bill of Rights, the federal government
would overreach its authority, as history had taught them,
and is now teaching us, that all authorities sooner or
later do.
Confusion about and inability to distinguish between
"powers" and "rights," and the notion that the Constitution
"grants" any meaningful rights, are among the fundamental
problems at the root of our present ongoing loss of most of
the rights intended to be secured by the Constitution
against governmental abuse.
Moreover, the Henigan being quoted in the article quoted
by Hettinga, then incompletely and without attribution
quoted by Atwood above, is a reeking asshole determined to
wrench the right of self defense from all good Americans.
When Atwood took it as his starting point without even
noticing where it came from or the land mines it contained
within it, he lost before he began. It is evil, traitorous
Henigan who chooses the words, "...couldn't have intended
to bestow a right..." and Atwood walks right into the trap,
already having his thinking skewed by the framework of the
enemy's propaganda.
Dennis Henigan is identified in the USA Today article from
which the quote originates as the legal director of the
Center to Prevent Handgun Violence, an organization that
irrationally works to _increase_ handgun violence by
attempting to further restrict unto abolition the
possession and carrying of handguns and other weapons
for personal, family, home and national defense.
Australia's recent experience with significantly increased
crime and gun violence in the wake of removing more than
600,000 firearms from private hands should make it clear
that to the extent that the Center has actually influenced
any legislation or voting to restrict handguns, the blood
of many American crime victims is on Henigan's hands and
the hands of his co-conspirators at the Center. It's about
time they got their asses sued for that. At the very least.
Shall we assume that Mr. Henigan is merely ignorant when
he labels as outlandish the notion that constitutions might
recognize and attempt to secure a right of revolution, even
though that nothing directly to do with the 2nd Amendment
controversy and he appears to have inserted it gratuitously
into his public statement? Shall we assume that he really
doesn't know the words of the Declaration which, although
not a constitution, clearly lays the foundation for the
principles of the American system of government? Shall we
assume that he doesn't know of the State constitutions
that guarantee the right of rebellion or revolt should
government become abusive of its only legitimate function --
the securing of the "unalienable" rights to which each of
us is born? Or shall we conclude that Henigan is a walking
slime mold encrusted with pathogens that attack individual
liberty? I leave that, as they say, as an exercise for the
reader.
And so the propaganda war continues. Laurence Tribe is to
be congratulated for at least partially coming to his
senses, even if decades too late. The damage he has already
done has to be weighed against the good he may possibly do
after his enlightenment. I'm not holding my breath for the
latter, though it's an interesting development so far.
Truthmonger
