I probably don’t even have to say that I’m excited about the Supreme Court’s decision in DC v. Heller. I’m even more excited that Scalia wrote the majority opinion, which made for a really interesting (if very long) read.
Part of the fun of a decision like this is that it has a lot of Leftists getting their panties in a bunch over the fact that citizens in DC will now be allowed to defend themselves. I offer a particularly galling example from a letter to the editor which appeared in the Washington Times today (emphasis mine):
The Supreme Court’sdecision in District of Columbia v. Heller (“The gun ban ends,” Editorial, Friday). leaves me with a disturbing realization that our society is strangely wedded to words written in a profoundly different era. While your editorial praises the importance of this ruling on the District’s gun ban and the protection of the rights of its citizens, Associate Justice Antonin Scalia’s majority opinion was not about what is right, nor about what is smart, nor about the best interests of the District. Justice Scalia’s grammar lesson on the relationship between prefatory clauses and objective clauses is hardly worthy of the sheer importance of such landmark decisions for our society. The District of Columbia and the United States do not need a long and winding recitation of the tyrannies of King George III that led to the formation of militias.
Were Justice Scalia and the others in the majority to have argued why the Second Amendment, as interpreted, is relevant today, this decision might not seem so anachronistic. On the contrary, Associate Justice John Paul Stevens‘ dissenting opinion smartly ignores such irrelevant history lessons and argues with the realities of the present era in mind. We need a justice system that lives in the 21st century, not one beholden to the myth that words written in 1791 about men carrying muskets have any bearing today.
In other words, it doesn’t matter whether the Constitution grants us a right or not, because it’s an old document and the history behind the words is irrelevant.
This is the attitude that scares me the most about modern liberals. If our rights are dependent on a cost-benefit analysis conducted by our dear leaders, we don’t really have any rights at all. If our rights are based on whether it is convenient to grant them, they don’t really exist. And it frightens me that there are people who believe that we should put aside the lessons of history and the intent of our founders to create a society of free and self-sufficient individuals, all in the name of being “smart” and in the “best interests of the District.”
While we’re at it, why don’t we reconsider the First Amendment? After all, it’s part of the same musty old document. It may have been important two hundred years ago, but there are a lot more stupid people saying stupid things these days. I mean, should free speech like that really be protected? And since the quality of our newspapers keeps going downhill, freedom of the press is a little obsolete. It’s not like they’re doing anything important.
