A More Perfect Union: What We the People Can Do to Reclaim Our Constitutional Liberties (7 page)

Threats abroad are one thing, but what happens if there’s a need for defense on America’s shores? Our founders recognized that “we the People” could represent a significant fighting force if necessary to repel an invasion by foreign forces. They also knew that an armed population would discourage government overreach. The Second Amendment states, “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.” The founders feared an overbearing central government might attempt to dominate the people and severely curtail their rights. This, in fact, is the primary reason that the Second Amendment was included in the Bill of Rights.

Most people in the United States would think it ludicrous to imagine our federal government trying to seize unconstitutional power and dominate the people. James Madison did not think this was so far-fetched; he said, “Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.”
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He could foresee a day in America when radicals might assume power and try to impose upon America a different system of government.
His hope was that the establishment of such a different way of life would be difficult in America, because American citizens, having the right to keep and bear arms, would rebel.

The idea that an armed citizenry was necessary for maintaining democracy is an old one. In discussions about the Constitution, Noah Webster said, “Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed.”
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True to Webster’s observation, American citizens have been armed for hundreds of years and they have been free for hundreds of years.

On the other hand, German citizens were disarmed by their government in the late 1930s, and by the mid-1940s Hitler’s regime had mercilessly slaughtered six million Jews and numerous others whom they considered inferior. Through a combination of removing guns and disseminating deceitful propaganda, the Nazis were able to carry out their evil intentions with relatively little resistance. Atrocities involving the murder of millions of people were also carried out against the people of China, the USSR, Uganda, Cuba, Cambodia, and Turkey, among others, after the people had been disarmed by tyrants.

Given our long history of freedom and the history of domination and tyranny in nations where guns have been removed from the populace, we should heed Thomas Jefferson’s warning: “Laws that forbid the carrying of arms . . . disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. . . . Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to
encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.”
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Only law-abiding citizens are affected by legislation imposing gun control. The criminals really don’t care what the law says, which is why they are criminals. Confiscating the guns of American citizens would violate the Constitution as well as rendering the citizenry vulnerable to criminals and tyrants.

Some will say that they see no problem with small handguns and hunting rifles, perhaps even shotguns. They are opposed to more powerful weaponry such as assault rifles and armor-penetrating ammunition. I too was a member of that camp until I fully recognized the intent of the Second Amendment, which is to protect the freedom of the people from an overly aggressive government. This means the people have a right to any type of weapon that they can legally obtain in order to protect themselves. They would be at a great disadvantage if they were attacked by an overly aggressive government and all they had to defend themselves with were minor firearms.

Freedom is not free and it must be jealously guarded and fought for every day. In his first inaugural address in 1789, George Washington said, “The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the Republican model of government are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.”
⁴
The experiment President Washington was talking about was our system, which depends on the people to adhere to the Constitution and require their representatives to do the same, rather than accepting major unconstitutional edicts issued by smooth-talking politicians in the name of some
higher social good. It was the eloquent C. S. Lewis who said, “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.”
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In America we can count on many voices calling for various types of gun control after any massacre, especially when it involves children. This seems noble but is just the kind of thing that our founders feared.

Rather than trying to control or confiscate guns, it might be smarter to offer free, public gun-safety courses. In countries like Switzerland, every man within a certain age range is required to possess a gun and to know how to use it, and Switzerland has one of the lowest gun homicide rates in the world. It is clear that guns do not kill people by themselves. Rather, people who are determined to kill will find whatever means are available to accomplish their mission.

We can talk about gun-safety issues and ways to decrease the likelihood of insane people obtaining guns, but we can never compromise the intent of the Second Amendment to accomplish any other goal. It is the people who are the guardians of freedom, not the government. The power of the nation resides with the people and depends on their vigilance. The great Daniel Webster put it this way:

There is no nation on earth powerful enough to accomplish our overthrow. . . . Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence, I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit confidence in their public servants, and fail to properly scrutinize their
conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men, and become the instruments of their own undoing.
⁶

This chilling warning was written sixty-one years after the Declaration of Independence but still is relevant today.

We must be particularly wary in a hyperpartisan atmosphere of being, as Webster puts it, “dupes of designing men.”
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Those designing men will frequently take things that are matters of liberty and conscience and recast them as political issues. If the party faithful accept this politicization without appropriate analysis, liberty then becomes a partisan issue, and our freedom is at stake. This is one of the reasons why hyperpartisanship is so dangerous to the long-term viability of our nation. We must be intelligent enough to recognize the forces of division that are busily pitting against one another people who should actually be friends and join forces to solve problems. Many who are pulled into the politics of division actually do not recognize that they are dupes or, as Vladimir Lenin purportedly put it, “useful idiots.” When people become well read and learn to think for themselves, they are less likely to move away from providing for the common defense.

In the age of terrorism, many have advocated that we sacrifice our rights to privacy for the sake of providing early detection of terrorist activity. Our founders would be horrified; they were gravely concerned about sacrificing privacy for the sake of security. This is one of the reasons why the Fourth Amendment became part of the Bill of Rights.

Everyone is entitled to their private thoughts and musings without fear of exposure. Creative thinking is much more likely to occur in a setting where private documents cannot be seized arbitrarily based on the suspicions of some authoritarian figure. In this cyber age, the right to privacy is more important than ever, since hackers and the government can monitor your online activities without your knowledge. Surreptitiously tracking phone calls, purchasing activity, Web site visitation history, and a host of other activities is tantamount to the illegal search and seizure forbidden by the Fourth Amendment.

The government consistently denied its involvement in such activities until it was exposed by an informant. Attempts were made to excuse such invasions of privacy by emphasizing their importance in monitoring potential terrorist activities and thereby keeping all of us safe. That might be a legitimate rationale, but it should be remembered that government authorities can easily obtain a court order on a moment’s notice, even in the middle of the night, when legitimate concerns are presented to the appropriate judicial authorities. Once again it will be up to “we the People” to put an end to such practices by raising our voices and utilizing the ballot box in an educated fashion.

The specific threats against America’s existence have changed since the founders wrote the preamble, but the enemies of liberty remain the same. As we take America forward, a strong military is still necessary for defense against threats from abroad. Human nature has not changed, so we still need an
armed citizenry to defend against tyranny at home. And we should never forget that this defense is a defense of
liberty
—any actions that claim to improve safety while destroying our freedoms should be rejected. Because we have been vigilant on these fronts, our union still exists today. Let’s be sure to maintain our defenses for the sake of our children tomorrow. If our common defense allows them to live in peace, they will be even more able to cultivate the “general Welfare” of our citizens, which was the next goal of the founders.

PROMOTE THE GENERAL WELFARE

“Do not withhold good from those who deserve it when it’s in your power to help them.”

Proverbs 3:27

L
ooking out for the good of others is one of the basic ideals that characterizes American society. Neighbors help neighbors. We do our best to enhance the prosperity, health, and happiness of others in our communities. Essentially, as private citizens we “promote the general Welfare” of our neighborhoods.

According to our Constitution, our government is also to promote the general welfare, but the avenues appropriate for government assistance are slightly different from those appropriate for private citizens. For one thing, it is fine for individuals to help only those individuals closest to them—we should all do the best we can to serve everyone, but our means are limited, and we sometimes have to prioritize. The federal government, on the other hand, must look out for everyone—the
general
welfare—not just an elite few or the members of a particular party. As private citizens, we can and should give to those in need, and we are free to give with no strings attached. The government, though,
shouldn’t just dole out support in a way that increases dependency—it is to
promote
the welfare, not secure it. The government should use every constitutional means to improve the situation of all Americans, caring about truly public issues such as the environment and monetary policy, but it is ultimately the responsibility of the people to maintain their own welfare.

Whenever the government chooses one particular group of people to help, we end up with injustice. The laws and policies of our government should be good for all of the people, and we should not choose favorite groups for the receipt of special favors, whether those favors are monetary or legislative. The founders of our country would be horrified if they could see the influence of special-interest groups upon the legislative process in our nation’s capital. So many groups receive handouts or preferential treatment in return for campaign contributions or political influence that it becomes difficult for legislators to discern the difference between what is good for their constituents and what is good for the interest group. As a result, our legislation is bloated with unnecessary pages accommodating special interests.

Many special-interest groups do need accommodation, but their needs should be balanced with the needs of the rest of Americans. This is a concept easily understood in the medical field. Most neurosurgeons wisely focus their careers on remedying the most common problems. Extraordinary cases may arise, but it makes more sense to refer those cases to experts than for all neurosurgeons to try to be prepared for
all types of cases. Trying to be an expert in everything results in shallow knowledge and less expertise in every area.

I saw this firsthand in 1987 when I was privileged to lead a medical team in an unusual procedure: an attempt to separate conjoined twins from West Germany. The two were joined at the backs of their heads, and no twins joined in that manner had ever before been separated and both survived. The involved operation required seventy members and twenty-two hours of surgery. The teamwork was impressive and both twins survived. Ten years later I was called upon to lead a team in South Africa in an attempt to separate twins joined at the top of the head. There had been thirteen previous attempts to separate such twins without great success. The conditions were not optimal, but the twenty-eight-hour surgery yielded two neurologically intact boys who will soon be graduating high school.

Because I have expertise in this field, I have been involved in a number of other craniopagus surgeries, though fortunately such medical anomalies are extremely rare. The overwhelming majority of neurosurgeons will never see one in their entire career. For this reason, a great deal of attention is not devoted to studying these kinds of patients. It is not that people are uncaring but rather that practicality dictates a more judicious use of time. It makes a great deal more sense to devote one’s time and resources to the things that are commonly encountered, leaving the care of the extraordinarily rare conditions to a few experts.

This commonsense principle should be applied to legislative matters involving the general population. Laws and regulations should be designed to address normal situations, while providing special mechanisms for the creation of
exceptions in abnormal situations. Changing the law governing the normal situation in order to accommodate the abnormal situation is like requiring that car seats be designed to accommodate conjoined twins as well as anatomically normal children. The more sensible thing would be to require car seats to accommodate typical children and design special car seats for atypical children as needed.

This principle can be applied to a host of situations in our nation. For example, most people are heterosexual, and changing the definition of marriage to suit those outside that definition is unnecessarily complicated. Instead, we should find other ways to accommodate those needing civil unions. If we adhere to common sense, those outside the norm will not feel that they have to change things for everyone else in order to get fair treatment for themselves, and we will experience more tranquillity and tolerance on all sides. The welfare of everyone will be improved.