THE PATRIOT POST - ALEXANDER'S COLUMN 04/08/2015

Right Analysis | Right Hooks | Right Opinion Patriot Headlines | Grassroots Commentary Alexander's Column Amendment II -- In Defense of Liberty By Mark Alexander · April 8, 2015    “The ultimate authority ... resides in the people alone. [T]he advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation ... forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any...” --James Madison (1788) While your Patriot Post team covers a wide range of issues, every bit of bandwidth we use is devoted to our mission -- "advocating individual Liberty, the restoration of constitutional limits on government and the judiciary, and the promotion of free enterprise, national defense and traditional American values." At its core, our mission rests on the eternal "endowment of Liberty as referenced in our Declaration of Independence and enshrined in our Constitution. While that unalienable endowment is eternal and assured for all people, it is only as sustainable as it is defensible. For that reason, any discussion about the Rights of Man is nothing more than talk unless it includes discourse on the ability to defend those rights -- which is why central to our advocacy of Liberty is our advocacy for the Second Amendment. Our Founders, as with generations before them, understood that Liberty could only thrive in conjunction with adequate defense. Thus, they codified both the innate right and obligation to that defense in our Bill of Rights as Amendment II: “A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.” For the record, in the context intended by our Founders and affirmed by the Supreme Court over the last two centuries, "a well regulated Militia" refers to "the People." Justice Joseph Story, appointed to the Supreme Court by our Constitution’s principal author, James Madison, wrote in his "Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States" (1833), “The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of the republic; since it offers a strong moral check against usurpation and arbitrary power of the rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them.” In other words, the obligation "to Support and Defend" our Constitution is entirely dependent on "the right of the citizens to keep and bear arms." While Americans may chose not to be gun owners, they are dangerously misinformed if they do not understand that their rights are assured by those of us who shoulder this obligation. In an era when the rights of Americans are under relentless assault by Barack Obama, the loudest members of his Democrat Party, and their activist cadres across the nation, there are several very effective organizations that are devoted to sustaining our Second Amendment rights and obligations. The most widely recognized of those grassroots organizations is the National Rifle Association, which is holding its annual meetings and convention in Nashville this week. I am attending those meetings and thus this is an abbreviated column. However, I recommend for your review the extensive commentary I have devoted to our Second Amendment, and its role as "the palladium of the liberties" of our Republic. Read more here and visit our Second Amendment store. Share Pro Deo et Constitutione -- Libertas aut Mors Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis