Your Monday morning post was graciously written by Stephen L. Hall. Many thanks, Stephen.
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I was recently introduced to the writings of one Justin Curmi, of the Huffington Post, wherein he set about the task of libslaining his perspective upon the Bill of Rights and the Constitution of the United States. The latest in his series of articles obviously stepped out of his intended direction of the series to address an apparent deluge of over 900 comments regarding the third post in his series, which appear to have expressed some rather negative and differing retorts to Mr. Curmi’s perspective.
Click here if you wish to reference the articles yourself.
The torrent of adverse commentary stems primarily from his statement that, “using a firearm to defend oneself is not legal . . . .” He attempts to deflect the animosity towards this statement by stating that, “I think there were details that have been missed . . . .” That’s right, you just did not catch the subtleties and nuance of his statement that it is illegal for you to defend yourself.
Why is it illegal to defend yourself? (Even though self-defense is recognized universally in every jurisdiction in every legal system.) Obviously, Mr. Curmi is more astute, clever, and enlightened than the seven billion other people on the planet, and everyone throughout history. Mr. Curmi obviously earned his intellectual participation trophy.
His theory is thus: that every accused has a right to a fair trial because that right is explicitly granted in the Bill of Rights but that right to self-defense is never explicitly granted, and if you kill your attacker they are deprived of their right to a fair trial. Of course the actual words, “fair trial” never explicitly appear in the Bill of Rights either, but don’t let semantics get in the way of your semantic argument.
To justify his position to the torrent of negativity about his assertions designed to render the second amendment meaningless, he latches upon the militia phrase like any good authoritarian to differentiate between civilian defense as contrasted to the common defense. Then conjectures that the individual or civilian defense is a matter of common law, therefore a state matter, whereas the armed forces are common defense are Constitutional. Of course, federal law superseding state law therefore mere common law, in his conjecture.
So resorting to the language of the fifth amendment he supposes that the military has “the right to override the balancing act between” self defense and the fair trial. The language he so conveniently ignores in asserting a non-existent military right to override your rights, in reality refers only to the requirement of a grand jury indictment in certain situations where it is not practical.
All of this by way of trying to justify his considered opinion that only the military has the right to use arms. “A gun for civilians is a weapon for a revolution and not for ordinary use.” So we are left with the absurd conclusion that you are permitted to keep and carry guns, but never allowed to use them. And you are really foolish to believe you can use a gun because those guns could “get into the hands of people who use them for horrible reasons.”
Obviously, such wildly erroneous pronouncements garnered the angry attention of many commenters; however, as is always the case, the errors in Mr. Curmi’s logic were expressed in the first of his series. That post only garnered nine comments, at least three of them by the same commenter. As typical, I am more concerned with the fallacy of reason than the foolish conclusions derived from such.
Mr. Curmi begins by reciting the preamble to the Constitution. Well enough, but then he inflates five broad pronouncements of the preamble to greater importance than the rest of the Constitution even the specific language of the very amendments which comprise the Bill or Rights which is the subject of his posts. The aim of his series of posts on the Bill of Rights is thus clarified; his purpose is to minimize and diminish the Bill of Rights.
He labels those five broad pronouncements as principles or aims guiding every law ever proposed, that these are requirements before the inception of any law or regulation. “In addition this sets the formula of interpretation for all legal documents in the USA.” In other words, he redefines the very purpose, scope, and extent of the Supreme Court to just the preamble.
Two of those five, the common defense and general welfare, are specifically mentioned not only in the preamble but listed as specific duties of Congress to fund in Section 8 of Article I, as was discussed in a previous post of mine. The other aims are ensuring domestic tranquility, promoting justice, and securing the blessings of liberty.
As criteria for law, for every law, these are rather vague notions and nebulous concepts. Why? Because only with such vague, fuzzy notions of principle can everything you could possibly want the government to ever do be rationalized and equivocated into an argument of weighing and balancing interests.
It is an excuse to justify everything, or dismiss anything. Weighing or balancing is a way to pretend to have standards when you have none. The list, which is to be weighed is merely a rack upon which to hang one’s hat; a rationalization of a conclusion reached before any weighing or balancing was ever pretended to have been done. In other words, come to an emotional conclusion then try to justify your answer. This is not a standard, it is an excuse.
So once an excuse is concocted, how does Mr. Curmi suppose the Bill of Rights comes into play? To Mr. Curmi, the Bill of Rights is kind of like a filter through which to review the excuse of his five aims. In other words, if it meets our subjective aims, is it specifically prohibited? Well, he would never be that absolute; those Bill of Rights are just a balance test and can be overridden if the law meets the aims well enough. That is, all rights become subjective.
Most telling is the last sentence of his first post, that these “rights give certain powers to an individual and withhold certain powers from the person.” Simply stated rights are specifically granted or withheld by the Constitution and the government, certainly not endowed by a creator.
Mr. Curmi dismisses any notion of the Declaration of Independence as a legal document. This is why by his third post, he asserts that you have no right to life and thus no right to defend yourself. At the same time, the ninth and tenth amendments are instantly rendered meaningless, as you cannot retain rights not mentioned if you only have rights if they are mentioned.
Now that we have a glimpse of his thought processes, lets look at his second post, the one assessing, or reassessing, the first amendment. As anticipated, he asserts that “it limits certain powers of the government and gives certain powers to individuals.” Note the language, that the government gives and takes away powers, that rights are merely legal gifts or permissions.
He explicitly stated so in his first post when he states that, “the people grant the rights to each other.” Which implies that the people can take away those rights, and explains his reference in his second post to our republic as a democracy, however offhandedly.
He oddly attaches himself to the last phrase concerning the right “to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” Employing this phrase, he subverts the very concept of the first words that, “Congress shall make no law . . . .” In other words, he contrives to eliminate the very restriction he states that the amendment imposes, rendering the first amendment effectively meaningless.
“Thus, the government cannot make a law but if there is a grievance brought to them by the people, they can ban or bar what is causing the grievance.” Congress can make no law unless some social justice warrior complains, then congress can just such a law. The founding fathers were just kidding when they said Congress could not do that, they just need a pretext first.
But don’t worry, “how do they choose if it is a proper grievance and not a populist grievance?” Why to subject it to the nebulous and vague aims of the preamble. Such vagaries will protect us from the populist and insure that the grievance is proper.
Throughout this review, my mind’s ears have been screaming in agony at Mr. Curmi’s abuse of the English language, and I should be remiss if I did not elucidate the vexatious detritus.
One is wont to excuse Mr. Curmi as having no understanding of the basic structure of grammar as to be able to comprehend the meaning of the Constitution, but his having apparently a collegiate level degree in both philosophy and political science it cannot be so easily dismissed that the misrepresentations are the work of an intentional and certainly nefarious nature of disinformation and rationalization.
He keeps rewording the language of the Constitution, apparently in an attempt to modernize the language, but invariably manages to change and twist the meaning of the words and phrases. Is that an intentional or ignorant mis-translation or rewriting?
He starts off obviously not knowing what the word “posterity” means as he rewrites a portion of the preamble as the question, “Does it secure the blessings of our liberty and posterity?”
He repeatedly uses the phrase of check and balance system without any real reference to the words or their application to the constitution. It is almost as if it is a magical phrase spoken with the wave of a wand meant to confuse and befuddle rather than carry any real meaning or import.
He alters “peaceably to assemble” to “peaceably protest”, as if the only time one is permitted to assemble is in a protest and for no other reason. He changes “petition” to “write”, I guess eliminating the possibility of actually speaking one’s grievances. And we could get into odd adjectives such as classifying grievances as proper or populist, as if a populist grievance could not also be proper. I was not aware that populist was in fact the antonym of proper.
There are repeated vagueness in his works, such as the overuse of the word “filtered” or the fear that the USA might be vaguely “gripped by a certain identity.” We must also beware lest we create a “detriment to democracy.”
It was plain that Mr. Curmi set out to simply create a dozen or so posts from what appeared to him a simple exercise of rendering a six to ten paragraph alternative and original view of the Bill of Rights, more of a thought exercise than any serious perspective. Put that is no excuse to label a few errant thoughts as a “paper”.
I surmise that in general it is the cavalier fluffiness of thought and ephemeral haze of words with which Mr. Curmi addresses a serious and precise subject which most offends my sensibilities rather that the obviously wrong conclusions. Reason is based upon principles, but when the very words like “principle” are rendered meaningless then there is no reason, no logic, no debate.
I find myself unable to arouse the ire which Mr. Curmi’s conclusions most deservedly merit for a vague sense of utter bewilderment that any society could produce such an entity so disconnected from actual thought.
Cogito, ergo sum. I think, therefore I am. But, I’m not sure people like this actually think. Are they, then not?
