McDonald, the Constitution, and liberalism/libertairianism as seen by academics

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http://chronicle.com/forums/index.php/topic,70002.0.html

This is a fantastic ruling. Ironic that the "liberals" (a name which points to liberty, no?) all voted no. We in America have the right to bear arms. You have the right to decline and not have weapons if you so choose. But these weapons serve a very important purpose in a free society. They allow us to defend ourselves, against anyone infringing upon our liberties be it some dopey crackhead or some dopey federal agent engaged in oppressive activities against the people.


I'm mostly libertarian at the personal level.  I'd like liberalism to be more class-based, and mainly about restricting capital, not policing individual behavior.

The problem with 2nd Amendment (and similar) battles always strikes me as less about unclear constitutional text, less about naive "originalism", and rather primarily about the unhelpful rigidity of our constitution more generally.  The conservatism that forces us to live forever with the constitution as written rather than change it to be more effective is what makes the arguments from both sides of the "gun rights" issue seem implausible to me.  I'm thankful for American conservatism on some levels... it strikes me as preventing overly rapid changes to our constitutional framework... but for these perennial issues that try awkwardly to fit into some pretty unhelpful precedent just because it's so difficult to adjust the framework itself, the conservatism strikes me as more of a liability.

Right.  Whether something is constitutional or not is unimportant.  What's important is whether it's right or wrong and other such concerns.

but why is it worse that notions of right and wrong should change with each administration than that they were laid down by a single group of men in the distant past?

The Court made the right call on this one.  The Second Amendment is unambiguous in its intent that all citizens should have the right to keep and bear arms (disclosure: Smith & Wesson M&P40).  Whatever "ambiguity" there is was generated by post-hoc hand-wringing and political maneuvering.  If the Second Amendment were no longer necessary, the government would have no reason to engage in any further attempts to restrict gun ownership.  Besides, if at any time Americans believe any part of the Constitution is no longer necessary, all they have to do is amend it or repeal it.  The only truly dishonest thing in all of this is on the part of those who know they could never sell their ideas about amending or repealing the Constitution, so they try to sneak around it by packing the Court with political ideologues rather than competent judges.

Some of the give and take is above.  More is to be found there.  I found it "fascinating" to wade through to the end - in the same way that rubberneckers are "fascinated" at the sight of an accident.  All of our favorite characters are there, representing all the sides of the issue.

Yes, kiddies, there are the folks that are putting ideas into the heads of the next generation.

stay safe.