The Canadian Right to Arms

Interesting Brexit Post

This is an interesting post on the Brexit situation.

http://crowncommonwealthfederation.blogspot.com/2016/08/the-british-people-have-made-wise.html

Magna Carta Our Shared Legacy of Liberty

A Proposed British American Friendship Act of 2016

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, regarding trade and tariffs, freedom of movement, and all other privileges that the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has had with the United States of America as a part of its membership in the European Union, it shall continue to have them for the next five years or until a new agreement touching these points shall be negotiated by the executive branch and confirmed by the senate.

And that the executive is advised that it is the sense of congress that without delay the United States should proceed to negotiate the aforementioned agreement on the basis of absolute free trade between the United States and the United Kingdom and reciprocal freedom of movement between them.

And further that should the Republic of Ireland chose to also exit the European Union that it be treated in the same way as the United Kingdom.

And also that it is the sense of congress that all countries that chose to exit or remain in the European Union be treated with, in the spirit of friendship and amity.

Why Brexit?

The Second Amendment and the Right to Own Warships

The Second Amendment and the Right to Own Warships

by Stephen W. Houghton II

Those who favor gun control often try to paint the National Rifle Association as extremists advocating a misinterpretation of the Second Amendment to allow private ownership of “Assault Weapons.” Far from favoring a broad and radical interpretation of the Second Amendment, the NRA is viewed in the gun rights community as moderate and compromising, when it comes to our Second Amendment rights.

  

 To discover which characterization of the NRA is correct, it is important to ask what does the constitution mean when it says, “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.” To do so it is important to remember the legal principal that one can only understand a part if one understands the whole, that is to say, that provisions of the constitution must be understood in relation to the whole text.   

The obvious place to start is with Article 1, Section 8, Clause 16 granting congress power, “To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia” This clause was interpreted by the Second Congress of the United States in the second Militia Act of 1792 which required all free able bodied male citizens age 18-45 to acquire a musket and bayonet, so that they could defend the republic. The musket and bayonet were the standard infantry combat arms of their day, equivalent to the M-16 rifle used by the Army or the similar though semi-automatic AR-15 that is the most popular rifle with citizens today.

Though the obvious place to start, the militia clauses are not the only place to look when trying to understand the Second Amendment. For example Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11 grants congress power “To … grant letters of marque and reprisal..” For those who don’t know, a letter of marque was a license for privately owned warships to capture enemy shipping and sell it for profit. If follows of necessity that the constitution assumes that private citizens can own warships. It is a matter of the historical record that such private warships were armed with as many as 20 cannons.

 If one can own a ship full of cannon, then it would follow that one can own a cannon not mounted on a ship. Cannon are a form of field artillery. This category would include weapons such as rockets, mortars, howitzers and similar weapons. Obviously by the rule that a greater right includes the lesser, then the private ownership of machine guns and rocket propelled grenades could also be inferred. If one can own artillery mounted on a boat, presumably you can own artillery mounted on a car, which would be a tank.

Does the National Rifle Association make any such argument about the constitutions implicit assumption, that warship, combat aircraft, armor and artillery may be privately owned? It doesn’t. Instead they speak of people’s undoubted right to defend themselves, their right to engage in the sport of hunting, their duty to aid the civil power in time of crises and to resist usurpation. These are goals that all Americans, liberal conservatives and liberal progressives alike can support.

That does not mean that the argument that the constitution assumes the private ownership of weapons of war from machineguns to warships is wrong, it just shows how moderate the NRA really is. It also shows how un-American interests such as the slave power in the 19^th century and the progressive movement in the in the 20^th have distorted the true understanding of our founding documents.  Of course as Justice Scalia wrote in Heller, even essential rights can be regulated, for the protection of the rights of all. So laws requiring that field artillery and the like to be kept in public armories when not in use, maybe constitutional.

But what is not by any reasonable stretch of the imagination constitutional are laws advocated by gun control extremists that seek to deprive law abiding citizens of the right to own pistols, rifles, and shotguns for the defense of themselves and the state.

An Open Letter to my Fellow Citizens

An Open Letter to my Fellow Citizens

by Civis Americanus et Novi Eboraci

"The saddest epitaph which can be carved in memory of a vanished liberty is that it was lost because its possessors failed to stretch forth a saving hand while yet there was time." - Justice George Sutherland

The bedrock upon which the Republic stands is Liberty which our constitution unambiguously calls a blessing. The right to speak one’s mind on matters of public concern and to publish those thoughts is not only an important individual right by which individuals can defend their other rights in a democratic society, but also an instrument by which the counsel of reason may come to guide the policy of the nation.

Thus it saddens me to see so many of my fellow citizens being led astray by men of zeal, most well-meaning but without understanding, but others with darker motives, who propose to gut the First Amendment in the name of political equality. The cause of this unfortunate state of affairs is a misunderstanding of the Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling in the case of Citizens United v. FEC. This misunderstanding is threefold, first as to what the court held, second as to the effect of the ruling, and third as to what can be done about the concerns of some that this will cause negative effects for the body politic.

The question that the Supreme Court had to answer in Citizens United was this, when individuals form or join an association do they give up their right to free speech? The court following the opinions of courts before it held that that they do not.

In asking whether this decision was the right one, it is helpful to look at what a contrary ruling would have meant. If associations have no right to publish their views, then it follows that: a union should have no right to publish an advertisement to support a candidate that will look carefully after the interests of workers, that the ACLU should have no right to publish adds defending unpopular speech, that the NRA should not have a right to rate candidates for political office, that the New York Times should not indorse candidates or for that matter have an editorial page, that priests and rabbis should have no right to comment on the morals of public officials or their policies from the pulpit, that universities should have no right to teach that which they believe to be true, good, and useful.

Would these outcomes be consistent with the First Amendment rule that “Congress shall make no law … abridging freedom of speech or of the press”? I submit that they would not.

Now some will no doubt say that the law that was struck down was narrower than this, which is partly true, but look at the facts at issue before the court in Citizens United. There the question was could a group of citizens and corporations form an association to make a documentary about a candidate for the presidency of the United States. Upon what basis could this be prohibited without treading the right of people to associate to express their views under foot?

More to the point those who propose to amend the constitution of the republic to overturn Citizens United v. FEC, have not limited their proposed amendment to only narrowly tailored instances. On the contrary, Senator Tom Udall’s proposed amendment gives congress “power to regulate the raising and spending of money and in-kind equivalents with respect to Federal elections, including through setting limits on-- the amount of funds that may be spent by, in support of, or in opposition to such candidates.”

The key phrases are “in-kind equivalents” and “spent by, in support of, or in opposition to such candidates.” An ”in kind equivalent” is anything which has value for the purpose of electing or defeating a candidate for public office. “Spent by, in support of, or in opposition to such candidates”, means what it says. So under this amendment congress has power to regulate anything that could help elect or defeat a candidate for public office.

There can be little doubt that a person standing on a street corner handing out homemade leaflets in support of a candidate would be of value to that campaign. A blogger who writes posts publicizing negative facts about a candidate is surely of value to the candidate’s opponent. For that matter, there is nothing more helpful to a campaign than an average citizen who is convinced that the candidate should be elected and tells his or her friends and acquaintances of their view. These are all in kind equivalents spent in support of or opposition to candidates. They are also the absolute core of the area protected by the First Amendment.

Whether he is well meaning but without understanding or worse, I will not venture to say, but the effect of Senator Udall’s proposed amendment is to put the power to regulate all political speech into the hands of Congress. This is an abomination.

The only reason citizens have been fooled into thinking this is anything but a disaster is because they have been mislead about the magnitude and effect of campaign spending. They believe that so much money is being spent that the donation of the average citizen can have no impact on the electoral process.

Here are the facts. In the 2012 election cycle about $7,127 million was spent on the Federal Elections. Since the population was 313.9 million in 2012 that is $22.70 for every man, woman and child in the United States.

This is hardly an out of control amount and well within the reach of most citizens. Nor is it true that gutting the first amendment is the only way to mitigate any ill effects of campaign spending on the body politic.

If we are really worried that campaign contributions are corrupting our legislators there are two reforms to the legislature that would help reduce this problem. First, if we significantly increased the number of seats in the House so that house districts were half as large this would significantly reduce the need for campaign spending because it would cost less than half as much to run for a district half the size. Second, we could choose some of the members of Congress by lottery. If a third of the members of the Senate were chosen from among members of the state legislatures and a third of representatives were chosen by lot from among the citizens then it would be nearly impossible for campaign donations to significantly corrupt the legislative process.

Another way we can reduce corruption in the political process is to reduce the fruits of crony capitalism. If the courts would fulfill their duty to enforce the constitution in the realm of economic liberty, there would be a lot less potential for corruption. For example, in the case of Kelo v. New London, if the court had enforced the public use clause of the Fifth Amendment, it would have put to an end the practice, ripe for corruption, of using the eminent domain power for “economic development” that was as Justice Thomas wrote, “suspiciously agreeable to the Pfizer Corporation.” Likewise if the court would enforce the privileges and immunities and due process of law clauses, then much of the monopoly licensing that stifles our economy and provides a strong motive for political corruption would be ruled unconstitutional.

In other words, if we are concerned about corruption of the legislature then we can take steps to fix that without gutting our rights of association and free speech. But it will be a sad day for our country and the liberty of the world when an amendment is passed which repeals our First Amendment Rights.

“The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials, and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One's right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote;” - Justice Robert Jackson

What We Stand For

What We Stand For

by Stephen W. Houghton II

          We stand for the traditional American ideal of a liberal, constitutionally limited, democratic, federal, republic. Let us break that idea down quickly. By liberal we mean the idea that all people are born with the inalienable right to life, liberty, and property, in sum to the pursuit of happiness. By constitutionally limited, we mean two things, first that all government power is limited by the principal of natural rights and second that the federal government is limited to its constitutionally enumerated powers. By democratic, we mean that government officials shall be chosen by the people, or by their elected representatives, or from among the people by random selection as in the case of juries. By federal, we mean that the state and national governments are both independent instrumentalities of the sovereign people, that the states are supposed to compete with one another to provide just and efficient government, while the national government deals with foreign matters and keeps the states within their legitimate bounds. By republic, we mean not only not a monarchy, but more, as John Adams put it, “A government of law and not of men.”

          We stand for the idea of the United States as an Anglosphere nation. That is a nation built of people who embrace the tradition of Magna Charta, the Petition of Right, the English Bill of Rights, the Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, the Bill of Rights, the Emancipation Proclamation, the 13^th, 14^th, and 15^th Amendments, and the whole Whig common law tradition.    

Anglospherism does not mean nativism in the sense of believing that only native born Americans or those of British extraction can make good citizens. Many immigrants have come to our country because they love our ideals and want to be free, that is part of what has made our nation great and we welcome them. But we also stand against politicians who despise our people and way of life and want to import a new electorate. We believe we should elect new politicians instead.

We stand for the tradition of individual rights: life, liberty and property, free speech, free press, freedom of conscience, the right to keep and bear arms, that a person’s home is their castle, the right to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures, the right to a grand jury hearing, the right against self incrimination, the right to trial by jury, the right not to be subject to arbitrary punishment, the right to due process of law, the right earn a living without unreasonable government interference, and many more!

           We believe in patriotism and civic government: the town meeting adapted to meet modern conditions, the militia adapted to meet the challenges of terrorism and other modern problems, the grand jury to combat corruption in government, in private associations to meet public needs and for self help.

We believe in the free and equal system of English laws, especially in the Whig tradition of Sir Edward Coke and Lord Camden, applied to government and citizens alike by an independent judiciary.

          We believe in the tradition of representative democracy limited by an upper house, embodied by the British parliament and our congress.

          We believe in the economic system known variously as liberalism, the free market, manchesterism, or capitalism. That is to say we believe that people have a right to use their person and property to engage in the production of goods and services and to trade freely with others and to keep the fruits of their labor.

          We believe in a foreign policy based on free trade, freedom of the seas, defense of our interests and our allies, and a naval and trade oriented world order.  

          We believe in a defense policy based primarily on naval power and minimal foreign intervention. We believe that the ground forces should be kept small in time of peace so that the executive branch cannot get the nation involved in a war without the consent of Congress.

          In short we stand for Americanism!

The Old Republic Vol. 1 No. 0

The Old

R e p u b l i c

Defending the revolutions of 1215, 1688, 1776, and 1865 from “progressive” counter revolution

A Journal of Traditional American Politics                               Summer 2016, Vol.1 No.0

Feature……………….What We Stand For….…………………………… page 1

Rights………… An Open Letter to my Fellow Citizens………………… page 2

Law……The Second Amendment and the right to own warships……. page 3