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George Will
I suppose I must mention his piece in WashPo. I mean he is a famous writer who wears a tie and always looks like he never got over being buggered with a turnip during freshman hazing at an Ivy League school (and has a classical education so he would recognize being buggered with a turnip) but can still use baseball analogies in every article, even if discussing his appendectomy, just to show he's one of the guys. Provided all the guys in question have been buggered with turnips as a prelude to a really classical education.
OK, I tired of his writings years ago and rarely read them. Just as he probably rarely eats turnips. But I digress.
His gripe (carefully hidden -- he's just relating what someone else said, mind you -- is that the Heller Court, well, recognized a right. OK, unlike Roe v. Wade, "In Heller, the court was at least dealing with a right the Constitution actually mentions." But Will (who is probably as frightened of firearms as he is of turnips) maintains it is a disputed right (hey, there was a dissent!) and now the Court will have to ... shudder ... decide what it means, and that means policy makers (i.e., the Obama Admin., Nancy Pelosi, the California and Illinois legislatures, etc.) will be unable "to function as laboratories for testing policy variations." Policy variations as to ... hmmm... expressly-stated constitutional rights. But, where the question is at all close, Will argues that conservativism requires deference to elected policymakers, especially those at the local level. "Judicial conservatism requires judges to justify their decisions with reference to several restraining principles, including deference to the democratic branches of government and to states' responsibilities under federalism."
I think Americans in 1791 chose their policy variations.
By way of contrast, we can look at Will's response to the Kelo decision, another 5-4, which held that private property may be taken (with compensation) by local governments in order to be given to private developers whom they argued would make better use of it. The title of his column: "Damaging 'Deference." He calls the government's claim "brazen," its actions a use of "life-shattering power." His conclusion:
"Liberalism triumphed yesterday. Government became radically unlimited in seizing the very kinds of private property that should guarantee individuals a sphere of autonomy against government.
Conservatives should be reminded to be careful what they wish for. Their often-reflexive rhetoric praises "judicial restraint" and deference to -- it sometimes seems -- almost unleashable powers of the elected branches of governments. However, in the debate about the proper role of the judiciary in American democracy, conservatives who dogmatically preach a populist creed of deference to majoritarianism will thereby abandon, or at least radically restrict, the judiciary's indispensable role in limiting government."
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George Will is no friend of the Second Amendment, and Second Amendment supporters are no friends of George Will.
He should just shut up and go sit on his turnip where he belongs.
What a dumb ass he is . . .
George is a neo-conservative. His beliefs are still centered around big government, which always is against absolute rights, such as the God given right to preservation of ones life. Gun ownership to George is a privilege that government can regulate or ban. He is a very sad man.
Will also said:
"But the majority and minority justices demonstrated that there are powerful, detailed, historically grounded "originalist" arguments for opposite understandings of what the Framers intended with that right to "keep and bear arms.""
Other critics of the Heller decision have also supported the dissenting justices, who relied on the academic historians' arguments as presented in the Rakove amicus brief to the Supreme Court.
The questions everyone should ask, including Will, is why were there errors of fact in the Heller amicus to the Supreme Court from the professional historians? Why was there even a single error of fact in an amicus from a total of sixteen academics? The errors of fact in their brief indicate strong bias on the part of the historians involved. Can anything relating to the Second Amendment from these historians be relied on?
If you would like to know exactly what errors of fact were presented to the Supreme Court by the professional historians (and later absorbed by the dissenting justices in Heller), go to my History News Network article critical of their brief and find out:
Whatever else one might say, George Will deserves our thanks for his November 15, 1993 Newsweek column publicizing Jeff Snyder's "A Nation of Cowards".
That 1993 column brought the idea of "shall-issue" CCW into the mainstream...and as one who has worked for "shall-issue" laws in several states, I'd like to point out that I have used, on many occasions, Mr Will's article as a reference point as to why "shall-issue" might be a good thing.
Will, like so many of his fraternity are not political conservatives of the American stripe as that ideology was originally understood. At best, he is a fiscal conservative and a social conservative, but he is a political liberal. As are all who do not understand that a conservative view of the constitution means "it says what it says and means what it meant at its writing." Anyone who believes that "policy variations" are allowable or even desired in contravention of the words of the constitution cannot possibly be a political conservative in the American tradition, because to believe allowable "policy variations"
contradicting the constitution are acceptable means one has to use a very "liberal interpretation" (to the point of violation) of the words and intent of the constitution.
Do not believe every conservative who claims he is, most don't have a clue about the above and confuse social and fiscal conservatism for real political conservatism, in the American tradition.
The "American tradition" is linchpin. A conservative here is the opposite of a conservative anywhere else in the world. The reason is simple. The flow of power here is from the people to the state, at the people's determination. Since this is the ideal presented and ratified in the Constitution, that is a conservative position politically. Maintaining the source of power in the hands it was assigned, the people's.
Everywhere else in the world the power flows the other way, if there is any flow. Too often we see a people totally powerless in other countries, all of it residing in the state. Therefore any lessening of state power and shifting of it to the people is seen as a liberal event. Just the opposite of here.
I suspect being buggered with a turnip is about like being buggered with a hunk of ginger root. Not that I know from experience one way or the other, but at least getting buggered with a ginger root is listed on Wikipedia.
Search for "figging."
And no, I don't think it has anything to do with figs. Or Fig Newtons. Or Apple Newtons.
But I digress.
..Who would have thought an article about figging would turnip on a gun blog ? That CANNOT improve your aim.
Dave, I'd suggest writing him. Perhaps he's never had a good opportunity to be enlightened on this issue. I don't what recall by now but I do remember him changing his mind (I think)on some issue. I wouldn't mention turnips though. Now that the turnips are public, on second thought, perhaps someone else of standing should write him. (It was funny as s*** though.)
The neo-conservative is best displayed by none other than one man who
would know best, Pat Buchanan.
Who are they, the neoconservatives?
The first generation were ex-Trotskyites, socialists, leftists, and
liberals who backed FDR, Truman, JFK, and LBJ. When the Democratic
party was captured by McGovern in 1972, on a platform of cutting
defense and "Come Home America!". These Cold War liberals found
themselves isolated and ignored in their own party. Adrift, they
rafted over to the Republican Party and were pulled aboard as
conservatism's long voyage was culminating in the triumph of Reagan.
Neoconservatives were the boat people of the McGovern revolution that
was itself the political vehicle of the moral, social, and cultural
revolutions of the 1960s.
Read more in his book, Where the Right Went Wrong, start on page 37.
Pat shoots this one spot on target and you will come to understand the
likes of people like George Will without the window dressing.
David, I hope you don't mind me posting about Pat's book but its the
read that many need to do to understand what is going on, on this
topic. For years I have heard people say Bush is a liberal. Well of
course he is, he is a neo-conservative which is based on a foundation
of liberals. Frankly, "neo", in this case means "fake" without
me twisting it with any more Latin.
Wow...I've been reading George Will for years and never thought of him as you guys do. And nobody who knows me would classify me as anything close to a Neocon or anything other than, at "best" a libertarian-leaning Republican.
We must PURGE our RANKS of the WRECKERS, the RUNNING DOGS of OBAMAISM !
[sarcasm off]
David E. Edwards and BlackX have it right. If he's mistaken, let him know. He's a bright guy. No need to invoke turnips and tuchuses. Just silly.
I like(d) George Will. I've read several past columns that made good points I hadn't thought of.
But this was pretty bad. The Second is disputed only because gun-grabbers made a decision to dispute it. The states' rights view is historically novel, a 20th century invention. I somehow get the impression I would not get the same split-the-difference deference if I came up with a rationale to contest the First amendment.
I laughed heartily at this post. I had no idea about the hazing thing.
I also get the impression you really don't like George Will.