"The holy grail, of course, is the Second Amendment. Of all the amendments after the first, each of which is profoundly important, this one is second for a reason. Without it, the right of the citizens to meaningfully stand against a tyrant and his followers who infringe or falsely rescind the other unalienable rights will disappear. The right of a people to defend itself is the last bulwark of freedom. Thus, to the left it is the most offensive, and the most dangerous of all. As such, that right has been openly under attack for 30 years. If it falls, so do the rest, quickly and without the cover of incrementalism."
By Jeffrey T. Brown
December 13, 2013
The first amendments to the Constitution, contained within a Bill of Rights intended to protect us from the dark side of our rulers' human nature, contain some of our most basic and important freedoms. Without them, we are merely inmates in whatever institution the elected decide to construct around us. At the risk of oversimplification, the Bill of Rights tells the elected that their designs have limits, which we consider sacred as deriving from God and not man.
On their own, those articulated rights are the model of clarity and simplicity. However, because they apply to all, and convey no preference or advantage to classes or sects, they are unacceptable to some. They must be rewritten and ultimately replaced by what is more agreeable to those who resent having their grand designs thwarted by long-dead geniuses. As the left is wont to do, they have set about not to entirely dissolve the protections of the Bill of Rights, but to unilaterally assume the role of arbiter, to constrict the meaning of the language of the Bill of Rights, and to decide to whom those rights will be awarded and from whom they will be taken. To fail to see their belief in the government's ownership of rights, and its entitlement to dispense them only to their faithful adherents, is to entirely miss a significant part of the left's end-game. Rights are prizes for loyal followers.
