District of Columbia v. Heller Will Tell Us a Whole Lot About Where We're Going

The following quotations, may not be recognizable (when you’ve had a chance to read what follows, and to consider both the quotes and what I say here, I’ll identify the quotes as to author, but they are unmistakably apparent as principles practiced currently by the United States’ government. They are paraphrased (even, in certain instances, stated verbatim) ever day by today’s leaders and government. They are rife in the legal argument that is my subject here.

“All propaganda has to be popular and has to accommodate itself to the comprehension of the least intelligent of those whom it seeks to reach.” This one is not only oft-stated in the media, it is their privately published tactical doctrine, stated again and again in their inter-office and inter-agency communication.

“As soon as by one's own propaganda even a glimpse of right on the other side is admitted, the cause for doubting one's own right is laid.” You might recognize this at an utterance of George W. Bush. On the other hand you might think Carl Rove said it. Same difference – isn’t it?

“Demoralize … from within by surprise, terror, sabotage, assassination.” Fundamental with IRS, of course, but how far from this is “shock and awe?”

“How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don't think. No one watching television currently can fail to recognize this one (with so few these days able to read above the eighth grade level at which newspapers are written, it’s not likely the public would see it there), and the commercials-making industry has it for their general orders.

“I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Creator.” Not much doubt that everyone who watches the Tee and Vee will recognize in this one our fearless leader (fearless with everyone’s life but his own, that is). The only way to be sure of something like this, of course, is to talk regularly with god – like George says he does.

“It is not truth that matters, but victory.” Especially if only I get to say what “victory” means.

“The art of leadership . . . consists in consolidating the attention of the people against a single adversary and taking care that nothing will split up that attention.” Standard politics these days, of course. Its masters are the leaders of every modern pressure group, from the militant feminists to the scoundrel patriots. And don’t forget the people who yell “racist” at everyone who opposes them for any reason.

“The day of individual happiness has passed.” John McCain wasn’t first with this one, in other words. Even the author of this one didn’t promise “whatever it takes,” or pontificate that “those jobs are gone” (suck it up, folks). On second thought, however, the original author of this quote did say his country would either win or cease to exist. Pretty close, what?

“The doom of a nation can be averted only by a storm of flowing passion, but only those who are passionate themselves can arouse passion in others.” Yeah, I know that’s Barack Obama almost verbatim, but he wasn’t the author of the quote. Obama just seems to agree (says so many things so close) a whole lot with him.

“The great strength of the totalitarian state is that it forces those who fear it to imitate it. “ Pretty much the neo-conservative hymn, isn’t it? “Grab ‘em by the balls,” an old military associate of mine used to say, “their hearts and minds will follow.” Also the published dictum of the C.I.A. (Cuba? Fidel Castro? Chile? Salvador Allende? Need I go on?)

“The leader of genius must have the ability to make different opponents appear as if they belonged to one category.” “The leader of genius” – remember?

“The very first essential for success is a perpetually constant and regular employment of violence. “ This one, of course, I lived. Anyone who has dueled with the IRS will recognize the “M.O.” (modus operandi) here. Generally, though, this one is the objective and fair reading of U.S. history. Not many citizens of this country have lived their lives without having seen us make war on somebody; in fact, you could call it a précis of U.S. foreign policy.

“The victor will never be asked if he told the truth.” “Mission Accomplished,” anyone? George – not being a soldier, and never having been closer to a fight than leading cheers - just doesn’t happen to know what “victory” must “accomplish.”

Those are just a few of the scores of utterances one who pays as close attention as do I, and who has read and reads history as assiduously as I do, would recognize in the statements and practices of today’s “leaders.” I have another subject for today, one relative but worthy on its own merits of consideration. So interested am I as an historian, that I have just finished reading all of the sixty-six amicus curiae and two parties opposed in District of Columbia v. Heller, a civil rights case now before the U.S. Supreme Court. The matter, of course, has directly to do with the 2nd Amendment, and whether a citizen of Washington, D.C. has the right to defend his life and property.

“Directly,” I said. I, and the Supreme Court case itself, speak indirectly to a national crises even larger, even more lethal, to a nation conceived and dedicate as this one was. Heller – what a twist of fate that the name should have been that one – betrays both in the fact of its having come to pass and in the language of those who argue it the cancer that must eventually end the United States of America as the Land of the Free.

Anyone in a virtual prison who can yet insist that he is free only demonstrates to those outside both the character and the effectiveness of his imprisonment.

I speak, among other things, of the hideous idea which constitutes a common thread through all of the argument propounded by any of the attorneys - party or friend of the court; and at least in some degree, both pro and con - the insidiously evil idea that government is the origin, the grantor, of human rights.

District of Columbia v. Heller is in point of simple fact about the most basic “right” of them all, basic not only to human beings, but to all living things. That is the right of the organism to defend its life and thereby go on living. All living organisms are endowed by nature and nature’s god with means – means far too numerous to describe here - by which to individually defend their life. Only among Homo Sapiens – “Thinking Man” – however, can that right be called into question. Human beings - governments, in particular – alone presume to arrogate to themselves, either by means of greater strength in the form of muscle, size, weapons, or weight of numbers or by politics, economics, and law, the right to deprive one another of that most fundamental of rights.

Man alone, also, is capable of the thoroughly ignorant and demonstrably (the Prisoner’s dilemma, for one instance) illogical idea that depriving another of the right and ability to defend his life somehow enhances his own chances to go on living. Nowhere in any of the Heller argument is the point made better than in the amicus brief filed by GeorgiaCarry.org.

“The unfettered right to keep and bear arms was so commonly accepted,” the argument says, “that the Founders undoubtedly would find the instant case puzzling indeed. There was, however, a common exception:
“‘No negro or other slave within this province shall be permitted to carry any gun or any other offensive weapon from off their master’s land, without license from their said master, and if any negro or other slave shall presume to do so, he shall be liable to carried before a Justice of the Peace and be whipped, and his gun or other offensive weapon shall be forfeited to him that shall seize the same . . .’”

The GeorgiaCarry brief goes on to note that when President Andrew Johnson ordered General Ulysses S. Grant to disband and seize the arms of an independent militia comprised of black men, the New York Tribune of the time wrote that the proposed arms seizure. “. . . would be one of the most flagrant and despotic acts of usurpation . . . even Congress itself has no authority to infringe upon the right of the people to keep and bear arms . . . Nor can it without a violation of the Constitution, take away any man’s musket while he ‘keeps it’ for lawful purposes.”

Gun control, the brief observes, is the historic tool for enslavement. In fact, it is more than that: a person deprived of his right to defend his life is not only a slave, he is a human being reduced to natural status lower than that of an animal. There is no logical way to deny that, and salient by its absence from the entirety of the argument made by the District of Columbia is any such observation or mention.

Of course, logic has not been much used in U.S. law (in the words of Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, "The life of the law has not been logic: it has been experience."). More, it is not often appealed to in any of the argument by either party to Heller, nor by any of the amici curiae (those – “amici” is the plural - who filed amicus curiae – friend of the court – arguments). Not many things speak more pointedly to the execrable state of our legal system than that one fact, and historians of the future will certainly note what has been the increasing absence of logic and effective reasoning in our courts and public discourse generally. Neither will historians fail to cite the devastating effect of this one social and societal anomaly.

District of Columbia v. Heller is there a case in point. I spoke yesterday of public and governmental stupidity as lethal to our way of life; today I will demonstrate an instance of that in the form of a case before none other than the highest court – and, presumably - the repository of wisdom in the land.

To begin with, “Petitioners” (District of Columbia) in Heller argue, as do all proponents of 2nd Amendment repeal and effective disarming of the U.S. public, that such is in the interests of public safety. The argument can only be recognized as an example of what a grandfather once warned me was the fundamental judgment one must make about those with whom he might be obliged to associate – stupid or evil?

First, are these people stupid? Is the mayor of Washington, D.C. incapable of the logic necessary to recognize the effect of the city’s guns ban on the horrendous rate of violence and violent crime there? Is he incapable of recognizing what any rational person would expect of “gun free zones,” too stupid to do the simple mental experiments necessary to realize?” Is he unaware of what has happened, almost without exception, wherever people have been legally authorized to keep and bear arms? Is he unaware of the horrendous rate of violent crime in his own city (even neighborhood)?

I don’t think so; nobody is that stupid. Not one of the people arguing for “gun control” – note the equivocation; it means interdiction of gun ownership - would knowingly subject himself to the danger of or to actual rape, maiming, or murder. All of these same people, I daresay without exception, speak from certain safety the common man does not share. Pretty typical of mankind, isn’t it?

I note, in that regard and parenthetically, however, that hundreds of thousands, even millions, of women like those whose attorneys argue for the Coalition of Human Rights Groups are somehow willing to walk defenseless into the arms of rapist-murderer predators. “Nobody is that stupid?” Some, obviously, are; and when one observes another behaving in a manner inimical to the subject’s own best interests, he must of course logically and objectively consider shear stupidity as the reason. But, to continue with feminist dogma and women affected by it as an example, all women who go about alone and dressed in the most sexually provocative manner possible aren’t stupid. As with any other matter the like, there may be a variety of reasons; but one is similar to that demonstrated by “petitioners” in Heller. I refer to indoctrination. Propaganda.

“Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.” In fact, each of the quotes that lead this essay is a factor contributing to the surreal arguments made by Washington, D.C. and its apparently benighted mayor in the Heller matter. These are all dictums of propaganda, and the propagandist, and for a primer on the art of the Big Lie propagandist, one need only go to the Heller amicus brief filed by “Professors of Criminal Justice.” The brief argues that “The D.C. Gun Law Is an Effective Mechanism for Reducing Handgun Violence,” and, “There Is a Proven Correlation between (sic) the Availability of Handguns and Incidents of Violence.” It gets worse. For instance, “The Effectiveness of the D.C. Gun Control Law Demonstrates Its Reasonableness” (!!! – what planet do these guys inhabit?).

One might reasonably argue here that that last one demonstrates the Ivory Tower, where ignorance is bliss, safety I construed here earlier; but, for cat’s sake, this is an argument before the U.S. Supreme Court!

Propaganda, from the Latin “propagare” – pay forward or spread – and the same word’s gerund meaning (more or less obviously) “spreading” - is a deliberately contrived communicaiton aimed at comprehensively influencing and thereby altering the opinions and behavior of large numbers of people. Effective propaganda is all but always truthful in some sense – sense, of course, always trivial or irrelevant to the subject.

The propagandist never fails to cite truth favorable to his purpose; he is careful to hide everything else. Briefs filed in Heller are redolent with the smell of propaganda, but nowhere moreso than with this tactic of the propagandist. There is hardly available – as well read as I happen to be, I honestly can’t think of one - a better study of propaganda than that propagated (another term related to propaganda) by most of the organizations filing amicus briefs in D.C. v. Heller. A study of their publications provide a veritable compendium of the propagandists art, and the propagandist ploy most characteristic of their publications is the emotional one – like the almost infinitismally small number of children killed accidentally by firearms.

This one is trotted out in the brief filed by “National Network to End Domestic Violence.” Et al. – there are so many feminist groups listed on the brief that in counting them I kept losing track – to say nothing of getting double vision. Listen to the argument (one wonders if these friends of the court get some kind of catharsis from this kind of drivel): “Domestic Violence is a serous crime that leaves millions of women and children nationwide scarred both physically and emotionally.” And, “Firearms exacerbate an already deadly crisis” (wouldn’t want to repair to the old loaded words fallacy, now would we?). Oh, yes – and: “The statue plainly survives Constitutional scrutiny.” Nothing like positive thinking, is there?

“The life of the law has not been logic.” Remember?

From my point of view, however, no argument among them all is as strangely bizarre, as thunderously contemptuous of both logic and history as that holding that men who lived in the Eighteen Century United States did not intend that individual citizens should own – “keep and bear” – firearms. In order to sincerely believe that, you must be totally ignorant of the time, or life then, and of the people then. Or you must have been somehow propagandized – Hollywood and its balderdash version of history, for instance.

This one, the primary argument of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, et alius (six more) characterizes and sets the tone for the entire anti-gun argument. It characterizes, too, liberalism, feminism, and politicized extremism in all its several U.S. forms – religion included. The one word that might further sum it all up is: “oblivious.” There is the real world and there is the world that is the figment of their Ivory Tower-derived imaginations. The Ivory Tower of humanist, feminist, and elitist liberalism demands that all of U.S. society behave in the same manner as today’s bubble-headed feminist. Society should find a way for the individual – and by extension, society – to defend oneself against criminal assault (the criminal element that every society in history has had), without violence - violence done by firearms, especially, that is.

Like the sweet young thing to whom I had reference a moment ago, they would have society proceed to outrageously tempt circumstance, demanding concomitantly that wiser society – men, in particular – find a way (one acceptable to her, of course) to assure that it gets away with its vacuous stupidity.

Heller also provides clear insight into what history will identify as the root cause of our national demise. I refer in this instance to the amicus brief filed by the American Bar Association (now, all of the “amici” – friends – of the court slanted their argument toward their particular interest in the matter, interest in themselves instructive to the logician or historian, but this one is a “doozie”). The lawyers for the bar association argue that we’ve always done it this way (proving that U.S. lawyers don’t know a hell of a lot of U.S. history; apparently, history hasn’t been Justice Holmes’ “life of the law,” either).

Now we have some insight into why our legal system is in the shape it is (like all the innocent men in jail, for instance).

One – no, two, actually - “Table of Contents” titles from the American Bar Association brief draws particular attention: The first is “The decision below undermines the rule of law by failing to provide special justifications for abandoning consistent and longstanding precedent upon which legislators, regulators, and the public (whoo, boy – now that is a stretch!) have relied.” That one is followed by this one: “The determination required by the decision below would compound the disruption of the regulatory system developed in reliance on judidicial precedent.”

Arguments not unlike that one are being made every day to keep imprisoned men proved innocent of rape charges by DNA tests.

A fair translation of both is, “The government has always done as it damned pleases without public control in any form, so it should be permitted to continue doing so in the future.” For insight into the hell of a mess we’re in, and how we got here, read the American Bar Association amicus brief in District of Columbia v. Heller.

For insight into where we are headed as a nation, however, read the entire case. It’s all there, a rhetorical blueprint for the virtual prison government by corporation intends for citizens of the Land of the Free.

The quotations with which I lead this essay, of course, are those of another gun control apologist and exponent, Adolf Hitler.