and... why is it controversial?

Free Market News stated that Ron Paul was going to run his two commercial spots in New Hampshire, despite the criticism the ads garnered last weekend. I liked them. I thought the first one was cheesy, yes, but it tells the viewer where our candidate stands on the issue. The second one, is better, I think.

the last defense

Since I was a sophomore in high school, taking Procedural Criminal Law, I have dreamed of becoming an attorney. One Saturday morning during first semester, I was laying in bed, and grabbed a book for some light reading: Constitutional Interpretation: Rights of the Individual, by Craig Ducat. A pre-lawyer was born.

Between then and now I've toyed with several ideas about where I'd find my niche. I thought about being a prosecutor, the Solicitor General for the US, a corporate lawyer, an author, a missionary (not having anything to do with law, but I did go through a weird kick for a few weeks one May), a trafficking victim advocate, a politician and finally, nothing. A few weeks ago, I hit a point in my studies when I realized that nothing appealed to me as a career. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my future.

A few days ago, I found my path again. I was having a conversation with a friend whose father is a lawyer. He told me that considered lawyers to be the people's last defense against the government. I had a eureka moment. I heard in my head the Will Smith song "Men in Black," the line where Will says that the MIBs are the first, last and only line of defense against the worst scum of the universe. I thought, yep, that sounds about right.

Our people need protection from the government. Further, the Constitution needs protection from the government as well. Places like the ACLU and the Institute for Justice work to continue that protection. Since I was raised a Republican, I was brought up disdaining the ACLU. I don't agree with all the cases they represent, but an organization that purports to preserve the civil liberties of Americans can't be all bad.

And maybe one day, our country will wake up and realize what has been given up, and realize that the only remedy is to act to bring us back to the way our country was when founded.

Politics ought to be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage. – Dwight D. Eisenhower

militia maintenance

I did not grow up with guns in my home. My parents never owned a gun, and I’m almost positive that neither my mother nor my father has ever even fired a weapon before. I did grow up with the mentality that guns are bad, and that I never wanted to use one, especially once I was older and went through my pacifist phase.

My views have changed recently, however. I wouldn’t say that I’m now an enthusiastic member of the NRA, and I’m not going to be donning reflective orange gear to forage around in forests anytime soon, but I do recognize the rights of others to do so.

I was in eighth grade when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold stormed Columbine High School and orchestrated the second deadliest school shooting in our history. Though there’d been other school shootings and violence, the scale of this incident immediately polarized the nation and brought out the zealots defending or denouncing the right of citizens to bear arms.

The Second Amendment guarantees this right of the citizens, but civilians and government officials alike seem determined to tell us that that’s not really what the Founders meant when they wrote:

“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.”

There are theories about what the Founders could have meant: “the people” really means the State; “to bear arms” really means in a military sense; “militia” really means the Army. In “Right to Keep and Bear Arms,” a report to the Senate, Senator Orrin Hatch wrote,

“They argue that the Second Amendment's words ‘right of the people’ mean ‘a right of the state’ — apparently overlooking the impact of those same words when used in the First and Fourth Amendments. The ‘right of the people’ to assemble or to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures is not contested as an individual guarantee. Still they ignore consistency and claim that the right to ‘bear arms’ relates only to military uses. This not only violates a consistent constitutional reading of ‘right of the people’ but also ignores that the second amendment protects a right to ‘keep’ arms.

“When our ancestors forged a land ‘conceived in liberty’, they did so with musket and rifle. When they reacted to attempts to dissolve their free institutions, and established their identity as a free nation, they did so as a nation of armed freemen. When they sought to record forever a guarantee of their rights, they devoted one full amendment out of ten to nothing but the protection of their right to keep and bear arms against governmental interference. Under my chairmanship the Subcommittee on the Constitution will concern itself with a proper recognition of, and respect for, this right most valued by free men.”

I recently began exploring the idea of purchasing a firearm of my very own (once I save up a lot of money for a really nice piece). Since I reside in Illinois, I am required to apply for and hold a valid Firearm Owner’s Identification (FOID) card. The card falls under the control of the Illinois State Police; before issuing the card, the applicant is run through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), which in turn is run by the FBI. The NCIS determines whether the applicant can possess a firearm based on criteria enumerated by the Gun Control Act of 1968.

I cannot legally own a gun if I’m under 18, or under indictment for a crime, or am mentally defective, or am addicted to a controlled substance, or have been convicted of a federal crime (imprisonment of more than 1 year) or a state crime (imprisonment of more than 2 years). Reading the restrictions of lawfully infringing the Second Amendment, I now understand why it is so easy to buy guns on the black market, and why citizens choose to do so.

I can also understand why many citizens believe that these restrictions should be imposed. They don’t want another Columbine (even though it happened again with more fatalities at Virginia Tech almost exactly eight years later). They want to get guns out of the hands of criminals. It makes sense, in a paternalistic way. But it’s undermining the freedom bestowed by the Framers, by the men who fought for freedom and liberty from the Crown, who died so that we might do what we want and be left alone to do it.

I own a t-shirt from Random Shirts.com, showing a man holding a squirrel. The caption is “Guns don’t kill squirrels. Cars do.” It’s an obvious analogy to the argument “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.” Still true.

The people of the various provinces are strictly forbidden to have in their possession any swords, bows, spears, firearms or other types of arms. The possession of these elements makes difficult the collection of taxes and dues, and tends to permit uprising. – Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Japanese Shogun, August 29, 1558

getting schooled

Children for me are a long way off. But I've been giving some thought recently concerning how I would educate my brood. I grew up in stereotypical white suburbia and received a public school education. I went on to attend a private religious university in another state and am now enrolled at an independent private graduate school. I grew up thinking that anyone who didn't go to school with me was strange somehow, like a few kids from church who were home-schooled. I equated private schools and homeschooling with bible class, like my friend who attended enigmatic P.S.R. classes at her Catholic church.

Now that I've had a chance to meet people from differing educational backgrounds, I'm not so sure that I would want my children to be victims of public education. Across the country, schools, even public schools, have varying curricula. Though there are standardized tests, some schools, especially in rural and urban areas, lack consistency and thoroughness in some subjects.

When considering public education, parents have to think about myriad decisions: Will my child be bored because he has to work at the same pace as others, though he is more advanced? Will my child be lured into a gang and killed in senseless street violence? Will my child learn about sex at the age of 10 and be given free condoms at the age of 14? I would say that a good percentage of American parents assume that a public school education is "good enough." Some don't have the money for private schooling, or the patience for home-schooling. I'm not sure I would have the patience, either, but anything but public schooling is looking attractive right now.

From all of my friends who are pursuing an education in education, the biggest complaint I hear is Public Law 107-110, popularly known as No Child Left Behind. Apparently, the No Child Left Behind Act leaves everyone behind, but at least they’re all together. The NCLB Act requires public schools in a given state to conduct standardized testing at appointed years during a child’s education, provides federal funding as an incentive to raise expectations for students, and purports to be succeeding at achieving a level field for all students, regardless of socioeconomic status or ethnicity.

Surprisingly, the Act was supported and signed by President Bush. (I say surprisingly because he is a Republican, but given the liberties he’s infringed on American citizens in other areas of life, it really shouldn’t be so much of a shock.) Though states are free to set their own standards and methods of testing, the money is still coming from the federal government, and there is a very real threat of a movement toward standardized federal schools.

Meanwhile, children who are home-schooled seem to be doing better than their standardized compatriots. In a study of more than 7,000 adults who had been home-schooled, the National Home Education Research Institute found that the majority were content, intelligent, active citizens. About 60% of home-schooled adults claimed to be “very happy,” and 70% found life to be “exciting,” compared to non-home-schooled adults answered 30% and 50%, respectively.

The question wants for further analysis, and I certainly have time for it. But as the federal government sneaks in the back door to control our lives, who knows what will have happened by the time I’m ready to send kids to school.

The public school system: "Usually a twelve year sentence of mind control. Crushing creativity, smashing individualism, encouraging collectivism and compromise, destroying the exercise of intellectual inquiry, twisting it instead into meek subservience to authority." – Walter Karp, Editor Harper's Magazine

what Hitler didn't learn from Napoleon

Before sending his troops to invade Russia, Hitler said, "We have only to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down." He obviously didn't learn his lesson from Napoleon, who retreated five months after attempting to take over the same country. History has a way of repeating itself. It doesn't seem very likely that we're able to learn from our mistakes. Granted, I don't think that there will soon be a Fourth Reich who tries once again to claim control of Russia, but there are other mistakes to be repeated.

During my internship in Washington, DC, my program took the participants to see "Cabaret." I'd seen the 1972 movie a few years earlier and hadn't been too impressed, but the stage production was different, and absolutely fantastic. The dramaturg included in the program an essay comparing the rise of socialism and Nazism to the current political climate in America. The essay showed ten signs that demonstrated the decline of Germany into paranoia and oppression; those signs were then linked to events happening in America, making several frightening parallels.

The movie Rendition opens today, which shows the darker side of our current administration. In his review of the movie, Roger Ebert comments that rendition started under Clinton. There is actually basis for rendition between states in the Constitution. Article 4, Section 2, Clause 2 states:

A Person charged in any State with Treason, Felony, or other Crime, who shall flee from Justice, and be found in another State, shall on demand of the executive Authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having Jurisdiction of the Crime.

This is commonly called extradition, and when it appears as a plot device in Law and Order, we're ok with it. However, rendition, or more specifically extraordinary rendition, is completely different from that. The United States has repeatedly denied claims that the government engages in this behavior, through interviews with various officials and reports for Congress. Whether or not there is hard proof, I don't believe that it's a stretch, considering the presence of America in other countries, CIA satellite stations abroad, and Abu Ghraib. The plot of the movie Rendition follows an Egyptian-born American citizen being kidnapped off a flight from South Africa to Chicago. He is taken to an unnamed country and tortured during an interrogation to discover why a known terrorist, or someone with the same name, called him on his cell phone, which he may not even have had at the time. His wife, when she discovers his disappearance does everything in her power to free him, attempting to fight faceless security admins who care more about averting the possibility of a terrorist plot than actually considering the likelihood that the man is a terrorist.

The last time I was in an American law class, which was earlier this morning, we operated on an adversarial system of law, whereby people are innocent until proven guilty. And I'm pretty sure I read somewhere in the United States Constitution the words "due process." Yes, that's right, Amendments 5 and 14. But then, if the government is working to protect us from foreign threats, we should blindly accept it.

These attitudes toward foreign-born citizens is reminiscent of something.

"A member of the U.S. Congressional Nazi crimes committee visiting Buchenwald concentration camp shortly after its liberation, 24 April 1945."

The more power a government has the more it can act arbitrarily according to the whims and desires of the elite, and the more it will make war on others and murder its forein and domestic subjects. The more constrained the power of governments, the more power is diffused, checked, and balanced, the less it will aggress on others and commit democide.- R.J. Rummel, Death by Government

self-censorship

A friend just today regaled me with a story that exemplifies a current running through our country today. He is in his last year of college at a private Christian school. He received through campus email a message with the subject "Are You a Hetero-sexist?" The email had a link that lead the viewer to a quiz concerning his beliefs on homosexuality. My friend, a very conservative Christian, scored high on the quiz, placing in the "homophobe" category. He was also raised with the idea, and he maintains as an adult, that homosexuality is a sin. He took issue with the quiz's judgment that not agreeing with homosexuality is the same thing as homophobia and discrimination and hate crimes. I took the quiz myself, scored a 45. Most of the points I accrued were from answers like "I never considered that before." I suppose that would be a personal failing, not wondering if everyone around me is gay. But it's not politically correct to ask people their sexual orientation, or to say that it is wrong, from a religious view.

I recently heard a speech given by Charleton Heston on the Radio Free Liberty podcast. Speaking at Harvard Law School in 1999, Mr. Heston said,

"If you talk about race, it does not make you a racist. If you see distinctions between the genders, it does not make you a sexist. If you think critically about a denomination, it does not make you anti-religion. If you accept but don't celebrate homosexuality, it does not make you a homophobe. Don't let America's universities continue to serve as incubators for this rampant epidemic of new McCarthyism."

It's not only the topic of homosexuality. I will admit that I was unaware that my godmother was mixed-race until a few months ago. I've known her since I was in junior high, and only this year did I know she was African, French and Creole. Before then I just saw her as the beautiful woman who was my godmother; the only thing that's changed is now I know her heritage. Sometimes I feel as though I can't talk about certain things or complain about others because I am three generations away from British citizens.

It's much easier to stay quiet, to assume that someone else will speak up if conditions get bad enough. Like the story of Kitty Genovese, whose murder was heard by about a dozen of her neighbors, but none thought to call the police or come to her aid, we rely on the next person to do something. The people my age are distinctly quiet in this generation, content to stick ear buds in their ears and listen to their iPods instead of taking up the cause, any cause. Even the horrific thought of Vietnam's history repeating itself in Iraq has barely spurred any activism in colleges, at least not compared to the 60s. Many activists this time around are leftovers from the last time, while my peers sit eerily silent. Maybe they're afraid to speak up. After all, in today's society, citizens who are anti-war are harshly admonished for being unpatriotic and not supporting the soldiers who are dying on foreign soil. But who thinks to ask why those men and women are dying?

Our U.S. Constitution still gives us the freedom of speech, though it's been carved away in pieces. We still need to be asking questions, making statements, even at the cost of uncomfortable silences, or social ostracism. The Sedition Act expired in 1801, and even though the Patriot Act has resurrected some of its ideas, we still enjoy a relative freedom to express ourselves. We need to exercise that freedom while we still can.

The freedom of speech and the freedom of the press have not been granted to the people in order that they may say things which please, and which are based upon accepted thought, but the right to say the things which displease, the right to say the things which convey the new and yet unexpected thoughts, the right to say things, even though they do a wrong. – Samuel Gompers (1850-1924), Seventy Years of Life and Labor, 1925

a question of dollar signs

If you've ever watched tv in the Chicago area, it's likely that you're familiar with commercial staples such as Erik Martin and Legal Helpers, J.G. Wentworth, Attorney Peter Francis Geraci (my roommate and I believe that his legal first name is actually "Attorney") and Roni Deutch. Now, there's really nothing sinister about these commercials, or the companies they advertise, save for the sad commentary on American lives and Americans' desire for government handouts. My favorite commercial depicts some type of credit class, where Erik Martin prevents the room from being "schooled" by "Creditor the Clown" by bopping him with his inflatable baseball bat. "Don't let bankruptcy, garnishment of wages or the threat of foreclosure keep you down," Martin admonishes. It's a nice idea, isn't it? Hiring a law firm to get your creditors off your back? Just forget the fact that you wouldn't be in the position if you were responsible with your money and didn't spend more money than you had. Unfortunately, for Americans, debt is a way of life, as the average American household has more than $9000 of credit card debt, and the national debt has topped $9 trillion (that figure is incredible, because I know for a fact that it was around $8.5 trillion in March of this year. So, in seven months, our government spent half a trillion dollars). Each American born today is responsible for almost $30,000 of that debt.

Since we're all saddled with thousands of dollars of debt, just by being Americans, it would be nice to have something to counteract that. Hillary Clinton has proposed such an idea: giving $5000 to every newborn to put into an account to later be used for college or a down payment on a house. It reminds me of the deal my parents made with my sister and I; they'd give us some money when we got engaged, to be used for the wedding or the first house. Good idea in theory. But where will that $5000 for every child come from? The taxpayers. It'll add to the national debt and drain further on our resources. Since about 4 million kids are born in our country every year, that's $20 billion in just one year. While it would be theoretically nice to put all children on a level playing field, to help disadvantaged kids go to college, it's a hard program to stomach. If our government can't set a good example of fiscal responsibility, how are the citizens supposed to carry it out?

A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money. – G. Gordon Liddy