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To: ForGod'sSake
Your zoo cage should have citizen guards surrounding it so that when a lion tries to escape, it's shot!

This rememdy is problematic. First, appeal to arms--what Madison called the ultima ratio (last resort?)--is extraconstitutional. It's a natural right, to be sure, but not a Constitutional exercise. Therefore, you are asking that every time the government oversteps its perceived limits, there should be violent insurrection.

As you know, the national government under the Constitution has the power to subdue such insurrection. Further, the government as it currently stands possesses standing armies and various forms of military police able to quell such rebellions.

It is also notable that the perceived transgressions of power have taken place over long periods of time. If you and I, today, believe that the Social Security Act passed in the 1930s warranted rebellion, do we now rebel, even though none of the politicians who passed it remain alive? Do we ignore the massive electoral victories of FDR, which demonstrate that the people at the time acquiesced to these new laws?

And how to you determine when a violation is so agregious as to warrant armed rebellion? Some of the framers themselves who first thought a thing unconstitutional, later found the same thing within constitutional bounds. How do you allow for error of opinion?

Last, the same people who advocate armed resistance, usually when asked, oppose a Constitutional Convention. It seems to me, then, they are asserting the right to defend a Constitution that they are afraid or unwilling to live under. The Constitution allows for a Convention whenever 2/3rds of the states shall propose it. What justifies the use of arms if it is not the last resort? The Declaration of Independence claims that they had tried everything else. They had gone to the British government and tried all legal means for redress. It seems contradictory to me that one would seek to use arms to defend a system when one is unwilling to use legal, non-violent means within that system to address grievances.

186 posted on 12/29/2009 6:04:19 AM PST by Huck (The Constitution is an outrageous insult to the men who fought the Revolution." -Patrick Henry)
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To: Huck
This rememdy is problematic.

Only for our would-be masters.

187 posted on 12/29/2009 9:37:21 PM PST by ForGod'sSake (You have two choices and two choices only: SUBMIT or RESIST with everything you've got!)
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