fromteaparty.org: 'Justice Scalia: 'Constitution is not a living organism' - Mar. 15 (orig. posted at foxnews.com)
((Fox News) – During a speech in Atlanta Friday, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on Friday defended interpreting the Constitution as it was originally written and intended.
Scalia delivered a speech titled “Interpreting the Constitution: A View From the High Court,” as part of a constitutional symposium hosted by the State Bar of Georgia. Originalism and trying to figure out precisely what the ratified document means is the only option, otherwise you’re just telling judges to govern, Scalia argued.
“The Constitution is not a living organism,” he said. “It’s a legal document, and it says what it says and doesn’t say what it doesn’t say.”
- See more at: http://www.teaparty.org/justice-scalia-constitution-living-organism-36957/#sthash.1eGReRCb.dpuf)
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We don't need the SCOTUS to tell us what history has already shown. Just reading the quotes and legislative history clearly show the meanings of words as they were used during that time.
Thomas Jefferson: “If once the people become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions.”, and, “Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms (of government) those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny”
"The preservation of a free government requires, not merely that the metes and bounds which separate each department of power be invariably maintained, but more especially that neither of them be suffered to overleap the great barrier which defends the rights of the people. The rulers who are guilty of such encroachment exceed the commission from which they derive their authority, and are TYRANTS. The people who submit to it are governed by laws made neither by themselves nor by an authority derived from them and are slaves….."
-James Madison
“Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.” Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson said ” And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first. I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive. I think myself that we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government. The beauty of the Second Amendment is that it will not be needed until they try to take it. ”
Thomas Jefferson said: “When the people fear their government there is Tyranny, when the government fears the people there is Liberty”.
“Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of Liberty.” ~Thomas Jefferson
“All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.” ~Thomas Jefferson
JUST A FOOTNOTE FOR MORE CONSIDERATION OF WHY WE 'MIGHT' NEED TO "BEAR" ARMS. We may just in well within "...the coming years", referred to in the following quote.
In October 1917, we parted with the old world, rejecting it once and for all.
We are moving toward a new world, the world of Communism. We shall never turn off that road! Comrades, do not be concerned about all that you hear about glasnost and perestroika and democracy in the coming years. These are primarily for outward consumption. There will be no significant internal change within the Soviet Union other than for cosmetic purposes. Our purpose is to disarm the Americans and let them fall asleep.
- Mikhail Gorbachev
http://www.rense.com/general12/gobie.htm
(Mar. 15)
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Stan Stanfield · Top Commenter · Stanford University
So glad to hear these words from Scalia - to say, from a sitting Supreme Court Justice. There's hope yet.
(Mar. 16)
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Bill Meyers · Top Commenter
So how is it the folks in CT, can make laws banning weapons they don't like? The 2nd amendment is clear, all citizens have a right to keep and bear arms.
Stan Stanfield · Top Commenter · Stanford University
Actually, Bill, all this sort of thing about our 'constitutional rights' needs clarification. The Bill of Rights is a list of examples of the powers that the federal government does not have over us, were not ceded to the federal govt. by the Constitution. But we need to secure our rights in our various States by our State constitutions - they are not ceded to us or guaranteed to us by the federal govt. That's why various States can do the sorts of things that they are doing, if they are in concert with the State's constitution. So citizens need to check out their State constitutions, and bring them to the point that they would like to have them - on various issues.
(Mar. 16)
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The latter brings up a VERY constitutional issue - the role of a judicial 'principle' called 'incorporation': the idea that the 14th Amendment turned the Bill of Rights on its head, and made it apply FROM the federal government TO the States.
I reject that notion. But that is the real issue here. And I wonder what Scalia's perspective is on that crucial constitutional matter.
Let alone on the issue of the 14th Amendment apparently not having been properly ratified.
Or the 16th Amendment either, for that matter…
'Tis all a right mess. Which needs someone simply to cut through it all; like Alexander the Great did with the puzzle of the Gordian knot.
Just so it isn't someone like Obama, who obviously desires to be a power unto himself; from a low-consciousness, monkey business-as-usual position.
America going through the same sort of processes that ancient Rome did, when it moved from a Republic to an Empire.
Me, I'd do the job with the announcement that 'The Play is over, ladies and gentlemen. We've had our chances to prove ourselves; and now it's time for the Real Thing.
'So let's get on with it. 'It' being our Ascension, onto a new, higher level of consciousness, called the Fifth dimension. Calling us out of our long imprisonment in the Third dimension. The dimension of duality, and polarity. Now to be replaced by a degree of Unity and Harmony.
'On our way to The Full Monty, of total Reunification with our Source; the Creative Intelligence behind the Whole Shebang.
'Another word, and concept, for The (mindless) Big Bang.'
All of this, making it crystal clear that
it's time for something new.
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